The Library

... I got older and managed to find easy access to the net for my fix... This carried on until I was 18. I was hardly keeping anything at that point. I was in Israel, clubbing every night and still using p**n as my crutch and getting into deep trouble. I didn't actually do anything, but I saw rock-bottom before I hit it and I knew that I was screwing up my life.

Around that time, I met this wonderful guy that introduced me to the works of the great Chassidic master, my holy Rebbe, Reb Nachman of Breslov Zatzal, and I made a U-turn. Honestly, a U-turn isn't enough to describe what I did. It was more an O-turn. From the lowest place on earth, I came up to place that I only dream of today. I divined hours, learned Torah and Chassidus, and just felt so close to Hashem. I didn't fall for over 4 months at that time. I couldn't. I was getting my "fix" through dveykus to the holiest ideas. But I knew at the time that this feeling wouldn't last forever so I made a decision then, that no matter what, I'd always try again. This way, I could take my "peak" with me for life, so that whatever happened in the future - even if I did fall, I'd pick myself up again.

I fell on Sukkos 4 months later. I felt so bad, but thank G-d, I got back up straight afterwards. But from then on it went down, it became so hard. I was grasping at my new-found position in yiddishkeit, but with my last strengths. Two months later, I fell again and I called my mentor. Although I was very close to him, I had never divulged my personal details until that point, but then I told him what happened and I cried like I never did - before or after - in my life. He told me that Hashem sees my broken heart - "ki chol levovois doresh Hashem - for Hashem explores all hearts", and he told me to keep strong and pray right then, because when a person is at his lowest, Hashem is nearest. "Lev nishbor venidkeh eloikim loi tivzeh - a broken and suppressed heart G-d does not forsake".

I know this sounds crazy, but within a week I was engaged to be married to my wife - a top shidduch! To this day I can't believe it. Five months before my shidduch I was a guy in the lowest depths, and now such a shidduch!

I had a couple of falls later, but I kept myself up. I think that the biggest lesson that I got out of Reb Nachman's works is that no matter how many times you fall, try and try - and try again.

I got married and that's when the problems started again. I was very happy B"H, but once I had to be with my wife... as Chazal say, "there is a small limb in a man, if one feeds it, it is hungry, if one starves it, it is satiated"... I felt like I couldn't keep myself back and I started to fall again quite often. It broke me, and slowly it broke off bits of my warmth in yiddishkeit as well. I fell again and again and again, and no matter what I did or tried, I just went down!

I tried so many ways to stop, but having never looked at it as an addiction I kept falling through and being triggered by the smallest things. It broke me so much,"why cant I break free?!". Whenever I had five minutes of access to the net, I was on p**n. So I stopped using the net, but I still found it on my phone, so I stopped using my phone too. Then I found an internet shop for any excuse, and I was again on the p**n. I decided to have a PC at home that I could use for healthy purposes and there I could install a filter that worked (well, kind of), but Hashem decided that for the business I was in, I needed a phone with internet. So I continued falling, until one day while surfing online at onlysimchos.com (and looking where I shouldn't) I came across an ad for this site. And as soon as I came here, I knew I'd arrived!