I'm about to call in to dovs ohone line after falling after a week.  One the one hand it was a full week!  on the other it was only a week.  it was also a week of playing around.  i wasnt serious and was peeking through at bits of online stimuli, flirting with temptation.  no more.  fresh start now!
I do want to ask an opinion: Is cleanliness just a lack of full on falls or all stimuli?  I need to work on my details I think,  keeping the halachos of all that is involved with this inyun and hopefully be zoche (we all should be) to some siyata dshamayim.  as I was falling my internet mysteriously crashed.  i should have seen it as a sign but didnt.  now I do, but only half heartedly.  It would only load my home page after saying, please let it work, I wont use it for bad anymore.  WOW right?!  so heres to a fresh start, starting with a 12 step chat with dov.  G-d willing...

ive had somegood streaks and the only reason they ended was because of peeking. it slowly breaks down your barriers. makes a huge difference if you just dont look to begin with,

as the handbook says, the most important thing is to avoid even taking "the first sip."  once you do, you're on a slippery slope.

keep at it!

I'm doing well right now. some sneaky thoughts but no actions.  I'm nervous though.  what happens when the initial excitement of being and wanting to be clean wears off?  will i fall again like I always have.  ugh.  any ideas?  I dont want to keep going up and down anymore...

Hey strugglingandstriving, let me say that we're in the same boat. I made it just under a week, and fell hard. Same story as you... I flirted with temptation off and on. I had it coming. Going up and down is probably what we're going to have to do for a while, the key is to be up more than down. In the Breaking Free material on the home page (read this if you haven't, I'm finding it helpful,) there is a story about someone who is walking down a road to his destination and slips on the ice when he almost made it. But of course, he gets up and keeps going, he doesn't go all the way back home. Similarly just because you fell, and I fell, does not mean we are back on the first page of our journey. We're still as far along as we were when we fell, we just have to pick ourselves back up and KEEP GOING. The up and down pattern is exhausting and disappointing, but to me, the biggest disappointment would be turning around. I don't want to go back to where I was before I at least started struggling here and seeking this group's support. I don't even want to look back. I just want to get up from a fall as fast as possible and keep moving.

I agree.  I still want perfection though.  I'm sick of the falls. I just want to be clean and innocent.  I dont want this tumah being part of my life.  It gets in the way of my spirituality, it gets in the way of school work and healthy relaxing (which is my biggest problem) and it gets in the way of my happiness.  I confuse lust with passion.  I met a girl I kind of like but shes not as frum as me and I have not idea what she thinks of me.  that sent me into part of the spiral, I was lonely.  so I used lust to hide from that feeling.  I dont have so many friends and I have more free time than Id like.  this is what i need to get free from, not just the falls themselves.  they hurt too, but the whole situation is a problem that only gets worse when I give in.

We all want perfection, but we have to accept that it's not going to happen that easily. we have to take the bumps along the way and just keep moving forward. Like Raz says, don't look back, just get up and get going. And that is the Sod of FSKOT!

Gevura!

Turns out, the quest for perfection is poison. Oh, but you read that article, too....
Anyways, brother, get up, stay up, keep going. Even one week at a time is a big step forward, compared to where you were, say, 6 months ago; am i correct?
Next time make it 8 days 
Hatzlocho and best wishes for speedy recovery.

strugglingandstrivngBT wrote on 26 Oct 2011 02:33:


cleanliness is much more than a lack of falls the same way good is not a lack of evil and light isnt the lack of darkness

cleanliness elevates us to a higher level than we were before and even if we fall later on we still are a bit higher than we were before we had the period of cleanliness because it changes something in us for good

6 months ago I was on a 9 month clean spree so no where I am is not by any means better.  than 3 months ago maybe.

I agree that the quest for perfection is poison.  It poisoned me.  Wanting to be perfect causes stress which is a BIG trigger.  then you use your favorite escape which leads to shame, which leads to the need to escape again.  You get my drift. 

Don't try to "overcome" it.  Learn to "let go" of it.  I'm no expert on the subject, but there's lots to learn here.  Let go of the perfection thing. you'll be much happier, which by the way is the biggest antidote for all this stuff.

hatzlacha rabah!

Oh, you might want to read or listen to some of Dr Sorotzkins stuff here drsorotzkin.com/ .  He has some great stuff on perfectionism.

strugglingandstrivngBT wrote on 28 Oct 2011 13:18:

first off you are better now than 15 months ago by the very fact that now you know you can do it.
better does not mean then i went nine months now two weeks in between falls, its where we are in the total scheme of things. after winning for nine months you are winning the war. losing a battle now doesnt change that fact
with that that doesnt mean that one can never fall lower than one once was but as long as one is still fighting he hasnt and wont lose that progress that he made even if he falls hard.

p.s. just a thought that came to me based on chazal "the greater a man is the greater his yetzer hara is" after being clean for nine months youve been "promoted" and this is just getting used to the greater yetzer hara but as soon as you adjust you should be back to were you were in terms of cleanliness and yes you are better off than you were 15 months ago even if it seems the opposite
so kot 

so despite missing 2 phone groups (studying for midterms right now) I am doing pretty good.  I have hit an interesting turning point where my therapist told me i dont have an addiction.  He said I have a problem but due to the nature of my problem not matching the definition of addiction I shouldnt think of it that way.  this goes counter to much of what I have experienced here, and fully with what I've thought and I'm somewhat bothered by that.  I have a spiritual problem and I'm ready to solve it by watching what I look at and do, and I think this realization is key to the fresh start I was hoping for when I started this thread.  I dont want to say no one here has an addiction, but I dont think everyone does either.  I think that helps framing it like that, as when I thought I was an addict I acted like one.  i thought i didnt have control when really I did.  I would never act out anywhere inappropriate, i never missed responsibilities, I never denied a problem.  I was actually ready to label myself an addict early.  any feedback?  no angry that im in denial, I think I am clearer than ever...