Hello everyone Mesayin here, I've been on the site for about a week now and B"H i've learnt a lot (thank you everyone) and i think now its time I write my story.

Before I came to this site I thought i was one of very few people that had these struggles and that my struggles were one of the hardest, but as i started reading people's stories I realized that there are a lot of people in this fight and are in much deeper problems than I ever imagined and the fact that they are on the path to cleanliness is Amazing and gives me strength.

So I will bezra"h write my story and hope people will gather chizzuk from it.

P.S. If its at night and you want to fall asleep you might want to read this.

I started playing computer games since I was 2 years old (that wasn't a typo) in a family that pretty good at the time but year after year became more broken, my parents were having serious shulim bayis issues and the children were caught in the middle of it all and it was getting worse and worse.

MY life was very tense as well other than being caught in a fight I was emotionally mistreated by my parents especially my mother, I used to get yelled at and beaten up, and there was inconsistency, one day she was nice another she was brutal, I was stuffed up with computer games and so on.

My father was very quiet and sometimes negligent which didn't help.

At about the age of 12 or 13 my family started having access to the internet, at first it was just watching three stooges and abbott & Costello and over the years it became regular movies and tv shows.

One humongous miracle happened to me in which I have to continue thanking Hashem for it is that from when I started on the internet I have never intently gone onto bad sites, which is pretty amazing considering that I was teenager from a dysfunctional home, internet w/o a filter and watching during the night without anybody seeing me, not only that but anytime in the movie it got to a dirty point i would skip that part or even just look away.

I'm mostly convinced the reason behind that was because of my severe complex, I was paranoid that someone might find out about it and that is what kept me from deliberately looking at those stuff even though sometimes there were pop-ups of these stuff right in front of my face.

However I did take pleasure whenever by accident I would look at those stuff, furthermore I would try to watch a movie that I thought might have some of those stuff and I'll watch it in a way that it seems like I innocently fell into it and make it look like I didn't know about it. (How clever is the Y'h)

On top of that at about the age of 13 I started doing mz"l, I had no idea what it was or if was something wrong, as a matter of a fact I thought I was the only one in the universe that knew how to do that.

That was until the age of about 18 when a mentor of mine reveal to me what it was and on top of that it is an issur, of course I took out a shilchan aruch and tried to find a heter, with no luck.

The first night That I heard that I wasn't mz"l but of course it was an addiction already so two night later i started again.

And so it went on, the three way vicious cycle of broken home, internet and the other thing, until a couple of years ago my sister recommended me to a great therapist who helped me on the path to emotional and mental recovery, and that year I went to sleepaway camp and for the first half I tasted happiness for the first time B"H.

But then I came home for a day in middle of the summer and things started spiraling, so I decided I need to move far away from home and far away from the internet, and so I made the tough decision to move away and decided that if i get bored due to lack of internet I can then come home but first move out.

To make a long story even longer, I moved away last year about this time, got myself a job and was off the internet for a few months, keep in mind though I was still being mz"l regularly so I decided to look for some help in that matter.

The first guy I went to was an old satmarer guy, he started telling me all sorts of chazal to try to get me to fear mz"l, I went out of there shell shocked and didn't know what to do with myself, but then Hashem put a thought into my brain that maybe Hashem gives so much punishment for being mz'l means that he loves us so much that he is trying to do everything in the world to make sure we choose not to do it, and with that thought I never felt happier in my life.

A couple of weeks later I went to another satmarer guy and he was much more about chizzuk, he gave me a tefila (see my signature) that worked instant wonders for me, and for the next few weeks I was totally clean.

One day confusion struck me, my mother started texting me her nonsense and the next day someone at my job reported me and I got suspended from my job, it was devastating, so I decided I'll calm down with some computer games, so I borrowed a computer from a friend of mine, little did I know that the computer had movies on it, do the math, it had a ton of triggers and was drowning into lustful thoughts all day, that led to a couple of mz"l over the next few weeks.

The person I went to said I need to use the tefila more often, but more importantly he revealed to me that having lustful thoughts is just as bad as committing the sin itself, that gave me motivation to stop and since then (which is about 4 or 5 months) I'm B"H totaly clean and I also got myself a new job which I like. (Even though I work on the internet I B"H can control myself much better)

Obviously I still have a fight and since i'm very sensitive to lust I have to be real careful with what I do and what I look at.

And then last week I found this great website and I'm learning new ways deal with lust and trying to help other people too.

I'm now 21 years old and single and with Hashem"s help I'll find a shidduch b"kuroiv and I hope I will say It was all worth it.

Mesayin,

Wow a really moving story. I didn't know you are having such a rough life. And yet so young but so determined and wise!!! You give me lots of chizuk. yes all those mamer chazal's never detered me. I am not sure why it just never really took away my addiction.

Just one helping pointer,

"Obviously I still have a fight and since i'm very sensitive to lust I have to be real careful with what I do and what I look at."

On GYE you will often find quotes like, " I gave up fighting lust years ago". And many of the pros don't like writing long megials like me. So you'll think huh?? But here is what they mean. There is a surrender approach that varies from fighting. I have no clue what the approach is yet other then the fact that its 12 step approach with lots of foreign terms. So till I reach the shpitz surrender, my plan is fight (white knuckle) but also realize that if we can only do our part, and hashem does the rest. Also part of my approach is that while fighting and surrendering you will fall every now & then. Its not an all or nothing approach. So don't give up if you fall rather brush it off and start anew.

I believe my plan is a good plan for beginers. But I am talking as a novice not a pro so you may wanna take my plan with a grain of salt.

And I envy your 75 day clean streak! Keep it going man!

Thank you so much Waydown.

Any tip you give to help against this Y"h is gold, we need all hands on deck and all weapons possible whether one is a novice or a pro.

WELCOME! Thank you for sharing your story. This is a great community of people trying to help one another. I wish you much brocha and hatzlacha! Keep posting and Keep on Truckin! You have a good attitude. I look forward to hearing more from you.

Have you read the handbook yet? It helped me get started several years ago.

gibbor120 wrote:

Umein on the bracha and thanks for the chizzuk.

I started reading the handbook and as a matter of fact I printed out the entire thing and I'm reading it at home.

Wow Mesyation, first of all, I am sorry about your abusive mother.
Second of all, you are on day 75. Keep it up. You have 15 more days to go.

Thanks for the comforting words.

And BTW its really more than 75 days I just don't remember exactly how much so I picked the date I was sure that I was clean

Welcome again,

Keep up the good work!

What can I say your story is very emotional it actually won't put me to sleep but won't let me fall asleep!
Chazak veamatz!!!!

Welcome! I appreciate ur story, i have seen ur name on here and ur posts but never saw the story. I am a single 20 yr old so maybe I can relate a bit and I also come from a home with shalom bayis problems (albeit not to your extent at all). I am litvish however...

Enough of me talking about myself. What did you do to keep yourself sober 75+ days?

I appreciate everyone's kind words.

Shlomo24 wrote:


I do some small stuff for lower level addiction, like distraction, taking cold showers and doing some exercise.

But the main thing I use is as I mentioned in the post, the tefila that the yid gave me, it,'s that powerful KA"H.

Anytime I feel my heart pumping I quickly say that tefila.

This is a famous poem and I happen to use it for my desktop background.


Today was the absolute worst day ever
And don't try to convince me that
There's something good in every day
Because, when you take a closer look,
The world is a pretty evil place.
Even if
Some goodness does shine through once in a while
Satisfaction and happiness don't last.
And it's not true that
It's all in the mind and heart
Because
True happiness can be attained
Only if one's surroundings are good
It's not true that good exists
I'm sure that you can agree that
The reality
Creates
My attitude
It's all beyond my control
And you'll never in a million years hear me say
Today was a very good day

Now read it from bottom to top, the other way,
And see what I really feel about my day.



You can find the story behind the poem on aish.com.

And thanks to 9494 for reminding me about the poem.

Mesayin wrote:


Mesayin wrote:


One of the beauties of GYE is that until we come here we think that we are the only ones in the world that have the particular issue we are struggling with and then you discovery that while each person is unique, their struggles are far from unigue. I thought about this when I read the above-quoted lines because I could have written them too.

I thought of this post again this Shabbos after seeing an amazing Alshich. The Alshich is troubled by the use of both "ופניהם אחורנית" and "וערוות אביהם לא ראו." If Shem and Yefes were walking backwards then they didn't see their father's nakedness. Answers the Alshich that the Torah is telling us two things. It's not simply that they didn't look at their father's nakedness, for that they could have walked straight in with their eyes closed. But, they didn't even want their face which has a Tzelem Elokim on it to see their father's nakedness even though their eyes were closed. For that they turned around. According to the Alshich watching a movie but closing my eyes at the problematic parts (often the whole movie) is itself a problem. We have a Tzelom Elokim that needs to be protected as well. (No this doesn't mean we should watch movies and simply turn completely around).

I was thinking that based on the Alshich perhaps this is the connection to Tzitzis which was Shem's reward. It wasn't simply that Shem didn't look by closing his eyes he took added precaution to remove himself even from accidental looking and exercised an added sensitivity by making sure he would not even feel the effects of tumuah. Perhaps, the lesson is that if we want our Tzitzis to protect us with the הבטחה of ולא-תתורו אחרי לבבכם ואחרי עיניכם then we have to take follow in the the footsteps of Shem which is to not even bring ourselves to a situation where we can by "accident" see, and to be critically sensitive to the things that our Tzelem Elokim is exposed to.

Welcome Mesayin and wishing you much hatzlacha on your journey.

gibbor120 wrote:

That is a good point by Dov and I think it is a very deep subject.

Here is my humble observation,

By us stringent frum people I think we try to make lust disgusting and shameful, we do that so we (or our kids) shouldn't ever consider going for lust since it's so disgusting and shameful.

However once someone gets addicted to lust or even just introduced to lust, then it becomes a different parsha in which I think is a very deep subject which can be much debated, in that case the best choice is to talk it out face to face with someone who knows and understands your situation and struggle, I don't think there are any general ideas for this.

I once posted that Rav Nachman Of Breslov zt"l once said "Even if I commit the worst sin c"v I would still be totally besimcha the very next minute", I heard this from Rabbi Jonathan Rietti on shmiras habris.

The bothering question many, including me have, is, we are suppose to do teshuva and regret and feel bad about the mistakes that we make, yet on the other hand we know that guilt, depression and not being besimcha is worse than the sin itself, so what are we supposed to think and feel after commiting a mistake?

Rabbi Rietti explains the following:

Teshuva needs to be with an objective observation, meaning, right after we commit a sin c"v we are still very emotionally attached to the moment we committed it (especially when it pertains to lust), therefore we cannot do teshuva when we are still in that state because teshuva is change and we cannot change if we stay stuck in the moment of the sin, therefore it is imperative to be besimcha right away, feeling guilty and depressed is not at all the right thing to do, as a matter of fact one of the old chasiddish'er rebbes (I don't remember which one) said that the main goal of the y"h when he tries to convince us to sin is: that we should feel sad and depressed afterwards, because that causes us to fall further and further into more sin c"v.

And as time goes on and we start feeling more and more emotionally disconnected from the sin we can start objectively try to correct what we've done, with all the criteria of teshuva, admitting the sin, regretting it and being mekabel not to do it again, and of course praying with a broken heart to Hashem to help us through.

Chazak v'emutz