"Hi, I am sorry I don't understand about selfishness. We have a problem with alcohol, how in itself is that selfish? If someone is depressed, is he/she selfish?"
In the Big Book of AA, the root of our problem is described as selfishness and self centeredness:
Selfishness--self-centeredness! That, we think, is the root of our troubles. Driven by a hundred forms of fear, self-delusion, self-seeking, and self-pity, we step on the toes of our fellows and they retaliate. Sometimes they hurt us, seemingly without provocation, but we invariably find that at some time in the past we have made decisions based on self which later placed us in a position to be hurt.
So our troubles, we think, are basically of our own making. They arise out of ourselves, and the alcoholic is an extreme example of self-will run riot, though he usually doesn’t think so. Above everything, we alcoholics must be rid of this selfishness. We must, or it kill us! God makes that possible. And there often seems no way of entirely getting rid of self without His aid. Many of us had moral and philosophical convictions galore, but we could not live up to them even though we would have liked to. Neither could we reduce our self-centeredness much by wishing or trying on our own power. We had to have God’s help.
Im no expert on clinical depression. I can tell you that I was diagnosed with clinical depression and anxiety. What it really turned out to be was rooted in self centeredness. A spiritual malady as it is referred to in the Big Book. When I took the steps to gain some humility and become "other centered" rather than self centered, life got a lot better. Depression and anxiety have slipped away for me.