Halfway to 90!

Mazel tov.

You're definitely a nice addition to gye, I'm glad you made it here.

inastruggle wrote:

Hi Cordnoy,

It sounds like you are doing well. As others have posted, the important thing is not to "beat" your addiction. No addict can beat the addiction. I certainly can't and I constantly have to remind myself of this. What works for me is surrendering before the fight begins, because once I step into the battleground I have lost, and then trying to the best of my ability with the help of friends and my sponsor to live just today according to G-d's will.

The 90 days goal is nice and admirable, but for me after being clean for 90 days + another couple of months, I started falling again. Today I am thankfully aware that for me no amount of inspiration, goals or chizuk will ultimately help me stay clean if i do not work on changing myself.

May G-d be with you

whay does surrendering mean to you?
how have you changed

Surrender to me means accepting that I am up against something much more powerful than myself. It means raising the white flag before the fight, not first getting triggered and then whining that I am powerless (which is what I used to do). Surrendering means staying away from lust not because I don’t want to, or because of the aveira, but because I cannot afford to; because if I do, then at best I will suffer emotionally and at worst get into very messy situations.
This acceptance was not something that came to me overnight, and even today I prefer to deny that I cannot handle lust on my own. I learnt it the hard way; years of lusting was one thing, but it took me a year and a half in SA to finally admit that I cannot touch lust, and to admit defeat. No, it was not a pleasant realization, and to this day I don’t know why I am different to people who CAN enjoy sex without going crazy (yes, there are such people); but slowly I was able to accept it and with it to admit defeat and to surrender.
Practically this means, taking whatever measures I can to stay away from lust and to share with others any fantasies or anything else which I am powerless over and which I know that I cannot deal on my own.

The big question is of course: without lust, how do I deal with a mind and body which are screaming for their fix?
This is where I learnt that G-d can help me; that I can talk to Him about the little things in my life and that He cares. And yes, for someone who had been through Yeshivas and Kollel, who (I hope) had always genuinely searched for meaning, had learnt gemoro, mussar and hashkafa for years, to have to learn how to have a basic relationship with HaShem, my Abba, from a bunch of Alcoholics, was a hard one to swallow. It has been a process, which did not happen overnight, but one which I am very thankful for.

thanks for the explanation

I think when you say surrender, I say numb
meaning...I am not allowing lust to start at all...not for anything else and sadly not for wife
I cannot control it
I am defeated, so I will not enter the cage with it

I am succeeding with first half, but second half is tough

your second part about G-d and praying and little things and Him helping, I am not there yet. I am not connected in such a way.

thanks so much

It comes. It really does. With HaShem our Abba, there is no such thing as "being there" yet. He is there for us all the time. It is a matter of practicing talking to Him like we would talk to a father. It may seem weird at first (I only ever daavened to HaShem for "big" issues. not for trivialities!)and it may even seem phoney, but with openness and willingness (and practice) it comes.

As far as surrender is concerned. I definitely identify with the feeling. It feels like we are cutting part of ourselves off, we may even have withdrawal symptoms, but it is really the addiction convincing us. Eventually it gets better.

A life changing line from Dov for me was: Clarity does not bring sobriety, sobriety brings clarity

thanks

that line from dov (sobriety brings clarity) is precious (all of his lines...at least those that I understand...hit the nail on the head).

Regarding first half (of your comment), I don't have that connection with our Father (yet); its not even at the weird stage. yes, when I remember by davening (which is not too often sadly), I ask Him to help me out with wife, but ultimately it is our thing...some of it the wife's. I am not laying blame...mostly it goes to me, and that is why im here workin my tail off to fix that issue as well. you are right though...I should be including Him much more. Step 2...knowing that in all or many of these issues, we are powerless without a higher source (although on this one, there is another being involved...my wife).

I can only share with you my experience and what has worked for me so far.

I spent many years searching for spiritual connection. Sometimes i felt that i had gotten it but most of the time I felt that I was not connected.

Coincidentally (or not)during all that time, I chased lust as well.

When i came to SA i was sure that there was nothing more fitting for a spiritually conscious person like myself. Slowly i discovered that my lifelong search had been for nothing more than a search for emotional high's. This may not necessarily be a bad thing for a normal person, but for me as an addict, it was catastrophic. It meant that i was constantly searching for that high, and when i did not have it i would replace it with lust.
This was a very hard reality to face that I had been practicing "emotional religion".

The critical point about this is that I WAS CONNECTING TO HASHEM ON MY TERMS, according to MY expectations, and my definition of connection.

Although accepting this was very painful, it was the first step in realizing that I can talk to HaShem all the time, and I don't need to feel anything.

But today for me i am able to accept that HaShem is with us if I want, in everything and that includes my addiction.

May G-d be with you

He is with us..in the addiction??
what does that mean?

Yes, like nefesh hachayim and others say, He lets us breath while we are sinning (sometimes I wonder what would be bshaas maaseh if we would get short of breath), but is He together in the addiction?

Please explain; I look forward.

thanks

This is my first post! what should I tell you cordnoy you came a far way!

keep it up don't let your self fall!!

Shalom Aleichem mcpropboy

We are happy to have you here!

Why don't you start a new thread in the "Introduce yourself" section and tell us about yourself?

WELCOME mcpropboy! Nice to hear from you. Don't be a stranger.

Thanks Chesky for some really great posts!

Hope Chesky answers me on the "He is there in the addiction" thing; he definitely is good

Cordnoy,
I thank you for sharing your feelings so openly and honestly.
I feel that I need to clarify something.
I started posting on the forum again (after nearly three years), not because I have what to teach people here but because I lusted for many years and tried to stop without success. Even after I found this website and was clean for five months, once I started falling again, I could not do anything to stop acting out. Even after I started SA, for a year and a half, I could not stay clean for more than a few days at time. (In SA people like me are called chronic-fallers). No, I am no big shot, I am a failure. But the more I accept that on my own I can never win, that I am up against something way more powerful than me, the more I realize that I have to turn to my Abba for help.
And I learnt that he CAN help me. First and foremost I saw this at meetings with other addicts. As frustrated and confused as I was, I knew many other addicts had recovered and they claimed that He had helped them.
Slowly I discovered that he could help me too, and today I am thankful for every day of sobriety, because today I know that I cannot take sobriety for granted at all.
So, I am here to share the hope that if a failure like me can recover then so can others here.

cordnoy wrote:

I don’t answer for G-d.But I can identify with your resentments and frustrations towards G-d.
With me before recovery, since I knew all the answers or at least felt that I was supposed to, when things did not go the way they should have, that was the perfect reason to act out. After all, clearly He either is not interested, or does not care, and anyway if He cared then why doesn't he punish me....
In recovery I learnt to communicate with HaShem, no differently than I would with anyone else I know. I try to share with Him everything; my frustrations, my fears and my resentments and my gratitude. After all He is my Abba. If I cannot talk tell my Abba that something is bothering me, then there is a problem. Yes, I can be angry with him too. There is nothing wrong with telling Him that I cannot understand why something happened to me; it is the truth. Neither do I accept the answer to come to me in some miraculous or inspirational or divine way. Things don’t get better just because I feel they ought to.
I finally was able to talk to Him about lust too; about the women who have such power over me, about my fantasies which have such power over me and everything else.
And I found that when I have an Abba who cares, then I can switch off from worrying and obsessing. Neither do I have expectations nor disappointments.I don’t need answers because when I have an Abba who is watching me, then I don’t have to worry.
Yes, He is there with me and he is there for everyone. We just have to talk to Him about it.