Personally, I sincerely believe that is why the overwhelming majority of goyishe sexaholics lust their brains out, as well. Perhaps Jews have a greater capacity for loving G-d? I do not want to go there. Such talk leads many to what seems to me to be hypocritical superiority and grandiose thinking. Blechh. I have had enough of my own...

Whatever the cause is, it is gonna eventually rupture. And we both know that no matter where it comes from, my addictive behavior looks really ugly to everyone.

It would be rather neat if the solution were to redirect our ahavas Hashem...but that's not the way it works. If there were ever a truly accurate example of the gemorah in Menachos, addiction is it! (U know: "The world is [like] a letter Heh, with a big open bottom edge to fall out of...but the only way back in is through the little space at the top of the left side. The straight path in "just will not work".)

In other words, all the ahavas Hashem in the world will not work. First there's gotta be sanity, self-honesty, and real honest relationships with everyone in the guy's life...then - if the guy is also abstinent from his drug for a good while during his growth period - he will finally be able to start using all that ahavas Hashem rightly. This takes time, fortunately!! Cuz it's the real thing, and precious.

That's been my experience, and that of many others.

Thanks for sharing your experience (and that of many others). Allow me please to share a bit of my own experience. B'H I'm generally doing well in these areas. I have stayed away from 'any unnecessary internet surfing' for quite a while (maybe 2 years). I have also refrained from looking at any forbidden or triggering images, live ones as well as pictures etc. I try to keep my mind off lustful fantasies, but I'm not always successful in that area. For instance, going to the Mikva presents a challenge for me. Even without looking, my lustful mind sometimes has me leaving the mikva with a feeling of less purity than before. I tried various approaches to be mechazek myself in this area, and my experience has been that what works best for me is to think about the following posuk and midrash:

תנה בני לבך לי ועיניך דרכי תצורנה
אמר הקב"ה אי יהבת לי לבך ועינך אנא ידע דאת דילי

My son, give me your heart and let your eyes guard my ways.
Hashem says: If you give me your heart and your eyes I know that you are mine.

Wow!
Hashem is talking to me directly - as if I'm his only child. And all He wants from me is to 'surrender' my eyes and my heart to His will. And by doing that He will be convinced that I am His loving child.
Wow!

How can I not go for it? How can I trade such an opportunity for some lousy shmutz?

There may be some readers who can relate to this approach. Try it. Costs nothing. You gain eternity - and you gain some serenity and a chance to enjoy life.

Hatzlacha

MT

Machshovo Tova wrote:


How indeed? How indeed...and therein lies the whole issue.

That is the question.

And for the man or woman who has no answer - there is recovery.

There is no question that Torah is the most powerful weapon there is. But Hashem says He gives us life and death to choose. And Chaza"l tell us that Torah is either the elixir of Life - or the poison of death.

Correct?

They explain that to those who misuse Torah, it is the 'sam hamovess', the poison of Death. It will kill.

And to the addict who is misusing Torah by trying to bombard his illness with willpower and hyper-religiosity, Torah is certainly the sam hamovess, as many here and elsewhere have found. They just get worse and worse, and the inner chilul Hashem grows and grows, the distance between them and their trusted wives and community (and their outer selves) gets wider and wider...until the beautiful promise held out by the well-meaning and truly holy Jews who simply do not understand the addict, becomes a mockery of the Torah.

No wonder so many come to recovery with deep emunah problems. They have been sold a bill of goods. They have been ill all along - and trying to fix it with goodness.

I agree 100% with everything MT wrote above! I invite all fellow Jews (and all people) to just drop the silly and immature chasing of women and lust and schmutz. Just as he does, I believe - no, I know - that life is so much better without all the mess of schmutz. Torah and avodah are the sweetest thing, far more beautiful than anything porn and masturbation offers.

But I am not here for the person who will hear MT's beautiful message and change. That is what I call normal, and what the majority of people probably can do and need to try (...unless they have already tried enough to see it does not work for them). When one breaks an arm they don't take him to the beis midrash and wrap a ktzos around his arm, sorry. Torah has the good parts of the 12-step program in it - but it's not more religiosity the addicts need, it is a safe place to open up, stop 'trying harder to be better and get some deveikus instead of the schmutz' in secret or behind a silly username - and get real help. As we know from the Chazon Ish, surgery and medicine are also in the Torah...so? Do we do Teshuvah or use the Torah to heal clinical depression, OCD, cutting habits, or addiction? No, we do not. We go to a doctor.

You are here for the guy who does not need a doctor. For the guy who is choosing bad over good because he thinks it feels better. And you say the Truth to him - halevai he will listen. Many will and I applaud your message 100%.

But I am here for the sweet, good Jew who finished his awesome Torah class for beginners - and is crying again because he is shocked that he just finished desperately masturbating himself in the bathroom again; to the young kolel guy who masturbated a bunch as a bochur and was sure that it was over now that he found a wife - but year after year sees it is getting worse and is scared because he can't stop using phone sex; to the mashpiah who really does a fantastic job advising couples in their marriage tzoress and really helps them - and is now driving the streets looking for the same prostitute he picked up last week; to the bochur who has already spoken to his Rebbe and told him the truth - and all his rebbi can say is that he needs to try harder, swear a lot, and shakes his head in sympathy every time the good bochur tells him he 'did it again last night'.

Who will help these people but other sober addicts who have been there? Who's got the experience? The Torah? What does 'the Torah' even mean? Often, it means sam hamovess, I think.

You have posed very difficult questions which demand approaches that each of us can grasp as a weapon in our own battles in this war, which we are fighting on both an individual and communal level.

I would like to pose the following suggestion and observation- As a student of history, I am haunted by one fact-we all know that the Nazis Yimach Shmam vZicram and their predecessors in Weimar Germany had an obsessive appropach to worship of the body, phsyical fitness, the worship of the young and the celebrity , a view of the disabled and elderly as expendable from a matter of public policy and obsessive views with sexuality that R"L survived the war and has become "accepted" as "mainstream" in the secular world. I think that in this respect, all of us have to realize that despite Klal Yisrael's miraculous rise from the Holocaust, we must realize that the secular culture around has many of the same decadent and perverted social, intellectual and cultural influences that were prevalent in Weimar Germany and were practiced in the most unspeakable ways by the Nazis, Yimach Shmam VZicram, and which unfortunately remain accessible by wrong click of the mouse or exposure to a trigger.

You framed a great tragedy of our time in an interesting way. Yes, society is ill, and yes, there is a yetzer hora. And instead of important philosophical and hashkofic questions and issues, I'd like to focus the entire tragedy you refer to in one discussion. I will pose it to you, in hopes that instead of taking this as an avoidance of the BIG issue you refer to, you see that it is the only thing that actually matters if you want to have an affect on the situation for yourself or the world as a whole:

Do you worship pretty women as evidenced by a feeling that you feel that you 'need to see her better again'? Do you eventually end up masturbating yourself to end the bitter battle with evil and 'start fresh'? Do you fight and struggle against desires but 'lose' often enough that it it affecting your life and you obviously cannot stop?

Bemoaning and finger-pointing are ways we feel better about our own flaws. We all have flaws. So I ask. I do not accuse.

Can you see it as a question and not as an accusation, please? I do not assume anything about you - so I ask.

And chaver, if you were to stop society from doing these things, outlaw the internet, and forbid women from walking around half-naked or whatever...it would still not solve the real problem. As Chaza"l say, "ein apotropus l'arayos" - there is no monitoring that will really stop arayos.

Please understand, I am not minimizing anything you are saying! Rather, I am narrowing things down from the great distraction of "What can we do to fix society?," to the small but precious question of real life: "How can I get fixed?".

What do you say, chaver?

If you prefer to talk about the evils of 'the goyim', Weimar Republic, Hollywood, and Madison Ave that's OK with me, of course. But I see little benefit in it. We all want things to be better. So I share exactly how things are with me with those who ask, and can ask you how things are with you, too.

You want things to improve in the world, no?

It always and only starts right here.

Dov wrote:

"Do you worship pretty women as evidenced by a feeling that you feel that you 'need to see her better again'? Do you eventually end up masturbating yourself to end the bitter battle with evil and 'start fresh'? Do you fight and struggle against desires but 'lose' often enough that it it affecting your life and you obviously cannot stop?"

Even before I arrived here, I never sank to the the level of your first question, but I definitely deluded myself in thinking that I could answer your last two questions on my own via the rationalizations and "approaches" inherent in the questions. That's why I came here, and decided to start completely fresh, with the help of a great therapist, my Eshes Chayil, and the chevra here. I still can't believe that I am Tahor for more than 150 days.

I think that we must fix ourselves first, and then we can tackle the issue of a toxic and decadent secular world,

I submit to you that the very day you see yourself as the right man to go out thee and tell the world how to be better, will be the day you lose whatever you have gotten by the help of Hashem through your therapist, wife, and chevra.

I suggest you humbly drop it, as I have.

We who have fallen are the last people on the planet who are fit to tell others how to behave or fix themselves. You may see it the opposite way, but I warn you from personal experience, that it is the path to staying the same guy we always were before.

For the one who has habitually fallen, I think the desire to fix the world/stamp out schmutz, is just a deep desire to finally be able to say "See? I am fixed!"

It does not usually work. And I am not giving you hashkofa here, but my personal experience, corroborated by 70 years of AA people who say the same things and by 30 years of SAs who have usually discovered the same.

G-d runs the world. Recovery is largely about stopping the 'fighting' things, stopping the managing others, and getting the heck out of G-d's way. As the Kotzker would say, Hashem is only found where people let Him in. Once He is let in by us getting ourselves out of His way, He remains in charge.

Going out on the crest of the wave to combat the evils of the world may be a valiant and beautiful thing. But it is probably for those more qualified than us.

Take it or leave it, man. It is just my experience and yours may be very different.

I think that your point is quite valid, but my understanding of this wonderful website and the pilpul chaverim here was to give each other chizuk and to also point out what is and isn't beneficial in dealing with our addictions.

Yes. And I think it is really obvious to everyone even before they get here that watching porn and 'enjoying' untzniyus advertisements is horrible for them. That does not really need to be stated here - in blasting the evils of society and the internet, you are just 'preaching to the choir'.

I am coming here precisely for what you wrote: "...and to also point out what is and isn't beneficial in dealing with our addictions."

And I suggest to you that aiming to become the bulwark against modern society's pritzus is better left to those more equipped to handle it. Addicts who get gekoched and fahitzed about that, are really just trying to make themselves feel better about themselves. Or as the gemorah puts it, "kol haposel, bemumo poseil" by shifting the ugliness to someone else. We frum porn addicts do that frequently - and I have seen it stunt and destroy early recovery.

Again, I am not disagreeing w you at all regarding the evils of society - just suggesting you protect your own recovery rather than 'try to save the world'. For doing so will probably ruin your recovery. And that is clearly a case of 'chayecho kodmin'.

Dov wrote:

"And I suggest to you that aiming to become the bulwark against modern society's pritzus is better left to those more equipped to handle it. Addicts who get gekoched and fahitzed about that, are really just trying to make themselves feel better about themselves. Or as the gemorah puts it, "kol haposel, bemumo poseil" by shifting the ugliness to someone else. We frum porn addicts do that frequently - and I have seen it stunt and destroy early recovery.

Again, I am not disagreeing w you at all regarding the evils of society - just suggesting you protect your own recovery rather than 'try to save the world'. For doing so will probably ruin your recovery. And that is clearly a case of 'chayecho kodmin'"

Ain Haci Nami-you are 100% right. First, and foremost,with as much effort and Tefilah as possible, I have to rebuild myself.

Hi Dov and SIB101854,

I have not been here for a while. I read your entire conversation since my last post. I liked it. I do have one point to add. If we don't talk to the outside world about this problem, then how would they know about it. Sure, they may have a general idea that inappropriately dressed women should not be in public, but they can never understand the extent of the damage if we don't tell them.

Just to be clear, I don't think that we should try to fix society. The first step to fixing a problem is identifying it. That is something that addicts can do and they cannot. They simple have never felt the full effects of it. On the other hand, the actual work can only be done by non-addicts. Being that close to filth will cause any addict to fall. That is how the I think this should work. We (addicts) identify the problems and they (non-addicts) do the work to fix it.

Just wanted to throw that idea in. Anyway, I have been doing VERY well. To be clear, I still have falls every few days, but I never get depressed afterwards. The cycle of falling and depressing that I had such a hard time breaking does not even form anymore.

I visited the yeshiva I want to attend over winter break. There are so many books and everybody is incredibly friendly. The best part was that there is a feeling of 'purity'. That is not the right word. It is impossible to describe what I mean. I never realized how 'low' (again, not really the right word) the public school I attend is until I went to the yeshiva. It is just inspiring.

Some_guy/Elias/Eliyahu

P.S. I bought a book called Judaism and Homosexuality: An Authentic Orthodox View by Rabbi Chaim Rapoport. I have only just begun reading it, but it seems like he has some different ideas than what I thought. For example; he writes that if a man has always had homosexual feelings and feels no attraction to women, then therapy cannot give him heterosexual feelings. He also says, that this man should live his life in celibacy instead of marring. Is this right? Is it one out of many opinion and he will talk about the other opinions later in the book? Did I just not understand what he was saying?

Re your PS-there is a whole separate thread re SSA-why not take a look at that discussion ?

Elias, before you run off to a SSA section of GYE, I have a question:

Have you mentioned any problem you had same sex attraction here on GYE before? I do not recall that.

Is this just another obsession?

I could have gotten all mixed up with whether or not I was a homosexual kind of guy or not, just by using the porn and CURIOSITY. Is that whats going on here?

As you may already know, your problem has only a little to do with sexuality - and lot more to do with obsessive tendencies.

Don't get swallowed up into a new direction so that you can get lost for another few years obsessing about a new way to get confused, if it is not really what you are about, chaver.

Haven't been around in a while. Just read this thread a bit. Wanted to share some experience, strength and hope. That when I'm in the mode of "lust is bad", and "those women shouldn't dress that way", and "all sexuall attraction besides my wife is wrong and evil", etc. - I slip more into the lust, and feel worse about it, and the cycle starts again.

But when I drop the whole Mr. Knows All The Proper Hashkofos costume, and get a bit honest, my addiction gives me more peace, and I can live my life, which as a religious Jew also includes sexual purity.

It's really helpful for me to look at beautifull and/or not so modestly dressed women as an alchaholic would look at whiskey, as they say in the Big Book: "it disagrees with me". Kinda like peanuts or choklate or milk disagree with some people who are allergic. Nothing wrong with lust, it's G-d given and therefore essentially good, anyone can be as sexy as they would like. And as a sexaholic I very much understand them and wish them well and hope they enjoy and get the love they need. I pray for them too.

It's just for me it doesn't work, I have this issue with women's bodies, I use them to fill me up even against my own will and better judgment, and when I start I cannot stop. But that's my problem, not theirs.

Love you guys. And hi Dov.

Sorry for not coming here for a while. I just needed to take a break from my computer.

Chaimcharlie, thank you for posting. I have never really though about things that way before.

Dov, I think that you are right. I probably have never mentioned homosexuality before. The main reason was that I did not see the difference between that and heterosexual lusts. I use them both in the same ways and for the same reasons. What I lust after is not as important as why I feel the need to lust at all. If you want to discuss this more, send me a PM.

-some_guy/Elias/Eliyahu