GT, the 'reframing the path to alcohol addiction' approach can be summarised in Annie Grace's own words, in a freely available online Q & A article in The Cut:
Why do people like alcohol?
Annie Grace: I think it’s a huge cultural thing. From a very young age, when our parents present it as something that we can’t have ‘til we’re adults, it turns up the allure like 100 thousand percent, and suddenly we absolutely want it. And then we see everybody doing it, because it’s been so ingrained in our society. And then I think it’s really confirmed by our own experience, because alcohol, when you first drink it — alcohol is an interesting substance, in that it’s both a stimulant and a depressant. And so for the first 20 to 30 minutes after we drink it, it acts as a stimulant. It gives us that tipsy, euphoric, kind of high feeling: It artificially stimulates our pleasure systems, and it feels good. That’s pretty quickly countered when our blood alcohol content goes down, at which point it becomes a depressant. Those mood swings don’t feel good, but we don’t necessarily associate them with alcohol, and so we think, “Oh, it was a stressful day” or whatever, and we reach for the next glass.
I think this whole cultural thing is very much confirmed by the neurochemical addictive quality of the substance. Any addictive substance is going to stimulate a pleasure part of your brain and artificially release high levels of dopamine. Dopamine’s a learning molecule, and it says, “Do that thing again.” And it becomes very quickly a habit that’s ingrained.
This was my experience as a young child in the development period, followed by teenagehood with partying and drinking for 'pleasure', followed by adulthood and attendant work stressors. and drinking for 'stress-relief'. But I'd been mentally conditioned to drink, which led to my brain 'pleasure centre' becoming fixated on alcohol as a 'cure-for-all' - addiction. Also, Grace explains in detail the effect that William Porter explained in his book 'Alcohol Explained' and the effect on the brain of drinking, withdrawal, drinking to ease withdrawal, tolerance and ultimately: addiction.
For me, learning about the pathway to addiction, showed me that I was not a hopeless, doomed cause. That the same pathway could be cleared and a new, sober pathway built in my brain., that the thoughts of drinking were chemically induced and would lessen in frequency, as I ignored and didn't act upon the thoughts (AV).
I believe in AVRT, but after I drank again, I needed more knowledge of the action of alcohol (and society) upon the brain. I need to make more sense of 'addiction', which was provided from a variety of sources, to include Annie Grace and William Porter. Hope this helps.