I think where we get the strength from is realising that, no matter what our problems are or were, alcohol, that stuff we'd slapped the label 'Solution ' on, was no longer cutting it. It ISN'T a solution to how we feel. It just causes us different problems. The 'recovery ' stuff you read people (me included ) harping on about on here - that is what helps us, as addicts, learn to deal with life on life's terms. How we dropped resentments that were burdening us (I know that I found a couple of things very very hard to let go of, inside I just screamed, "why should I let it go? He doesn't deserve forgiveness". Thing is, I was taught that holding onto resentments is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to suffer. It doesn't work like that. As I tried it myself and started to trust the program more, then I started feeling able to make decisions to 'drop' the other things. With abuse issues I found that some of the codependency literature really helped with this, especially the books about codependency and rescuing the inner child. (Sorry if some of this sounds like psycho-babble to you, but I can only relay it how I found it and just hope it might be helpful at some point). You see, one of the things that is common with adults who were abused as children, is that we feel that by dropping the resentment and anger we would be abandoning that child we once were. And boy, did I hold onto my anger. I wore ut like and invisible cloak, and I thought that cloak would protect me from being hurt again. And i would sieze any opportunity to top up my anger, and any negative emotions, be it jealousy, fear, irritation, disappointment, self-pity or whatever would get flipped straight into anger. And I didn't even know I was doing it. And if I got scared or uncomfortable then I could easily drum up some self-pity by dwelling on the past and all its unjustises for a while. Yep - self-pity was excellent for keeping me just where I was.
Now I know that my cloak of simmering rage actually didn't protect me. It left me suffocating and agonising in my own feelings. The people who caused it either unaware or bewildered by the intensity of my feelings (Well, the ones who did one little thing and I reacted like a mad woman I suppose would be). And my attitude pushed away the good, kind people who are in the world, and so I stuck with 'people like me' which was never going to end well to be honest.
Anyway. Things have been so much better for me since I did my 12-step work. I go regularly to AA, and have been to CoDa a bit as well (their meetings are harder to get to - although their handbook was really, really useful reading for me).
Sorry. I wrote more than I'd intended to, but it just kind of came to the surface reading your post. Perhaps something I said might be helpful. Maybe not. I can only try.