for good?
well.... I sometimes wonder if they ever really shut down "for good". Probably they would if we were to move off to a nomadic tribal society somewhere in a mountainscape where alcohol didn't exist. Maybe....
but, I can say with confidence these thoughts and romantic notions to fade and subside.
In the early days it's a lot harder.
You mentioned that for the first time you 'really embraced' step one. What did you mean by that, specifically?
I ask you this because I was around AA for quite a while before I actually DID Step 1. I believed I'd 'embraced' it and 'done' it, until I finally got a sponsor and WORKED it.
In my case, working it involved completing and reflecting on a 20+ page workbook that was filled with questions about my personal history with drinking. How it impacted my life, how the impacts evolved over time, the impact on relationships, spirituality, work, family, emotions, mind, body, activities. It was a very thorough set of questions that took me on a meandering journey from the age of 14 to the age of 42 forcing an honest look at the whole picture.
What I found this work did was make it a LOT harder for me to fall into the thinking that maybe my life really was 'manageable'. Maybe I wasn't 'powerless'. Maybe I'd just had some bad luck here and there. Laying it all out in a big complete story made it a lot harder for me to think romantically about the 'fun' of alcohol without it being glaringly obvious how out of synch that romanticism was with my own personal reality.
So.... one suggestion if you've not already done so is perhaps find a good sponsor and get to work on Step 1 in a really active and thorough fashion. It isn't just about saying "I am powerless and my life has become unmanageable". It's about getting thoroughly honest and specific about what that has meant for YOU personally and the direction that is leading in your life.