BS"D

It's been a while. I want to share that I have started face-to-face SA meetings ( 5 meetings in the last 5 days). And  I had no idea what i was missing. The feeling of togetherness amongst other addicts is very powerful - its hard to describe why it is helping so much more than the online SA meetings did (since we use all the same materials) but I feel as though a huge weight has been removed from me. I have been traveling to different groups and making this a part of my day - its just as important or more for me than going to shul . I'm slowly getting  a better sense of who I actually am when I'm there with others. My life and my addiction always kept me apart from people even when I was with them. I'm been hearing very inspirational shares by others and have been trying to speak in details about aspects of my disease that I have always kept to myself. This  as been liberating. I have been impressed with every meeting that i have attended so far. There is really so much out there for us. I had to surrender alot of pride, shame and fear to show my face at these meetings, but as someone said, he would rather be caught coming out of a recovery meeting than out of a house of prostitution.  I feel apart of the larger SA recovery movement now. i feel that I take the program and my new SA friends with me now into my day. And I finally am feeling closer to Hashem.

-Yosef

Im so happy for you R Yosef. And a bit jealous too. Wish i could get over my dignity and do something like that. Oh well. :-\

Dear imtrying,
I said the same thing  (that I didn't know how others could go to these groups) why was I so fearful and ashamed and they were able to. So someone told me that it was because I wasn't really sober (in my thinking yet). My need for "dignity" was my disease talking - as if my masterbating while peeking into windows was really dignified. Or trying to make out in the back of a plane with someone who could be my grand-daughter was dignified. I must admit that walking into an SA room for the first time didn't exactly feel like I was the guest of honor at a Yeshiva's Annual Dinner - but those kind of honors are not going to help me stay sober.  I need to be in touch with who I really am; how far I've gone and the  danger of even riskier compulsive sexual behavior that this disease will lead me to if I don't go to meetings. And once I sat down and looked around I realized that I was exactly where I need to be. I then felt "held" and very safe in these groups which were very well officiated. I have been feeling more free to be myself lately. Anyway, good luck. Hope to "see" you at a meeting.

-Yosef

Couldnt agree with you more. This is why i started the kumzitzim here in israel. Although this by no means is a sa meeting, it definitly is something. Weve gotten together 4 times already. Almost every two weeks. So im taking steps. Small steps, but steps nevertheless.

Thanks and have a great shabbos.

I'm moving to Eretz Yisrael, I"H in one week (Yerushalyiam). Let's stay in touch!
-Yosef

Yosef wrote on 29 Jan 2010 14:45:
Cant wait!!!!!!!!!!! :D :D :D :D :D

imtrying25 wrote on 29 Jan 2010 00:47:
Ditto.
Except I have to fight with myself just to consider going to a kumzitz.
So IT your at least better off than some of us out here...

Hey. Why don't we have a meeting and then do the kumzitz for the "fellowship" which follows the meeting. If its embarrassing then so be it. It will be the best thing to lose that embarrasement. It will be a relief to see that admitting to each other that we are sex addicts only strengthens us and makes us feel more whole. There are so many goyim who have been doing this (the groups) for so many years. Hashem protects them and nothing bad happens. The worst thing that could happen (that we lose some pride) becomes the best thing that could happen: that a whole new way of life opens up for us. There is really nothing that the non-addict world can do to us if we stick together. Togetherness and helping each other is where Hashem is. We've got no choice but to trust this and take the first step to believing it. In this weeks Parasha Hashem said to Moshe: Mah titzak alei? Why do you cry out to me? The question is why not? Whats wrong with Dovening to Hashem to split the Yam Suf? The Or HaChaim explains that there are times when people have to do more than pray - they have to demonstrate their worthiness to be saved. Therefore Hashem commanded Moshe to stop praying. Instead, He wanted to see the people show their readiness to put their lives in "danger". Go ahead and jump into the water (do you really think that I'm not right there to catch you?). Walking into SA meetings still feels a little like this for me but i know that that I have to find a meeting to go to tomorrow. I'm going to need guys like you KG and IT to help me build a good meeting in Israel otherwise I will end up dead or in jail. I just think about how it would feel to be publicly exposed for what I am as compared to admitting it too a room of guys like you.

A Gutta Voch!

-Yosef

Another kumzitz is already in the plans...

Yosef: I really admire your thoughts that the best tool to come clean is sunlight.  (I'm fracturing a Yakov Horowitz the parenting guru line about sexual abuse in the community:  the best disinfectant is sunlight.)  For you to say 'whatever it takes' is a brave, strong view that will take you far in your efforts.  Guaranteed.

Seems there's a range of views on how much sunlight is healthy and how much painful.  I don't know you but I'm guessing you're sorta young and single.  The presence of other parties (wife, kids, career, etc) might temper your enthusiasm someday (but I sincerely hope it wouldn't).  Sh'koiach for the bravery.

I wonder if you've seen the thread on 'coming clean with my Rav' in this Break Free forum.  I think it's a sorta different take on the privacy issue.  I would suggest taking a look.

Gut voch.

"Seems there's a range of views on how much sunlight is healthy and how much painful.  I don't know you but I'm guessing you're sorta young and single.  The presence of other parties (wife, kids, career, etc) might temper your enthusiasm someday (but I sincerely hope it wouldn't).  Sh'koiach for the bravery"

Dear Briut,

Halavei, I should be young. Although I feel younger when I'm working my program. I'll give you a hint. I was alive when Nikita Krushef was banging his shoe on the table (I think it was at the UN). If I were a young guy and starting recovery, I would have many more years of good living ahead of me. Instead I have made life very hard for myself and my family. Yes I do have a wife and a bunch of kids, but you can imagine what kind of husband and father I have been. When I was forced to confess everything to my wife almost 2 years ago, I thought she would leave me. Instead she said "why didn't you tell me before, i could have helped you". Thats what they call co-dependant ( but i think its also a schtikel Gadlus). As for me being "brave" as you say - I really am not. I'm just out of options. You see everybody's disease progresses in its own ways and at its own speed. Mine really fooled me big time because for many years it was "content"  with masterbation and a little voyeruism - nothing that was too risky (except that it was rotting me out from the inside). But then, out of nowhere about 12 years ago, my illness took off like a rocket and I have ventured deep into far risker and sicker means of getting my "high" than masterbating in front of a computer. But it all came about because the disease blinded me into thinking that I could somehow beat this thing my way. My only chance, and B"H, I really believe this now, is to surrender myself to meetings and being amongst other guys like me. Its the Holiest time of the day for me. I hope it doesn't take you guys as many years as it took me to give in. I had to be clobbered over the head by someone who saw right through me and how I was conning myself. Now he is my Rebbe. Good luck doing it your way.

Love,
Yosef

Yosef. Ouch -- my apologies for getting it so wrong.  That should teach me to make assumptions.  (Yeah, as if I haven't slipped and fallen in THAT lesson before....)

I don't think it changes my conclusion about your strength, though -- indeed I now see you as even stronger.  Changing habitual behavior is so hard, as we all seem to know.

(Why don't folks without nisyonos like ours seem to get that??)

Yosef wrote on 29 Jan 2010 00:06:


Dear Yosef,
You remind me of what I heard from a beautiful drunk named Chuck C. who died with over 30 years of sobriety: "We wanted so much to be a part of - but we were forever apart from!" He saw our tendency toward inner isolation (that is often unknown to even our closest people) as a great curse of addiction. You are breaking out of it the hard way, by opening up bedafka in this area - and it is the only way I have ever known to access normalcy.
He also talked a lot about giving up the ego/pride, as you are slowly doing, by not giving so much credence to our little worries and convoluted thinking and figuring....he called the process "getting lost in living, and waking up in G-d." Beatiful, beautiful words to me. You seem to understand this, too.

Hatzlocha, chaver. 

R Yosef of course we will be here for you. And Hopefully you for us. us kumzitzim are really sa meetings. Frum sa meetings in the process. But calling people to an sa meeting wouldnt of gotten any responses. Call it a kumzitz and everyone comes! Get it?? And as everyone whos attended will attest too. Weve all gained so much from getting to know eachother. Seeing real live people struggling in the same areas as us, people who can really understand us, people who over time have come to really care for us, has helped us in more ways than imaginable!!

BS"D

My Dear Dear Reb Dov,

What are you trying to do to me? My laptop isn't warrantied against tears! You are the one who schlepped me out of the sewer and sent me to the first person I've ever known that  I couldn't con. Talking to H. was seeing myself for the first time. He forced me to realize the truth about my condition and how my own thinking about how to get out of it was bound to destroy me. He saw through my soft spoken arrogance, denial, and self-will. I could not see it myself because the poisen had already reached too deep into my way of thinking. He exposed years of my self-delusional thinking for what it is.  He needed to beat me mercilously turning all my lumdisher thinking back against me. And after he knocked me out and i  couldn't do anything except lie there praying to be spared,  He lifted me up with with more love and encouragement than i ever felt in my life. I have now attended 7 SA meetings - I cannot describe his joy. His joy (for me) is teaching me how I can feel joy for me. It's the human element for which there is just no substitute. My heart goes out to a guy who shared tonight. He just lost a great job because they caught him having phone-sex at work; his wife left him; he is losing his house; he is still be investigated for something else (unspecified). He has also just started meetings and feels so grateful to have meetings to come to. He is also grateful for his new job as a security guard (even though it is far less than what he had).  He was so thankful for the little heater they gave him that kept him warm in his booth all night long. He is about as alone in the world as a person can be. He has hit bottom. Most of the guys in tonight's group have hit bottom. We all felt his pain, his lonliness and our own. Something special, magical and indescribable was shared between all of us tonight. I don't think I'll see these guys again. I hope I never forget the experience. Dov, you should know that your posts belong in an intensive care unit. They are intravenous lines for those that use them! You should always be gebentched!

Love,

Yosef