Post of the month
Gonna go find the talk!

I acted out over and over again when I was active in my disease and all my will power, resolve and determination wouldn't help me. Interesting is that I acted out only once the year I spent learning in Israel and don't recall any strength or determination  needed. I don't even recall  making a decision  to not act out. I know that many others share the same experience. What I do know is that porn and masturbation is not my problem. I had no problem with it (except for that one occasion) in that year in yeshiva. It was only after ( not sure how long) that the restless, irritability, discontent, feelings od inadequacy, emptiness and  eternal uniqueness crept back in and I started resorting to sex with self again in order to feel good. So if you take away my lust and don't replace it with something that fills that hole in my spirit I will act out again. 

Hello friends. I just wanted to check in an get up to date. I'm sober since 3/19/2015 one day at a time with the help of my Higher Power and the program of SA. I remain very active in recovery by attending meetings, working the steps and doing service. Today I spoke to a group of people in an addiction support group and shared my experience and engaged in questions and discussion about recovery.

My computer keeps glitching, so that's all I got for now

Thanks for sharing your success bli ayin hora and for reaching out to others. You show us all it can be done.

Thanks for being such a wonderful model for us.

Just a word of hope to the average struggler. I once considered myself to be beyond help with no possibility of ever coming back. שובו בנים שובבים - חוץ מאחר. I considered myself like Acher. With God's help and the help of many special people, angels from Hashem, I'm sober today and I haven't been required to turn to sex with self in 2 and 1/2 years and haven't watched porn in over three years. So I'm here to tell you that there is hope and the best advice I can think of right now is to stick around, have patience and take suggestions of people with sobriety.  And I don't know really how to say this other than get out of yourself. Stay away from self-pity, guilt, remorse and the like because it's all ego driven and accomplishes nothing in my experience. 

Just a reminder about forum etiquette. This is a cut and paste of the popup that sometimes appears on the Forum when you first sign in.  Main point for me is to share what works for me and to avoid giving good advice even if I heard it from a top top professional in the field.

• • Please Note: For your protection, all private chats are monitored.
    
    Please note, while it is a good thing to be open and honest with others, it is not helpful to paint a picture with vivid details of what we struggle with. This can be triggering for both parties.
    
    It's best to share what has worked for us in our own experiences rather than trying to think up good advice for the person we are chatting with. We are not here to play therapist/rabbi, we are here as people who could relate to each other because we've been through similar situations. Sometimes just being understanding, even if we don't have all the answers, is helpful.
    
    People may offer to be in touch via email, cellphone apps, phone, etc. Unless you have chatted with them to the point that you feel comfortable with them and feel that they are stable, this is not recommended.
    
    Though the chat feature is moderated, and best efforts are made to keep malicious users out, some can slip through the cracks. If you have reason to believe that a user is a danger to others, please email eyes.guard@gmail.com or contact one of the moderators.
    9:47PM 13th Jul

Are private messages also moderated?

yes

serenity wrote on 24 Nov 2017 17:40:

Brother I love your posts - keep me coming!
Your signature got a little stretched and the biggest prob is that some links don't work (especially the donate one) but I don't see a problem with your sig the way it always was ;-)

Thanks Mark. Someone pointed out to me that the links the way it was weren't working. I think the way I had it came from Guard at one point or another. Any suggestions or help?

serenity wrote on 30 Nov 2017 03:17:

I believe it's more beneficial the way you updated it now - you're just missing your name from your signature line you used to have (and did you have to put my last name there? - just kidding)

name is too much identifiers for a public site, Mr. Twain

One of the GYE old timers whose sobriety and outlook on life I greatly admire reminded me that when I speak I have to know my crowd. This GYE elder pointed out to me that not everyone can appreciate the rigorous honesty that we look for in the program of SA when I'm talking about myself and my own story and I would say how much more so when I'm talking to someone else. My mistake is that I confused my need to smash my own delusions with the need to smash those of others and that probably applies to people in SA as well except my sponsee. Notice I use the word "delusion" and not "denial". De_Nile is a river in Egypt, what I suffered from was delusion. That's brings out another issue I have. I try to choose my words carefully and in my head there is all this meaning behind them, but what I don't realize is that meaning may be lost on others and therefore I may come across as harsh, uncaring or just misunderstood. I can assure you that nothing is further than the truth. My problem is that I do care and it hurts me to see people suffering and it is at times so clear to me what it is in them that needs correction for them to finally be free. I don't mean free from masturbation but I mean free from that inability to be self aware; free from the bondage of self. Believe you me, I'm in no position to judge anyone here. I was stuck living a life of delusion for over 30 years. 

I was at SA international in New Jersey this year and I was talking to Harvey A. (Harvey is sober over 30 years in SA and has helped many hundreds of guys get sober) and a guy came over to him and said "Hi Harvey, remember me? I came over to talk to you last year and you said get away you're drunk (drunk on lust)." The guy said he was so offended that he went back to his room and was going to leave, but then he got to thinking that Harvey was right. He was lust drunk. Now a year later he says to Harvey " I just want to thank you. I've been sober ever since." 

​I definitely ain't Harvey and this isn't SA, so I'll try to behave. 

Thanks for reading this.

I came across this article from Dov which is from 2010 or earlier. Thought I would share it here. 

Daily Dose of Dov

An Entirely Different Track

"Struggling&StrivingBT" writes:

So, like all, becoming a Bal Teshuvah has by no means been easy, and I'm by no means there yet. One of the hardest parts has been in the area of "self gratification". While intellectually, I understand what is so bad about wasting seed, I sometime have trouble attaching my heart to the idea. I feel like a hypocrite; how can I know it's wrong but do it anyway, how can I daven and keep the mitzvot and avoid all these other prohibitions, but this one thing I can't stop?  Then, in not wanting to deal with the weight of my actions or fall to despair, I try to look it as lighter or ignore it, and so I can't even make since Teshuva for it. Does anyone have any advice on attaching ones heart to the belief that this is wrong?  

Dov Responds:

Supposing you finally got the true idea of how horrible the aveiro of zera levatola is, clearly in your mind. And it also became so real to you, that you'd say it's now in your heart. It sounds like you are convinced it'd stop you. Or that, at the least, you are saying that it'd help you a great deal to stop, even if you'd still have some struggle. So far, am I on track?

You may be right. But I don't have experience with success that way. I tried, and can point you in the same direction I took to get some of the tremendous guilt and disgust that I thought would finally speak to me... OK. I'll spare you.  But I fully respect anyone who goes that way, as long as they succeed.

There may be another way completely for you to gain freedom. The 12 Steps do not look at the folly of sin at all (except in the very first step), and are an entirely different track than what it seems to me that you are describing. The Steps don't sound very religious to many. And they essentially are not about religion. They are about our receptiveness to religion as a force of growth in our lives.

They are about cultivating integrity, self-honesty, maturity, and G-d-centeredness. The people who live them, all seem to say they got some of these things from working them, along with the ability to remain sober one day at a time.

But it seems that so far, your focus on the evil of looking (and I agree that it surely is evil!) has only brought you to attend even more to the lust objects! So. We all know that wishing it away just makes us think about it even more, which is the Problem to begin with! No chidush there.

I'm just plugging what works for me today. There are many who go very different ways and get better, so I suggest you search recovery in some way, then settle down (with help of friends in recovery) and do it.

Do it like we all did the addictive behavior: daily without fail, with "tzniyus" (we hid it or did whatever else we needed to do in order to preserve it!), honestly (we acted out very personally and earnestly), and sparing no expense or trouble.

You are already very lucky to be here! Hatzlocha!!