Alcoholics will drink anything they can get their hands on that has a nice portion of alcohol in it; period. The one I live with has taken to drinking cough syrup when he can't get anything else, which is why we have to go out and buy it when we're sick because we don't keep it around anymore.
This is probably where I'm different - I couldn't have just anything with alcohol in but the stuff I would drink I'd drink until I passed out and then carry on until I passed out again. I was a functioning alcoholic, I suppose, in that I could still carry on my daily life and my addiction didn't appear to interfere on the sort of scale you see on TV and in the news. But I'm no less an alcoholic for it and therefore I can never drink again.
I've actually taken to drinking non-alcoholic wine lately - you have to have about 300 litres of the stuff before it even begins to drop some alcohol in your system, but the taste is similar enough to proper wine that I can convince myself I'm having a drink. Having said that, it shows me how I cannot ever go back to drinking for real because even with the fake stuff, the whole bottle is gone within ten/fifteen minutes.
Worst times for me are Christmas, parties (any occasion) and when it's a nice warm summer's evening and the time is just perfect for a quiet glass of something in the back yard with friends. Oh, and naturally times when I'm uber-stressed out are when I struggle to not just buy 2 litres of Spanish antifreeze or whatever's cheapest at the off-licence and drink the lot.
6 years on and the desire to drink has never gone - I'm just choosing not to give into it. I wish it were easier for some people; addiction is horrible and it ruins more lives than the addict realises.