Dear Georgenuevenuevenueve (and maybe Guy, too),

Working on the cause of your pain. Isn't that a thing you (and Guy) have been doing for quite some time already? I believe with my whole heart that what you describe is a valiant search for the Holy Grail...and it goes on forever, taking on a life of it's own. A run towards finding myself that never ends, for it is really AWAY from ourselves, in disguise.

And why should that be so? Maybe because:

The searcher has not yet accepted the 'sudden', inconvenient fact that using his drug has been screwing up his mind, his relations with others, and his relationship with his own G-d, for years and years...and that he will not stop using his drug no matter how much 'blessed insight' he compiles. I suggest this is true based on my own experience and from what I keep seeing and hearing from guys again and again: people have an all-consuming desire to figure this thing out while still holding onto the option of using their drug. "I will only really let go of (surrender up) my right or option to have sex with myself once you fix this," we all say. And we are not evil. We are sincere. We are good people.

Toveil v'sheretz beyado, I call it. The 'tevilah' is: figuring it out so I can free myself, and the 'holding [of] the sheretz' is the fantasy that: no real surrender is necessary - that there is no absolute need for me to to give up my drug beforehand. So many of us go that way simply because we are deathly ashamed and afraid of letting go of our secret - so we need to fix it ourselves, quietly. We assume that is our 'avodas Hashem'.

But my calling for surrender first, taking real actions of opening up and doing whatever it takes to keep to it for today - seems silly to many folks. And as Guy puts it so well: it's basically insulting my intelligence! It recalls our old words: "Na'aseh v'nishma", no?

But there you may say, na'aseh v'nishma makes sense when talking to G-d! But here who are we talking to?! A bunch of addicts sharing their recovery and promising riches?

I will tell you who I think we are usually talking to and bargaining with, here:

Our god. Sweet orgasm. Sweet porn. All the sweet faces and figures we want and so deeply believe in our guts that we can't survive without..."you mean never again!? What? Are you insane? I can't possibly live without this stuff. It's what's beautiful and sweet about life. Life-giving. Sha'ashu'ai!" Do we not believe this at least as much as any of the Ani Ma'amins?

I am dead serious. We follow the sweetness of the image of the hot lady we see on the computer, at the supermarket, at shul, in the bed, wherever...because we are tied to it like dogs. We worship it and love it. Yep, it's love. It's the real deveikus - for us, no matter how frum we are nor how much we sincerely also cry at L'cho Dodi every Friday night. They co-exist. Ah, the miracle of the frum porn addict.

How could we ever seriously give it up even just for today? So we do not...even if we stop for a while.

Yes, sure - we can hold back for today, or for 10 days or whatever...but to honestly give it up even just for today? That's an entirely new ball-game. Guys here generally do not do that. Rather, they dig in, take a deep breath, misread "one day at a time", and think that holding their breath for a while is 'sobriety'. It isn't. Anyone can hold his or her breath for a while. But it's not much use cuz eventually you gotta breathe, no? It's just a matter of time. Anyone here interested in seeing how long we can hold our breath for and making a contest of it and call it 'chizzuk'? Not me.

I'll take giving it up for just today over that, anyday!

Do you understand me here, George (and Guy)? Or is this just gibberish? I'm pouring out my heart here.

Therapy and doing some real work to get free of some of the deep things that you are in real pain about will definitely help you a lot! Most of us probably need that, regardless. But if you are like many of us, the gift of therapy or pf figuring it out will not do us much good, if any, unless you and I surrender the right to lusting and are abstinent from it (our drug of choice) during that process.

Not a convenient suggestion, I know.

The self-honesty that Guy and George are sharing here with us is so rare, so precious!

I respectfully suggest that Guy is just too angry at the G-d he calls Hashem and demands Hashem to answer for His sins first . And I just as respectfully suggest that George just needs to remain in religious or intellectual control of the situation and understand it and know that he has gotten past the real pains he has before he takes what feels like an abysmal leap. These things may be a problem.

I am suggesting that neither approach has hachno'oh. And the 1st step of the 12 steps - the only one that has anything directly to do with not drinking/lusting+masturbating ourselves, is only one thing: hachno'oh to the truth about ourselves and agreeing to the implications of it. Hachno'oh is a different way of living for most of us...OK, for all of us.

"What are you talking about Hachno'oh for?," one may ask. "we have Hachno'oh aplenty, that's not our real problem at all."

Maybe...but Hachno'oh to whom? Well, when was the last time we were machniyah ourselves to the god we really worship (with our zippers down or our eyes peeled to follow the best naked people on the screen, again)? It has not been very long ago, maybe.

That god, I know very, very well, and could still serve it again with the hachno'oh I discovered as a wide-eyed 12 year old. I am an addict. That's what we do: switch gods at need. But I need a miracle today cuz I am willing to do anything to stay sober today and keep this great life and keep this G-d I found - and not all my own power nor all my own seichel will give it to me. Kinda sad, but true - still true. It's humility or humiliation. Perhaps that is what Rebbe Nachman meant when he used to say, "ader a nisayon, ader a bizayon."

Is this acceptance a bit insulting to myself? Maybe - but so is idiotically and desperately masturbating myself to orgasm again! A man in a suit and a beard, driven beyond all recall to faithfully and desperately do what he learned as a 12 year old. I find my drooling and masturbation very demeaning and insulting to myself...not much release of anger or much gaining respectability , there! I figure it is all about which kind of bozo do I want to be. A bozo on the sober bus, or a bozo on the same 'sexually enlightened' bus I have been riding since I was 12?

OK, how far has all that gotten us, so far?

I suggest to Guy and George (sounds like a rock band of the late 80's) that none of these issues you describe are new. They are probably your old buddies. So I think that going about it the 'angry' (Guy) or 'respectable' (George) way is just retrying the same tools you have been using till now. I am stubborn, too! You will surely get the same results you have been getting until now. GYE will not save you there, and neither will G-d (and not even the play-god will, apparently, or you would not be here searching for help in the first place! ). Both of you have been 'there and back again' so many times before already! So have I. Where does that get us? Same place it gets most of us: back on our knees masturbating and then having that old 'clarity' again, that painful 'clarity' of "Oooh, this time I really have to stop!", and pretending we have it all figured out, or need to. No?

Those feelings and that old game are just a crock.

Hatzlocha!!