Have already been diagnosed with chronic gastritis and now I have a little bit of neuropathy too.
Ex(!) alcoholic here, been through all that. I know what it's like when booze is the only answer. It fixes everything. Instantly. But only for a short time, then everything gets worse. You have my heartfelt sympathy.
However, those symptoms, it will get worse. Systemic damage to everything, especially if you are experiencing neuropathy already - I was the same.
Now my bowel doesn't work and my metabolism is screwed. If you feel bad now, you will feel orders of magnitude worse as your body deteriorates. And the alcohol will stop working too as tolerance effects progress. And then eventually, when you actually have no other option but to quit, withdrawl will be horrific.
And there will come a point when you have no option but to stop, as it won't be helping anymore and you body will start to reject the alcohol. When your liver starts to hurt, you won't actually want to drink anymore, your body won't let you. At least that's how it was with me. I lost all desire for booze even though my body still craved it.
I'm sorry to tell a horror story, but I've been through this and it has destroyed my life, utterly. It's why I'm here. I'm sure it's not what you want to hear, but unfortunately, that's the reality of the situation.
I don't have any clever solutions or alternatives and I understand why the booze is so tempting, because it does really help in the short term, but I promise you, the medium to long term effects are hideous beyond imagining.
As ever, I can only speak to my personal experience. What you do is your choice. But that is how things progressed with me and even though I would love a drink right now, I seriously wish I'd never ever touched a drop of alcohol my entire life.
And even now, I'm tempted to buy some booze, with the lock down and all, it would just be so nice.
But I won't. Not ever again.
The experience I've had and am still having is WAY worse than having to deal with life without alcohol. I can't stress that enough. What I'm going through health wise is many orders of magnitude worse then any mental health issues that I used alcohol to overcome. I'd gladly go back to those days where depression was my only issue, as ridiculous as that sounds.
Good luck and if you do want to chat about anything in private please feel free to send me a PM.