When tragedy or misfortune strikes, a drink will not help any more than it will help if you're having a good day ... if you're an alcoholic, that is.
Being an alcoholic means that I'm by nature tempted to drink regardless of circumstances and that, if I drink, I will likely drink to excess and maybe resolve never to stop. That means I can't risk one drink.
Even if I drink for relief and manage to stop again, the problem will not be progressed either practically or emotionally, so I won't have achieved anything.
Anger, resentment, fear, guilt, shame, and other negative emotions are just emotions. I was amazed to discover that I am actually able to tolerate emotions. When I stopped resisting them and stopped thinking about them but just felt them, they started to trickle away all by themselves. The programme gradually removed the structures that were producing the excess negative emotion in the first place.
Defences create or reinforce that which I'm defending against. Defending against negative emotions actually stops me naturally processing them out of my system. They don't even need manual processing: they automatically process themselves. No analysis needed. Let 'em slide.