hello all, i am starting a new thread for myself - to symbolically say goodbye to the 'old' me.in other words, out with the old, in with the new.what better time than at rosh hashanah - may the old year and its curses end, and may the new year with its blessings begin.ameyn.

hi jack,
hoping you fill up this space with lots of new good stuff

zs

we can still make a go of THIS year
ברך עלינו .... את השנה הזאת
do you know how much we can do in an hour?, never mind a whole day, & never mind a week or a MONTH

yes - every second we dont get caught up in narishkeit or speak loshan hora is another mitzva.
r' twerski has another great book - it's called 'the addicitive personality'. he describes the dynamics of an addicted person's thinking. i highly recommend it.

bye now.

and remember - (i'm talking to myself - ok?) a person's worst enemy is (are?)  the eyes.what the eye sees affects us more than all the other senses. even though hearing bad things is also bad, but i think seeing is even worse.thoughts are bad, too.but seeing is even worse.so if you can't control ALL the bad stuff, at least try to control what the eye sees.
as we find by the sotah - chazal asked wont people be affected by the memory of the sotah being degraded? and the answer is only what you SEE affects you.
ok, jack?

you know how a rocket needs super-duper thrust to break out of the atmosphere into space? well, that's exactly like breaking an addiction.once you've broken through that layer of resistance,it's much easier.i'm not going to say it's totally smooth sailing, but it's definitely a lot smoother than where you were before.

Very true. I think part of the reason is that we've broken the habit, a little bit, another reason is that we have started to taste the joy of living sober...

And, of course, mitzva goreres mitzva.

another thing - i once heard that being addicted to learning is a good thing.is this true? i once heard also that this is why we were given this yetzer hara - to be able to use it to be addicted to holiness instead of shmutz.in the biography of r' moshe - his wife said to him - 'you are addicted to learning!'
well, is it good or not (since the definition of an addiction is bad)? what do you think?
can this be considered serving G-d with our yetzer hara?

Reminds me of the story about a Godol (I don't remember who, I think someone posted it here on another thread recently), he was walking past a Bais Medrash and overheard some people talking in learning. He had what to say, so he didn't even waste time looking for the door, he climbed right in through the window! Afterwards he said "Ich bin a shikker far Toira!"

people who are addicts should not feel guilty - this will only keep them down.they should just know they have to get out of it somehow.guilt works backwards for us - instead of getting us to stop, it pulls us in more.go figure THAT one out.

hello chevra, i would just like to speak to myself out loud, if you want to listen, fine.
psychologically speaking, we are all afraid to die.but we cant begin to live until we get rid of that fear (i dont mean REALLY dying, of course).i mean like chazal say - you have to 'KILL' yourself in order to acquire Torah. the withdrawal we have makes us feel like we're going to die.like an alcoholic - he thinks if he doesn't have one more drink he'll die.the opposite is true - if he has one more drink his liver will be that much closer to cirrhosis.for us, if we dont have 'unzer drug', we feel like we're going to die.so, we have to get rid of that fear of 'death', in order to start REALLY living.i dont mean to go bunjee jumping or parachuting, but to stay away from our drug, which to us,if we dont have it, makes us FEEL as if we would die.
jack.

a very good point
(did you really think that your life is dependant on filth?)

if you ask that question, you dont know how entrenched i was.i spent hundreds of dollars, would stay in the theatre for about 10 minutes, couldn't go home without 1st stopping there. around day 60 of my recovery,i had a feeling that i was 'dying'.mamash dying.at that point, r' guard wrote to me the following: jack i've got good news for you - what you're feeling is the death of the yetzer hara'.i didn't fully realize the import of those words until this week, more than 3 years later. so what, i learn slow!
jack

Hey, progress is slow.  Thank Hashem that we are progressing however slowly it may be.  Did you ever watch a plant grow, you can't see it, but it happens!

Keep Growing, and keep trucking!

and even more, when i was beginning in recovery, my sponsor asked me to list 10 things about the addiction that made my life unmanageable.well, i couldn't even think of one thing! my life wasn't unmanageable - it was fine! i also didn't realize until this week how unmanageable it really was.you call running to the movies every week manageable? you call disguising myself so no person would see me manageable? you call being a religious jew finding himself in the most decadent place on earth manageable?
you call lying to your wife, your rabbi, your friends, and yourself manageable? you call feeling that pull, not being free, manageable? (that's 8 so far).i'm sure he'd be happy with 8.

jack