Hello everybody,

I've been subscribing to your email list for the past few months. I've been in recovery for past 2 years, and I have been sober for 136 days. I am in SAA not SA, but the only difference between my definition of sobriety is that I am not yet legally married, although I have been in monogamous relationship for past 5 years, and do intend to get married in a near future.

As you can tell from my previous statement, I am not a very religious Jew. I was born in former Soviet Union, lived for 3 years in Israel, and now I reside in United States. That being said I consider myself to be a highly spiritual person, and G-d has definitely been the main component of my recovery.

I really enjoy this forum and the kind of people that come here. Often times I get so tired and upset observing the world, and I really love finding a different kind of environment here. Its nice to know that I am not alone.

I am in a tough spot in my recovery now. The original pain of consequences of my addiction begin to wear off, and I begin to get complacent with my recovery. I allow myself to get away with things, just because I can justify getting away with them, although at the bottom of my heart I know I am not doing G-d's will for me... And it scares me...

I am now, first time in my life, begin to experience the life for what it is. And it is scary... What even scarier is realizing how really unmanageable my life has become... I am now working on step 4 with my sponsor, and begin to take my personal inventory... And what a mess my "business" has become...

And the worst consequence my addiction had is on my soon to be wife. She does not trust me, and is always waiting for me to hurt her again... I never wanted to hurt her, but hurt her I did... And even now, two years later, after realizing that I am an addict, I still continue to make bad decisions on the daily basis. I've made a lot of progress and I want to give myself credit for that, but I have a very long way to go...

I don't even know why I decided to post today... I just felt that I needed more program in my life. My sponsor encourages me to call people, but I really enjoy writing...

I am tired tonight. Its almost 11pm. I was productive today, but that is a dangerous situation for me. Because now I am both tired, and feel like I deserve to do "something fun". I got on internet, and even though just this morning I decided to avoid internet, for any reasons other than work related, I began to waste my time. Now, an hour later, I decided to post on this forum. For a long time, I tried to give people advice on how to deal with their addiction, but just recently I realized that the best thing to share, is something that you don't want to share... So here I am, sharing... Because I don't want to.

Dear feedtherightwolf,

I am the admin of this forum. Welcome to our community!

I like your name. It reminds me of a parable I once heard, but I can't remember it now. I think it has to do with the idea that we have two wolves inside us. Our emotional and spiritual powers. And we need to direct them in the right way, or they go to the wrong "wolf"... We wrote about this idea in our handbooks as well (see links below).

It's beautiful to see how a Jew finds G-d in the darkest places. Stick with Him and you'll go far!  :D

Scientific studies have shown that it takes 90 days to change a neural thought pattern that was ingrained in the brain through addictive behaviors. Did you join the 90 day chart on-line? Sign up over here...

Make sure to install a strong filter. It will be almost impossible to break free of this while having all the garbage within a mouse click away. See this page for one good filter option, along with instructions on how to install it best - and give away the password to our "filter Gabai"... See this page for another 20 (or so) filter ideas and information...

We get cries for help every day, by e-mail and on the forum. Tzuras Rabim Chatzi Nechama    And that is why we created the GYE handbooks (links below). If you read them well, from beginning to end, slowly, and try to implement what you read, you will find the answers within them to enable you to completely turn your life around. You're worth it.

Also, join the daily Chizuk e-mail lists to get fresh chizuk every day, and post away on this forum. You will get tons of daily Chizuk and support. This disease can't be beat alone. It works best when you get out of isolation!

GuardYourEyes also offers various free anonymous phone conferences, where you can join a group of other frum Yidden, along with an experienced sponsor. See this page for four different options. Our conferences are taking place daily, throughout the week... This would be a tremendous step in the right direction for you and help you learn freedom from this addiction. Not only will you learn the secret of the 12-Steps - which is known to be the world's most powerful program for beating addiction having helped millions world wide, but joining the group will be another way of GETTING OUT OF ISOLATION and connecting with others who are going through what you are.

Let me tell you a little about the two GuardYourEyes handbooks. They lay down the cornerstone and foundation of our work, and they make our network much more effective and helpful for people.

You see, until now, people would often get "lost" when coming to our website, not knowing what tips and techniques to try. For example, a beginner wouldn't jump straight into therapy or 12-Step groups, while on the other hand, someone whose addiction was more advanced wouldn't be helped by the standard tips of "making fences" putting in "filters" etc... So it was essential to develop a handbook which details all the techniques and tools to dealing with this addiction in progressive order. Now with these handbooks, anyone can read through and see what steps they've tried already, and if those steps haven't worked, they can continue on through the handbook where the steps become progressively more powerful and "addiction-oriented".

And the second handbook, called the "Attitude" handbook, can also help anyone, no matter what level of addiction they may have. Often people write in to us saying that had they only known the proper outlook & attitude that we try and share on the GuardYourEyes network when they were younger, they would have never fallen into an addiction in the first place! So we hope that through this handbook, many addictions will be prevented.

The handbooks are PDF files, set up as eBooks, and they have bookmarks and hyper-links in the Index, to make them easy to navigate.

Note: You might want to print them out to read away from the computer. Keep in mind though, that if you do this, you won't be able to click on the many web links in the articles. But you can always come back to them later. The truth is, it's anyway good to go through the whole handbook once without clicking on links, just to get an overview of all the tools available. Once you did that, you can start again from tool #1 and read each tool through more carefully, click the links and study each technique and assess whether you have tried it fully yet or not...

Right click on the links below and select "Save Link/Target As" to download the handbooks to your computer.

1) The GuardYourEyes Handbook
This Handbook details 18 suggested tools and techniques, in progressive order, beginning with the most basic and fundamental approaches to dealing with this addiction, and continuing down through increasingly earnest and powerful methods. For the first time, we can gauge our level of addiction and find the appropriate tools for our particular situation. And no matter what level our addiction may have advanced to, we will be able to find the right tools to break free in this handbook!

2) The GuardYourEyes Attitude
The Attitude Handbook details 30 basic principles to help us maintain the proper attitude and perspective on this struggle. Here are some examples: Understanding what we are up against, what it is that Hashem wants from us, how we can use this struggle for tremendous growth, how we can deal with bad thoughts, discovering how to redirect the power of our souls, understanding that every little bit counts, learning how to bounce back up after a fall, and so on and so forth...

May Hashem be with you!

Welcome! I'd be interested in hearing the story behind your username, too!

I think it's great that you decided to post, to open up, and share! 2 years is a long time to be in recovery, and that's fantastic, but you're right - the consequences start to wear off, and we forget about the pain.

One thing that works for me is to look at the positive - I want to be clean, not just to avoid pain, but because my life is SO much more beautiful that way - I feel closer to god, happier, healthier, closer to myself, etc! And that's why right now, I don't want to fall, no matter how much my yetzer hora (or "disease," take your pick ) tells me that i do!

It sounds like you're a growing person, who wants to get close to god. It doesn't matter  where you are, so much as where you're going. And it sounds like you're going to great places! Happy to have you here, where here for you - so please stick with us!

Feedtherightwolf, pleased to meet you. I wish you the best in every moment. May every decision you make be L'shem Shomayim and may every resulting action be to your health.

It is not easy to rise to the occasion of a withholding our hands from a sin when the pain of negative consequence fades. It is so easy to simply satisfy our desires. But as easy as this is, it behooves us the more to weigh the other side of the matter, the whole matter. In Pirkei Avos, we are admonished to consider the benefit of a sin versus its consequence. Often, it takes much effort to consider its consequence, full as we may be with our desire for it. But we must make that reckoning. We will find everytime that these aveiros are deadly. Why involve ourselves with the grave? Why reach out to death when life is so much more inviting?

Personally, I try whatever I can to convince myself to just plain do the right thing. Whatever works for you should be fine. The most important things are to remember that you only need to do well for today and that the door is always flung wide open for you to begin again.

Two years is very impressive. That is a glaring reason to be proud of yourself. Yasher ko'ach.

Hey buddy, welcome to GYE!! Howyadoin? ;D