Hello everyone. I'm a married business man in late thirties. Just found this site. Am working a 12 step programme and currently 41 days sober BH. Would love to join a live SA group but just can't face the exposure. If I wasnt Jewish, Id be out there like a shot. I have a network of friends in various stages of recovery and i talk to a veteran brother in recovery weekly. (ten years sober YES ITS POSSIBLE).

THat's it for now. I try and remembe that G-D loves me and am keeping hanging in - one day at a time!

Hi,

You may want to check this link bellow.

www.guardyoureyes.org/forum/index.php?topic=2637.0

Good luck!

noquitter,

I live in a city in the Southern part of the U.S.  That's below the Mason Dixon Line.
I've been in S groups for over 10 years and usually wear my hat to all meetings.
I am treated just like everyone else.  In fact once one of my Goyish friends saw me
in a Yarmulke and asked me why I don't wear it to meetings.  I told him about
making a Chillul Hashem and he told me the way to get better in this program
is to be rigorously honest.  So sometimes when I'm not in a church classroom
I do wear it.

These people love me for my honesty and my true imperfect self, where when
I'm with my Jewish friends or in shul they just see my mask.  One day a guy
who I daven with walked into one of the meetings.  I was shocked but I stayed
and we talked about it and keep each other's confidences.

When you're ready to "goi to any lengths to get well"  you'll discover that live
meetings are the fastest and most healing way to go.

Elya

noquitter,

I'm going to second Elya's post.  I have found nothing that can compare to a live recovery meeting.  I came to SA about 8 months ago and my sobriety emotional and otherwise have far exceeded what I thought possible.

I don't know where you are but in NYC you could make a minyan or two at many of the meetings.  Personally I actually prefer the varied experiences of the more mixed groups that I usually attend. 

Of course anonymity is an understandable concern and I at first was terrified that I would meet someone I know.  Eventually this did happen and frankly has been a great experience.  So much so, that now I would get excited about meeting a friend in the meetings.  Remember - if they are in the room they also have a story!

Hatzlacha

Dear noQuitter,

I am the admin of this forum. Welcome to our community! What 12 Step program are you working, if it's not live? Is it on-line? By phone? (Just curious)

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, it means 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. The lay down the cornerstone of all our work at GuardYourEyes. Before the GYE handbook people would often get "lost" when coming to our website, not knowing what tips and techniques to try. For example, someone with a low level addiction wouldn't jump straight into therapy or 12-Step groups, while someone whose addiction was more advanced wouldn't be helped by the standard tips of "making fences", putting in filters etc... For the first time ever, this handbook details all the techniques and tools dealing with this addiction in progressive order. Now, anyone can read it through and see what steps they've tried already, and if those steps haven't worked, they can continue on through the handbook to the next tools, as the suggestions become progressively more "addiction-oriented".

We suggest printing out the handbooks and reading it them at least once. Then, we suggest going back and reading them again slowly on the computer, and this time pressing on the many links that are found in the different articles.

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.

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!