With immense gratitude to Hashem, I would like to announce that today on the hebrew calendar(11 shevat) marks:
ONE YEAR OF SOBRIETY
AS many of you already know, my first day began at Rav Noach Weinber's Levaya, which is why I am using the hebrew date as my "sobriety birthday". B"H, I have learned and grown a lot in the past year and I am happy to have this addiction behind me. The funny thing is that I remember last year thinking how excited I will be on after hitting one year. But the truth is that sobriety is so normal that it is a bit hard to relate to the fact that I was once an addict. B"H, I continue to work on myself in all areas of avodas Hashem but specifically midas yesod I put lots of emphasis on. I continue to grow in shemiras eynaiym, which is also so second nature at this point. But I still work on it and address it. I read the sefer "V'haer eyneynu", which is an excellent sefer OK, the hour is late for me.
I wish all my chaveirim here on GYE lots of hatzlacha and siyata d'shmaya. May HKBH open your eyes to your paths of recovery and may you have the strength and courage to travel on the journey that he set forth for you. Feel free to contact me by email if you think I could be of any assistance to you.
I will end by including a post I wrote on Aish.com, which Guard included in yesterday's email:
"My first exposure to porn came at age 10. My addictive behavior picked up speed at age 12. When I was 16, I had a spiritual awakening and made a conscious decision to stop. However, despite all my efforts, my addiction grew and grew as it threatened my job, my family and ate away my spirituality. At the beginning of Feb '09, I was introduced to the guardyoureyes.org website. But I still could not get courage to pick myself up and beat my addiction. However, a few days later, Rav Noach Weinberg zt"l (Rosh Yeshiva of Aish) passed away. I attended his funeral and something magical happened that day, as I listened to all the eulogies. All of a sudden I felt a sense of strength. I felt a sense of meaning. I felt a sense of believing in myself that I could do what G-d wants me to do. For the first time in a long time, I felt that I could rid myself of this addiction if I only wanted to and asked Hashem for help. That day marks my first day of sobriety. From that day forward, I remained clean of this destructive behavior as I learned to rebuild my life using the tools on the guardyoureyes.org website."
