How nice it is to look at the Chanukah candles through eyes that haven't been viewing pornography. A freilichin Chanukah!

At some point the following outlook changed for me. I used to imagine at times that I would never act out again. At other times I would think, I definitely won't act out today or within the next hour. At some point I became 100% sure that I would act out again and probably really soon. That realization only came when I learned that there is a solution to my disease and became willing to pursue that solution. Funny how that works, not that I am convinced that I am at any moment liable to act out, the undefinable urge, or the strength of that urge, that I get to act out has become less and less. I guess that is part of my surrender. I would have thought that if I surrendered to the notion that I cannot control my disease, it would defeat me. And yet somehow the opposite is true. Once I surrendered to it and accepted that I am sick, I could then begin to accept the cure.

Sounds to me like the first steps.

Great thinkin'!

b'hatzlachah

I went to my third face to face SA meeting this week. I now have a sponsor and I'm working on the first step. It is nothing short of a miracle that I haven't acted out in over two months. There have been some tough days, but they have only made me stronger. The three things that are sticking out in my mind that have helped me the most are honesty, fellowship and prayer. As far as honesty goes I have come out fully to a chaver and to my sponsor. I have become more open with my therapist, but not fully for practical reasons that there is no need to go into here. I will discuss with my sponsor if he thinks I should get a separate therapist for my SA issues. I have also become more open and willing to discuss sexual addiction in general with people. Sex is becoming less a taboo perverted subject to me. On the matter of fellowship, I have tel. numbers of fellow addicts and I am making contact and phone calls. I have a chaver who I discuss my thoughts with on a regular basis, especially when they get real perverted. The more I discuss them with him, the less frequent they are becoming. They are losing their appeal to my twisted psyche. I also just call to discuss regular stuff and we get together at times just socially for friendship and fellowship. As far as prayer goes, it has helped me out of a couple tight spots. I'm talking about specific prayers at times when I am losing control and seemingly about to return to hopelessness; although, those times are diminishing.

I would be remiss not to mention the online fellowship from those of you here at GYE . Thank you!

Glad-to-be-here

So, I'm working on the 1st step of SA. I was supposed to meet with my sponsor tonight, but he got tied up helping someone else. He is going to try and free up some time tomorrow for me. It's working out pretty good for me on another front as well. I'm paralleling my step one SA work with my AA sponsee's step one AA work. So enough about me, on to what I am finding about me . I am powerless over lust and my life is unmanageable. I am powerless because: I engage in behaviors without regard for my health, my family, my reputation, my parnasa, other human beings, my time, my mental health, and legal consequences. My life is unmanageable because I have damaged my marriage, my religion, my parenting, lost time and energy that I can never replace, lost money that I can never regain, have almost gotten arrested on two occasions that I am aware of (which caused tremendous financial and emotional hardship on me and my family) and I have been michallel shabboss while acting out. I have missed work, appointments, my own birthday party, Purim twice and acted out on fast days. (Pls ignore the grammar.)

There is no need for you to know the details of my lust as I am now sure that I am not unique. Nor is the above list complete, it is just some of the items that are more immediately pressing on my mind.

20 or so years ago in yeshiva I was convinced that I had become "Achar". That there was no hope for me and no solution to my problem. I still tried to fight it. I learned, I davened, I begged Hashem to take away the sick desires I had and nothing helped. I got married, had kids, continued to daven and nothing helped. I would throw myself down to the floor and ask God to forgive for bowing down to the ground, when it wasn't yomin neorayim. My disease only got worse and worse over the the years, until I had given up all hope. Another thing I did was drink alcohol in crazy amounts. When I was younger I thought I could burn the yetzer hara out of myself. That if I just drank enough my "sod" would come out and bury my yetzer hara. Later in life I just drank, so I wouldn't have to face myself and so I could make it through shul. I started gambling as a bachur and continued for many years. That was a great and very costly escape from myself. I ended up being dishonest in business. I committed fraud and stole. There was no where my depravity wouldn't take me. I would hope to be arrested for a crime other than one relating to sex, so that I could go to jail without too much embarrassment. I became convinced that the only way I would cure my disease would be to get arrested or die.

In September of 2013, I decided I needed to stop my alcoholism and I went to an AA meeting. I was also hoping that I could work on my sex addiction through the 12 steps of AA. When I came to AA they started talking about God and Higher Power. I was baffled and thought they were full of nonsense, but what did I have to lose. I chose to just ignore that part. After all, were a bunch of goyishe alcoholics going to teach Me something about God? I had learned a long time ago that I was beyond God's help, if He was even there. After about a year or more in AA (and after have learned a lot about God from these Rednecks) I met a chaver who told me he had an addiction to love and lust and that he was sexually sober for many years. That he hadn't masturbated for 3 years and he told me about GYE and SA. Around the same time my AA sponsor told me I needed to go to SA. I went to an SA phone meeting, signed up for many of the tools here and started getting honest. Now I am going to face to face SA meetings and phone meetings regularly. I attend between 4-6 AA meetings a week and one face to face SA meeting and 2 phone meetings a week. I have an AA and a SA sponsor, I am working the steps with my sponsor and do service, and I'm in therapy. I have an AA sponsee and I support and at times chair an AA meeting in an institution and have various other service opportunities. I pray to God regularly with regard to my recovery and meditate on his presence. I'm not telling you about what I'm doing in order to pat promote my ego. In fact it is humiliating and humbling. I am telling you this because I am of the hopeless kind of Sexaholic and nothing else worked. It is nothing short of a miracle from Hashem that I have any length of sobriety and that His miracle came to me through the 12 steps of AA as adopted by SA. I thank Hashem for one more day in recovery and that it is all I can hope for and that is all I need.

You stand as an inspiration to us all. Ashrecha v'tov lach!!

Wow!
B"H!

Continued hatzlachah!

The real question is: how serene are you?

Very

I have nothing exciting to report. My life is pretty boring these days and that's a good thing. I made it to a different SA meeting than the one I have been going to. That's about the limit of excitement in my life . I'm still working on step one. Things are going well with my recovery, but I still have plenty of struggles. Oh yea, at the new meeting the format was to introduce yourself with your mo's as well as some other basic info. It was awkward stating the ways I act out to the group. I was glad that we did that though and I think it's important. First of all, honesty has been key to my recovery, Second of all it helps me to hear other people's mo's to know that I'm not unique. There are other people struggling with the same and even more difficult issues than I am and some of them have a lot of recovery. It helps me to see that it is possible to recover. Which kind of brings me to the issue of the 90 day chart. First of all, the chart was one of the tools that helped me get out of a helpless abyss. Second of all, to see that other people have made it helped me to believe that I can make it. I do appreciate the people that explained the limitations of the benefits of the chart, but I'm glad I started the chart before I heard them. I still have the character defect that makes me have to explain why I update the chart. I hope one day to just be able to do what works for me without having to worry about pleasing other people. And in the interest of honest, I only wrote this post to bump
my thread up .

Heck of a post for a 'thread-bumpin'!

dear serenity
everybody has some character defects
unless they are angels
so now i discovered that you are a real human being
you are doing really great, keep it up with them group
באחרית הימים, האספו וגו'
these days only group help, is the soloution

So why does OA get 13 steps, and we only have 12?
Are we missin' one step?
What are they doin' that we aren't?
Mosif gorei-a?

Thanks

serenity wrote:



mitoich shelo lishmah ba liahmah,
i think everything and anything should be used as a step to recovery.

maybe start planning, what are going to do after you hit 90,[ and after the party of course]
i had a rough time after i hit 90...
i wish you better.