I wouldn't read that. I believe that thinking about insomnia can cause insomnia. It's very hyperstituous.
I wonder how much of addiction is down to the substance itself and how much is down to situation (is alcoholism always an illness, not sometimes just a product of environment/other problems)? Seems like AA take it as axiomatic that the substance itself is the problem. But some people might just be in an environment that encourages drinking (like Russia) & because it's normative everything is chill until you realize your nightcap isn't just a g & t anymore, it's half a liter of vodka.
Or you might be drinking because you're depressed, anxious or just live in (seemingly) unbearable circumstances (drinking often makes them worse, naturally). I drank every day for three months or so, starting early afternoon and going on until the early hours. But this was due to circumstances I didn't like and wanted to be at a remove from, to kill the anxiety so engendered, little to do with any addiction to the substance itself.
Once I'd extricated myself from that situation, I just went back to 'drinking responsibly' without giving it much of a thought. But seems like according to AA, I should never drink again because I'm an alcoholic for life. It's a 'disease'.
Other times you might spend a week or two drinking heavily on a daily basis just for hedonistic reasons. Celebrating a divorce or something... (heavy drinking is perfectly normal in this set of circumstances, it's not pathological).
Of course, often it is a physical addiction to the substance itself though. And good luck to Craner.
Hmm, but you're relying on false dichotomies, here. It turns out that our environment, our "psyche" and our brains are continuous, not fragmented and autonomous.
Addiction from a strictly clinical perspective is a disease state of the brain in which the various neurotransmitter channels are literally dependent on a substance in order to function (properly or sometimes at all).
It doesn't really matter *how* you get there--if it's because you're sad that someone died, or your life is shit, or whatever--once you've reached a level of literal chemical dependency in the brain, you require medical intervention or you stand something like a 1/5000 chance of ever recovering medically. Even with medical intervention the chances are 1/30, which is a probability of ~.033.
As an analogy, think about someone who has smoked their entire life. It may have been their environment that largely caused them to begin smoking in the first place, ads targeted at their demographic, etc., but in the end, it was the chemical reaction that the substance produced in their body that caused them to become literally dependent on nicotine. (Smoking is an extreeeemely efficient mechanism for producing addiction, and nicotine addiction, which works on several very complex channels at once, is one of the toughest to treat.) Once a smoker gets lung cancer, that lung cancer will need treatment, *regardless* of the whys and wherefores of the smoker's addiction narrative. It's the same with addiction: it requires medical intervention/treatment, no matter where it's coming from. (Dealing with "where" it comes from holistically starts a year after the pt is stable.)
The problem with AA/NA is that its "disease model" is outdated and not backed by clinical research. According to AA/NA, you are an "addict for life", even if the clinical disease state of addiction has been arrested by medical intervention. This way of thinking can actually be counterproductive, because it's guilt based. It's a Christian recovery model that disguises itself as being holistically "spiritual" with no direct religious affiliation.
There is a lot of controversy about the AA/NA disease model among specialists these days. Groups like SMART Recovery and others rely on the clinical disease model rather than the "once an addict, always an addict" remission model, and in general spend a lot less time on slogans and pushing the necessity of adherence to their program. They have lower relapse rates and in general better reputations.
Also: this should come as good news, but you were not an alcoholic because you drank heavily for a few months. Not even close. If you didn't have alcohol withdrawal syndrome when you stopped drinking, then you were just a "substance abuser", not an addict.