My Erev Shabbos update: 68 clean days are now complete!  It is difficult for me to believe that I have gone this long without giving in to the Y"H.

On the down side, I am still fairly sick.  My wife told me that I am not walking anywhere this Shabbos, I can just daven at home.  I just said "Yes ma'am."  I would lose the argument and I really feel physically weak anyway.  Interestingly, the sickness has not led to any significant struggle with a desire to m*****, for which I am very thankful.

On the learning instead of TV watching front I am off to a pretty good start.  I wasn't even in the room with the TV for most of yesterday evening (except for a brief nap).  I went over the parshah with Rashi last night.  I am hoping to get one of Artscroll's pocket sized Mishnah sets to facilitate my learning instead of TV watching goal.  I have a birthday coming up soon, so I should have an extra good excuse to spend the money. 

At any rate, a Good Shabbos to all.

Hi Ben,

Congrats on your 68 day accomplishment.  yihe ratzon that this noble step should turn into a lifetime of sobriety.

Your learning instead of watching TV is a truly noble goal.  Is there any way to get rid of your TV completely?

Wishing you all the best!

At least for the time being, getting rid of the TV would create a Shalom Bayis problem.  I have enough other issues going on without opening that can of worms.  I hope that over time, as I cut my TV watching, the rest of the family might be persuaded by my actions.

Ben, it's after midnight on Motzai Shabbos, so it's March 1, and that makes it 70 days for you!! Congrats on reaching Level 6 on the chart.
Only 1 more level and you go on the "Wall of Honor" chart with the greatest Tzadikim :D

I hope you feel better!

We just made March 1st in this part of the world so now it's official, 70 clean days.  If you had told me I was going to make this far back during Chanukah, I would have thought you were nuts.  Instead, here I am, feeling much better about myself than I have in a long time.  Onward and upward!

On the other note, I am getting better, but I have a really nasty bout of laryngitis right now.  My voice is pretty much a whisper, whch made for an interesting kiddush....

73 clean days completed!  That number seems like so much, and yet I am so conscious of how far I have to go.  From here, I can see that 90 days will be just a beginning; the war will have many more battles on many more fields.  Of course, today there is just today, and that is a big enough battle by itself.  It has been a while since I've experienced any overwhelming urges, B"H.

I'm finally starting to rise up out of the illness that knocked me for a loop for the last week and a half.  My voice still isn't back, but I generally feel better otherwise.  I purchased an Artscroll Mishnah set and it should arrive today.  I will now have more tools for my effort to increase in my Torah learning.

I have more to write, but time is pressing me, so I'll have to come back to it later.

You're magnificent!!! Everyone should learn from you! Keep going higher and higher!!!

I keep meaning to post, but always find myself too busy; and I really don't spend much time on the web at home.  As of this morning I am 75 days clean, almost another week done!

I've been going through a very difficult time that I've just snapped out of.  As I've noted before, I'm very prone to depression.  My secular birthday was this past Wednesday and the days leading up to it were very difficult.  I've had a lot of struggles in the past year and a lot of failures.  Further, my wife and children have an expectation that we will relocate this year which will require me to get a new job.  I am not at all confident that, in the current economic climate, this is doable.  But when I bring up any possibility that we may have to stay where we are, it is the beginning of a fight.  We only relocated to our current town last year, and the reaction of my family was simply awful.  We were very close to divorcing over it.  I agreed to try to move us back to the town we came from, but this was before the economy was in a shambles.  Frankly, I'm terrified of what will happen if I can't find a job in the old town.  Things were bad enough through the High Holidays that I spent Yom Kippur asking Hashem for a din that I should die this year, so scared was I to continuing facing the pressure and the anger.  My birthday basically is at the halfway point of the year, so the depression was very strong for a while.  I haven't solved any problems, but the depression largely passed with the passage of my secular birthday.

What occurred to me Erev Channukah, was that if I was going to pass this year, would I really want to pass with this blemish on my neshama?  Now I have no idea whether or not Hashem will take me this year.  Most of the time I really don't want to go yet.  But whether it is this year or in 78 years, I want to go with the blemish of being p'gam habris cleansed from my neshama.  [btw, just to answer the question that is lurking out there in someone's mind, I am not suicidal; if I was I wouldn't have asked Hashem to take care of it since He can always answer "no"]

Still think everyone should learn from me, Battleworn?  I rarely think so, except as a negative example.

Wow, 75 days! Chart updated!

Ben, read reply #4 on this thread.

So you see, you are not the only one who wished he would die. But look at yaakov today! He is a flame of Kedusha and determination. Look what levels he is reaching now!
So don't feel bad you asked Hashem on Yom-Kippur to die. Hashem kept yaakov from jumping off the building time and time again, because he knew how much Yaakov could achieve on day. And Hashem knows how much you can achieve as well, and he won't let you die.

An 80 year old man once came to the Kalisker Rebbe (Talmid of the Magid of Mezritch) and told him he wants to die already, he has nothing to live for. The Kalisker asked him if he puts on Teffilin. The man answered that he does. The Kalisker then told him: "It is worth it for a man to come down to this world and suffer for 80 years, just to merit putting on Teffilin ONE time! And you want to die???"

I tell you Ben, what you are achieving in Shmiras Habris (75 days clean!!) is worth 100 years of suffering! One day in the World-to-Come you will see how precious every moment that you held back was, and how much infinite reward you are getting for that, as well as for every Mitzva you do.

So Rejoice!

That is an amazing letter.  While all the detail are obviously not the same, there is enough similarity that I could see a lot of me in YKV's own experience.  It's encouraging to be reminded every now and again that I'm not the only one who's done these things, who's worked hard to bury the evidence.... 

Shabbos was helpful for me.  When I got to shul before Shacharis, I caught the last 10 minutes or so of a Chassidus shiur; they were discussing the nature of the Y"H.  I can't remember a lot of it right now, except that it was very informative of my own experiences.  I am going to try find out what work they work reading so I can get it for myself.

The other good part of Shabbos was that I spent some time reading Garden of Emunah.  I'm finding it very challenging in terms of pushing me to grow a lot.  Like I said, I am on my way up out of the doldrums.  Being sick contributed a lot to my depressive state, so my return to regular minyans has been important to my emotional state.  Shabbos is especially important I find, in terms of a restoration spiritually and emotionally.

Like a fish in water, a Jewish soul becomes alive when immersed in the Shul, with other Yidden, and in Torah! And then the need for other stimulation is lessened!

Well, I have now completed 80 clean days as of last night.  Purim went well.  I didn't get drunk; I had about 2 and a half glasses of wine and felt a pretty strong buzz, so called it quits on the alcohol.  I am a fairly quiet and reserved kind of person, so I didn't last real long at the Purim party I went to last night.  It was fun for a while, but I decided to leave before the craziness got to me.

Only 10 days to go till the 90 day milestone.  Only 9 days till my 42nd birthday by the Jewish calendar.  I think reaching 90 clean days would be an excellent way to celebrate my birthday (23rd of Adar).

An excellent way to celebrate the Birthday indeed! (in - deed!)

Also Ano hit 90 on his 20th Jewish B-day!

Hashem gives these signs to us sometimes, to show us how much he's proud of us!

Take one day at a time.
Hatslachah Rabbah

Well, I completed 85 clean days yesterday.  There have been struggles, and some have been more intense than they have been for a while.  Like many of us here, my imagination is sometimes too good for my own good.  I tend to believe that I have not been as careful guarding my eyes in public as I should be.  Still I am hanging in there and avoiding m*******, and I am fighting the thoughts and imagination when they turn to improper things. 

As I am approaching the 90 day mark, I have been thinking a lot on what a number of people here have been saying, that the battle is not about the milestones.  Rather the battle is fought one day at a time regardless of how many days of success one has had in a row.  I have been dwelling on this as I will hopefully be at a point shortly where the milestones are much further apart.  The past is just that, it is past.  There is nothing I can do to change it.  Tomorrow has not yet come, all I have is today and its' battles.  But by fighting and winning battles today, I will be stronger for tomorrow's battles.

In the meantime, I am building up in other ways.  My Torah study is becoming much more regular, and G-d willing, that will strengthen me in the fight against the Y"H as well.