Hello Yidden

I have been recieving the Chizuk emails for a long time now. But this is the first time i am posting on the forum. I am doing so in order to broaden my support base.

I go to SA meetings, which are a lifesaver for me, but i find that i get more identification among fellow Yidden, and there are very few of us here in the U.K.

With the help of Hashem, I am currently sober for 3 weeks. This time I have taken a much more rigid stand. Sobriety today means not just refraining from physically acting acting out. It means not having any lust, and surrendering any lust that comes my way. Experience has taught me that this is the only way to do it.

For the first 2 weeks or so it went quite well. I would call up a fellow member every morning and would say something like the following: "I am crazy, I am insane, I am powerless, I have an illness. I am not like other people. I have a mental obsession that its ok to take in a bit of lust, i can take a look here and there at someone that triggers me, it wont kill me if i do, everyone does it etc etc. But actually I have no control over where it will take me once i do take in even a tiny bit of lust". I do this because my addiction makes me want to forget these points and this is my way of constantly reminding myself.

In the past week however, I have been much more challenged. My eyes have been wanting to look and i have been doing alot of surrendering. I also find that I have been bingeing alot on food.

These, I can deal with, i.e. if the price of sobriety is doing alot of surrendering (praying, davening...) and putting on a bit of weight then its a price well worth paying for. But I am now starting to feel the vaccuum. There's a restlessness, an uneasiness. I think its called emotions, an quite frankly, I'm afraid of my emotions.

On previous occasions when i took such a rigid approach towards recovery I fell into deppression. I really want to avoid this happening.

Can anyone identify?

Please tell me what worked for you.

Welcome and thank you for sharing from the heart. Many here would do well to read your post.

I'm no recovery guru (unlike some others here), but I do know that for us addicts, our habit served the purpose of filling emotional voids for us. So without the drug, it's expected to feel a little empty.

Time to reconnect with people in your life -- friends, family, chavrusa's. Oh, and Hashem too. Seriously.

And find good things to do like lifting weights and doing something aerobic, a project, a hobby, a shiur or chabura.

I hope you won't turn to overeating and gaining weight to fill the void. That sounds too much like trading an old problem for a new one.

Thank you "alexeliezer" for taking the time to reply. I really appreciate the support.

It sounds like you are saying that i should stop trying to fill the void, but rather take the right actions in living a healthy lifestyle (physically, emotionally and spiritually) and eventually the void will fill itself.

Exactly. Real life is the best cure for addiction.

Did you ask your sponsor?

moish wrote on 15 Nov 2012 15:05:


Moish,

Welcome to the club :-)

During the first month of my 90 day journey I had a serious case of the munchies many times. (pint of ice cream, pound of potato chips etc.)

I made it my business to keep to calorie snacks around until my brain said, "forget about it, your not giving me the good stuff"

nederman wrote on 15 Nov 2012 22:37:
My sponsor is abroad and i will of course discuss this with him when i am able to.

A good doctor once told me that when a person is depressed the right thing to do is to tell others how he feels. This is because depression is a withdrawel from other people and retreating into my self. Therefore, reaching out to people isn't just a helpful tool, it is actually the antithesis to depression.

I have a history of depression which is intertwined with my addiction, going back more than twenty years. When i'm acting out I'm depressed, and when i stop acting out i feel depressed. (I have stopped asking myself if which is causing which, is it the addiction causing the depression, or the depression causing the addiction?)

In recent years whenever i have made a serious attempt to put down the addiction (with a sponsor, and with working the steps) i have become depressed, to various degrees, sometimes to the point of being suicidal.

While of course i will be reaching out to my for practical help in how to work the steps and to apply them. But at the same time, its important for me to reach out for support.

moish wrote on 16 Nov 2012 11:55:


Good for you.




Actually depression is a result of a number of different beliefs. There are plenty of people who were cured of depression and did not increase their contact with others. It all depends on what the irrational beliefs are.




That's good, because one is not the cause of the other. You have some irrational beliefs, that's all. Some cause your feelings of depression, some cause your acting out, and some cause both.

The modern standard for getting over clinical depression is a few months. What type of therapy have your doctors used on you?




If that's true I am guessing you have a mitzva to act out. Fortunately for you I think it can all be fixed, but only if you are willing to make the necessary changes and have an open mind. Right now you secretly believe that your current behavior is the best one for you, but it's all based on an incorrect interpretation of reality.




It's best to do whatever works.

I was just asking about your sponsor because some people who are in SA don't seem to have one yet.

HI, Moish, I can feel your pain. I'd like to echo what Alex said. Life is the problem. Acting out is our way of medicating ourselves so we can handle life. It doesn't work very well. It's like drinking saltwater to quench a thirst. We end up worse than we started. Learning to deal with life in a healthy way is the only answer. Then we will be full, and not need to resort to acting out, over eating, or any other "medicine" to help us.

I think you are on to something with the depression acting out cycle. It's a cycle. I don't think it has a begining and end. It is an endless cycle where one causes the other.

You seem to be on your way to a better life. I wish you hatzlacha and hope you have some good news of progress to share with us soon.

Love,

Gibbor

Hi Guys,

Thank you for all the messages of support. They are precious. And they are something i can read over and over again when i need the chizuk. Thats the beauty of having this in written form.