The warmest of welcomes to you at what sounds like an incredibly challenging time in your life and the life of your family.
It took me a long time to work out what my alcohol dependency in my younger years was really about. Being a 54yo gal now, my dependency came to an end when I was 35. I'm wondering whether you can relate to it as being a form or emotional regulation to some degree. For example, want to feel a sense of peace, drink. Want to feel more excitement, drink. Want to feel less stress, drink. Less depressed, drink. Less torment, drink. Less upsetting inner dialogue, drink. Less social anxiety, drink. The list goes on and on. While there are chemical elements to alcohol that can be addictive, while promoting some happy dopamine in the brain, I found a large part of my addiction came down to being addicted to the way it led me to feel or not feel the feelings or emotions I struggled to manage.
I've never met an ex drinker who said 'It was so easy to develop life skills after I stopped drinking'. All, including myself, have admitted to how incredibly tough it can be at times. Having to develop skills in naturally dealing with stress, naturally dealing with social discomfort, naturally managing to find and feel highs in life etc etc can be challenging but it also comes with a sense of achievement. This is the path that you'll be looking to step foot on, a challenging path but a highly rewarding one at the same time.
You're spot on with the availability factor. Walk into a bottle shop, a pub, a restaurant or somewhere along those lines at it becomes a matter of 'Pick your mind altering substance. What flavour would you like? What colour would you like? Which attractive container (bottle/can) gets you excited? Take your pick, it's all perfectly legal and you can have as much as you like, until it gets you in trouble'. While my husband remains a drinker, which does raise issues in my marriage and with our adult kids at times, one thing I always raised my kids to understand is 'While it's a mind altering liquid solution, it is not the solution to your problems'. My advice to them is based on my own experience and how destructive I found it to be while I depended on it for so many years.
Perhaps the first and most important question comes down to 'Do I know why I drink?'. Most drinkers will say 'Because I like the taste'. This is something I used to say myself, btw. While we may like the taste of a certain soft drink, for example, we're not going to continuously drink glass after glass of it within a matter of hours. It's far more than a simple taste factor.
