When you can declare "cured", can you also declare yourself conscientious? Selfless? Aware of and concerned for others? Do you begin putting others before yourself?

Would love to hear from everyone.

I am sick today, of seeing my husband piss away his relationship with his daughter (my step-daughter). In the interest of not turning TSM.com into my own personal al-anon, I'll leave it at that.

I think being addicted to any substance will make you self centered because the addiction is driving you. Once the addiction is gone, other things become more important to you. In this way, I did become less self centered.

However, some people are just self-centered by nature. Maybe these people will just because less self centered. I don't know. Being cured of your addiction isn't going to make you something you already aren't. Being cured may make one more appreciative of what he has in life and introspective.

Often times, I think people develop problem drinking to deal with other things going on in their lives. Removing the addiction, doesn't remove the underlying problem. You are still left to deal with that. Dr. Eskapa even mentions this in his book. One thing I will say from experience here is that removing alcohol from the situation makes dealing with the issues much easier.

Q

Some therapy may be in order in addition to the TSM. I am doing this myself and it's worked wonders. the shrink i'm seeing is the one prescribing the NAl for TSM. hope it works out, but all I can say is taking the alcohol out of the picture definitely won't hurt. it may help a lot though, I think in most cases it does, but there are things to work on for all people, not just addicts. al anon will tell you that a person is selfish because they are an alcoholic. While many alkies are selfish, and some are selfish even when sober, I disagree with this AA claim that selfishness is a byproduct of alcoholism. it's another thing all together, exacerbated by, or medicated by, alcohol

Thanks for the feedback. When I can look at things objectively, I think it is mostly the alcohol. He has a giving and helpful nature. But when the alcohol has it's grip, it's all about him and his needs.

Therapy may be in order where his ex and his adopted daughter are concerned. And I did hesitate in destinguishing her as adopted but that may be a factor too; he has no biological children of his own. The daughter is used as a tool to manipulate and hurt him and I think he is ready to give up on a relationship with her.

I think there is some birth-order theory at work here too. He's in the younger half of a large family and had older sisters taking care of every need and doing things for the cute little brother. For me, I was the older sister and it seems hard-wired into me to always take care of things and not ask for help. Things have been better since I started recognizing this. I'm not jumping to do everything, asking for help with all the little things. Even though I'm capable of doing it all on my own, I probably shouldn't.

So many issues that would be more managable without alcohol skewing everything.