The Library

My sponsor told me that I should be a grateful alcoholic and always have “an attitude of gratitude”—that gratitude was the basic ingredient of humility, that humility was the basic ingredient of anonymity and that “anonymity was the spiritual foundation of all our Traditi...

“Anger is a wind which blows out the lamp of the mind.” — Robert Green Ingersoll

A Practice For When You Find Yourself Annoyed by Other People By Leo Babauta It’s a common thing to be frequently annoyed by other people — added to our regular interactions with family, friends and coworkers are the online habits of people on various social media, and t...

I've been thinking a lot about it lately and I realized that looking at inappropriate things is just like smoking - either first hand or second hand - and we should approach it the same way. Let me explain. Every time I walk around someone who smokes, I try to make sure I...

GYE is greatly expanding its services behind the scenes. We hope to have a major announcement in the coming weeks about a whole new division for addicts that is being worked on now. Stay tuned. An anonymous donor has made a generous offer to donate $5,000 to GYE if we s...

In the spirit of Purim, I figured I would share a thought of Torah with everyone here. The Bnei Yisaschar (Rav Zmi Elimelech Shapiro of Dinov) points out something very interesting about Purim. In naming the Moadim, the Torah refers to each particular holiday with a name ...

 “A comfort zone is a beautiful place, but nothing ever grows there.”

I was 35 years old the first time I spoke up to my mother and refused to buy into her games and manipulation. . .I didn't have to start an argument. But I could say what I wanted and needed to say to take care of myself. I learned I could love and honor myself, and still ...

Tonight I celebrate 90 days of sobriety. I've had 6 months before but this is the first time it's a sobriety with not giving in to lust. What I've learned in the past 90 days is it's all about surrendering and allowing G-d to do the rest. I would never have believed...

Learn from the mistakes of others. You can't live long enough to make them all yourself. -Eleanor Roosevelt

When a pleasurable and intimate activity is always shared with one person ( e.g., a wife) to the exclusion of anyone else, that both indicates a closeness and causes further closeness [siman & siba]. If this activity is also experienced with others (or even a person a...

GYE Responds: Excellent question. I am not a posek, but I will try to use common sense based on what I have learned. - If a person's wife is a niddah, then he should not do anything intentionally to arouse his desire for her. - If she is mutar to him, then it depends. If...

GYE Responds: Before the great flood in the days of Noah, it says "And G-d saw that the land was destroyed, for all flesh was destroying their ways on the ground". Our sages explain this to mean that one of their many sins was that they spilled their seed. This seems to i...

GS says: “Not without your sponsor and not before you get to step 9. And - not until you have read everything the Big Book, the '12 and 12', and what the White Book say about disclosures.” Dan says: “I have been in the rooms for about 8 years. I haven't seen anyone wi...

"Moshe took the Book of the Covenant and read it in earshot of the people and they said: 'Everything that G-d has said, WE WILL DO AND WE WILL OBEY!'" (Exodus/Shemos 24:7) As we follow the narrative of the Jewish People from the time they spent as brutalized slaves in Eg...

Question: Dear Dov, As someone who is 20+ years clean in SA and (as it seems from your writings) has learned how to surrender lust, I wanted to ask you about shmiras einayim in the street, which is something I struggle with a lot. Are you always successful in guarding you...

I struggled with shmiras einayim for years. I tried every trick in the book, every kind of inspiration, but nothing lasted for the long term. Until I finally gave up. Surprisingly though, it was actually when I gave up that things finally changed. I came to the realizati...

Question: Is a man with azoospermia (absence of motile - and hence viable - sperm in the semen) allowed to masturbate? GYE Responds: Interesting question. I will pass it on to a Rav who deals with such questions. Meanwhile though, please see what we answer when a woman ...