I think i see where your coming from with the you have the choice if you try hard enough to overcome odds. But my belief, - that we have no real free will is deeper than this.
For example take the drinking example, your mother doesnt drink, the past experiances, knowing father and brother and how they get, all external pressure, everything that influences her, all push the decisions she makes one way or another, so although she may think she has the choice to drink or not to drink, in actual fact due to everything influencing her she would only make the one choice, that is not to drink. Everyone has the same thing happen with every event in thier lives, will i cross the road? my thought processes at the time due to the makeup of my brain due to events that happened the enviroment etc all lead to only one conclusion, may it be cross or not.
So though we feel we have made the decision it actual fact we''re just particles interacting with each other, with enough monitoring the future could be predicted.
Take criminal pychologists, they have the job of predicting what a criminal, murderer or whatever will do next, they can see by the crime. If you "get into the head" of the criminal enough it can be predicted what they will. Take this to another level with normal people, things etc, and you should in theory predict what will happen, until the end of time.
This gives a illusion that we have choice but in reality we dont.
Im an athiest and dont believe in a higher power.
I hope someone can challege this and throw up a counterarguement im very openminded about this
