Momo wrote on 22 Sep 2009 06:11:
Dear Momo -
Two things to respond that are not the derech for everybody, but I share this for Momo cuz my heart tells me it may be for him, as it is for me:
No, and...No. I'll explain, be"H...
For me in addiction, staying clean was a religious struggle. A clean day was another feather in my hat, a good deed, a great mitzva, and - as some here have stated - another feather in the "hat of the Ribono shel Olam". This did not get me any better, though,  same as you seem to be saying. It's beautiful to know that a clean day is a kiddush Hashem and gives Him nachas, a tikkun, etc. But by itself, that did nothing to change me, and I knew it. It sounds like you are expressing a similar awareness, Momo.
In recovery, things are vastly different. And that brings me to your reiteration of Guard and my posts to you (#453-ish above).
No, the ikkar of recovery is not "not acting out". It is about the rest of what we are doing. Why is it that some of us has had a year or so of relatively clean time while in yeshiva in EY, or wherever? We were living differently, so we were different. (Then we went back home and back to the same way of life and the rest was history .) 
As Kedusha has posted many times, the "best way" to guarantee I'll think about lust is focus on trying not to think about lust. But I'm going a step further, perhaps. In my life so far, the way it works is that I can't struggle with it. I can't struggle with it, even for Hashem's sake. "Hashem ish milchama" means I am not, in my case. In fact, the steps don't even mention our drug/problem, besides in #1. So, the way I see it, the way for me to guarantee I'll keep struggling with it (and losing) is to just keep thinking about not struggling with it. "Counting the days" is all the impetus I need to pick up that bat and get back to work struggling (and losing). It happens so fast and so naturally, I don't even realize it's occurring. Then I wake up obsessed and fantasizing. And for years the struggling and the counting were "lesheim shomayim", which doesn't make it right, of course. And it isn't "right" if it doesn't work.

I have to give the entire mess to Hashem. But how do wedo that?

The answer is to learn how to continuously focus on living right - living for Hashem. And that takes work and is what the 4th-12th steps are all about: getting myself clean enough for Hashem to shine through me. Mainly by reducing ga'ava. The 3rd step - the program's condition for sanity and sobriety - is about one thing: deciding to live for G-d. Not about resisting temptation for G-d, and certainly not about not acting out. And it cannot be done successfuly alone.
Sfas Emes: "v'hyisem kedoshim leylokeichem" - Hashem does not have any interest in his people being "Kedoshim". What He wants his people to be is: Kedoshim leylokeichem - kedoshim for Him. Jews for Hashem!

If I am acting out, even occasionally, even just "slipping", my real malady is that I have slipped back into living for myself. It needs quick correction. Struggling with lust isn't the solution - it is a symptom of the problem. I'm not even the issue, that is, my "goodness" is irrelevant. I've just got the wrong employer, that's all. And nothing will "work", because I am an addict. A regular yid can "make it". I can't.
How lucky can a man be?
A well-known vort (see a recent Battleworn post): "Vehaboteyach baShem, chesed yisovevenhu" Even for one who is still a rasha - as long as he attaches himself to Hashem with bitachon in Him, Hashem will connect with him with His love/chesed. 

So, sipping beer or not sipping beer is not what the solution is about. It is about all the other things that we thought were not related to our acting out. Our motivation for living is what matters, not our motivations for acting out. Life gets good in a hurry when we are living for the right reasons, even if we are not doing it perfectly. The 3rd steps is about a decision, a start. But it has to be real.
A tzaddik said: "pischu li pesach kechudo shel machat, v'ani eftach lochem pesach shel ulam, etc." he said, it has to be like a needle: all the way through. Meaning: He doesn't ask for perfect, just for "real".
If you are content with "winning one for the Ribono shel Olam" (between losses for both of you), gezunterheit. That has not been my experience or understanding of the program, or of recovery. At all. 
Don't worry, He won't mind you engaging in some enlightened self-interest and leaving the glory of beating the YH to a pulp to others who are more qualified. And there are some, it seems, as you implied in a post. He really wants you to succeed at living a good jewish life after all, no? The only way I could live was by finally giving up the romanticised struggle, and getting to work, for Hashem. C'mon. At some point I had to admit that my whole struggle and torture (of about 20 years) was ultimately all about me deep inside, really. Even though it was cloaked in kedusha, Torah and mitzvos, for Hashem, etc., it was all about me, me me. Eventually I saw I was only fooling myself and that I'd be the star-crossed, tragic loser in the end. They'd be cheering for me at my grave. "What a fighter he was." Wow.
Adon Olam: "Hashem li, velo iroh" - He is for me. And I'm for Him. That is how we approach the Yomin Noraim: E-l-u-l. If He's my banner and my employer, then I have absolutely nothing to be afraid of.
To recap: No, it's not all about beer vs wiskey, nor even all about staying off the stuff altogether. Long-term sobriety (and I assume that's what you are interested in)  is not born solely of abstinence.
(and) No, "I can try it again" is not necessarily the answer either. If you want a different life, you will need to start living differently. The focus cannot be on "stopping the lust" while leaving the rest of your life essentially the same. If the way I eat, sleep, learn, daven, love your wife and kids, see yourself in a mirror (when permitted), and breathe have not changed an iota, I believe the whole thing is B with an S after it. Now, it may take some time, but that change had to be my focus. The sobriety came almost memeiloh - with phone calls and lots of quiet "Hashem help"s all day long, and meetings where is got honest and poured all my garbage and shame out of me and into the light. 
So, instead of worrying about slipping a falling so much, how can you change the way you are living the rest of the (50%? ;D) of your life so that it's for Him, or at least for others than you?
I love you, and all addicts.
- Dov

Dear #36 -
First of all, please be moichel me for liking you so much. I'm really sorry but I can't help myself.  ;D
Please consider: Where the heck did you get the idea that NOT doing stupid stuff like lusting, playing with the filter, or whatever, would immediately lead to to happiness? If you want to laugh at yourself, laugh about that.
If you are mekabel that you were not only lusting out of habit, but also to comfort yourself, then it's poshut that when the acting out and other nahrishkeiten are removed from the equation you will go a little bonkers. We all do, temporarily. After that, it is your choice: to ride the storm holding our hands while you find peace (I use the steps 4 that), or go to back out there and comfort yourself some more with the sweet poison. Oh yeah, or you can just keep kvetching about it. I certainly did my share. But these guys don't seem to have much room for pity...tough bunch....
Whatever you (and we) are hurting or annoyed about or scared of is still going to need facing. We need peace, not more painful adventure. We can either face it now while aching a bit in sobriety and really attain the peace we deserve, or we can medicate again, to deal with it perhaps in the next gigul, or - if/when the medicating finally stops working - in this one. Nu. At least in this one you have our hands to hold and laugh with the berdichever! It seems that Someone is looking out for you and is giving you the help you need in this trip! Make a lechayim for a sweet new year together with some flaky people who really understand you, for a change.

Amen V'chein Y'hi Ratzon, sweet INH, with one caveat for me:

I completely relinquish any s'char I may deserve and may ever deserve for what you call "overcoming my nisayon". I want no part of it.
This is why:
When I'm sane, I calmly say,"Tatte, help me" whenever I notice a problematic image coming out of the corner of my eye or a troubling memory growing out of a corner of my mind. I give the job of freeing me of the powerful desire to look more or to think about it more, to Him Yisborach alone. Struggling with it reminds me too much of how I got here in the first place!   Not healthy....
Besides, every now and then the desire will surely be much too powerful for me to resist. To admit that requires humility - also a gift from Him, I believe. But I'm in good company, as Dh"M said, "va'ani l'tzelah nachon".
I remember that giving it up can sometimes really feel like a punch in the stomach; intolerable; as though I am really losing something I desperately need for my own good!! I am not smart enough to rely on my wisdom then. After all, it was my wisdom that got me here in the first place...
So I give the credit to Him and do not assume that I am smarter or better, now. That's what I always thought...foolish fellow that I can be. .
What s'char do I deserve for running from lust like the fire that it is for me (or maybe just closing my eyes for a second) and quietly, humbly asking Him to take a second out of His busy schedule to help His little Doveleh out so I can move onto His work?
I am aware that this attitude may not work for everybody, but for me, it's the best so far.

S'char anyone?

Dear Moshe and 90,
First of all, I'm honored by any feedback from you. Thanks.
Now about the "why should I really care about these people?" thing, I asked myself a question like that a long time ago and my heart told me this (we have a nice relationship going, me and my little heart): If I actually witnessed a wild-eyed and desperate stranger tripping and falling down the stairs right in front of me, would I desperately try to catch and stop them? And I said, "yes". If it were a goy, a man or woman would it make a difference to me? And I said, "not really". (On the outside chance that you think you feel differently, I'd say to wait until you are in that type of situation before deciding, you may be suprised.)
Then it occurred to me that if I'd take rachmonus and desperately try to save the life of any of the people Hashem made, that means that I care about them. That I do feel a kinship with them as human beings. V'rachamov al kol ma'asov, I believe, means on the little starving children in North Korea whos parents can't love them because they are all property of the stae, too. He loves them and "wants" the best for them, too, I believe. Whatever the "best for them" is.
These p**n people are misguided (see R/Noach's definition of Chet). Though I am surely not qualified to save them - I need to run k'boreiach min ha-eish from them - I need to accept their humanity. Like mine.
Forgive me if I'm being blunt. But this is important: When you wrote "I dont mean to put anyone or anything down...I believe thats what they were created for", you hit the nail on the head. We as lust (ab)users make these people into inhuman pleasure objects by buying into the industry, as Kanesher was writing. But there's more: We need to maintain their animal-like inhuman persona in order to make them usable for fantasy. Trust me, as soon as my sex-object loudly blows her nose, is angry at me, has a bad day, or is otherwise obviously human, she's not as appealing. The fantasy mystique is gone. Uri posted bravely and openly about his pain relating to the struggles with casual sex partners. These partners change in quality when they finally appear to us with their family relationships, children, pregnancy, depression, periods, medical issues, and bad middos (that we all have). They become HUMAN.
Davening for their HUMAN needs helps me let them out of fantasy and into the human realm, regardless of whether they deserve to be there. They are real people with real fears, problems, hopes and needs. That's all. Our lust makes a giant mountain out of sexuality, which is really just a small aspect of the whole person. I can't stay sober accepting that lie I use in addiction and desperately need to do whatever it takes to fight that perspective. Got me, chaver?
Moshe, I don't know exactly how you used davening for them, but I'm glad you quit it when you saw that it wasn't working for you. More power to you.

BruceWayne wrote on 13 Sep 2009 06:11:
I understand the dropping guard for a second business, but how do you tolerate living in an "impossibly hard" situation to begin with?
Maybe I'm missing something here, but it really, really is not the last drink that gets us in trouble, it's the first one. Maybe you know this, but - for me - putting it into action means one thing: pain. It just, plain, hurts to walk the other way and not take the "drink" after noticing something tantalizing, for example. For me, it feels like mourning a real loss, crazy as it may be to mourn over poison. But like I always need to remember, surrender and freedom from temptation ultimately has nothing whatever to do with goodness, intelligence, the Torah, G-d's Will, how I should be/could be, my potential, my neshoma, etc. Yes, being truly aware of those may prove useful tools, but for me and the addicts I know, they remain half-measures in the end. It eventually comes down to acceptance of my inability to successfully use lust and learning to live honestly with the implications. It grows out of a 1st step. And I do not believe that anyone who is not an addict can ever understand that pain w/o judging it or trying to analyze it (just as useless for me!). Exactly becoming an expert about all aspects of driving w/o getting into a car. Useless, really.
Oops, I got off point again - the question was how do things get bad first? I have almost no will-power, nor any real strength, and am more powerless today over lust than I ever was! I just can't afford for the fantasies to start, nor to take the second looks even though I may wish I could, much of the time. Admittedly, my early surrender mechanism took a while to engage...

Mr. Smith wrote on 12 Sep 2009 17:06:
No. What was told to me was: You need to learn how to step out of the ring. And it works. But to step out of the ring I cannot be going-it alone, I need to bring other sober people into my struggle, and as often as possible in the heat of the moment. Because if I am doing it alone, I am mostlikely saying inside: "I can beat this! I have the trick now!"
There are no tricks and no easy ways out. It doesn't seem to ever work if I am really saying to Hashem: "Take it away, G-d, so I don't have to give it up"! (as the white book puts it so well). And we cannot assume that our faith in Hashem is so real that when we talk to Him it has the same emotional value to us as talking to another person does. If that were so, we'd never hide from people when acting out. We must really have a disconnect there. Face it. And the answer for me was establish real connections with people, then with my G-d. As I have posted before to someone, this is the way Hashem made us. We are created to establish human relations (parents, then friends, then a spouse, then children) all to model and develop our relationship with Hashem. Trouble is, addicts get short-circuited somewhere and remain eleven-year-olds, in their own head and still fighting their parents. Hashem becomes a ritual, to some extent. If you were G-d, you would not want to be a ritual, would you? And it (the relationship) doesn't work, either.
So How to do it? The steps spelled it out simply and clearly for me, and I worked them with my sponsor and continue to work them today with Hashem's help. And if I can, anyone can. Trust me - you may not know how screwed up I was, and how grandiose, self-centered and fearful I am, by nature. ANYONE can do this.
The trick is to stop thinking about it. Just stop. Work it in order and with another person who already did it and for whom it is still working. No deep  meforshim and cheshboinos need apply.

Dear BW -
I relate to how you described the feeling of not hearing people and the attack you had of brick wall cranial convergence syndrome. Sorry about the circumstances, of course.
A thought that really meant a lot to me is this, and I am sorry about the crass terms:
I cannot go to the restroom for tomorrow, today.
There is really nothing we can do to stay sober for ninety days, a week, or for that matter: tomorrow. Because it is like every other bodily function. The only day I can go to the bathroom for is today. I can't go to the bathroom extra this evening so that I may be "off the hook" tomorrow! (can you tell I hate wasting time in the restroom?)
Well, there is one thing we can do that may set us at some advantage when tomorrow arrives: being sober today. And I'm serious, not glib nor trying to be poetic or cute. I'm dead serious.
It will be OK. No need to lose even a drop of faith, BW.
I can't say more right now.
Love you (all)
Dov

Holy Yid wrote on 07 Oct 2009 23:51:

Holy Yid,
Agreed, 100%. Really. As a matter of fact, if I could not talk openly with somebody about all the goofy and gross ideas that pop into my head, I'd certainly eventually act them out! "We are only as sick as our secrets" they so wisely say. So, more power (and Holy-ness) to you!
But making a study of it is an entirely different matter to me. It doesn't deserve all that much attention. And that was all I really meant.
It all depends on what I want. If I want to keep thinking about lust, or why I lust, then I'll be in it. I tend to then do more of it. If, on the other hand, I just want to finally get free of it, then I'll find someone safe to dump it to, ask My Best Eternal Friend to help me out, and then focus 100% of my brain and body energies on thinking about and doing whatever it is that I am supposed to actually thinking about and doing. And most of the time it's: giving - to my clients, wife, children, Whoever. And I'll just have to be content assuming that I'm a bit of a nut for having really, honestly believed (for a minute) that doing such an assinine (or evil) thing could possibly have been in my best interest! Nu. I'm nuts that way.
I am not telling you or anyone what to do, just admitting (again) that I can't think myself into right behavior. I can only live myself into right thinking. The analysis is very tempting, but letting go of it and doing right does me more good. That's all.
Does that sit well with you?

R' Eye -
Here goes:
There is no such animal in my experience as working the (entire) 12 steps "on anger". The anger/resentment, fear/worry, pride/entitlement problems we have are, in my experience, just our associated disorders that lead us to be miserable with life, people, or ourselves. When an addict is uncomfortable enough  he/she will medicate using the addictive behavior.
The compulsive sex, lusting, drinking, cocaine, heroin, gambling, etc, etc, seems to give us our power back. It gives us a real feeling of control, of safety. Even though we are out of control and very unsafe, we are plugged into something much bigger than ourselves and 100% along for the ride. It is more powerful, and more predictable than real life has been for us so far. And so much more powerful and predictable than Hashem has been for us, too, by the way. And you cannot argue/reason/hashkafa "away" a thing that we actually know we feel in our very gut. "Go ahead, join my conscience and beg me to not believe what I know in my gut - good luck!" Real or imagined, it is real to us, and seems to work for us - at least in the beginning. Addicts become stuck in it and cannot usually get out on their own. Then life really starts to stink - sometimes to everyone around us, too.
The 12 steps I know about are for anyone who has come to the conclusion that they are hopelessly unable to beat their addiction or have come to really believe that they will be beaten if nothing radically changes. 
Once they are clean because they really accept that they are no longer able to drink, drug, lust, etc., they work the steps in order and will face their associated disorders ("defects of character") that make life today so unbearable in the first place. That is what steps 4-9 are about. And it never ends. We do not get fixed. We keep on growing, discovering and surrendering more defects, getting more and more free and living with less and less pain, stress, anger, pride and fear. Slowly.
If we do not consent to face our defects of character and to use those steps, it seems that we will eventually just fall back into the addictive (or a new addictive) behavior. So the solution is basically inescapable.
The good news is that it makes for a great life for us and all those around us, and - in my case - it was the only way I found to really become a yid and find my own relationship with my own G-d. And that isn't something that any money can buy .

Now, that's all just my experience. Some see their anger or other emotional acting out as an addiction in itself. I don't understand how they do it exactly but, who cares? If you feel that your problem is not sexual acting out or lusting at all, but that it is rage or anger that is making your life unmanageable, then you may find something useful if you look up "Emotions Anonymous", an organization that I believe was started by an early member of SA, named Jesse.
Hatzlocha and all the best to you and yours!!

un de Rebbitzen? She is chopped liver??

For the Rebbitzin, we would need a whole NEW book... We'll call it "Chopped Liver. Yum!"