As is true of many relationships, it's the loss of what might have been or could have been rather than what was actually happening that provokes a sense of loss. What I "lost" was a ghost of my own creation, one that had nothing to with what was real, a phantom that I believed I needed in able to avoid pain and increase comfort and satisfaction in my life.
Alcohol isn't made by wizards and never was the magic potion that we hoped it would be or, as happens much more frequently, the the magic potion that we convince ourselves it truly is in order to continue drinking, while denying the reality of self-destruction.
I don't know about grieving, but alcohol became less important to me the more I worked on building a life in which drinking had no meaningful place, but only after I put down the drink and dropped the illusion that drinking made life better for me in any way. In other words, after I started getting honest with myself.