My name is aJew.  I am 22 year old Yeshiva Bachur who Has been addicted for many Years.  My family has always owned a computer and a television and I think that is where it statrted.  It seems for all of my life I have been struggling not to look at things that are asur.  However once I get a peek I just can't seem to stop watching.  I feel that I have a major addiction problem. 

I have joined this site because i have finnally realized that I cannot deal with this on my own. Every time an episode occurs I tell myself that I wil never do it again but that has not worked.  I have never revealed to anyone the extent of my problem so I have joined this sit in search of a cure.  I really want to get better it just seems so very hard

How do I get better. and What is the best way to start?

First of all, welcome, AJew!

The first step? I think you just took it. In fact, you've taken  few steps - you admitted that there's a real problem, and you've done something about it - you joined us, here! You've done something that you never did before - you've opened up about your addiction, and that's a scary thing. but opening up, in my experience, makes it more manageable, easier to win over.

And I'd say that's one thing you need to know - that you CAN win. As impossible as it seems, it's do-able. Almost all of us here never imagined we could succeed, but even those of us who still fall occasionally have succeeded beyond our wildest dreams before we came here. Success is possible.

Have you checked out the handbooks yet? I think they've got a bunch of practical tools that can help you grow...

Hello Mr. Ajew and welcome to GYE.
You my friend have come to th right place. This is your first step to true freedom. The road ahead willl soon become more clear as you venture further. The behavior you describe of always telling yourself you will stop and not being able to is of course a symbol of an addiction. With time, you will learn the tools of how to surrender yourself and be truly free. Utilize all the tools this site had to offer and you will see freedom.
Your friend,
Zalmandovid

Dear aJew,

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

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.

One of our goals on GYE is to help people "hit bottom while still on top" so they will take recovery seriously. To explain better what I mean, please see this page. If you're here, you're already taking serious steps in recovery, so keep up the good work!

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!

Hey aJew!

Welcome to the warmy and fuzzy GYE. You soun like youre in a very similar situation as me. So I will tell you this: There is a way out. There is a solution. Work at it and work hard. "Lefum Tzara Agrah". How adly do you want this?

Feel free to PM me or email/gchat me at Yiddle2@gmail.com

All the best!

-Yiddle

Dear aJew! And Gezundheit!

May Hashem help us all admit the truth about ourselves, and finally begin to get Gezunderdheit!

Dov

I'll PM you, bl"n

Thank you for all the encouragement.  i believe it means a lot to show support.  It is very hard to relay one's problem to a live person so this forum seems like a good pace to start.  I am going to start by reading the guidebooks and phoning in to a class.  Thank you  Have an awesome Shabbos

Hope you had a great shabbos...and yes - this forum is wonderful in that way. Most of us don't feel comfortable, certainly at first, with opening up to people in person, so this offers a fantastic alternative.

The phone classes are supposed to be very worthwhile, as well - people seem to rave about Dovid Chaim's...

Dov rebberebber

I got ur joke

I guess I'm slow


A jew. Wlcome

As I always say

Keep on trucking!!

(Its a lot shorter than anything my reebe says besides for gezuntheit)

Bards

hows it going mate?

welcome!!!

i am new here as well...
what's really special about this site (from what i can tell so far), is that people here r e a l l y understand what you're going through. everyone here is ירא שמים and everyone cares about not falling on a religious level. everyone here also experienced the same battles and struggles, and that's why i love it here!!!

i wish you all the best and i am sure that taking the step to start dealing with our problem together will strengthen us all and bring us closer to G-D.

B strong.
M

welcome!

Thanks Dov for the joke - very funny!
Thanks Bardi for catching it - I had no idea what you both were talking about...

I must be getting older.. I hope I am not becoming illiterate in Dov and Bardi language.