For me, my AV is all too real, in my experience. For me to evaluate my AV as unreal is to defeat my awareness of recognising my AV from myself. It would follow from there that I would in fact be creating an even greater influence from my AV as I continued to generalize it as nothing more than unreality.
My AV is in fact, a collected harvesting of my own thoughts. My own very real thoughts, to be sure...
In any case, nice going on your not drinking. Awesome!