Hi Lionhearted. Congratulations.
What I'm hearing you say is: no excuses.
And that's what it took for me to prevent relapse.
I had to commit to this: Nothing, no happy event or horrible event, no feeling, no sensation, no thought, no body, no where, no how, will ever be sufficient reason to drink. End of story. No exceptions..
From there it was and is developing the ways I would cope to keep that commitment to myself. And as I became less like a dependent infant with a bottle and more like the woman that was hanging on for dear life inside, the coping skills became and are becoming more sophisticated. They build on each other.
But in the beginning some days you crawl your way through or don't even move if that's what it takes to not drink.
Not drinking and not relapsing is the most direct way. It is like a portal. Dive through and go for it!