Usual dinnertime cravings starting up. 
Do you think this works as an analogy? I've been learning about neural pathways and I thought of it earlier when we were driving home through the bush...
Imagine each and every day you have to get from one end of a piece of land to the other. The land is scrub, with dense bushes, weeds, rocks and trees. Each day, once you get past a certain point, you always come to the start of a very well-worn dirt track with a quad bike ready to go...each day you gratefully hop on the quad bike and cruise down the dirt track and it's so much easier than trying to find a way through the bushes and over the rocks. Sometimes when you're feeling up to it, you decide not to take the dirt track and the quad bike because you know deep down it's healthier not to, and sometimes you even enjoy the novelty and sense of accomplishment you get from trying a different way. But in the end, most days you end up using the dirt track again. And every time you use it, the path gets smoother and more firmly forged and the undergrowth around it gets the thicker.
Giving up alcohol is like choosing not to get on that quad bike and use the worn path. Every day you have to find a way through, over or around the obstacles you usually don't think about and you often find yourself not moving forward at all because you're standing still next to the quad bike, stamping your foot because you want to keep on using it.
That's why we need to practice PERSEVERANCE! The new paths across the land will get easier the more we walk them. At the moment, we're all trying lots of different ways - some seems surprisingly easy, some are frustratingly difficult but the more we walk them the easier they'll become.
Have a good weekend all 