firstly i would like to thank those who took the time to read and reply to my post, it really leaves one with the feeling that someone cares. And that i have begun recovery.

The most important thing that happened to me  is the realization of what I/We are up against. It is not the need to masterbate that entices us to look, it is the looking itself that is addictive, and masturbation is merely a peak of those desires. We desire to let our eyes feed on an image. The best example is how we derive actual pleasure just by looking at a woman passing by on the street and continuing to stare as she passes by. Those few seconds are literally no different than the first few bites into a steaming slice of pizza which are eaten while still inhaling. During those first bites the mind is focused on and is thinking about nothing else other than that pleasure. masturbation is an extreme example of that because it requires your mind to focus so intensely on an image in order to imagine you are actually doing something to that image and that that image is responding to what you are doing, a tremendous amount of imaginative energy is put in to fooling your mind you are actually there and actually doing something which then brings about the result of masturbation. It is the ultimate actualization of that feeding, to reach that point of ecstasy you have to completely wrap your mind around an image and let it totally consume your conscience. It is that that we are addicted to. and only with that realization does it truly dawn on us that allowing ourselves to look at an image,or more correctly to feed on an image is just as bad as masturbating, because it is a less extreme version of the same thing. We can no longer convince ourselves that as long as we are not masturbating its not bad, that the fall is only when we have given in and masturbated. No you have given in to your addiction just as seriously if you have allowed your mind to feed on an image as when you have masturbated to an image. Just like a drug addict cannot ( or must not) fool himself into thinking, its not so bad its not a fall, its only a joint its not like I did heroine or anything, I think we would agree that both light and hard drugs are a fall for someone trying to free himself from a drug addiction, and if their mindset is not so then they dont really have a chance of recovery.

...you have given in to your addiction just as seriously if you have allowed your mind to feed on an image as when you have masturbated to an image.

briut - I am putting my thoguhts into action - and letting you know I am thinking about you....

30years wrote on 14 Apr 2010 09:40:


Hmmnn. I seem to recall the Baal haTanya making a big distinction in Judaism between thoughts, speech, and actions. As I understand it, allowing a thought (machshava) to enter (and perhaps, perhaps, even to linger) is simply not identical to bringing that thought into physical reality and action (ma'aseh).

I'd hate to bring any teenager (or even an old guy like me) into a guilt trip that being distracted by a movie image is as distancing from HKB'H as The Ma'aseh itself.

There's room for many opinions here, I suppose, but mine is that such a view would be unnecessary from either halacha (law) or hashgacha (outlook). I hate to imagine what kind of [edited, to add: self-imposed] pain comes to anyone holding a less tolerant view.