Shalom everyone, I'm a newbie to GYE. 
I've struggled with an addiction to lust (specifically porn & zera lavatalla) since I was 11 years old. I'm 26 now, and want to be completely free. Honestly, I didn't learn about how serious of an aveira this was until a few years ago. Since then I've been making a conscious effort to stop, and though I have only had a few clean streaks for 30-90 days, I have fallen back into the habit; a sin that I hate more than anything else in the world. I know that zera lavatala is equivalent to avodah zara, and feel so ashamed for falling in this area. Some of the causes have been boredom and loneliness, but even when I'm not bored I still fail. I thought going to the mikvah daily (a custom I recently started keeping), would help weaken the urges and attacks. But sometimes I get attacked so hard, I feel like I can't escape.

I'm ready to break free from my addiction and have lasting change.

Dear Chassid84,

Welcome to our community! Once you've arrived, there's no turning back. Everyone here will just grab a hold of you and pull you up, up, up!

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!

Thank you so much!

you did a good thing coming here
stay here
read up around the site
we are all in similar situations for the most part
you can learn a lot from us
we can learn a lot from you
it's a give and take
and remember to laugh with yourself or at yourself at least once a day

Welcome to GYE, chassid84!!

It is an honor for all of us here at GYE to have the opportunity to help you out.  You will see that the help that you receive here is from those that are experiencing the same difficulties as you are.  Don't be afraid to ask us any questions that you have.  There is even a forum for having fun.  Take some time to look around and find out about some of the other peoples struggles.  Maybe you can help them out with something that is a strong point for you, and maybe they can help you out with something that is a strong point for them.  Either way,  Welcome to our family!!

Sholom U'bracho!

Reb Chassid84, welcome to the club!

You seem to be the perfect material to join our chevra. Exactly the type of guy we love to have as part of our great & holy group!



I do have one slight correction to make on RisingUp's post. He wrote:
RisingUp wrote on 14 Feb 2011 17:42:

ALL the threads of this forum are liable to be a lot of fun. What he meant to say was that there is one section which is exclusively for having fun! The rest of this Great GuardYourEyes Forum is chock full of inspirational & thought provoking post - but with a generous sprinkling of humor there too!  ;D

What Yosef Hatzadik means is that you can post all your jokes O0 RIGHT HERE O0.  Like he said, you can post jokes anywhere,  but I have found this thread the most useful.  Also, if you want to post like a thousand posts with nothing in them just to get your status up, you can do that over there also.

Welcome Chassid84. 

You will stop acting out. 

You will never stop being vulnerable to acting out.

You will learn what's for you to do and what's for Hashem to do (the age old hishtadlut-bitachon problem).

You will grow close to "HKBH, so close.  And then when He turns His Face, you will miss Him something terrible,  And then there's even more, more clarity, trust, simplicity, love, thoughtfulness. 

This is an amazing journey.  Not so easy at first.  But we're all here to help, care about, joke around and stay in touch with you.

Hatzlacha