1- Addiction and regular lust sufferers are 2 different (maybe opposite?) things.

If that's the case, how can one differentiate and know what he or his friend is struggling with?   

3- Giving up self control means, to realize that without G-D we have no control, but we still have bechira and with G-D's help we can strengthen our self control. 

Powerlessness simply means that I really, really stink at living without acting out my lust. More to the point, it means that I am really bad at using and enjoying lust. I feel sure I can do it, so I keep trying - but when I do, important areas of my life eventually get screwed up, and I get miserable. My years of sincerely trying to use lust without it ruining my mind, relationships and life, and all that while 'fighting it to finally quit!', prove to me that when I do partake and try to enjoy it, it takes over my day, I take risks, lose self respect and my relationships become progressively uglier.

That's why I finally had to get sober. Not because I have self-will to quit or yir'as Shomayim. No. It was simply because doing it my way was too big a mess.

If I (Dov) could successfully enjoy using porn and acting out my sexual fantasies, I would. Probably so would most guys who are stuck in habitual masturbation and porn use - though they hate admitting it and perhaps consider it apikorsus. Of course, that does not make it untrue... I will not lie to you or to Hashem or to myself - my years of trying to control and enjoy it prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that I feel I need it. That I must have it. That I must control and enjoy it. That I must tame it. But I cannot. For whenever I have tried to, it messed up every aspect of my life more and more. So apparently I do not have power over my lust. I can't use it successfully. That's "Powerless". And it feels pretty sad. Incredibly sad, actually.

I feel that applying 12 steps and some of the 12 step concepts to non-addicts twists both realities, mixing falsehoods into yiddishkeit by distorting yetzer hora/avodas Hashem into feel-good messages, and also makes a mockery of recovery by pretending that it is Torah when it is in reality only derech eretz and about self-honesty.

Someone wrote:

The 12-Steps speak about how we are powerless. This seems to me to be ANT-TORAH!! It may SEEM like we're powerless, and it may be EXTREMELY difficult (like it is for me) but powerless?? The very first mussar shmooze in the Torah was given by the MASTER HIMSELF to Kayin. Hashem said to him in a few short words - Kayin, you can do it if you WANT TO - I'm not saying it's easy, BUT YOU CAN DO IT. You CAN overcome this.

GYE Responds:

You are asking a good question, but it's based on a common misconception about the concept of Powerless.

Powerless doesn't mean you can't do anything about it. Powerless simply means that you can't change the fact you are an addict, in the same way that someone with diabetes can't change that fact either.

Does this mean a person with diabetes is doomed to die? No! But instead of fighting diabetes, he needs to learn what WORKS for a diabetic!

So again to sum up: Powerless is referring to the disease and not to the person's ability to help themselves.

Further, the 12-step idea of powerlessness is disempowering. Research [W. R. Miller et al., “What Predicts Relapse? Prospective Testing of Antecedent Models,” supplement, Addiction 91 (December 1996): S155–72.] shows that the more someone believes in the idea that addiction is a disease over which he is powerless, the worse and more frequent a person’s relapses tend to be. While some people can interpret “being powerless” in a benign way, others decide that it means they have no control not just over drugs but also over multiple spheres in their lives...

I have been in SA for a number of years, and there is a big thing there (and here to some extent) of being "powerless" over the addiction. Now I don't pretend to know what each individual means when using that word, but for me it always meant that I have no control over the addiction and was a subtle way of me abdicating responsibility for my own sobriety (maybe recovery too). What this led to is when the going got tough, and I mean really tough, like yesterday, it was one additional factor in me "giving in". Now to be clear, I am not blaming SA, GYE or anyone else for my addiction, slow recovery or anything else. My recovery is solely my responsibility. If something is not working for me it is my responsibility to identify that thing and change my approach if necessary. However the fact is that I did get "comfortable" in my cycle of addiction for a long time and I did use the "excuse" of being powerless as part of that cycle.

I now believe that difficult as it is to remain sober (and believe me, I am not underestimating the difficulty that it can present), it is my choice whether I want to be sober or not and it is my responsibility (to myself, not to anyone else) to take the necessary actions to implement that decision. I'm not for one second saying that this means I will never fall again. Quite the opposite, I have no idea whether I will or will not. It simply means that if I want to then it is possible and doable; whether I actually do it in the end or not is not something I can tell in advance (and maybe that is what is meant by being powerless, but it's not the message I got). It's a little bit like running a marathon (or maybe triathlon, iron man?). If I chose to run a marathon this time next year, no doubt it is doable. It would be difficult to train for, and there is a good chance I would give up half way through. But it is an achievable goal should it be something I choose to do. Of course I can't just turn up and expect to run the marathon without training. I would need to put in concerted and regular effort and go through a whole lot of pain. But to me to say I am "powerless" over the process would simply not be helpful (or true) for me.

The physiological effects of tolerance and withdrawal as well as science and society’s movement away from an explanation of addiction as morally reprehensible behavior have led to addictions being understood within a medical model. This perspective has also been promoted in the materials describing the 12 steps and 12 traditions of AA that talk about the disease of alcoholism, which they liken to a chronic allergic reaction (Alcoholics Anonymous, 1952).
Others believe alcoholism is a disease that is not completely physiologically based (Miller & Kurtz, 1994; Sheehan & Owen, 1999). The disease model has been instrumental in shifting society’s view of alcohol dependence from one of moral deviance and sinful behavior to one that promotes understanding and treatment.
However, there are many criticisms of this use of a disease model for understanding alcoholism (Donovan & Marlatt, 1988; Lewis, 2015; Miller & Rollnick, 1991). It is also interesting to note that proponents of the disease model for alcoholism will not always use the same explanation for drugs of abuse and have some difficulty when the concept is extended to behaviors like gambling. Even though brain regions, neurochemistry, and physiology are clearly implicated in the initiation and maintenance of addictive behaviors, these behaviors and the end state of addiction have multiple determinants.
It is probably best to consider addiction as a chronic condition rather than a physical disease. However, the term “brain disease” has become a common way to describe addictions because of the neurobiological component (Volkow et al., 2016).

SMART Recovery tools can help you regardless of whether or not you believe addiction is a disease.