It's can be sellfish, yes, it's your choice of whether you drink, definitely.
If you're out in the snow and have been hiking all day in a blizzard, you stumble across a thatched cottage, with a roaring fire, a friendly host and a roast dinner on the table, would you decline the invitation to come in and choose to camp in a snow hole in the garden? This merely is a metaphor for loneliness and how it influences my choice, especially if there's no-one I can talk to regarding how I'm feeling.
I think it's important to UNDERSTAND and RELATE to the reasons why people make the choices they make, rather than to label them as sins. I personally think that this sort of narrative is rather damaging and not coming from a point of understanding. For those that consider it sinful, I would at least like to see the advocation of alternative coping strategies, ways to learn alternative skills to cope with what drives us to drink. Labelling people who've fallen into problematic drinking patterns to cope with life's problems is DAMAGING and, if anything, perpetuates the problem.
Sometimes, we stumble across situations in life that we find incredibly painful, that we simply don't know how to cope with. Sometimes, just a little heart-to-heart and a listening ear can make all the difference in the world. If that isn't available, alcohol fills that gap.