And I just read your post carefully and I
know I am not disagreeing with you, either.
In AA, Bill wrote that our problem was never our religion, nor even the intensity of our religious feeling! It was our sincerity and acceptance of some very basic things. We fooled ourselves and thought ourselves greater than we were/are. It is common that an addicted Jew cries with real tears over the churban one day in bentching - yet does not really believe that G-d
is actually only Good. Deep down, he or she can truly believe that Hashem is basically a loose cannon and not really safe to trust with running his life, his sex, his money, and his relationships...in other words, he is actually alone and really
without a G-d of his very own, no matter how frum and good he is. And then he is shocked that he was crying yesterday in L'cho Dodi with real teasr of d'veikus - and is on his knees in the bathroom at work masturbating - again...it's madenning! The double life, the ruchniyus roller-coaster ride, they are terrible. "How can this happen if I am so good?"
It is easy for us loving, good people to sit back and sincerely say: "Gevalt! That's
horrible that he could feel that way - a yid yet! Read him some Tanya or whatever, quick! We need to convince him that he really
does have a G-d who is is very own Best Eternal Friend who is 100% on his side always and forever!" - but if we ourselves are regularly and cyclically masturbating and using sweet porn, it is likely that with all our religious trappings, we are lacking in that very nekudah, ourselves. Not lacking in
information, no! We do have the right info...I mean, we've got the Torah and we learn it, don't we? We do. But if we are active addicts, then we clearly do not have the precious thing that successfully recovering goyim (and Jews) in AA, NA, and SA have: a faith that really
works. Ouch. That is not 'information', but an experience. It's certainly k'shot atzm'cho time...
People who are addicts
stay that way because we are missing something big. And it is usually completley irrelevant how we
got that way. Everybody has a yetzer hora and there are a lot of people who are occasionally nichshal in lust-related stuff and struggle with it - yet the overwhelming majority of them are certainly not addicts! The addicts - the ones who
stay in the pattern and do not get out - are usually totally convinced that their problem is davka their penises, their yetzer horas, a particularly pretty woman, or because of 'the internet'
![](https://guardyoureyes.com/components/com_kunena/template/default/images/emoticons/new/shocked.png)
But as most recovering people know, it's not. The pattern of self-medicating demonstrates (as RMB"M writes) that there is somethings else going on. But, sadly, just setting out to
'solve the root cause of our problem itself' gets us nowhere! It's so tempting to 'get all psychological' or deep-rooted'...while we are still porning and masturbating when we really 'need' to.
![](https://guardyoureyes.com/components/com_kunena/template/default/images/emoticons/new/sick.png)
I read about that journey here all the time, unfortunately. If true addicts are to get anywhere at all, experience indicates that
we need to be sober first. The inner change comes later, as a gift...with work. It's called ho'odom nif'al k'fi p'ulosav. That's humbling - and very painful. So most addicts do not get better till it hurts too much. That's called 'rock bottom'. (And many of those do not choose to do whatever it takes to get better, either, and do not!)
Whatever our 'big hole' is, if we are getting clean we
do need to take a step back and learn the basics. We stop trying to fix others, for a while. We even stop fighting with our
selves. It's not a self-help program, but a
G-d-help program, these 12 steps. And they are not Torah, but Derech Eretz.
So, as usual, we come back to humility...or as you a Chabad guy might call it: bittul or hisbatlus. As a frummie, I and many others I know discover the 12 steps as a simple trip back to the real basics. Basics that are so common and so
basic, that they are exactly the same for goyim as they are for us.
That is how basic they need to be, if they will work.
And that pride is often why we ill people have the greatest trouble actually getting the help we need. It feels so humiliating. We tell ourselves it's apikorsish...and that is just our PRIDE talking. Rav Twerski wrote a whole book about it and hid this idea inside it. It was titled, "
Self-Improvement? - I'm Jewish!", and was really about the 12 steps, not just 'self-improvemt'. His point was not really that Jews feel they do not need mussar/chassidus or self-improvement, but rather this: it takes
painful humility to accept that my chronic, progressive sexual self-stimulation using porn and sex with myself or others (or alcohol, overeating, spending, or gambling, or heroin), shows I am lacking in something that any human being can relate to and needs: Sanity. I can learn sanity as well from a goy as from a Jew, of course. That is a huge insult, especially to a frum Yid. "What could
I possibly learn from
him?! I mean -- he is a goy!"
So the 2nd step sets
Sanity as the basic goal of recovery. Period. Not 'madreigos', not 'Teshuvah', but for a Power Greater than myself to eventually restore me to (progressive) Sanity. That's pretty humbling, no?
That is why there is no real advantage for a frum addict to having a frum (or even Jewish) sponsor. There are many great excuses for it, I know. But
requiring him to be frum can be poison, for it reveals a holding onto preserving respectability - that's nothing but pride. If we can do this with frum yid, then I can call it "Teshuvah" and it is respectable! I see this many times. Having pride as our guide is a poor way to embark on anything, least of all, recovery. For true addicts, as long as we are convinced that our problem is "a bechina of kedushas habris", we never need to really get down to the basic hole in us. "Phew. That was close!"