Hi Harvey, you haven't said a great deal but the nub of it, for you, shines through. Do take note of and contemplate what some pretty together people such as Shock, Fresh, and others say. They're the ones who can gently suggest, as they're doing, some simple ways you can think about your addiction.
For myself, I'm not the best person to say anything about the idea of alcohol as a calming restorative (that is, the illusion of that). For me, unfortunately, it does go some way towards restoring me to some calm - even though I've had some brief good glimpses of that same restorative calm, in previous periods of sobriety, from meditation and such like.
It's a bugger, isn't it? The search for the grail, of inner calm. I think that the best we can do is trudge / sprint our individual ways in that general direction...and it truly does tend to help a lot if we hear and know that others have gone before on that similar road, and that some - like me and you and others in SR - are still puzzling over the map.
I use the map metaphor (yes, I'm big on metaphors, they come easily to me with my literary type background) to illustrate my own struggle as much as anyone else's, including yours. For example, I'm an excellent map reader - and I mean real printed maps, not this GPS rubbish :-). BUT over my many years of travelling about, I've long ago learned that the map is not the terrain. The map (in our case, of how to stop drinking and stay stopped) is a representation solely of what is in fact a complex terrain. Anyone who's been lost - in the cities, the countryside etc - despite earnestly consulting the map, knows this to be true.
What do we do, when we've taken a turn or road which seems to have lead us - according to the map OR our slight mis-reading of it - to where we hadn't wanted to go? We re-consult the map, look at the terrain itself, see if they match. If not, either the map is inaccurate (sending us in the wrong direction to where we wanted to go)....or we haven't quite looked at it closely enough, to match it with the surrounding terrain. Or, we were / are too distracted by stuff to pay attention, and so took that turn to place A instead of place B. But even place A has its small and real experiences. They're part of our lives. They may not be what bring us comfort (because we didn't get to where we wanted to be). But they're real.
To slightly torture the metaphor further (I hope you're not getting a headache :-)): one of my vivid memories of my one trip to the UK from Australia, in 2001. I went by myself, at age 45. It was a big deal for me. Due to my life at that time, I drank my way through much of it, mostly in the North of England. Anyway, re the map thing: one time, I managed to meet up with the one English resident I knew for a small trip with him around Yorkshire. My goal was to see Castle Howard (the site of Brideshead Revisited TV series).
Anyway, on one of the days there or on the way back, we were driving about the Yorkshire Dales. He was driving, I was navigating - with the map, and this, in a strange country, so doing my best. He's a slightly control freak person, but a dear old friend. What with miscommunications on the road and such, when someone else is driving, I'd somehow 'sent' us up onto what became a cow-track. High on the hills. He was freaking out...'where have you taken us??' 'Where ARE we?' and such.
But we got to the ridge of the hill. I suggested we just get out of the car, to just peruse the panoroma - the vista, which I'm always fond of wherever I am. And mainly to just get fresh air, out of his rather musty old car, and to re-group before working out how to re-navigate our way back to the main town we were going.
Guess what was there, on that hill top? Not much, given it's the Dales. Fairly basic, few if any trees. Just grass, stones....and more of the same, as far as the eye could see.
BUT. As I suggested to my friend we just 'check it out', rest, look around..........there, at our feet, a few feet away, part hidden in the grass, was what I knew to be a Neolithic tomb. I still have the photo I took with my old Pentax SLR of it: just two or three biggish oblong stones, crossing over each other, rising up from the ground.
What brought us there? The map? My misreading of the map? The tension in the car with my friend? The fact that I was reading the map in a very new place, for me? The fact that I was due to travel back to Aus shortly afterwards, and sooooo didn't want to?
In that moment, though, as I saw the tomb.......all that fell away. Personally, I honestly hope for you and me, Harvey, and so many others here, that those amazing moments can remind us and stay with us.