I an a new comer to this site. I look at this site for encouragement and excitement (in my journey), and for the most part I find it. I even print out the coins and keep them in my wallet! I have been clean for 3 days now and been addicted for 15 years. As I was looking at the 90 days chart, I see people with 100, 200, and 300 days streaks that are now back at 3 days...

If it happened to them, why couldn't it happen to me?


And another thing - has anyone ever felt that reading so much about it, posting about it, chatting about it, and checking your own 90 days chart is ACTUALLY A TRIGGER?!?!

I agree with both your points, but it doesn't make the idea of giving up less appealing. I need to lose this habit and I don't actually really care if I relapse as it's a small price to pay in comparison to the productivity that I achieve when not viewing.

Yes, reviewing old habits, and many other things to do with this is often a trigger for me, too.

Patience. Patience. Recovery takes time. Most of those guys have probably been around for quite a while. Growing is a slow process and occurs one day at a time. There is nothing really amazing special about having so many days besides for the fact that its 100/300/4000 days living life not living lust. You can start living life today and then the days will come. Once i put the days on my back burner as in it wasn't my main purpose of recovery, i got more and more days. Whoah! Look at that!

Check out the GYE Handbook and Skep's tips

When I read your post I felt like it was someone reading my mind. Yes, it can be very discouraging to see what everyone else has accomplished- but who knows how long it took them to reach that point. The 90 day chart doesn't show how many times they fell. Is it discouraging to make it to 100 and then fall? Probably, but so what? It's also discouraging to fall after 12 hours. Is it worth it? FOR SURE!!! Every second we work on ourselves and just TRY to become better people brings us infinite s'char in olam haba. The chart is just to show people tangible results. Not everyone uses it, but many find that it does help them.
Regarding posting, it depends. Sometimes it can be a trigger for me to read what other people are going through, but for the most part it's a place for me to air my thoughts to other people with similar issues. Personally, my recovery only truly began when I started to post.

I'm one of those guys with the 300 (395 to be exact) streak that's at about six days right now. So in answer to your question




A: Of course it can happen to you.

Of course, it could also not happen to you. But who cares? We have a goal, we want to be clean. We all have at least one reason for it, most of us probably have many. So just because it can happen, maybe even very likely happen, or even did happen, isn't the remotest reason not to try to stop right now.

I personally don't think that it has to happen, it takes a lot of stupidity to fall after a very long streak. (did I just insult myself?) After a long streak it gets much easier and you're already in the habit of being clean. In addition to that, after a long while of being clean you get a taste of what life without it is about and that itself is a boost to help you get up again.

I think that seeing people like me on the bottom of the chart can be discouraging, and disappointing, but it also serves a purpose. First of all it serves as a lesson to remember when you Be"h get on top of the list that you aren't invincible (Hey inna, try to remember that next time k?), also I think that seeing someone with a long streak at a few days can be a big chizzuk. If a guy with such a long streak fell, yet he still thinks it's worth giving it a shot, then how can anyone say it isn't?

Also to answer your question about gye being a trigger, I think that you're right. Some content here can definitely trigger me, and there were times that I came here for that purpose (when I didn't want to fall, buuuut).

However it's a risk that's outweighed by the benefit for us that felt it necessary to join the site in the first place. If you feel yourself getting triggered by a post then stop reading it.

I also think that while there is truth to the site being triggering sometimes, this argument is mostly used to get us off gye when we should be on it.