I needed the 12-Steps for all this and - as I was - I could not get it from Torah. Theoretically, maybe it's unfortunate for me, but I choose not to accept that. You don't win a battle with a dirge, but you go ahead to victory with lively marching music! So it is a good thing that many of us in the groups just accept the facts as they are on the ground, hold our heads high, and grow using this path as though our very lives depend on it. It may. At that point, it is certainly a precious and holy derech of Hashem for us!
B"H today I rarely feel I am fighting. When I do have a temptation in lust, I choose not to look at it as a "Yetzer Hara" issue. I view it like a "little tentacle" of the beast of my addiction. The Yetzer Hara had total and relentless control of my life and that approach seemed to be a sure bet for keeping it that way! Now, B"H, it's "body" is locked in a "dungeon" guarded by Hashem, until He decides to "recycle" it - bimheira beyamieinu.
In the meantime though, it's tentacles are still dangerous, having a connection to the beast and can destroy me totally, though they now appear to be weaker and thinner (just a "thin string", if you will), but bitter. Till today, I use the same tools in the same way as I always did from the very beginning. Today it's just faster usually, and not as big a deal as it used to be. (Occasionally, like the last day or two, it has been scary. But Nu, what do you expect from an addict? B'H I'm feeling better, and your support is appreciated)!
Along the way, some people think that because of the way I share and frame/describe my challenges, that I am still listening to or watching or running after shmutz or acting out just like before! Although this is B"H not the case, I know I need to face it the same way as Dov-the-newbie, or I'll trip, get stuck, fool myself, act out, and eventually - die. (I once sat through a long verbal thrashing about selfishness because I shared that I believed in some way that I was still selfish and disrespectful to my wife. Phew! The guy had 2 years of sobriety and I had five, but I kept me mouth shut tight, even afterward. Who knows, maybe it was good for me!) Better to be a (safe) fool in peoples eyes for a few minutes than to Hashem (permanently).
I have no evidence that I will ever be cured. I do not know if what they say: "Once an addict, always an addict" is true. I just choose to apply it to myself for lack of a reason not to. I assume I'll be going to meetings till I die, which is good because it seems I am more pleasant to live with when I have meetings in my life. And I get to help addicts too, just by being there. If I somehow become certain that I am cured, I may not go to meetings any more and I hope to let you and others know. If you think you are cured, gezunterheit, and I will assume you are right until proven otherwise. (But it is not clear to me exactly what the litmus test would be though; feeling cruddy? acting out once? a pattern? arrest?)
My goal in life is to be a pure and total eved Hashem. I know this deep in my heart. But most of the 12 steps are truly Derech Eretz Kodmah LaTorah as far as I am concerned. The 11th Step ("We sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry it out"), it seems, is about moving on from the steps and truly starting your life as a Yid (in my case), no?
Is the 3rd step (turning our will and our lives over to the care of God) Kriyas Sh'ma? Yes, in retrospect. But I could not - and would not - have "gotten it" from that, had you taught it to me that way. I had been saying kriyas sh'ma all those years in addiction and yet in my mind, Hashem still wasn't truly in charge enough, He wasn't on my side enough, and He wasn't able to help me enough, as far as I was concerned, and I wasn't able to really trust Him. It was all too complicated in my experience of Yiddishkeit.
I had to hear and learn all that in a different way. I had to get off the 18-wheeler (or airplane, helicopter, whatever!) and get on a nice, quiet bicycle with training wheels. That's the 12 steps. Simple, focused, and real.
Now, certainly Torah is the ikkar and hopefully a frum recovering addict will be able to maintain enough sanity to make Torah the ikkar and grow in it. But unfortunately I have met some who can't yet. Let's daven for them, that they should have what we have too.
Hoping some of this megilah was helpful,
Dov
Dearest Dov, your posts are so beautiful they bring tears to my eyes!
I think to sum it all up, we can say that the 12-Steps teach us how to live and think right. But "Living and thinking right" is not the end goal in itself. Perhaps for a non-Jew it is, but for a Jew, we can go much higher. But how can we start with XYZ before learning ABC? Once we know ABC, we can take that WITH US into the XYZ. We need to take this honesty, humility, selflessness, and this close connection to Hashem that we learned in ABC - into our TORAH as well. And if we do this, then our Torah and Avodah become truly powerful, much more than before; they become nuclear weapons against the Yetzer Hara!