One of the main driving forces to this kind of thinking is this: "I'm only 28, I'm too young to be sober for the rest of my life. What the fuck is that?" I swear lately it feels like I'm serving a prison sentence of sobriety. I guess I'm still waiting for myself to not be ungrateful that I've been given a new life and a 2nd chance at life.
The idea that desire leads to further suffering, and that you should not give into desire to avoid future suffering, can feel threatening. Desire, before it honed in on heroin, alcohol or whatever your crutch was, is a very primitive force within us all. We desire food, sex, companionship, and there's good evidence to show that desire for intoxication or a suspended state away from reality is innate for us too. So to supress everything on a hunch that living the life of the humble man who structures his life around avoiding giving into desire...simple can easily become complex and neurotic!
I really think that you need to just transform your human desires into things that can better harmonize with your spirituality and your good health. You do not have to give up adrenaline rushes, partying, having fun, overwhelming your senses. You can still have a very crazy life, and even more, you can let your focus on these new and improved desires push your old desires to the things that caused you spiritual pain even further away. The push against intellectualizing, fantasy, psychological freedom and whatnot that you get in some recovery circles, it's really just a reflection of these themes in the miserable, shallow, materialist modern world than it is what is best for your recovery. You gotta do what makes you happy and confident, which, at least for me, is giving into desires that allow me to have fun and grow spiritually, and likely help others, rather than hurting them, at the same time.
You don't need to become homeless to learn what suffering is really about. Suffering is wanting what you cannot have. You already know what it's like to suffer. Being homeless would just be more of this. Additional suffering doesn't always lead to something positive. In fact, it can often send you into a state of confusion and desperation. Intentionally making yourself suffer to somehow make yourself grow is the last stage of insanity. Perhaps it's good to occasionally fast, spend periods alone or whatever, but the point where it becomes suffering instead of a rewarding effort, you've done it too long. Instead, you have to rid yourself of the desire to want the thing that you can't have. Right now for you, it's still a desire to be a recreational drinker. So look at this as the most difficult desire to remove/transform, and perhaps only one that you can handle after you've become a master with smaller ones. Similar to the 4th step in AA, perhaps you can make a list of everything you desire, and then mark which ones lead to spiritual benefit, and which ones lead to suffering and pain. Figure out why you're so attached to everything on that negative list, and what you may be able to find that is similar to those things, but could instead lead to spiritual fulfilment. When you can make major progress ridding yourself of unhealthy desire, you'll have also ridded yourself of a lot of your continued misery, which is precisely the reason why you want to relapse in the first place.
now how can you prevent yourself from walking back in? 
