I also just thought that, if you believe that alcoholism is a disease - would you tell a cancer patient or a chronic depressive person that they are behaving selfishly by talking about their disease?
yogachick, here's my take on that: If a sick person is seeking treatment to get better, I will be eternally patient (or at least a bit patient) with them talking about their illness.
But I think what Seek reacted to, and what prompts the "selfish" comments is that many of us who post here are involved with alcoholics who don't see anything wrong with their drinking habits. So for many of us, the parallel would more be a guy walking around with a nail through his hand complaining that his hand hurts but refusing to do anything about it.
So I think that's the other perspective.