Oceanlady, I used to find that my other obsessions such as with cars or motorcycles would ramp up when I was in not drinking.. to the extent that I made more than one expensive toy purchase in early sobriety. And sometimes would relapse while "celebrating", lol.
I talked at length with my psychologist about it and he said it's the addiction just finding another path, something else to get obsessed about. For me, removing my method of self-medicating just allowed me to get wound up over something else.
Tolle, in "A New Earth", also refers to the ego's need to create "wants" as being very important to the way we identify ourselves, identity being such a big part of the role of the ego of course. The wanting often being even more important than the getting, which usually provides only brief satisfaction. For me it was very true.