Its so easy to fall of the wagon! Its been a very unproductive couple days. Not that i did anything that bad, but watching movies and even exploring Jewish videos youtube aren't such a great way to spend so much of my time.

BUTTTTTTTTTTTTT! Come on Dee emes? Why do you have to be so hard on yourself? Recovery takes time!!!! Calm down!!!!!!!!!! Relax! Yes, you shouldn't be doing those things and its good to be honest. BUTTTTT you have been addicted for how many years? about 10 right? Do you really think a mere year or so will completely erase all your problems? DMS, please don't use this as a rationalization to go lust, as that wouldn't be an honest thing to do, but you should know that recovery is a process. You should feel proud. You are going up, not down, the ladder and even if you stumble or even if you fall down a few rungs, you should know Hashem loves you and all he cares about is that you are moving forward, that you are at least taking some steps in the right direction. DMS, those steps do not need to be big steps. They could be as little as saying: "Hashem please help me!" or diverting your eyes from that lovely lady in front of you! Those are all steps. Nice, small baby steps that make a HUGE difference.

Now DMS, it does gets hard. Sometimes it gets really hard. You want it soo bad and you think you need it do survive. But, you don't. This past year, you have lived wonderfully and how many times have you lusted? Not many! So you don't need it! It's a lie. It's a pure lie. DMS, you know what to do when it gets hard. Don't put on your gloves and step into the ring. You know it doesn't work! You have tried so many things over the past couple few years. You know that anything you do is futile. Over the past year, you have discovered the secret. The secret of recovery. That you can't fight! You are useless. You need God and you need others to help you notice and seek God. God is the key. The key to opening the door to a new life. A free life! DMS, whenever you are in trouble, don't wrestle! Instead, reach out to Hashem. He can help you. He can help you live life!!!!!

DMS, you may not have the power to say no to lust but Hashem does. Realize that he is helping you and he will help you more. Your enemy is yourself. It has always been about you, what you want. And how is that going for you? Are you living a life you want to live???? NO! You aren't. You hate it. You hate your life when you lust. So why don't you stop living your life and start living the life He wants you to live.

So, what do you have to do now? How do you start living the life He wants you to live? How do you give up your life to him? The answer, DMS, is that you recognize that He is running the world, not you. You may think you are in control but you should know that He is in control of the world and even of you! And because you realize that Hashem loves you, you know that everything will be fine. Everything will work out because He has a plan. We are trusting that His plan is good. And what He wants for us is truly whats for our best. Therefore DMS, when you want to lust, you are fighting Hashem's will. Hashem knows that those pleasures are not good for you but you think they are!!! But as we said earlier, at the end of the day, are they really what you want? Are they really the key to a satisfying life? Or are they just an illusion? So DMS, stop fighting Hashem, because that is exactly what you are doing.

Instead, take a deep breath and realize that Hashem doesn't want you to have these pleasures because they aren't good for you. They aren't conducive for the best life. Realize, He knows how you should live your life and that's why you shouldn't be partaking in these pleasures. Realize that everything is going to be alright. And then smile! Smile, be happy! Hashem is watching you and loves you! Soak in your beautiful life!

Breathe, Recognize, Smile!

From the Web :
"My Aunt Pat makes a wonderful strawberry shortcake. I look forward to it every time I see her out in Newton, New Jersey. After years of visits I finally asked her for the recipe which she gladly gave to me. I went home, followed the directions as they were written and viola! the strawberry shortcake I have always loved!

"Then my ego gets involved. I think a little more sugar in the whipped cream would improve it. Maybe frozen strawberries. Or let's use Cool Whip instead of real whipped cream. I make the cake using my version and it isn't as good, in fact I am disappointed. "

The Big Book shows us a specific recipe for sobriety and, if we follow it carefully, we will get all the benefits of The AA Program. If we change the recipe we will get something else and we will be greatly disappointed.

Good thing there's not only one wonderful recipe for strawberry shortcake, and one could come out just as good, if not better, than the other.

dms1234 wrote:


I came across this post and the simplicity of it grabbed me. Thank you for the Chizuk and help on this journey.

Dear skeptical , whatever works , you know that very well. As long as you like the short cake you got. I would stick to the original first. Behatzlacha to all.

I am very surprised as to how wrong we are. We think that if we fall or slip or whatever then back to square one, back to day one (maybe this is wrongly emphasized in the 90 day chart). This is simply not true. Recovery is not about accumulating the days. Its not that if i fall after 150 days clean, those days don't matter anymore. NO, not at all!

Recovery is a giant process. We will not recover in 90 days. I am sorry. WE WILL NOT. If you are an addict, 90 days will absolutely not guarantee your recovery. It may help but it won't mean that you are recovered. I have done 90 days before and to be honest, it was awful. It was not recovery at all. I was a dry drunk. I was white knuckling. I was holding my breath the whole time! I was scared and hoping that i wasn't going to fall. All i was doing was worrying and scared of lust but i wasn't doing anything proactive. That is what the 90 days did for me! Yes, I got 90 days and it helped me see that i could hold out on masturbating.

But holding out on masturbating, porn, or any lust is NOT recovery. You know what that is? It is hell! Pure hell! I hate it! You are in a prison, waiting to be decapitated!!!!!!!! Only when i realized that i needed to forget about counting and concentrate on one day at a time did i truly start recovery. What does one day at a time means? It means: "The past is gone, and the future is not in our hands." (GYE Handbook, 7) The only thing i am concentrating on is the present. That is all. All the times I masturbated or looked at porn or fantasized about girls in the past. OR all those days i was clean, Hashem saved me and I was meeting with my GYE friends do not matter TODAY. Furthermore, the future is irrelevant at the moment. Whatever happens, even if i fall!!! Only Today matters. That is all.

Today i can not recover fully. No! It will take many days to recover, that is true BUT i can not recover without being clean Today, and the only when i can be clean Today is by concentrating only on Today. What is going on today? What do i have to do today? I do not need lust today? Please Hashem help me only for today?

TODAY! TODAY! TODAY!

90 days will not cure me. Recovery is a process. It does take time and i shouldn't be upset about that. Thats the way it is. I may fall or slip again. I may not. But who cares? I don't have to concentrate on that! I only have to concentrate on right now! Leave everything else up to Hashem!

dms,
love your posts,
it seems like you have a way in which you really know yourself.
i understand your aversion to the "90" and i can respect it.
maybe though you'll agree that the "90" has benefits for some, as i will mention.
1) a short term goal of proving to oneself that it IS possible to be clean for 3 months,
2) showing that one doesn't die from abstinence.
3) a shake up

about the process of recovery.

the TODAY ONLY seems to be very popular, and as well as the understanding that recovery is a long process,
what bothers me if one continues a long long time,[say 10 years] making only real small steps,[ never being clean for more than 90] is he really progressing or is he stalling?
how much time is needed for recovery?
does one have to spend his whole life without seeing real results?
maybe i'm expressing an opinion which can be debated,
but i think that if after a significant time one cannot make larger spaces between his falls, then where is his progress.....
[i'm just thinking aloud..]

4) To get our heads out of the muck, so we can begin to see, hear and think again.

5) some of us are so ridiculous that, that which we could not stop even in the face of deadly health risks or severe legal consequences, we were able to stop because of a check on a chart.

lavi wrote:


i feel that way also but i think that there are other ways to measure progress
such as how low we fall and for how long
and maybe even more really real even if harder to measure is how much we have progressed in our attitude towards life and dealing with our issues which theoretically should effect falls but for various reasons may not be so obviously noticeable, lemashal there may be more nisyonos in one tekufa or another (or maybe like it says that before every aliya there is a nefila kyadua)

Maybe it's useful to think about recovery like this:

Say you have a physical condition for which there is treatment but not cure. Examples: At the Gd-forbid end of the scale, diabetes or Parkinson's...at the trivial end, something I have, rosacea, a skin rash which means I'll probably never be Miss America. All this stuff is treatable. Take the treatment and you may slow the progress of the disease. However, the treatment is for the rest of your time in Olam HaZeh. Thank Gd, there is treatment.

Hope this helps. B'hatzlachah!

Very good points but all those points seem to direct towards an illusionary recovery and by the way

Lets go through your points....

lavi
This is true but since when is recovery about self confidence! Why is it about the "self" at all???? Dov says that SA is not a self-help program but its a God-help program. Why are we showing ourselves that WE can be clean?????? That is what is going to give us self esteem???? To get 90 days??? I don't need self esteem! My self esteem is soo crossed. I have such a big ego and yet i don't believe in myself at all???

lavi
You are right. You are abstaining that it is true. But if you are a dry drunk, it doesn't matter!!! Because all you are doing is white knuckling!!!!!!!!! You are not living, you are gasping for air. Abstinence isn't true recovery. You are just not lusting. You are still not living. Not learning how to truly recover and bring God into your life.

lavi
A shake up? How is the 90 days going to give us a shake up??? If you fall and then see yourself off the 90 day chart? Then you will just try it again, and keep failing and failing until you find yourself hitting the bottom and wondering: "how do i recover???"

serenity
Again not if you are a dry drunk, you will go right back in the muck!. But it takes 3 days apparently not 90 days so see, hear and think again. But if you are fighting through those 3 days then you won't see, hear and think properly.

serenity
I see what you mean and i think a therapist would be a better choice than the 90 day chart!

I am not against the 90 day chart. For addicts who want to truly recover though i have my doubts. It could help to get someone on the pathway but to use it to actually recover? I am not sure. But, we are liberal here at GYE, so you could do whatever floats your boat!

[quote="dms1234" post=246156]Very good points but all those points seem to direct towards an illusionary recovery and by the way

Lets go through your points....

lavi
This is true but since when is recovery about self confidence! Why is it about the "self" at all???? Dov says that SA is not a self-help program but its a God-help program. Why are we showing ourselves that WE can be clean?????? That is what is going to give us self esteem???? To get 90 days??? I don't need self esteem! My self esteem is soo crossed. I have such a big ego and yet i don't believe in myself at all???

lavi answers: clearly ego and self esteem are different, if not opposites. i would say that all agree that a healthy dose of self esteem is needed to start any major project, and especially a challenging one such as recovery. After the self esteem, then go for SA, 12 steps, etc. The purpose of self esteem here is obvious. that there is a chance of recovery. because if one doesn't hold himself in enough esteem, all the programs and surrendering won't help him. (l'fi ani'us da'ati), because he lacks confidence to do anything.

lavi
You are right. You are abstaining that it is true. But if you are a dry drunk, it doesn't matter!!! Because all you are doing is white knuckling!!!!!!!!! You are not living, you are gasping for air. Abstinence isn't true recovery. You are just not lusting. You are still not living. Not learning how to truly recover and bring God into your life.

lavi answers: i see Whiteknuckling as a necessary step and tool for recovery. it is not the end or the ideal part of the game, nevertheless it has it's benefits. among them, that it shows one can has a level of resistance, which is a good thing. No resistance won't win the war, but it may win a battle, and that is also important.

lavi
A shake up? How is the 90 days going to give us a shake up??? If you fall and then see yourself off the 90 day chart? Then you will just try it again, and keep failing and failing until you find yourself hitting the bottom and wondering: "how do i recover???"

lavi answers: i meant what serenity wrote. we need a respectable time period to recover our senses.





serenity
Again not if you are a dry drunk, you will go right back in the muck!. But it takes 3 days apparently not 90 days so see, hear and think again. But if you are fighting through those 3 days then you won't see, hear and think properly.

serenity
I see what you mean and i think a therapist would be a better choice than the 90 day chart!



It could help to get someone on the pathway but to use it to actually recover?

recovery is a pathway. and being on the road is a first step. and of course one needs other steps as well as the 90, i just hoped to make clear my points on the matter.

The 90 day chart has been helpful to me. In the meantime I've gotten to 4 SA meetings, have a sponsor, working step one, joined Dov's desperadoes, have joined in for several BB study calls, reading the White Book, listening to SA step taped lectures and in therapy. But I wouldn't have gotten to any of that without this site (and all of it's tools that I used) and wouldn't have been to abstain til now without the chart specifically. During the first 30 days especially, just knowing that I had that chart to place a check on got me through some very tough spots. Does that make sense, no, but that's okay. Alcoholics white knuckle it in the beginning. Hopefully they grow in their program and find real sobriety. We also have to white knuckle it in the beginning. For alcoholics, they can stay out of the bar or the liquor store and away from booze. For us, our penis is attached to us, so if a chart helps us get our mind off it then why not use a chart. I'm not checking the chart every day anymore and I don't even think of it daily anymore. There is plenty of time for people to learn the ups and downs of the chart as well as all about recovery.

I dont know about others . Last week i was bombarded in my mind and my thought process by lust. Thanks to Hashem , technically there was no fall. I discovered,though, that i have still much workk to do . One of the things that saved me was that i ran to the computer signed to gye and upgraded my chart and saw the amount of days that i have accomplished and "swore" to myself not to destroy that. So the points brought down above by Lavi and serenity are clear in my very humble opinion. More over the man by the name of Ebby Thacher sat across Bill W in his kitchen and introduced him to the "spiritual awakening" and the need to connect to a Higher Power in order to keep sober was not considered a founder of AA as Bill and Dr Bob for the sole reason that he himself did not stay sober. He had spells of sobriety and relapses because he did not take the steps seriously as Bill and dr Bob did . There is a formula and if we adhere to it we should be sober to the end of our days . . . in my opinion.

Although I'm no expert, I have heard that one can attend meetin's and take the steps seriously, and still fall. That is the meanin' of bein' powerless.

I also take slight issue with the word 'formula.' I have spoken to several SA members, as bein' one myself, although not as religiously as I should, and they have stated that the meetin's and the steps are not a 'formula' for sobriety, as a logical math equation or physics experiment; but rather,, it accomplishes several other things:
1. a chance to surrender
2. puts us in a proper state of mind
3. brings us closer to our Higher Power

Perhaps there are other results as well. All this enables the addict to pray, and God will do what He does.

Will one remain sober for the rest of his life thru this? There is no way to tell.

b'hatzlachah