I hear you, Brian. I know I had to become pretty damn miserable before I made the decision to quit for good. Then I had to come to terms with the realization that drinking became a problem because I was miserable; I was not miserable because drinking had become a problem. I would be rewriting history if I believed I was miserable all those decades. The truth is I loved the hell out of drinking and getting high for a long, long time. It was misery that turned relatively normal consumption and free-spirited partying into a death spiral, but sobriety is what I most needed in order to face that misery head on. Sometimes a voice in my head tries to convince me that alcohol abuse was just a symptom and I'm not actually an alcoholic, but at this point I'm so much better off sober that I wouldn't risk testing that theory. I'm probably fooling myself, anyway.
Anyway, we're all different, and I'm hoping you find your balance, AA.