Hi,

Depression= gasoline to P & M addiction.

P & M = gasoline to Depression

One must break both cycles together.

I have health issues together with P & M addiction. I must say that dealing with P & M is definitely a factor in regaining health( especially anxiety/depression). Together with Nutrition, I would suggest Cognitive behavior therapy/NLP/Hypnotherapy, and mention to the practitioner about addiction. They are both on the same page. All emotions are from thoughts. Once you learn how to identify your thought patterns, u will be able to retrain your self from getting caught up into your depressive patterns which are definitely fueling ur addiction.

Good Luck

If you can "break cycles", Struggler, then you have your answer right there: you are not an addict as AA/NA/SA define it! So? This is simple. An addict cannot stop. Well, actually, he can stop plenty of times, but cannot stay stopped. Eventually, he is right back there and usually eventually a bit worse than before.

If nutrition works, then you are not an addict.

If anything but simple real honesty with yourself and with other people enabling you to use G-d, is working for you, then you are not an addict.

Go ahead and try behavioral cognitive therapy (and stay frum so you at least can still think you are using Hashem, whether you are, or not). If it works for you, I think that's great. It obviously can for some, and surely does. I, for one, support you fully!

But if it doesn't work for you by a year from now (or less, if you prefer), and you feel you are just all thumbs and basically hopeless, then you are like me and all the other addicts I know and love, and we have a program for you.

With you all the way , habibi! Hatzlocha!!

Thanks everyone for support. I am working on fighting both now. It’s definitely a cycle with depression and P&M. It’s going to be a couple of months until vitamins I am taken to fully kick in, but already seeing some decrease intensity in urges. I am working on building up resistance against urges (trying to stay 2 clean days, 4 clean days, etc). I am thinking that I also have ocd. I recently notice that during lunch I visit the same clean websites everyday. I have stopped looking at the sites that I really do not need to be checking every day. At first, I had urges to look at them, but now urges are pretty much gone. Hopefully, it will be similar with porn, but it probably will be harder to break away from. I have not talk to nutritionist about P & M / Ocd. I am working with him on stress management / sleep quality improvement.  I am planning to wait for a couple of  months until vitamins fully kick in and see where I am at. If I am still have issues w/P &M, I was thinking about seeing a shrink and tacking the P & M directly.

Perhaps you failed after being clean for thirty days because you weren't surrendering the lust. Maybe you were just holding out, "bare-knuckling it".

If you want to find out try to going to a sexaholic anonymous meeting, and say out loud there "hi. my name is X, I am powerless over lust." When you walk out of the meeting you will know what I mean. It's the cavalry.

I use a simple test for addictions:

- take a look at where you are today, compared with where you were 6 months ago..is it:

a. at same place
b. much worse
c. much better

- using a similar sliding scale, where do you think you will be in 6 months from today?

a. at same place
b. much worse
c. much better


ADDICTION: is a substance or repeated set of actions which lead to a PROGRESSIVE DEGENERATION of ones ability to think and act normally.

The thrills wear off - and in order to maintain the same level of "pleasure" we need more intense thrills.

but in order to get it, the brain has to become numb

so
STOP, LOOK and LISTEN to where you are, where you came from, and where you WANT to be.

(BTW - I remember one of the guys on my call, telling me, "he is not really an addict. after all - all he does is go onto the chats".

I asked him if he is there to exchange recipes?
or if he would consider giving out his mailing address, and becoming a regular pen-pal ?

I hope he got the point. )

But, don't worry about the Addict thing.
There is an END-POINT to addictions.

are you able to hear it?

ok, don't say I did not warn you...

the end point of an Addiction is..


DEATH!!!

After awhile life becomes worthless ... and death is the only way out.
whether a financial one, a public one, your marriage, your job.. or even you own life! !


of course a person can choose to end the cycle before hand.. but nobody can make that choice for you.

Wow, that was great!

Mr Struggler, why completely hide any more? Posting here was and is a big step for you, as it is for all the folks here. It shows you have a problem and it shows that you want to do something about it.

But that is not enough. Even posting on here is still hiding - you are using a fake name! Nu - I am not faulting you. Just trying to say: please open up to a real and safe person. Your real self, to a real person. Maybe a shrink would be good, maybe an SA meeting. Who knows?

Just do it and stop trying to see yourself just using your own eyes. Hiding and secrecy is how you act out your lust - let it not be how you are trying to get free.

Ein kateigor na'aseh san'eigor.

Dov,

Exactly what you just said is so fascinating about this forum. How can the very secretive nature that enabled you to develop your addiction be used as the means to the cure. It's hard to see how we can rid ourselves of our dishonest hiding through anonymity. There definitely has to be at least someone real that you completely shed your anonymity to.

Yossi

Yossi -

and there you have one of the best kept secrets of GYE... the ego wants to play in isolation.. but we slowly lure the ego to come out of hiding... and THEN!!!  and then.. when the coast is clear, we BASH the ego into submission and we trick the ego in leading a life of recovery!

but, shhhhh!

its supposed to be a secret!

lol greattt

Yossi.L. wrote on 27 Oct 2011 02:25:


Dear Yossi

Not sure where you are going with this. Are you bashing GYE? I hope not. We agree that a virtual forum has many weaknesses as a comprehensive soultion (I mean solution ) to true addiction. I feel that insisting upon doing my recovery work b'chashai (secretly) is a tom-fool of a way to expect to outgrow a lifestyle of secret sexual adventure. As Chaza"l put it so nicely, "ein kateigor na'asoh saneigor". For many reasons:

1- Doing it that way puts me just where I want to be: in the driver's seat, defining myself based on my own research and offering myself my own favorite solutions. [Hey, that's exactly what all we frum liars have been doing all these years: trying our guts out to stop by gimmicks and compromises that "seem right for me". Who we are kidding eventually becomes clear...]

2- By never having another real person to face who isn't us, we never end up really having to face ourselves. [Convenient, no? Ask Captain Kirk, he'll tell you all about it. ;)]

3- By never admitting it all to another person, we never really admit it to Hashem. [Say, haven't I been davening shacharis, mincha, and ma'ariv all these years? Doesn't He really know everything about me anyhow? Well, apparently he is not that powerful a personal force in my life if I can still hide in the bathroom on my knees and masturbate to my sweet goddesses of schmutz... Nu.] 

4- By never meeting real people face to face who have been there, done that, and are making it through life without acting out with lust today, I never actually have to face the fact that it really is possible to live without it. We all keep on doing it precisely because we believe in our hearts that we cannot live without it. Period. That's why we keep doing it. [Phew! Saved by the bell again.]

5- By hiding behind a username and never peeping out from behind it to meet and create real relationships with real, sober people, we are doomed to forget. A friend of mine says "this is a disease of forgetting."

Far from bashing GYE - my point is that GYE is great as a 'gateway' medication for addicts. Good things start here. Friendships in person and by phone, and lots of other things become available to those who want them. GYE can also be also a great help to non-addicts who are swimming in desire and despondency. But again, a certain degree of 'coming out' is the price we all must pay for real friendships. One can pretend his 'friend's' name is really "Taikwondo613Help!" for only so long. Eventually it just gets stupid saying the fake name even just in writing, kal v'chomer on the phone. But some folks are just not ready to take that step. It's a shitk'l self-imposed 'prison', if you ask me.

I did not get clean and sober on GYE. The recovery I have been given so far, Hashem is giving me through SA. IN SA I am a bit anonymous. The frummies I know there from my home town know where I live, and most of my identity, of course. Hey, I just met a guy there three nights ago who I have been davening next to for two years! One might say that only now do we really know each other.

But to all the majority of the members in the SA meetings I attend, nobody knows my whole identity. All they know is that I am a recovering pervert and that my name is Dov. Funny name. Maybe they think it is "Taikwondo613Help!" in Hebrew!  ;D

Anyway, we in SA are mostly anonymous, and it still works. Why? Because we are physically present. That is real enough. 'Virtual' is a bigger limitation than it seems to be.

hey dov, how ya doing?You never stopped by my thread.

I went to my first live meeting today after almost falling at the end of a 90-day clean streak and after almost doing other destructive things. I also spoke to two real people on the phone, one whom I called and one who was kind enough to call me.
The experience is b'ein aroch to just being on the forum, and I say "just" with great reservation, because this is an awesome place to be.
But the forum was clearly not answering my addicted self. It allowed me to stay inside my head, so much so, that when the push came to shove, I didn't even want to post here. I just wanted to be left alone in the dark. Only knowing, and reaching out to, real people I spun out of the toilet bowl swirl into life again.
Very interesting experience to say the least.
Dov mentioned to someone (maybe me) that the only solution is shimish talmidei chachomim, i.e.being around other recovering addicts.
I had a conversation with someone outside of the forum and he mentioned that the negative side of all 12-step meetings is, that there is no action: they just sit and talk, he said. And it dawned on me: He is right! He is wrong!
You can not affect a real change without action. If you stay on a talking level, or worse, thought level, you'll stagnate and your change will be reversed. Only action that comes from within can make the change permanent. Chassidus is full of this concept, as I'm sure other books, too. Hama'ase hu HoIkar.
But going to a meeting IS ma'ase. Shaking hands with other guys is maase. Thinking what you are going to wear is maase (ok, maybe that's just for me). Picking up a phone and either making or taking the call is maase. I hesitated for quite some time before answering the guy's call the other night. It WAS an action to pick that receiver up, I assure you.
So my layman's opinion is with Dov on this one (as of about 12 hours ago): if you want to affect a permanent change within you, if you want to find the solution that has a potential to be long term, get out of your own head, and go rub elbows with fellow perverts. Look yourself in the eye (hello, Cpt. Kirk). 

One galaxy at a time, buby.

To boldly go where no chicken has gone before!!

Daa, daa, da. Daa, da, da, da daa, daaaaahhhh.....

Dov,

In no way was my post bashing GYE. GYE has, and continues to do wonders for me. What you preceded to say in 1-5 is exactly what I meant to imply with my post.

I am the Gemara and you are my Rashi. Actually Tosfos would be more accurate. You are the Robin to my Batman.

I love you(Both the virtual and the actual......unless you are that guy in shul who told me to shhhhhhhhhhh....,

Yossi

"I do not particularly care exactly which "lav" suicide is. I'm not interested in it for other reasons!" What does this mean?