Mazal Tov SB on almost a year clean!

Thanks for posting that piece from Dov. WOW. It says it all.

Thank you!

I got a reminder today, though, that even distance from the disease doesn't guarantee anything. I passed a woman in the street today, and knew I should look away, and even while I was thinking that, kept looking for way too long. I realized that i should be taking my glasses off more - why tempt myself and put myself in a position where I need to be powerful, when in fact, I'm powerless?!

And I need to reach out more, like Dov says. Need to get some people I can just call up when I need to talk about ridiculous thoughts and urges.

Mar Silentbattle,

You are a Holy Jew in a Holy matzav walking around in a Holy City. Leave the Yetzer Horah out of the loop.

If u send me a ticket ill attend

I think that stubhub.com is selling tickets to the event. ;D

snubhub?

You should be begging Bardichev to come!

and you know rebbes do not travel alone, they need their 'entourage'...

and being that i am, ahem, his official whiski-carrier, i think it is only fitting....

Mazel Tov SB! wherever you are i will be happy to celebrate your milestone with a lechaim

I was joking...you know, because Bards was reffering to a plane ticket, but I used the opportunity to pretend that this would be an exclusive event...

Thank you, Reb ZS!

Hashem sent me a message through other channels recently, letting me know I need to step things up. I'm powerless, so I think I need to start taking my glasses off more often when I walk in the street.

silentbattle wrote on 17 Nov 2010 07:19:

keep up the good work!

silentbattle wrote on 17 Nov 2010 07:19:

it is a very exclusive event, you are causing the whole Mesivta Derakia to sing and dance with your avodah!

silentbattle wrote on 14 Nov 2010 05:11:

Have you figured it out yet?

Nothing yet...I'm thinking maybe next week, motzei shabbos...does that make sense?

Us chutzniks are extremely jealous!

uhuh

I hear you - you do have the option of making your own celebration, of course  ;D

I was listening to a shiur recently, and the speaker mentioned a concept that I realized is essential to our work here (it's really essential to everyone's work in this world, too).

He was talking about campus kiruv, and explained that someone's in trouble if they walk around thinking, wow, these people live such great lives, they have so much pleasure. Hashem is going to reward me so much from restraining myself from all this good stuff." If you want to survive, you need to realize, to understand, to feel (not just know) that these people are living lives of garbage.

It's pretty obvious how this concept is necessary for recovery.

I was just thinking about one of the things that helped me - the realization that this addiction would kill me. Maybe not physically (although this disease has a way of sucking you into situations that can spiral out of control), but dead nonetheless.

It seems extreme at first, but there are many levels of understanding this. One basic level, for me, was realizing that unless I stop and get clean now, I could end up doing this for the rest of my life. It's scary, and we all like to think that "we'll stop someday." But when is someday? If we don't make someday now, it may very well never come. And I'll die, old and unhappy, still addicted. I'll have wasted my life, spent it all running after my drug.

I didn't want that.