good for you
keep on posting and don't give up. yes some posts are hard hitters but it is all out of love i've come to realize this and it helped me understand some of the heavyweights here
KUTGW

B'hatlacha 

mggsbms wrote on 15 May 2016 16:25:

One day at a time may be a tool, for some people. For lots of GYE people it may be a powerful gimmick to trick the yetzer hora into leaving me along or something...but for me it is simple and literal. I am alive now and there is no such thing as "many days" or "a bunch of days". This does not mean that I do not plan for tomorrow or for next week. Rather, it simply means that I train myself to do today's job today, and tomorrow's job tomorrow....not any other way.

It's really an entirely different way of living - of being  - for me. In addiction it was ironically all 'in the moment': I could sacrifice many tomorrows for the comforting lust would give me right then...but the lifestyle filled  me with worry about the future, regrets about the past, and terror of getting caught in a lie. Terror of whether I will be satisfied sexually tomorrow - or ever. Worried about how my kids will turn out or if moshiach will chas v'sholom come before I finally "do Teshuva gemura"...it was very dramatic, very exciting, and very stupid.

Now my emotions come, they wash over me and I stand outside myself observing me having them...and my sponsor helped me see that feelings are not reality, but just feelings. They do not move me into tomorrow, and not into yesterday. They just are. This is how I feel right now. 

Perhaps my daughter will be married in 5 days like you, and there is fear and worry and regret and dissatisfaction, and excitement, and resentment. But all those things are fantasy - just like the naked women I was looking at in the porn, just like the sex scenes playing in my head while I masturbated...not reality. They were there because I needed excitement - or crisis.

Now i am learning to accept G-d's Will as it comes. And by 'G-d's Will' I certainly do not mean 'the mitzvos', and neither does Hashem! G-d's most pervasive and relevant 'Will' is simply how the events of my life are unfolding right now - today. Life on Life's terms, as they say in AA. This is obvious to anyone who really thinks it over. The GR"A calls it the contents of the dot in the 'Beis' in bereishis...the Zohar (and gemora) calls it "istakla b'orayso uboro almo". All of history is in the Torah - not the mitzvos, but what people call 'divrei reshus' is all G-d's Will as somehow expressed in the Torah: how fat you are, how rich or poor you are, if your daughter is happy or smart or not, or if the caterer is nuts or good or how much money you will need to spend, or save, your health and the traffic for all your guests and family the day of the wedding, the photographer being a jerk, someone vomiting on your (geneidigeh) machteinisteh in the mitzva tantz (c"v!...heheh), etc, etc...all factors that will have far more severe and noticeable consequences than what time sof z'man kriyas Shma will be....this is G-d's Will. The ikkar of G-d's Will that we have a horrid time accepting.

It's not about whether we choose to sin or not. It is whether we choose to live with the times - to accept G-d's Will today. Life as it really is....or if we whine our way through it whispering regrets and worries and disappointments all the way through. White-knuckling through life is our big problem, not white-knuckling through sobriety.

I know that once a person works the 12 steps and learns that he or she does not need to white-knuckle through life any more, they will find that staying sober is no problem at all....

And without acceptance of today being more than enough for me to think about, none of this is even touchable.

None of it. 

It's the basis for real living.

Some people may view me as not wanting to accept other people's advice.
But think to yourself
(without posting anything, or quoting my words back to me proving the contrary, please)
do you know anyone who is not willing to accept other people's advice who has:
1. talked with a guy in long-time recovery for hours
2. met with a guy in person who is having long-term success
3. called up and joined in the discussion on a 12-step phone conference
4. talked with his personal Rov about this issue 
5. posted almost daily to a website dedicated to help
6. emailed the founder several times
7. emailed a couple of people often who are sponsor/buddies with long-term success set up here
8. willing to read at least parts of the big book
9. sat down and asked a Rosh Kollel his opinion on this inyan
10. listened to many shiurim on this inyan suggested by this site

I highly doubt it.

"Sometimes you face difficulties, not because of something you are doing WRONG,
but because of something you are doing RIGHT." (still not a perfect quote, but whatever)
That one is a real WINNER.
Thank you!
I had a Rosh HaYeshiva who said that any time we are in the middle of learning
and we get interrupted by something or someone,
it's a simin we were learning well.
The yetzer hara is giving you a haskama that you were learning real Torah,
which it then wanted to interrupt and stop.