I may be in a unique position to be able to answer you Detached. The substance abuser in my life had cancer.
They have support groups for the families of cancer victims. They are not to teach you to learn to treat cancer. They are for dealing with the emotional repercussions of having such an ill person in your life. Alanon is a support group for people who need to learn how to deal with the emotional repercussions of having an alcoholic in their life. They cannot teach you to treat alcoholism. It doesn't mean you don't want the alcoholic treated. It doesn't mean you don't care if they get well. It's simply that the function of the group is to get the codependent back on track. It has nothing to do with the alcoholic.
Why do anon groups emphasize a "me first" attitude? They don't. What they emphasize is that, in a relationship with an addicted person, you are the only one whose recovery you can control. There is just not a thing you can do to change another person. So we learn to change ourselves.
From personal experience, I have to say your analogy of addiction to cancer is pretty much of a stretch. Some people get cancer from personal habits, but Dino didn't. It was one of those random types without a known cause. He didn't make any bad decisions to get it. He wasn't stubbornly indulging in behavior that kept him from getting well. The kind he had was totally out of his ability to control in any way, except to be treated or not. His drugging, on the other hand, was a decision. An action. A repeated behavior. Something that he, and only he, could control. Cancer is something you have. Alcoholism and addiction are conditions you have, too. But drinking and drugging are something you DO.
His drugging affected me in negative ways that the cancer did not. Both made me deeply sad. Both drained my wallet. But the cancer didn't make him surly, deceitful and manipulative. It didn't bring dangerous people to my doorstep. I never had to go out of town in the middle of the night to bail him out on cancer charges.
I would have crawled naked through broken glass from here to Alaska in February to help him recover from either condition. I moved a lot of mountains on his behalf. But the fact is, his drug use was simply a thing I could not affect. I tried. For years. I tried encouraging, loving, yelling, threatening, cajoling, reasoning. I bailed, bought, redeemed, pledged, borrowed, skimped and starved. I dug a mighty hole for myself doing it and made myself crazy. It was useless. So instead of trying to take care of Dino, which didn't do any good, I have learned to take care of myself. I had to let go of the notion that I could save him. It doesn't mean I don't love him. It doesn't mean I don't care if he stays well or not. It means that my being ill won't make him well, so there's no point in keeping myself sick.
I HAVE to let Dino deal with his own problems. He's the only one who can. And I have to deal with mine. Does that translate as "I come first" to you? To me it says "I am responsible for myself". And sometimes, a codependent finds that dealing with his or her own problems means getting away from the triggers. And sometimes, that means getting away from the user.
Dino had some of the same problems that you're having understanding the function of alanon. It took awhile for it to sink in with him, that the people who are affected by the user are in every bit as much pain as the user himself. I knew he got it when he coined the phrase "separate but equal hell". Your wife is in recovery, too. She has to deal with it in her own way, just like you do.
Hugs,
Smoke