I started drinking because I felt the "good girl" I'd been raised to become was false and I enjoyed feeling "off leash". After some years had passed, I continued to drink for the effects - the buzz, the warmth, the sense that I could escape into my own imaginings. Life without alcohol seemed dull and full of boring routines which were essentially meaningless.
I see now that drunkenness is an illusion - a dangerous illusion - and that my choices DO matter, that life is not meaningless.