Let me stop here and give you a personal testimony. When I was a rigid SDA, I reached the point in my life where I decided to give up the use of vinegar, which was according to my understanding of Ellen White's counsel. So I got rid of the pickles, mayonaise, ketchup, and started using lemon juice instead of vinegar in my salad dressings. No weeks of sickness. This type of a struggle happens every day with people addicted to alcohol .
Alcohol is strongly addictive.
She apparently had an addiction to the alcohol in the vinegar, and the life-threatening struggle she endured in breaking the habit seems to indicate an addiction that may have lasted for many years. There is one other possibility for explaining this vinegar addiction. It is possible that Mrs. White was wildly exaggerating her sickness and struggles. If this is true, then perhaps she was not addicted to the alcohol content of the vinegar. If this is true, perhaps her vinegar had only a tiny bit of alcohol in it.