Oh Algorithm thank you! As usual, you are spot on! I have been dragging this around with me for my whole life, way more than 7 years, and my Beast is not giving up without a fight. You're right, this new obsession is just that, IT's death throes.
When the Beast's organizing principle, the addictive mandate, is replaced, via the Big Plan, with a new mandate centered around abstinence, one may undergo a significant, and possibly profound, personal reorganization. This reorganization will naturally be centered around the new organizing principle of the Big Plan -- the mandate to abstain.
This has to happen for me, IT is all mixed into my beliefs and self image/ identity in really insidious ways. I got indoctrinated into drugs and alcohol by my parents as a teen, some really whacky family values that set me up. From the beginning, this was my life. AVRT has to be the way to end it once and for all. It's the way to get into my brain and identify/ replace all that faulty thinking. I don't even know who my authentic self is? I've never met her. That just made me tear up.
I'm trying to chill out and not be so neurotic.