Jellybean, your post sounds exactly like me 10 years ago. I had no alcoholics in my life prior to my stb ex ah and had NO IDEA what I was up against. About 3 years ago I really began to notice that his alcoholism as well as my codependence was progressing pretty much word for word exactly as the AA and Alanon literature describes.
I wasted 10 years of my life thinking that this was something we could fix on our own if we tried hard enough.