Agreed. It all depends on what your starting point is.
If you start by saying that your excessive drinking has created an artificial survival drive - the Beast - which you can never eradicate, any more than you can your hunger drive, then you will always be subject to AV - the Beast's bark - which will be trying to get you to drink. However, that starting point is an assumption, not a scientifically verified, or even verifiable, fact.
You can start off with other asssumptions, e.g. that drinking is a matter of choice which you are responsible for, and if you do then you are in a whole different paradigm where concepts like the Beast and it's bark (AV) do not apply.
Recovery, like psychology, may interact with science at certain points but on the whole is more an art than a science and, I believe, always will be.