I think that your story is the most significant thing, and the drinking and giving up drinking might be an offshoot of having your story embraced and understood by yourself and other people.
I can totally relate. I was spat on, pushed around, felt fairly inhuman in my silly little town. You know, small towns, silly self-important 'end all' ideas about the world. Because I'm half Jewish and my father has an edgy east coast thing, people would ask me if I was from Boston. The first time I felt really a person was when I left my own culture and traveled. Drinking sort of coincided with that in my early 20s. An ecstasy of escape. Even now, I view local morays and contextualize them as a local culture that locals cannot read.
I think the risk for me, the worst part of it, was that I'm a sociable person. I like people. And being not liked or just feeling fringy and pushed around took a real psychological toll. I started to take society's side against myself. I think this is part of my drinking, but it's sort of an independent phenomenon as well.
Right now, I'm trying to crawl out of it and recapture some good feelings about myself, but it's really hard AND not everyone can relate to this experience. Even really super intelligent people can not know how to listen, and recovery culture is not immune to that.