Sounds like you are doing good.

Just try not to think in terms of winning. For me in the long run, that never helped. In fact today, the more I remember that i am a loser and that without the help of my Abba I have no chance of staying sane without acting out, that is how a am granted sobriety for another day.

Barditchev who used to post on the forum usedto write "winning means staying in the game".

I'm still in the game. Our Abba must have a lot of faith in me to keep me here.
I made it through the morning, I'm winning.
The Soton failed (or perhaps was restrained), but I'm sure he'll be back.
Thanks Abba for you help and for having these wonderful people here to help me.

All these new forums buttons.
Thank you's and smites.
Ebay items and maps.
challenge accepted! - I'll make a plan to use each one.

Well done. Sounds like you won this morning. How long do you feel you can keep up the fight? Are you prepared for the next round?
For years I took on the fight head - on, each time convinced that if i won this time, I could win the next....... It took me long time to come to terms with the fact, that eventually I would always lose.

The plan isn't to live fighting.
But sometimes the fight picks you.
A healthy routine is the long term plan.

The problem is the the fight picks you when the routine is not so healthy.
i am not trying to be difficult, just to say that I have been down that road and it never worked for me. And from your first post it sounded like you have tried a lot too. So what will make it different this time?

I don't have an answer.
I don't know how to just make it all go away.

hi, im a newbee here, but welcome back!
ToAdd wrote:

could you elaborate? u mean focusing on living now, rather than fighting?

p.s. hatzlocha!! the first big step is coming back! everyone deserves a second chance at living on this forum!

ToAdd wrote:


Yup, I love a good chulent, as you may have guessed.

startingrecovery wrote:


What I'm trying to say is that life shouldn't be a fight. I don't want to, nor have the energy to fight every single day.
It's like when I decided to become kosher. It was hard at first and I desired foods that I was not allowed to eat. After being kosher for a while, it was no longer an issue - I simply do not desire non-kosher food. I might see food I can't have, but that's no longer in my domain and I ignore it. My friends may eat pork, but I am just not bothered with it.

If I avoid non-kosher restaurants, only shop in the kosher isle, the temptation is greatly reduced.
Once I'm in the habit of avoiding non-kosher food, and see how bad it is, it looses its desire.

That's the plan. Get out of unhealthy patterns and replace then with new healthy ones.
Live the solution as if that's the only way to live.

To extend that thinking:
It is not good to let myself starve when pork is the only food around.
Fighting, thinking about the fight, is like starving yourself as part of your diet. It is not sustainable.

PS, being around a good chulent is always good.

what you wrote about keeping kosher is what a Y"H is. You have a temptation but you have a choice whether to do it or not. But 1. there is a choice and 2. there is no obsession about it. It is just a question of logic over emotion. (An over simplified definition of Bechira)
Guess what! There are people who masturbate for pleasure, and they do have control. (I am not speaking about the Aveira aspect), just as there are people that enjoy a drink of alcohol without being addicted.
But for me, the second i have the opportunity to lust i am sozzled. I don't stand a chance. That is not having a Y"H with a bechira! That is something way more powerful.

Kosher food and kosher eyes are in two different leagues.
I can easily tell myself "I am not that hungry" and I can easily find a kosher snack.
Lust can not be postponed by snacking.

I'm not sure if that message sinks in all the way though. last night, I was thinking "I shouldn't do this but just one little..." and we all know how that ends.

My urge at night is still strong, and that probably leaves me waking up with it too.
A snack here, a snack there.

For this to work, I need to cut down on snacks. Even a little poison is too much!
My willpower is low at night, at the end of a long day, when everything goes quiet and I have a chance to relax.

I think that means the trigger is not the normal ones - it's more like "after a busy day, I need to relax..."

I guess I've also conditioned myself to thinking that only if it goes all the way is it bad. But the reality is that the one snowball causes an avalanche.

I'm not strict enough with myself.
That's where I think I am.

Stern replies welcome

People are addicted to food just as others are addicted to lust (OA). And believe it or not, most normal people are NOT addicted to lust. Most people CAN see a provocative movie or billboard etc, they might get excited over it, but it won't blow their mind away, the way it does with us addicts.

I can just say that all the things you describe, I tried too, over and over again; identifying triggers, going easy on myself, going hard on myself.... Ultimately nothing worked long term. The addiction was just to powerful for me to control.

May G-d be with you

chesky wrote:

No research behind this, but I believe that when the activity is related to our primal functions, it is a huge candidate for addiction.
All life needs to drink and eat, procreate, hunt or defend. Therefore these things are deeply rooted in ourselves which is why it's so hard to uproot. Lust is addictive, food and drink, anger and violence.
The other thing I have left out is happiness. That too is tied to why we are here, but at an even deeper level.



That's probably the case with most of us. You can't just forget about your addiction and move on. That's why I'm back here. I thought I was "normal" again and that I could live like "normal" people do.



There lies the solution. This is too big for us to beat - we need His help.
That's something I haven't really mentioned so far.
Equal to the effort will be the reward.
The solution doesn't lie in fighting the addiction but channeling that energy to a higher place. Imagine being addicted to H" and Torah!

May G-d be with you too. May He give everyone here some extra help today.

... on that note, I've heard that most people simply swap one addiction for another.
e.g. a smoker may give up smoking but shift it over to eating.

I guess what I'm saying is:
I need more Torah.