I've known alcoholics who consider themselves abstinent but still toast with a slurp of wine occasionally, enjoy desserts with a finishing splash of hi-test over the top, and when they are cooking will sample the wine they are about to dump in the pot in order to...to make sure it's really wine, I suppose.
All those are willing and concious intakes of booze, but there still exists for these people a line which they will not cross. For them anything over a half glass would be wrong and a clear violation of their non-drinking identity.
Others I've known have passed the half-a-drink mark but stopped short and did not continue on to getting drunk at that time, and so interpret their experience as not drinking, or as not REALLY drinking as they would describe drinking.
It's almost two schools of thought...one school holds the line at zero deliberate alcohol ingestion, another is ok with drinking small amounts if there's a reasonable reason to go ahead and do that, but not to overdo it and to not do that too often.
The second school views the problem to be avoided is the extreme drunkedness of the past. As long as that doesn't take place the alcoholic has remained sober enough for practical purposes and anything further than practical is approaching fanatical.
The first sees complete abstinence as the goal, which by definition obviously also precludes the old drunken episodes from taking place.
What would be a clear violation of abstinence to people in the first group is commonly shrugged off by the second.
I see from the two differing viewpoints that people can associate with AVRT while still choosing to interpret the material loosely instead of literally, each finding what works for the individual, taking what they want and leaving the rest.
Good to know there is a wide degree a flexibility in interpreting and applying the basic concept of abstinence among AVRT'rs.