So I decided to start this log to keep track of where I am holding in my new goal of 90 clean days. I've had a tough but rewarding time since I've started and thought my sharing how I'm doing could help others in the same boat as myself. Meanwhile, everyone's feedback can definitely help me. I figured I'd wait about a week in  before starting to post. I started writing this and just checked - Im only up to 2 days!!  :'( :'( My previous best is 75 so I definitely got a long way to go.

But the  "advantage" of having started and then fallen so many times is that I know how difficult these first few days are. Otherwise I don't know how I wouldve lasted until now. But this time is gonna be different!! I got all the GYE tools and tips -   and this whole awesome community right here so I'm banking on that to help me make it!!

Day 1 was surprisingly easy but Day 2 was a perfect example of where I would have fallen before finding this website.  Throughout the day, from doing work to lying in bed my whole body was just screaming for release. There were a few times it got so bad I couldn't focus at all anymore -  I really felt like I was drugged.

And thats when my good old friend (the y"h) started speaking -

"Come on, you aren't even 2 full days in. You picked a bad time to start being clean - your body can't physically do it right now. Its not any fault of your own. You can start clean tomorrow."

"Look at what this staying clean is doing to you. Hashem knows you can't fight this. This is obviously a test you weren't meant to pass."

"Look at yourself. You're a wreck. You know the Possuk says V'chai Bo'hem. Hashem wants you to live a normal and enjoyable  life - not to be in pain like this. "

This is the point that I have always fallen before. I am a fighter and I always will be. Its just my nature. But I've always lost the fight when the lust gets this bad - when I can't focus or get anything done. And the only way is just to give in to my taaivos "just one last time".

So I did something I have never done before and it actually worked!! When I first read the GYE handbooks  and joined the forum I saw this strategy and said "Lame. Not for me.  Giving up and admitting you're too weak to fight? That's for wimps. Nothing can control anyone so much that they can't beat it."  But there were a few times yesterday that I was literally tearing out my hair to stop myself from sinning. So what did I do?

I just closed my eyes and said "Hashem, I can't do this on my own any more. You know that I have tried fighting in these type of situations and lost time and time again. Please! I need You to help me through this."

I did this at the  four or five times during the day when my taaivos felt unbeatable and Hashem was really there for me!!
Its funny because I am not the type of person that "talks" to Hashem outside of davening. Interestingly, I don't think I ever would have reached that level of feeling close to Hashem if it wasn't for reaching that low level of having nowhere else to turn.

And this is after 72 hours clean!!

Onwards Day 3!!  - going on 90

GEVALDIGGGGGG IN ALL COLORS!!!!

Don't worry, the first 90 days are the hardest.

Just kidding!

It does get easier, as you get out of the habit of falling.  

But then there are those days that you feel like climbing the wall and ripping out your hair in frustration.

But you just got to keep on trucking.

Luria wrote on 26 Oct 2009 19:30:


Amazing!
you figured out the whole secret
we cant do this by ourselves.
we have to let go and let G-d do what He does best.
everything!
im very impressed
keep up the great work Luria!

-uri

Beautiful! This should go into a chizuk e-mail :-)

Amazing. Thanks for the chizuk and for reminding me I can't do it alone.

guardureyes wrote on 26 Oct 2009 21:24:


While I was reading that superbly written post, I said to myself "aha another one for the Chizuk emails"

which btw holy Luria, it is the ultimate compliment on this forum when Rabeinu Guard "piliagrizes" a post and puts it into one of his  awesome chizuk emails!!!

Oops!  I forgot to give u a proper Shalom Aliechem!

welcome welcome holy warrior,

Your courage, encourages us all

Keep sharing your victories, u have a gift of expressing yourself very well!

Fiery love to a fellow warrior

Noorah

Oh stop it you guys...oh no don't make me blush. Oh no, no here it comes -  :-[  darn

Seriously speaking though, I've gottten a tremendous amount of chizuk from a lot of the posts on this forum. I'm really in awe of so many of the people on this forum  - I'm really happy that I can give something useful back.

I didnt even know about these chizuk emails before everyone started mentioning them . I think Ill sign up for them - sounds like another great idea.

The chizuk emails are an important tool in this battle for self.

Especially when youve been ACEd -

A another
C chizuk
E email
:D

You really are adding to the forum. Keep it coming!

So yesterday was overall was a good day with only one rough spot.

I was standing in line in a store with a very pretty woman ahead of me. I was very careful with my eyes but I heard her on the phone making some neutral comment - something involving her going to a chiropractor and my imagination just started going haywire with all sorts of thoughts that I've been working to keep out. (I know we should avoid putting "lust triggers" in our posts  but I'm assuming something this pareve does not trigger most of you guys -  although it sure as heck got me going so I could be very wrong.)

I've been re-reading and using the tips on this site and they've helped me tremendously thus far, but I'm wondering - is there any strategy to stop these things from triggering me altogether. Obviously, I am a human being and certain situations can make unclean thoughts arise in anyone's mind. But  an innocent comment like that!!!  

Does there come a time when little things like that will not trigger me - or at least, just affect me like they do an average guy (though sadly I don't have a clue what goes through most people's minds in such cirumstances). For example, I am only on  day 4 now, so situations such as the one I described cause me quite the struggle - but surely some time in the distant future, after working on myself for so very very  long, (e.g Day 6 ), will I be spared having to struggle to keep my thoughts clean if a similar situation arises?

In short, what I am wondering is the following - Once someone stays clean for a while, do their actual lusts subside significantly, or do they still have that innner struggle constantly occuring? Any thoughts?

If you didn't know about the Chizuk e-mails, you must not have gotten the official welcoming letter on the forum yet... That's strange because we welcomed you already on October 12 over here (you must have forgotten)... Well, let's try again!  :D

Dear Luria,

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...

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.

Make sure to read them, they contain a wealth of information on beating this addiction! And I'd love to hear your feedback on them...

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!

Did you get today's Chizuk e-mail (#615?)... I quoted your story! if you didn't get it, I'll forward it to you...

This is a great question, I'd love to hear what the Forum Masters have to say about this.  From my experience I think the answer is both good news and bad news ("bad" should be read as "opportunity for growth").  At first, the answer is a YES.  After a decent clean period (this can vary for each person, we can use 90 days since it's the initial target on GYE) lust subsides significantly.  You've broken the chain of addiction - meaning you should have at least a brief moment to actually DECIDE whether to act out rather than simply acting out WITH NO CHOICE because that is the nature of addiction.  This is priceless - it is literally the difference between life and death.  However the goal of life is not just to cheat death so this is not the end.  After the short term challenge comes the long term one.  Triggers unfortunately do not vanish, they pop up with alarming regularity.  You're given the ability to choose and you are presented with plenty of opportunities to exercise that ability.  Each tiny positive choice chips away at the Y"H and over a long period of time, triggers will become less frequent as well.  However this is the LONG TERM (read: lifetime).  In between there are many ups and downs, even if the overall trend is up.

I quote from today's Chizuk e-mail (from the SA white-book):

So the realization slowly dawns that we may always be subject to temptation and powerless over lust. We come to see that it's all right to be tempted and feel absolutely powerless over it as long as we can get the power to overcome. The fear of our vulnerability gradually diminishes as we stay sober and work the Steps. We can look forward to the time when the obsession - not temptations - will be gone.

And this article was linked in the Chizuk e-mail two day's ago...

See also these FAQ pages:
www.guardureyes.com/GUE/FAQ/FAQ40.asp
www.guardureyes.com/GUE/FAQ/FAQ21.asp

Hope some of this helps...

aaron4, thanks for the answer!! The answers from your own experience are similar to the links that Reb Guard posted here deal with that question. Definitely check them out!

Reb Guard, thank you for the fantastic links. Today's chizuk e-mail was the first one I got. It is really good (not only the Personal Victory of the Day   ).
Lol, I did get the official welcome but it is so jam packed that I started reading the handbooks right away,  said I'd go back to the chizuk emails, and promptly forgot about them. But I am honored to have the zchus of two official welcomes to this holy forum!

The chizuk email was very good but the part quoting from the White Book is pure gold!! It really felt like someone was reading my thoughts and analyzing my feelings. A little scary, to be honest!!

I've always enjoyed and had a knack for analyzing and understanding how people behave and function. I occasionally browse through some of these self-help books, usually in areas that I have never struggled in or are not relevant to me (e.g parenting) and am often not  impressed. I find that much of what is written is fairly obvious ; I feel that given a few years of experience,  I could have written the book. But then every once in a while, I find an author who just "gets it"; who really understands how people work.

A couple of months ago, I was  browsing through a book by Rav Twerski and was completely blown away. Not only did he "get it", but much more than that -  I really felt like he was talking directly to me. I thought this was strange as it was on a topic not relevant to me at all - addiction... (cue eerie music here) but I never really gave much thought to it ( I'm starting to think I  understand why  ). I got practically the exact same feeling reading theThe SA book. It is excellent and should be mandatory reading for anyone struggling with this addiction.

There is a step that I should have taken a while ago in my battle, but I have been pushing it off - the quote from the  SA book made me realize that I've got to take that step.

Usually we find that our initial surrender was incomplete and we begin to see some loose ends.  We discover some rain checks secretly stashed against future need.  Like alcoholics hiding their bottles.  
               
"It's her key; I can't throw that away."
"I'll keep his phone number; I may be able to help him sometime."
"I'll get rid of the magazines later..."

I actually worked up the courage today to call someone about it and hopefully by tonight it will be done. One more loose end tied up!! I'll let you know!!