The craving for alcohol is a sign of health, not illness.
Have you ever had food poisoning, or a bad flu? Did you feel like drinking?
When we're truly ill our survival drives - for booze, food, sex - shut down. We have to enjoy at least a modicum of health for our appetites to surface.
And far from being powerless, we have absolute dominion over our lower or beast brain, which can't lift so much as a finger on its own.
We choose to ignore its urgings, and that's the end of the matter. It's exactly that simple.