What are you talking about?

(admittedly not a very good way to start a conversation...!)

Lets not confuse G-d with Rav Elyashiv zt"l. If you are an addict, then G-d helps you in recovery, not Rav Elyashiv. I know that what you wrote is sensitive to the loss of a Tzaddik - we are all certainly less because he is gone.

But Hashem is no less. We need Him no less. Let me try to explain with a 9 Days idea...

When Klal Yisroel sinned enough that it was reall a big mess, what did Hashem do? He took away the beis hamikdosh. Not only that, but He took away the nevi'im, the nissim in the land (and the mikdash) and many of our Torah sages and good people. And He even took most of us outside of Eretz Yisroel!

Now, how does that make sense? If we messed up when we had prophets and cohanim telling us the truth about how we should each individually serve Hashem....if we messed up when we had direct proof of Hashem's power and existence in miracles anyone could see....if we messed up while in the Holy land that has air that brims with inspiration and Kedusha...

...then why make it all even harder by taking all those things away?!

Now He expects us to get better? There's more hope now?

Sounds a bit goofy, no? And it's especially goofy if it is all punishment. For then it is clearly a case of a god who likes to cut off his nose to spite his face, no? (This is not my question, but the GR"A's.)

But it all makes perfect sense if it is all just the way to discover that all we have is Avinu Shabashomayim. The way to see how much He loves us and how dependent we are on Him is when there is no palace and we are out in the cold - and He still loves and helps us and takes care of us...that's love. That's a relationship. All the distractions are stripped away. (This is the midrash's answer, not mine.) And about distractions:

When Hashem said through the novi that He despises our Shabbos and Yomim Tovim and says, "who told you to stomp about in my courtyards, anyway?" (remos chatzeirai), what could He possibly mean? He told us to! Aliyah l'regel is a mitzvah! What could He mean ?

When he told us He does not want - and never wanted - our korbanos (read the novi, it's even in the haftorah), what could He mean? He told us! Korbanos are a mitzvah!

(The nations of the world say He indeed meant he really does not want those mitzvos at all and never did, which is ignorant, of course. But that's their way in, by denying the unchanging truth of the Torah. But then what is His logic?)

He means that the korbanos and biyas mikdash were vehicles for getting a relationship with Him. That's what He wanted, and all He wanted. Haskel veyado'ah osi. He gave us mitzvos in a context - we created a new context - doing them for honor and competition.

Bil'am seemed to do His Will, too, right? And Hashem's malach yells at the guy....huh? Make up my mind. But the answer was that Bil'am was using Hashem's command to do his own will, not Hashem's. Hence the haftorah that week about Sha'ul's mistake doing his will rather than Hashem's

In sefer Chovas heLavavos, R' Bachya writes that the entire purpose of the mitzvos is to have a real relationship with Hashem. 'Know me' is all He wants. And we do that by the Torah and mitzvos. But the purpose is the neshomah of it.

But when the acts of mitzvos become distractions to knowing Hashem - to having a real relationship with Him...something's gotta go. So He took some of the mitzvos (hatluyos ba'aretz) away from us. He took the Mikdash away, and He made us more lost. So lost that ein lanu al ma/mi lehisho'ein ella al Avinu Shebashomayim. We have been killed and tortured and confused for millenia, all to come to Him with our entire selves.

Yes, the tzadikim show us the way to do that - but they do not do it for us! I know Rebbi Nachman and the sforim talk of the tzadddik being the catalyst to have a relationship with Hashem. But guess what> In the end, that relationship is yours, and yours alone. You feel the pain and you feel the s'char.

So please do not worship Rav Elyashiv for he is not G-d, and please have no trepidation from me at all, for I am just a recovering pervert. I masturbated myself into recovery and into Hashem's 'arms' and deserve no respect. But I'll gladly tell anyone how I did it. It's the steps worked openly with other recovering addicts. But it all comes down to having an honest relationship with your own G-d. We need Hashem, period, end of story.

And please do not have any self-pity about how you can't approach G-d yourself now that that great tzaddik is gone. Hashem fills all worlds and surrounds all worlds, as the Zohar says. He does not need anyone to help Him reach you, chaver.

Now, if you are still porning and masturbating yourself, then certainly Rav Elyashiv could not save you. For guess what? Even Hashem doesn't save addicts until we allow Him in by being sober and working real steps of getting sanity back. As the Kotzker put it, Hashem only comes where people allow Him in. Sounds kind of funny, but that's the way it works.

I do not even know if you are an addict! You may just be a regular guy who likes the way watching porn and masturbating makes him feel (except afterward!) and can quit but just doesn't want to. But if you really are sure that you want to quit and try and fail, then you may be an addict. Few porn and masturbaters probably are, I think. In which case all this is for you, friend, so use it if you want to. BTW, my real first name is Dov. What is your real first name? Charlie? That won't do - is it being open? Hop on the reality train with the guys who are taking real steps, not just virtual ones, amigo.

- Dov (another sober and recovering porner and masturbater, free one day at a time for a while now, b"H)

Sorry about the arichus.

Dear Zvi,

Here is the confusion as I see it, be"H:

You are asking, "So then you are saying that feeling close to Hashem is not the answer?!"

And of course, being with Hashem is the answer. Not feeling close to Him, but being close to Him. And his main requirement seems to be self-honesty. Chasamo shel Hakodosh boruch Hu is Emess, Chaza"l tell us. It is His calling card.

Many are close to Him but feel practically nothing! Many feel it all...but are not really with Him, at all. In fact, if doing xyz made you always feel soooo close to Him before - and you were soon masturbating yourself again anyhow, then I'd suggest that your deveikus indicators are broken.(emphasis mine) Practically all ours are, too. You are in good company.

Do you know how often Christians say "So I gave it some thought, prayed on it a while, and I finally heard (or felt) G-d tell me this is the the right choice"? Very often...whether they are raging addicts or not. Well, I ask you, Zvi - did He? They are neviim, now? Hmmm..

In "Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions" (a fantastic read) Bill W. wrote about this and commented that many of us drunks are experts in religious sentiment, deep feelings and such, but "wallowed in emotionalism, mistaking it for true religious feeling." He wrote that "the quality of our faith was more important than the quantity." Interesting words. Few of us have a quiet faith that works. He did not mean that we were insincere. He meant that we were just sick.

The only way we really know we are 'off' is by whether we can thereafter live our lives well without having to resort to our drug or any other compulsive behavior that substitutes for it. (emphasis mine) It's no use trying to 'line up' what we think we believe with what Torah says we should believe to compare it and judge...for we have no clue what we really believe yet!

Sure we are all kedoshim and possess infinite being that our neshoma is a chelek Eloka mima'al! But here we are in Olam ha'asiyah. And in the end, the way we actually behave shows what we really believe on a functional level. And it is not pretty.(emphasis mine) We have work to do. Slow, patient work. We all want to be tzaddikim by plugging into our potential and letting all the distractions fall away. And that is so very important for general growth and stuff like that. But I have come to believe that for addicts that is just plain irrelevant (to starting and maintaining recovery). If we really take the actions we need to in order to stay clean at all costs, then we can be certain that our hearts are in the right place. But if we need to paint our problem in pretty spiritual terms in order to make it more respectable...well, then I fear we have chosen respectability (comfort) over truth. And the Truth about how we work right here and now is unbeatable.

And like I posted a few weeks ago, we have all had the experience of absolute religious clarity and alignment with Torah - right after we masturbated again. It all becomes so clear then...for a little while.

So for the true addict (maybe not you at all, Zvi) the way I see it there are two options for attaining and maintaining religious clarity:

recover

or

masturbate a whole heck of a lot, so that you will spend a lot of time in that blissful/excruciating state where "it's all so clear to me!"

Life is really not that bad.

Dear Zvi, I am going to be blunt, please forgive me.

Obviously you have been somewhere like this before - probably many times - and obviously the response to it failed because of how you faced the facts of the situation. So if you agree with that, I will suggest options that work for me and others I know who experience what you describe. In some ways it may not seem identical to typical Jewish practice - but I doubt that 'normal Jewish practice' really addresses chronic, frequent porn users and masturbaters. So here are some extreme measures made for extreme problems, that work for many of us that I and many others still use regularly with good success because we need to, and G-d helps us:

1- I accept that accidentally thinking of porn scenes during davening is 100% perfectly OK. The only thing Hashem is interested in at all is: how I respond to the fantasies. So when it happens to me, I smile (very important, because it's really OK by Him) and I speak out to Him in words, "Tatty, You know all about the sex fantasies that popped into my head. Thank You for being with me always and I accept whatever You want for me and I love You so much. Please help me daven to You a little better, now. Thanks!" Then I get on with wherever the heck I was...

I repeat it, if necessary. Always calmly. He does not pay any attention to my 'intensity', the contorting of my face in prayer, or the forcing of tears...Hashem is no longer for the show. This is recovery, here, not 'piety'. It's calm, real, and good.

If it does not work, then I assume it is because I am lying. I am not really meaning it. Perhaps I am hanging onto my familiar old prideful guilt - as though 'such' thoughts are 'below' a person of 'my' great stature and holiness...or I just don't care to be liberated from the thoughts. Perhaps I really like them and do not want to let them go. (stranger things have happened! ) Either way, 'lying' to G-d does not work very well...at least not in recovery. So I look at that and try my best to accept it, then say it for real, and then be'H move on.

2- I pray for the very people I am resenting, afraid of, and/or lusting after, right then and there. This prayer must be sincere or it does not work. I have posted a few times elsewhere about the issues with davening for goyim, porn starts, girls or women we know, etc. "Tov Hashem lakol, v'Rachamov al kol ma'asov" - that does not mean only tzaddikim, only Jewish people (or even only humans). It's everyone and everything. I can join with Him, here.

By doing that, we leave the fantasy world that our hearts and heads are so accustomed to, and start to rejoin the human race and reality. It is an unpleasant landing, and for that reason many guys resist praying for these people! For by doing it (not by thinking about doing it or discussing it, but by actually doing it) we start to face the fact that the objects of our lust are actually real people with real problems, families, issues, real relationships with Hashem (even if they are goyim and/or very lost and are not aware of their relationship with Him at all), and we ought to be concerned about them. v'Rachamov al kol ma'asov. If we are, then we will not use them and their images quite the same way again in our minds. This is usesless to figure out and discuss - just do it early and often. It is baduk umenusah for anyone who does it sincerely.

3- I stopped responding to these pesky problems in any way that I used to respond to them with. The old ways were the problem, not the solution. They were rife with pride, screwed up applications of Torah ideas, and attitudes, and did not work. They are probably poisonous and will ruin whatever good things I do, eventually. It is important for me to remember that "it was not my 'YH' that got me into this tangled mess as badly and as I got into it. Rather, it was my very best and 'sincere' thinking (and misguided teshuvah-attempts) that got me where I am."

4- I blabbed too much already.

Hatzlocha. Don't think about it too much. How smart are we, anyhow? Just do it.

And none of this stuff works if we are not using it as part of a slowly changing diet and behavior that includes recovery rather than the same old drivel we are used to.

Too blunt?

Love you,

Dov

And it may sound obvious...but it's not:

Tehillim, kedusha, and even the 12 steps with meetings, sponsors, written stepwork, and regular phone calls whenever in trouble, etc - none of them work at all if we still do not really need to stop.

See, right after we masturbate, everybody wishes they'd stop! So us frum guys suffer so much, struggle so hard, and fight tooth-and-nail (all l'Shem Shomayim, of course). But we just don't feel right, do we?

There is only one surefire way we all know to bring our dirty, yucky, painful selves close to Hashem - really honestly close:

masturbate again!

Within a minute or so we find that we are dropped cold out of lust like a rock. Brought to our humble, reeling, holy senses again like the worst cold shower in the world. It's horrible five minutes later. We become frantic to finally fly right, despondent, ready to reach out like never before..."I'll do anything to quit and not fall the next time!" See? We are brought back to our senses! We wanted nudes five minutes ago - and now, all we really want is sweet tahara! Because we masturbated and 'got it over already'.

It works every time. It's the nuclear reset button, isn't it?

After our painfully intense 'zera levatola', life and avodas Hashem suddenly and painfully makes sense again. Sure we are farther away - but at least we are in the game again! ..or so we think. The sex obsession is blown out of us, gone. Holiness is again in view, at least. Menucha...

...for about a day (maybe)

Maybe I became willing to start recovery because I got tired of reset buttons, that's all? While we are flaming addicts, there eventually comes a point at which we realize that in order for us to live successfully we do not really need to give in and end the game by masturbating (again) so that we return to our holy senses. This is a total shock to a frum porn and sex addict.

We always saw our lusting, fantasy, and sex-with-self as the opposite of our avodas Hashem...and surely, the lusting and the fantasy always are. But not so the zera levatola! So often we held our breath, counting the days till....till it built up to a crescendo of crushing tension. Then we used the good old nuclear reset button - ending the game. We just couldn't take it any more. How long can you hold your breath? Eventually, everyone who is holding their breath needs to come up for air! So we fall, R"l. "It's Game Over, I guess," the poor guy says.

But it's not really ending the game at all! It's just starting a new game!

Anybody here who has ever been addicted to computer games knows exactly what I mean, here, by "GAME OVER" just being a reset button. Think it over.

Hatzlocha using this.

(Hatzlocha using anything! )

Rebbe Shlomo of Karlin, a young talmid of the Maggid of Mezritch once said, "I wish that Hashem would help me have love for the world's greatest tzaddik that is even a fraction of the love He has for the world's worst rosho."

Our very common focus davka on 'Tikunnim' before stopping and living clean for a few years, is really nothing but childish gayvoh in religious garb. I know and have been there. Oh - and it does not work, too.

Sheesh. If by "the 12 steps" you mean: attending SA meetings, working the 12 steps in an orthodox manner, and doing the things that traditional addicts in AA or SA do...then I have to say this:

For the flabazzilionth time, I do not think that every addicts needs the 12 steps! Never said that, never thought that. I do not even think that most addicts need it!

That having been said, I cannot imagine being where I am today (which is not very far, but far enough for today) without having worked the 12 steps in order, orthodoxly, with in-person SA meetings, a sponsor, recovery relationships that are fully open and fearless, and sponsees, the whole shebang. It's awesome - for me and many others I have met and know.

But that understanding of recovery is not what I mean when I talk of 'recovery', in general and it is not what I'm thinking of when I lean on guys I meet who are considering getting out of the mess they are in.

All I wish for them and all addicts (Jew, goy, frum, not frum, whatever), is: to find an honest relationship of their very own with G-d. That's it. True integrity. That is what the entire 12 steps boils down to, and nothing else. As Bill wrote: "Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps..." That is the central result, the goal of this whole mess.

But for liars like us (and all frum masturbaters are professional liars, of course) to gain that true integrity (a real relationship of your very own with G-d), we usually need to open up to other reeal live humans who know us. (I explained this inyan more in the Captain Kirk post, if you are bored enough to read it.) Integrity with G-d (the only true integrity there really is) cannot come for liars, just 'from within'. We are integrity cripples. Behavior patterns of lying, pretending, and hiding die very slowly. I believe that for most people (maybe not for MT, granted! Seriously!) self-deception is unstoppable until deceiving other people stops first. So opening up to other safe people who know us and see us is usually a must. Otherwise it is not really real. And I am not just referring to sexual and lust issues, but also to opening up all about our attitudes, feelings, and behavior in general.

The 12 steps and the 12 steps fellowships (like AA and SA) happen to have a lot of good tools to foster this kind of work. But there are other ways to do it, other venues. But I do not believe for a second that 'doing it alone' is one of them. Alone is how we got here and alone is certainly how we stay here. Some will need other addicts to meet with, and some will be able to find non-addicts to meet with - as long as they can open up fully and get really real, they may be fine. And yes - there may be some who will actually be the exception and will be able to get better just by posting on GYE - and even under a fake name! Strange things happen.

One last digression:

Many guys insist they could never, ever open up to their wives about these secrets, yes. But some guys have told me that the only people they can open up to are their wives! Some of those are right, and do well. But some don;t get better at all - I fear the reason those guys 'can only open up to their wives' is sadly this:

others can abandon them, but their wives are emotionally stuck! They now bear the same dirt, the same shame. How can they be exposed as having pervert husband in front of all their friends and the community?! The wayward guy knows she is the one person who will not betray his dirty secrets - because they are also hers now! So the guy opens up to her, the hapless, helpless victim of shame. Sometimes his gamble is right. But sometimes he turns out to be dead wrong. I know many frum women who go through that hell, grow up, and get help for themselves even though their husbands don't get into any recovery at all! These wives (b"H) come to see they cannot control or fix their husbands (and never could) - so they either get a shrink or other counsel, join S-Anon, or leave their husbands (at least for a while).

How did I get so side-tracked!?

Chachaman wrote:


No, I cannot, chaver. I think that helping people perhaps get sober is far more important than whatever reason you may have for me being less explicit. And I respect you as a friend (at least a virtual one !). I also believe that sugar-coating is exactly what we all do in order to maintain just enough self-respect so that we can continue the same lifestyle of meshigineh 'struggling' and losing.

So why would I want to be part of the problem?

I respect you and what you do here, a lot, Chachaman. And much of what I wrote may not apply to you. I recognize that not all guys here are as bad as some others here. So let's make a deal. The last time I checked, the average porn-using frum guy here was not just looking at girl-scout cookie ads. When most of us here look at our porn or use fantasy in our heads, it's about terrible, embarrassing stuff: naked people having sex, plain and poshut - and worse. We are looking at the most explicit stuff there is. So I need to be explicit about recovery, too.

As soon as you can show me that 'impropriety' is not occurring over and over at the hands of us frummies here while we are at our computers going from image to image of schmutz, or while we are desperately masturbating ourselves to explicit fantasy, I will gladly tone down my descriptions of what our lusting is really all about. And I mean that seriously, respectfully, and as a real friend.

Sincerely,

Dov

P.S. So many guys say they 'opened up' to their Rabbi or a friend about this issue, or that they "pray to Hashem for help" for it, etc. Yet many are not telling the truth - for they are not explicit about it enough to give forth an honest picture of what's really going on with them!

For example, they say, "I was nichshol, rebbi, in shmiras eynayim and come lidei zera levatola, often b'ratzon....I am so ashamed." Or they say such things in sh'moneh esrei at Sh'ma koleinu or S'lach lonu...as if Hashem has time for such meaningless talk.

Here we were last night, sitting and chatting with some strange girl and using explicit and vulgar language - because it's expressing ourselves and our real desires (at the time)...but when it comes to talking with Yedid nafsheinu the Ribono shel Olam, we are indirect? All of a sudden makpid on nivul peh?! And no, I am not talking about using the F-word in davening at all! That's just cursing, and totally different than what I am referring to. No, I am not saying 'two wrongs make a right' - and I am not advocating the describing of sexual fantasies to Hashem or others in lurid detail. But there is a big difference between frivolous detail that is meant to excite - and between blunt, painful honesty that I can cry about. It's just the truth. It hurts to expose the truth - so it helps. Cuz it is the change that it hurting so much, not the shame!

So I use the phrase 'sex with my wife' in sh'moneh esrei when I am talking to Him about concerns I have with sex with my wife. I use the word 'masturbation' when I am talking to Him about masturbation, and if I was struggling with the desire to look at a certain woman's chest, I say to Him in Sh'emoneh esrei those exact words. He knows it all - He won't faint ! I see no reason to pretend I am really about bechinos of klipos, or something. He may see it that way, but it's none of my business. He wants my heart - Rachmonoh liba bo'ei. Your heart si your real heart...not what your heart 'should' be.

Isn't Emess the only avodah sh'bleiv there really is?

So I believe that anyone who says considerations of 'lashon nekiyah' gets in the way of being factual and honest, has a very different experience and understanding of tefiloh than I do. And such tefiloh would be useless to me now, just as it was all those years that I was busy masturbating myself in yeshivah and davening with 'propriety'.

But if it is working for you, that's great. And I mean it.

(Boy, another megillah! )

Dear Georgenuevenuevenueve (and maybe Guy, too),

Working on the cause of your pain. Isn't that a thing you (and Guy) have been doing for quite some time already? I believe with my whole heart that what you describe is a valiant search for the Holy Grail...and it goes on forever, taking on a life of it's own. A run towards finding myself that never ends, for it is really AWAY from ourselves, in disguise.

And why should that be so? Maybe because:

The searcher has not yet accepted the 'sudden', inconvenient fact that using his drug has been screwing up his mind, his relations with others, and his relationship with his own G-d, for years and years...and that he will not stop using his drug no matter how much 'blessed insight' he compiles. I suggest this is true based on my own experience and from what I keep seeing and hearing from guys again and again: people have an all-consuming desire to figure this thing out while still holding onto the option of using their drug. "I will only really let go of (surrender up) my right or option to have sex with myself once you fix this," we all say. And we are not evil. We are sincere. We are good people.

Toveil v'sheretz beyado, I call it. The 'tevilah' is: figuring it out so I can free myself, and the 'holding [of] the sheretz' is the fantasy that: no real surrender is necessary - that there is no absolute need for me to to give up my drug beforehand. So many of us go that way simply because we are deathly ashamed and afraid of letting go of our secret - so we need to fix it ourselves, quietly. We assume that is our 'avodas Hashem'.

But my calling for surrender first, taking real actions of opening up and doing whatever it takes to keep to it for today - seems silly to many folks. And as Guy puts it so well: it's basically insulting my intelligence! It recalls our old words: "Na'aseh v'nishma", no?

But there you may say, na'aseh v'nishma makes sense when talking to G-d! But here who are we talking to?! A bunch of addicts sharing their recovery and promising riches?

I will tell you who I think we are usually talking to and bargaining with, here:

Our god. Sweet orgasm. Sweet porn. All the sweet faces and figures we want and so deeply believe in our guts that we can't survive without..."you mean never again!? What? Are you insane? I can't possibly live without this stuff. It's what's beautiful and sweet about life. Life-giving. Sha'ashu'ai!" Do we not believe this at least as much as any of the Ani Ma'amins?

I am dead serious. We follow the sweetness of the image of the hot lady we see on the computer, at the supermarket, at shul, in the bed, wherever...because we are tied to it like dogs. We worship it and love it. Yep, it's love. It's the real deveikus - for us, no matter how frum we are nor how much we sincerely also cry at L'cho Dodi every Friday night. They co-exist. Ah, the miracle of the frum porn addict.

How could we ever seriously give it up even just for today? So we do not...even if we stop for a while.

Yes, sure - we can hold back for today, or for 10 days or whatever...but to honestly give it up even just for today? That's an entirely new ball-game. Guys here generally do not do that. Rather, they dig in, take a deep breath, misread "one day at a time", and think that holding their breath for a while is 'sobriety'. It isn't. Anyone can hold his or her breath for a while. But it's not much use cuz eventually you gotta breathe, no? It's just a matter of time. Anyone here interested in seeing how long we can hold our breath for and making a contest of it and call it 'chizzuk'? Not me.

I'll take giving it up for just today over that, anyday!

Do you understand me here, George (and Guy)? Or is this just gibberish? I'm pouring out my heart here.

Therapy and doing some real work to get free of some of the deep things that you are in real pain about will definitely help you a lot! Most of us probably need that, regardless. But if you are like many of us, the gift of therapy or pf figuring it out will not do us much good, if any, unless you and I surrender the right to lusting and are abstinent from it (our drug of choice) during that process.

Not a convenient suggestion, I know.

The self-honesty that Guy and George are sharing here with us is so rare, so precious!

I respectfully suggest that Guy is just too angry at the G-d he calls Hashem and demands Hashem to answer for His sins first . And I just as respectfully suggest that George just needs to remain in religious or intellectual control of the situation and understand it and know that he has gotten past the real pains he has before he takes what feels like an abysmal leap. These things may be a problem.

I am suggesting that neither approach has hachno'oh. And the 1st step of the 12 steps - the only one that has anything directly to do with not drinking/lusting+masturbating ourselves, is only one thing: hachno'oh to the truth about ourselves and agreeing to the implications of it. Hachno'oh is a different way of living for most of us...OK, for all of us.

"What are you talking about Hachno'oh for?," one may ask. "we have Hachno'oh aplenty, that's not our real problem at all."

Maybe...but Hachno'oh to whom? Well, when was the last time we were machniyah ourselves to the god we really worship (with our zippers down or our eyes peeled to follow the best naked people on the screen, again)? It has not been very long ago, maybe.

That god, I know very, very well, and could still serve it again with the hachno'oh I discovered as a wide-eyed 12 year old. I am an addict. That's what we do: switch gods at need. But I need a miracle today cuz I am willing to do anything to stay sober today and keep this great life and keep this G-d I found - and not all my own power nor all my own seichel will give it to me. Kinda sad, but true - still true. It's humility or humiliation. Perhaps that is what Rebbe Nachman meant when he used to say, "ader a nisayon, ader a bizayon."

Is this acceptance a bit insulting to myself? Maybe - but so is idiotically and desperately masturbating myself to orgasm again! A man in a suit and a beard, driven beyond all recall to faithfully and desperately do what he learned as a 12 year old. I find my drooling and masturbation very demeaning and insulting to myself...not much release of anger or much gaining respectability , there! I figure it is all about which kind of bozo do I want to be. A bozo on the sober bus, or a bozo on the same 'sexually enlightened' bus I have been riding since I was 12?

OK, how far has all that gotten us, so far?

I suggest to Guy and George (sounds like a rock band of the late 80's) that none of these issues you describe are new. They are probably your old buddies. So I think that going about it the 'angry' (Guy) or 'respectable' (George) way is just retrying the same tools you have been using till now. I am stubborn, too! You will surely get the same results you have been getting until now. GYE will not save you there, and neither will G-d (and not even the play-god will, apparently, or you would not be here searching for help in the first place! ). Both of you have been 'there and back again' so many times before already! So have I. Where does that get us? Same place it gets most of us: back on our knees masturbating and then having that old 'clarity' again, that painful 'clarity' of "Oooh, this time I really have to stop!", and pretending we have it all figured out, or need to. No?

Those feelings and that old game are just a crock.

Hatzlocha!!

A Rebbe of mine, who was a great gadol b'yisrael (and my mesader kiddushin) told us in a shmuz that being in Yeshiva is all about self-development, improving your learning ability and your knowledge, your quality of kiyum hamitzvos, learning how to be a real y'rei Shomayim, and doing Teshuva.

In other words, it's basically a self-centered endeavor. Right? He didn't say it's bad, mind you, just that it is self-centered, because it has to be.

Even working on your anivus is basically a self-centered activity (all Novardok jokes aside)... but what else are we to do? The job needs to get done somehow! "im ein ani li mi li"!

Now it seems to me that for a normal person, the "system" should work just fine. But just about every addict that I have met is a "self-absorbed" person, and that is the root of their problem. Therefore, I think that the Yeshivishe system - which I would not replace for anything - has an inherent problem for addicts. It stokes the flames of self-absorption and self-centeredness tremendously, by telling us that these are wonderful things. Not being selfish, but being basically totally self-centered and self-absorbed.(emphasis mine - gibbor)

So while the points being raised in this thread make for interesting moral, mental, and Torah hashkofa exercises, the elephant in the room is: When will you turn from being all wrapped up in what you need and want, and open yourself up to making your main focus in all your avodah to become the man thatyour future wife will need and want?

All the great gems that the folks here have dropped for us will likely remain useless tools, as long as they are all about "finally" satisfying ourselves. Your context is far more important than your facts or knowledge. And context is real hard to measure. Only Hashem, and you - in your own heart - can tell. It's what the Shulchan Aruch is referring to when it says "kol ma'asecha yihi'yu l'Shem Shomayim". And that mainly means not l'shem us. Simple.
And it's what addicts call the Third Step.
("We made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him").

Once we get that right, what concerns us will change to matters that really have a solution.

Hatzlocha!