Dear GYE family,
As you know, I only have sporadic access to GYE these days at the library (if there's no line). So, I want to wish everybody a CLEAN year, and I want to tell you that I love you all for the efforts you are making. Yes, it's extremely difficult, but the rewards are worth it. Any addiction can ruin our lives if carried too far. It ruins families - do you want that? Taken to its extreme, it can even be deadly - do you want that? Do you want your picture on the front page of the New York Post with the following headline: 'JEWISH ORTHODOX MAN SEEN IN THE MOST DECADENT PLACE ON EARTH!'? The post would love to print that story - and your life will be ruined. Do you think they care? They just want one thing - to sell papers, period. THINK man, THINK!! This is all BESIDES transgressing the will of G-d!!!!
Do Teshuva now. It is before Rosh Hashanah - one day now counts more than any other time of year! Please, get the treatment you need. And remember to have patience. Help might not come right away, it might take time to find the right support, the right people; but at least you're trying! And above all, DON'T GIVE UP! NEVER give up the fight! No matter how many falls; as it says "seven times the Tzadik falls and gets up". Seven is just an arbitrary number. It means even a thousand! And remember, you can't do it alone. It is only a rare person that can do it alone.
And lastly, if you get clean, don't let gaava (pride) get you! Gaava can bring you down faster than you can blink an eye! Never let your guard down!
A good and blessed year to everyone,
Jack
I want you to know that I have thought about Jack many times over the past year and I was sure that by now he had relapsed, big time. The fact that is still clean give me HUGE hope, although I would love to know if he doing anything to keep himself sober (maintenance), or was his original 90 days enough to keep him going till now?
Please tell him that the 90 days was VERY important in the struggle. One must have those 90 days under his belt. After that, I wouldn't say it's a breeze, but it's a lot easier. But even then, we have to keep in mind that a fall CAN lead back into the addictive cycle if we're not careful. But those initial 90 days are CRUCIAL - I can't emphasize this enough; and that means 90 days with NO falls. It's like taking antibiotics, it has to be continuous for it to have an effect on the bloodstream. Here too, we have to have a continuous streak to effect the nervous system. And the studies show that 90 days is the time needed for this. AA knew this already 80 years ago, even BEFORE there were any studies. In AA they suggest 90 meetings in 90 days to really get a person started.
One more thing - no, the 90 days alone isn't enough. You have to keep the kesher (connection) with your support people, otherwise you may slip back into the addictive cycle. So, I have kept up my kesher with our leader (yup that's me, the humble "guard") and I call my sponsors from time to time, just to keep up my kesher. Without my sponsor Elya (see our hotline here), I NEVER could have accomplished what I accomplished. He was always there, and I mean always. He listened to me scream and cry over the phone and he didn't say anything, because he knew what I was going through. And I did it! It was the most unbearable voluntary pain that I ever put myself through. But I had people to support me, and that made ALL the difference in the world. I felt their love through the phone and emails and the forum, and for the first time in my life I felt loved, even though I never met or spoke by phone to our our leader. And "Mevakesh" showed me that he loves me too, even though I never met him, but I did talk to him on the phone (see Mevakesh's story here). Love and acceptance is what it's all about; and that's what I was missing in my life. Some Rabbis who don't understand the power of addiction will just tell you to stop, and I don't criticize them, because how can they know better if they didn't study addictions? Do they know about dentistry? No, because they didn't study it. Addiction is a medical condition; and that's why Rabbi Twerski knows about it, because he studied it.
So anyway, here I am now, one year clean (with only one slip), and I can't believe my own progress in this area. And I wish the same for you!
Jack