In my case I believe it was ultimately helpful, but I went down a lot of distracting paths en route looking for other reasons than the one that I finally discovered - I was addicted to it.
I liked the way drinking made me feel, so I did it a lot. I did it enough that it broke a part of my brain, and now that part of my brain is programmed to tell me that I need alcohol. Understanding that dynamic made it easier for me to deal with the part of my brain that was constantly telling me to drink. Understanding that the feeling I needed alcohol was the result of 'some broken bit of neurology' (to quote Saochick) made resisting that feeling easier than it had ever been.