“Friends and family members often desperately ask themselves and others:”Why does he act like this? Doesn’t he care about us anymore?”  The truth is that the Addict within does not care about them.  What it cares about is acting out and achieving the trance.  The Addict doesn’t care about the Self either….the person suffering from the addiction often asks the same question long before anyone else:”Why do I act this way?  Don’t I care?”

Many families have gathered together in tears, realizing it is the Addict, the illness and the addiction they all hate and fear, not the person..  It’s often a great relief  for people suffering from an addiction that they are not “bad people”…that their addictive personality is not all of them, but only a part of them which has grown because of their illness.”  (The Addictive Personality, by Craig Nakken).