It’s interesting to me to see this comment, because “today” is very much the focus in recovery circles. If you’ve ever been to AA or any of the other 12-step programs you’ve probably heard someone say something akin to “one day at a time”. In general, though, it is important to note that part of what makes an addiction an addiction is the lack of willpower to overcome it. So if you tell an addict “it is a choice” they’ll ultimately agree with you, knowing that in the moment of their failure it very much did not feel like one.
For those of us who have had to make drastic life changes in order to make “making the wrong choice” difficult or impossible, there’s definitely an amount of life planning (and before that, honesty with self and others) that has to happen in order to balance the scale and turn those forks in the road into ones we can look at and say, “Today, I’ll make a good choice.” For some there are ways to reset and never look back, and I’ve seen it happen. One good choice can be the difference. For others, as you mention, there are daily choices, and it continues to take effort to make the right one every single time.
There's the saying that "we are free to do what we want, but not to want what we want". I'd guess that at the moment of a lapse, the drug/alcohol is all an addict wants. Changing that want into something else is the hard part and also depends strongly on the environment.
It's a good saying, but something leaving in exposition. Each addict is different, but frequently the drug/alcohol is not what the addict wants.
Think of the addict in relapse more as saying “yeahhhh gonna let loose and party hard and have a lot of fun and go wild and crazy.” The overindulgence is the point, the feeling of freedom and abandon.
I liked the way Craig Ferguson put it in American on Purpose, he said that if he could drink alcohol “socially” the limited way other people do, it wouldn't be interesting to him in the first place.
This is also why people get addicted to casinos, it's a similar “woooo, party!!” desire. People who are addicted to junk food also have this, they call it a “cheat day,” the idea is not that I slipped myself an extra Oreo, but that I decided to slip myself the extra Oreo and then declared it a cheat day and then ate puddings and cakes and pizza and guzzled soft drinks and “wooo, party day, calories don't count”...
One typically doesn't “change that want,” one buries it. It still keeps coming up as an “I am overwhelmed with the boring tedium of adulthood can't I go back to being a reckless kid and partying all night?” and you say “Look, having fun is why we have playing that guitar in the backyard or lifting or jamming out to music or planning a week off in Colorado, we have to do the less intense adulty fun things that build us up now, because we know what happens when we do the reckless childish fun things that tear down (and have torn us down, over and over and over and over again)... and we have to grow up so that we don't lose everything and die alone in a ditch.” So you bury the want, not allowed to want “woooo party time!!”, because you have hit rock bottom several times now and you know that you don't have an ability to have a healthy relationship with that internal party-fiend, because he will react to the stress of money being tight by wanting to gamble more, will react to the weight gain by having more cheat days, will react to the hangover by looking for a cider in the fridge. Can't give him a foothold in your life again.
For those of us who have had to make drastic life changes in order to make “making the wrong choice” difficult or impossible, there’s definitely an amount of life planning (and before that, honesty with self and others) that has to happen in order to balance the scale and turn those forks in the road into ones we can look at and say, “Today, I’ll make a good choice.” For some there are ways to reset and never look back, and I’ve seen it happen. One good choice can be the difference. For others, as you mention, there are daily choices, and it continues to take effort to make the right one every single time.