i've been battling with this for a long time. I made a post a while back about how I was successful in cutting out masturbation, but not guarding my eyes on the internet. I've had a pretty great last few months. Even though I've slipped up plenty of times, it's become more like once a week as opposed to everyday. the only thing is, this year I made vows to keep myself from sinning. Unfortunately I was not able to keep them. Just earlier tonight I spent literally two hours looking at nonsense. I feel so helpless. Like, a year ago when this was all new I would sin but then get over it because I had the excuse that I was a baal teshuva. Now It's a new year and i'm back to the same stuff. I'm wondering if there's even a way to do teshuva for my sins now, because I knew full well i was sinning when I did it. I know the satan wants to get us depressed, so I should be cheerful, but I don't see any upside right now.

Of course there is room for teshuva. Hashem loves you unconditionally.

Keep in mind, addiction is an illness. You do not have total free will at this point. Moving slowly in the right direction is wonderful. Do not belittle your accomplishments of the past, because that is exactly what the yh wants.
Do not say "I was a Baal teshuva. IYH you still are and always will be. By definition, a baal teshuva is one who constantly strives to get closer to Hashem and do better, REGARDLESS of what his background is.

My bracha to you, myself, and everyone is that we ALWAYS strive to become true baalei teshuva.  Hashem wants our hearts and sincere desire to return. Every second that you say "no" to the yh, is more precious than we can even imagine.

DearStraightedge,

I just noticed you never received the official 'welcome to GUardyoureyes"!

Welcome to our community! Once you’ve arrived, there’s no turning back. Everyone here will just grab a hold of you and pull you up, up, up!

Scientific studies have shown that it takes 90 days to change a neural thought pattern that was ingrained in the brain through addictive behaviors. Did you join the 90 day chart on-line? Sign up over here.

We get cries for help every day, by e-mail and on the forum. Tzuras Rabim Chatzi Nechama    And that is why we created the GYE handbooks (links below). If you read them well, from beginning to end, slowly, and try to implement what you read, you will find the answers within them to enable you to completely turn your life around. You’re worth it.

Also, join the daily Chizuk e-mail lists to get fresh chizuk every day, and post away on this forum. You will get tons of daily Chizuk and support. This disease can’t be beat alone. It works best when you get out of isolation!

GuardYourEyes also offers various free anonymous phone conferences, where you can join a group of other frum Yidden, along with an experienced sponsor. See this page for four different options. Our conferences are taking place daily, throughout the week… This would be a tremendous step in the right direction for you and help you learn freedom from this addiction. Not only will you learn the secret of the 12-Steps – which is known to be the world’s most powerful program for beating addiction having helped millions world wide, but joining the group will be another way of GETTING OUT OF ISOLATION and connecting with others who are going through what you are.

Let me tell you a little about the two GuardYourEyes handbooks. They lay down the cornerstone and foundation of our work, and they make our network much more effective and helpful for people.

You see, until now, people would often get "lost" when coming to our website, not knowing what tips and techniques to try. For example, a beginner wouldn’t jump straight into therapy or 12-Step groups, while on the other hand, someone whose addiction was more advanced wouldn’t be helped by the standard tips of "making fences" putting in "filters" etc… So it was essential to develop a handbook which details all the techniques and tools to dealing with this addiction in progressive order. Now with these handbooks, anyone can read through and see what steps they’ve tried already, and if those steps haven’t worked, they can continue on through the handbook where the steps become progressively more powerful and "addiction-oriented".

And the second handbook, called the "Attitude" handbook, can also help anyone, no matter what level of addiction they may have. Often people write in to us saying that had they only known the proper outlook & attitude that we try and share on the GuardYourEyes network when they were younger, they would have never fallen into an addiction in the first place! So we hope that through this handbook, many addictions will be prevented.

The handbooks are PDF files, set up as eBooks, and they have bookmarks and hyper-links in the Index, to make them easy to navigate.

Note: You might want to print them out to read away from the computer. Keep in mind though, that if you do this, you won’t be able to click on the many web links in the articles. But you can always come back to them later. The truth is, it’s anyway good to go through the whole handbook once without clicking on links, just to get an overview of all the tools available. Once you did that, you can start again from tool #1 and read each tool through more carefully, click the links and study each technique and assess whether you have tried it fully yet or not…

Right click on the links below and select "Save Link/Target As" to download the handbooks to your computer.

1) The GuardYourEyes Handbook

This Handbook details 18 suggested tools and techniques, in progressive order, beginning with the most basic and fundamental approaches to dealing with this addiction, and continuing down through increasingly earnest and powerful methods. For the first time, we can gauge our level of addiction and find the appropriate tools for our particular situation. And no matter what level our addiction may have advanced to, we will be able to find the right tools to break free in this handbook!

2) The GuardYourEyes Attitude

The Attitude Handbook details 30 basic principles to help us maintain the proper attitude and perspective on this struggle. Here are some examples: Understanding what we are up against, what it is that Hashem wants from us, how we can use this struggle for tremendous growth, how we can deal with bad thoughts, discovering how to redirect the power of our souls, understanding that every little bit counts, learning how to bounce back up after a fall, and so on and so forth…

May Hashem be with you!

Hey straightedge,

I just finished reading your response, and here is what I've got to say. What kind of loser do you think you are? This is not written in spite but seriously, you were clean for months. I fell for the past two days straight, and I feel really bad, but I'm not giving up and nor should you nor should you put yourself down or feel helpless. You gotta a support group here on the forum. People like me and others who are struggling to stay clean for consecutive days wish and hope that people like you who stayed clean much longer show us the way. Be an example. You are the "straight edge" for us that are bent! So, when I fell I believe it was 7UP who told me something similar to this: Think about the minutes, seconds and milliseconds that you spent clean, those months/days/minutes/seconds etc are not lost and are precious to Hashem.

Pick yourself up. We are all behind you.

Giant Leap.

Vows don't usually work with addictions, unless we know how to make them wisely and safely.

See this page: www.guardureyes.com/GUE/Tips/TipsShavuos.asp

And see also this page: www.guardureyes.com/GUE/FAQ/FAQ33.asp

7Up wrote on 22 Oct 2009 10:55:


thank you for your reply. however, doesn't rambam say that whoever sins and says "I'll repent later" cannot repent?

Giant Leap wrote on 22 Oct 2009 22:07:


Thank you for the reply.

guardureyes wrote on 22 Oct 2009 22:46:


I've seen what the website has to say about vows. I tried vowing to do 20 minutes of excercise before looking at p**n. That didn;t help. Then I did something I thought was genius. I vowed that if I were to look at p**n, I must first watch a jewish clinical death video(you know the type where a person claims they saw evil angels). My logic was that I would be too terrified to sin after watching one of those videos. It did help me a few times. The problem was that when my desire grew too strong, I just said F it and went right to the p**n without watching the video,

How about vow to take an hour walk AFTER giving in? That works a lot better, because one you gave in you want to do Teshuvah and you'll fulfill the vow. And the fact that you know you'll have to fulfill the vow, will prevent the acting out in the first place!

That's a good plan, but what happens to my previous vows?

I suggest you do hataras nedarim (like erev rosh hashana) and then use the NEW plan to carefully map out a set of vows that you KNOW you can & will keep. (and only for a week at a time at first, and as the vows work, make them for progressively longer periods...)

Quote" thank you for your reply. however, doesn't rambam say that whoever sins and says "I'll repent later" cannot repent?"

Meaning he makes it harder for himself to repent. He causes a natural mental block and starts off a step behind the one who sinned without doing this.  There are many reasons for this. Our feeling of not wanting/be able to do teshuva is the very answer to your question.

You gone weeks more than so many of us. Get up and do it. We all know you can.

Is there a way to do hateras nedarim without other people? I really don't want anyone to know about my addiction.

When doing Hatras nedarim on erev rosh hashana, we don't specify what nedarim we made. There's no reason anyone should know about your addiction.

guys, im in a worse position now then i was a few days ago. I started the 90 day log, and fell. But to my surprise, without even touching myself, i ejaculated. I didn't even know this was possible outside of nocturnal emissions! it's been almost a year since I've last masturbated. all the horror stories about wasting seed I heard. I thought i was at least safe from that. this is killing me.

Did this happen as a result of viewing forbidden images and/or sexual fantasies?

In any case, if you did not mean for this to happen, it is not as serious a sin as otherwise. The #1 thing we learn on GYE is not to let anything get you down. We only have the "NOW" to worry about. Put the past behind you and focus on doing G-d's will and being a better person NOW.