The Library

Should I Tell My Parents?

By GYE Admin
No, you certainly do not have to tell your parents. I do believe, however, that your making a huge deal about rejection and shame if you would tell the parents is just not accurate. If your parents love you and are not very screwed up in the head, they will sympathi...
Learn more

Every young man's struggle - or addiction?

By obormottel
Our Reply: Dear Bewildered Tzadik, it is good that you are reaching out for help. Although we get tens of emails like yours every day, your email shook me up. Firstly, because of the statistics you quoted (75%!) and, secondly, because of how you make it sound: as if the...
Learn more

"Normals" vs. Addicts

By GYE Admin
Everyone needs some sort of help to make it in life - even our tzaddikim and gedolim admit that they do. But... I keep hearing people asking in one way or another, "So how can I finally convince myself that I am really powerless/that I am an addict?" Gevalt. I do ...
Learn more

Recovery vs. Teshuvah

By obormottel
It is important that we differentiate between recovery work and “Teshuvah”, otherwise we are implying that addiction is essentially sinning, which is a Pandora's box, of sorts. I insist that addiction and recovery are Derech Eretz issues rather than Torah ones, and tha...
Learn more

SIPUR YETZIYAS MITZRAYIM - SPEAKING IT OUT

By obormottel
Dov, who is clean in SA since 1997 (see his story here), replies: Gorgeous! At the Seder, we say, "afilu kulonu chachomin/nevonim/know the Torah and the whole story - mitzvah aleinu l'saper" - 'sipur' means to tell someone else a thing we already know. First, it is to t...
Learn more

How I (Finally) Got Out of My Box

By obormottel
I understand fully and do not blame you. There is a right time for everything. I just want to share with you what happened to me and how the time became right. With my first faltering and shaky phone calls for help almost 28 years ago to a person on an 'anonymous helpli...
Learn more

A moment in the life of a full-blown sex addict

By obormottel
Someone shared on GYE that he has found a tool to help him. When he feels the temptation to stare at and/or follow these women with his eyes, he thinks about the realness of this woman that he is worshiping, and tries to use that realization to snap him out of it and trea...
Learn more

Dov's Siddur Talk

By obormottel
Recording of Dov's speech.
Learn more

Hashem doesn't want us looking at Shmutz for OUR Sake.

By obormottel
Recently, a longtime GYE Board member met one of his Rabbeim, whom he had not seen in over 20 years. In the course of the conversation, he gave his Rebbe, who is involved in the publication of the Klal Perspectives journal, www.klalperspectives.org, a Yashar Koach for t...
Learn more

Can the 12-Step program help someone deal with SSA (same-sex attraction)?

By obormottel
Dov writes: Sometimes guys write to me about SSA. I responded to a couple of them with this (below) as a start to the right conversation: As far as myself, I do not see any similarity that homosexuality bears to addiction. Do you? It seems like a separate issue and ther...
Learn more

Calling a Spade a Spade

By obormottel
I'd like to take issue with the using of sanitized descriptions like, 'I am nichshol in shmiras einayim and zera levatola.' All my acting-out years before recovery, that was all I'd ever tell the Rabbis and therapists I went to for help ... and it never worked. While usi...
Learn more

The Grass is Greener Where You Water It.

By obormottel
I've related this story many times in sharing my step-work and recovery thus far. Though cliche, it was an important experience because it was mine: I was at a chasuna. I saw a guy who I really respect, a talmid chochom who is 'different,' knowledgeable in areas that I as...
Learn more

To Remember is to Appreciate

By obormottel
A member wrote to Dov: I'd love to say that things are great, and I'm on a long clean streak but that wouldn't be true. Today, however, I'm doing well, and isn't that the only thing that counts? Dov Responds: Our limitations and abilities are not determinedby the past ...
Learn more

Rosh Hashono Dose of Dov

By obormottel
We are told to pray on Rosh Hashana to be given life for the rest of the coming year and to beg Hashem for a good, easy, and successful year. But that is poison for myself and the addicts I know. Fortunately, there is a dissenting (or maybe clarifying) opinion: R. ...
Learn more

Our Yiddishkeit Changes in Recovery

By the.guard
The Gemora Brachos 13a discusses whether we will still refer to Hashem as the 'One who took us out of Mitzrayim' when Moshiach comes. The Gemara concludes that it will not make much sense to us to do that. It brings the example of a man who is endangered by a succession o...
Learn more

The Cheftza & the Gavra of Lust

By obormottel
Dear Bewildered, Good question, I asked this of Dov once. The answer is, that we get MORE sensitive to lust triggers when we LET IN even a little bit of lust. However, we are LESS PRONE to letting it in at all because we recognize how poisonous it is for us. So even if a ...
Learn more

The Opposite of Addiction

By obormottel
After watching this TED Talk (above), Dov and Guard had the following dialogue: Dov: "The SA White Book calls Sexaholism a disease of Misconnection, and describes the solution as making the right connection... Consider how condemning it is to those who see GYE's offer of ...
Learn more

On the subject of congruency and anonymity.

By obormottel
You refer to it as 'the Yetzer Hora'. Sounds religious. But the truth may be that you just like it. That the way you are, you just feel you absolutely need it right now. I remember not feeling as though I didn't need it first - yet ended up finding myself back on the hunt...
Learn more

A Letter from Dov

By obormottel
I just want you to know that I just got back from a sexual sobriety shabbaton with ~300 people, at least 100 wives and >200 sexaholics, all going to SA and S-Anon meetings and getting well, be"H. It was incredible. The speakers, the ruach, the simcha, the meetings, th...
Learn more

Powerlessness

By obormottel
Powerlessness simply means that I really, really stink at living without acting out my lust. More to the point, it means that I am really bad at using and enjoying lust. I feel sure I can do it, so I keep trying - but when I do, important areas of my life eventually get ...
Learn more