Yeah (crestfallen). Me3 is probably right.

dov wrote on 07 Apr 2011 16:41:

You are all right (Guard, Me3 and Dov).  The 12 steps are an excellent program. They work great for many people, they are not torah m'sinai, and many people can be helped without them.
Many elements of the 12 steps can't be avoided and are found in chazal and sifrei musar. The fact the 12 steps has these elements is why they are a good program.

The problem for this forum is that because so many people here have benefitted so much from the 12 steps, they feel a responsibility and need to share it with as many people as possible. This is putting off many people who could gain from this forum without taking part in a full blown 12 step program. 

This keeps coming up in too many threads and should probably be addresse. I have some thoughts on the matter. Feel free to email or PM me

kosher wrote on 07 Apr 2011 17:18:


GYE doesn't have any agenda and we don't have any "one" mehalech. If you read "the GYE program in a nutshell" you would see many, many other eitzos for lower levels of addiction. But for the higher levels when nothing else worked, the 12-Steps works and should be used.

The reason it is important that it is mentioned again and again on the forum is so that when a person has tried all the other "easier" things over a period of months on this forum and it still isn't working (c"v), then he'll start to be willing to consider that maybe he should take the jump and start "hearing" what Dov has been saying all along...

There's no reason to defend the 12 steps simply because they are not anti-Torah, all these people with the problem havent read them, they have a problem just because the author of them isn't Jewish and hasn't based it on Chazal.  You could explain to them how Chazal say the same thing or they can read the links we have sent them countless times explaining that but they are not interested.

You could try to tell them about the old program from the baalei mussar that proposes working on ones middos darga by darga with different shlavim kineged the yud bais shevatim (which represents all the different kochos al pi kabbbala) and they will lap it up.

You could tell them that instead of giving them all the maamer mekomos in chazal, you are just giving them the kllalim in short. But after all is said and done, they have no interest in listening.

You are wasting your time.

guardureyes wrote on 07 Apr 2011 17:43:


I agree totally with all of that. However, for steps 3-6 in "GYE in a Nutshell" support (including from the forum) is an important or at least very helpful tool (especially in the higher numbers). For those people, who are not part of a 12 step program (and according to everyone, don't need it and might even be worse off going to one - that's what Dov tells me), it can be very hard to benefit or take part in the forum becuase all that is heard and talked about is 12 steps... and that is not something they are (or perhaps even should be) part  of. We need to develop a way people can talk about their struggles and their successes without 12 steps taking over. Otherwise we are losing a large percentage of the people that can be helped with this forum.

Does no one agree with me here?

kosher wrote on 07 Apr 2011 18:37:

just to clarify, when you say that some people shouldn't be going to one, do you mean they should not be going to live SA meetings?
or that they should not be doing the 12 Steps, even if it is not done in a context of a live meeting, like on the phone?

ZemirosShabbos wrote on 07 Apr 2011 18:58:

I am not an expert in these matters to answer specifically. I would imagine that some people should not go to live meetings but the phone support would be great for them, some people should not take part in phone meetings either, and some people should not be on GYE at all.
I am not an expert to determine the specifics for any individual or category, but its hard to imagine that they aren't all the case for at least some (and I would think lots of) people

ZemirosShabbos wrote on 07 Apr 2011 18:58:

like not going into a room that has the number 12 in it, and they should certainly make sure they don't buy a house with a staircase in it.

You can't do this like that, it's almost like darkei ha'emori or the twelve steps or some other superstition!  ???

rabeinu guard! i envy your gan eiden!

ill tell you, im shocked! i did not know the 12 steps have mekoirois in our bible, cause i never ever read (קראתי) what are the 12 steps cause i got פארעקלט, discusted by the name of the "program".... "12 steps" i have a bible and i do what the toiro says to do.
i think that when you will publish for the haimishe oilom in yddish or in lashon hakodesh you should consider change the name 12 steps into smething more frum per exampe: ליקוט מש"ס ופוסקים מספרי יראה וחסידות בעניני שמירת עינים ושמירת הברית  or you choose, and write next to each thing the mekor, its gonna help a lot.

now about the other think you wrote , how come we dont manage to get ut of this cicle.... well i dont know if its a good ראיה cause i do not stop with the cicle of lashon hara either do i need "12 steps" for lashon hara" ?

any way i know that it helps many ppl , and with facts i cant fight

laagvokeles wrote on 07 Apr 2011 19:18:


Hasn't stopped you from trying for about four months now.

ur-a-jew wrote on 07 Apr 2011 19:24:

;D
for me privatly i still think its nonsence.....
unless it has mekoiros in chazal....
but again.... if for someone is gonna help to drink watter.... he should do it.... to me its not gonna help! אין לנו שיור כי אם התורה הזאת

Kosher is 100% right, I think, and raises a good point. GYE needs to be as welcoming as possible to folks who do not need anything like 12 steps, but just chizzuk to be holier. A problem I have with actually presenting that in my posts is that when I am speaking to a person to is already failing with what they see as "Teshuvah", I feel it is my place to offer them another derech to get to the same exact place. I encourage them not to "hang on for another day!" with what is clearly losing, and discorage them from seeing the struggle as having value in itself - if they are clearly losing it already. I see them as sinking ships - sometimes just with a hole in the hull that others may not see yet. Then I get bashed. Sometimes I am surely wrong, too. Nu. I have a soft spot for innocent Jewish wives and children, who have a husband/father all too ready to sacrifice them on the altar of his own selfish "avodas Hashem". Nu. I guess I'm going to gehinom for that, too.

I'll ask laag vokeless, maybe he'll save me.

Speaking of Laag vokeless, I would love to show you where I see the 12 steps in the Torah and kisvei ba'alei mussar and chassidus and wrote most of a sefer about this but never tried to get it printed yet. The problem is this:

As long as 12-steps recovery has to be "respectable" enough for a frum yid to be comfortable enough to throw himself into it, I believe he is not yet paying the admission price. I have seen these people fall flat and either get beaten enough to let go and win (ala' G-d) - or get up, make excuses, and spit on the program on their final exit.

Not lorik do the tzaddikim praise a broken heart above all other hearts. My kovod needs to be ripped down. I need a leiv nishbar enough to admit that I lost and cannot even get up. I am a loser to lust! That is the only reason that I ever had to really need G-d. Till then, everything was nice hashkofah and luxury. I still believe it and that is why I and many others still have a chance to keep getting better.

The Yoreh (shooting) chato'im baderech has ways of bringing us to this. I have lived to see it happen over and over. Change must be painful - or at least uncomfortable.

laagvokeles wrote on 07 Apr 2011 19:31:


We truly have nothing but the Torah to save us from this bitter golus.

But I do not believe that "lanu" there is referring to yidden who obsessively and repeatedly look at porn to save them from their boredom, anger with life, or anything else. Please....lanu, indeed! And when your pipes are leaking you do not open a gemora - you call a plumber.

The 12 steps is just a Derech Eretz program - and that is needed kodmah laTorah. Most relatively normal yidden do not need it, I think. I do. In lust, I am an animal - lower than an animal. And I am crazy and very, very stupid.

If some people who have the problem do not accept this idea, I wonder if it is their gayvoh that does not allow them to admit that they are actually lower in some way than other yidden who are not as frum as they are. And if the fact that they need something that prusteh goyim also need is just too ugly a fact for them to face. So ugly that alst kvod Shomayim they don't go there.

Oh, boy. Looking at schmutz, searching for it, staring at women, masturbating, and divorce are all not very 'kvod Shomayim', either.

Yosef Hatzadik in an email on August 25, 2010]
[Quote author= Steve's Email Blast]
Shlomo shared his asking Rabbi Twersky in person wrote:

hey dov i want to call you and speack to you......
לעניננו

i think that to the ultra ortodox jew very very chnyokish its not a matter of "respectable" its a matter of a principle, that be cause we are talking about ruchaniut (רוחניות)  we should deal with the toiro only and finish.

there is no reason for me to believe that i need treatment unstead of tshuva.
no reason at all and its stupid to ask than why dont i manage to stop to mas$$, because i dont manage in any thing that its hard not only with porn.
בקיצור
im happy to hear that 12 steps have a mekor in the tora, and even if it is true (i dont know what the 12 steps are) i still have to be convinced that its not enough the little that i know from the tora wich is;
dont look at woman
dont think about them
and pray to hashem he should help you....
give away from your self to breake your bad mides ( a few sefarim write this and they say it helps for kedusha to give zedaka etc)

there is also the famous(i dont remember now the name of the sefer) , that for each time you have a orgasm you have to do פ"ד תעניתים, and the zadikim say that with learning tora in our דור is enough


and no i did not succeed yet, cause its frea freaking hard!!!!