Some thoughts
-I am an intense creature of habit, so I'm seriously considering quitting red wine permanently. Red wine was my go-to stress reliever during my doctorate, and it became part of my day to day life.
I don't even like alcohol or its effects, even if I were having a major wine craving, another form of alcohol could be placed in front of me, and I wouldn't drink it.
I'm not sure what my future relationship with alcohol will be. I don't need to make that decision now, but I've committed to cutting out red wine for the year, which will probably be indefinite. I feel like those established neural patterns could so easily be rekindled, so it's not worth the risk of retriggering a habit I don't want.
I relate to a lot of this. There seem to be two main patterns of drinkers...the daily habitual drinkers that are not inclined to binge, and those that respond super intensely to one hit of alcohol and then have trouble finding an 'off' switch. Eventually, of course, because of building tolerance, many of us with a built-in 'off switch' end up becoming bingers by default. It seems like people who are genetically and physiologically wired to be 'strong responders' from the early days really struggle with moderation in any form.
What I am interested in, like you, is the question of successful moderation if you are a habitual, psychologically dependent drinker (like I was), but never a natural binger. That's an interesting experiment in progress.
I didn't plan to give up alcohol entirely, but only to quit my decades-long habit of evening wine. I did that, don't miss it, and have had ~6(?) drinks total since I did that alcohol-free month about 9 months ago. There were no particular occasions that I 'looked forward to/planned to drink'...it's more like I no longer make drinking part of my daily routine, but I'm not interested in beating myself up on the rare occasions I do still drink or putting a bunch of special rules on it. My only hard rule is...no more wine with dinner at home b/c that was 90% of my lifetime drinking and that routine involves the vast majority of my triggers.
So far, I haven't had any desire to look for 'special occasions' to drink more often (i.e., I'm not going out with friends more as an excuse or whatever, and I've socialized plenty of times without it in the past 9 months). But I AM wary of drinking very often, b/c of the inbuilt brain wiring around it. So I can see where just taking it completely off the table might simply become easier.
At any rate, I'll keep reporting in how it's going over the next few years.