Thank you for that response. It makes me feel encouraged that what I wrote actually helped someone.
About what you said about the limitations of a forum, and it's function as a stepping-stone for real life opening up - do you mean that the main function of the forum is in fact to start opening up to others regarding those things about ourselves that we're not so proud of?
Either way, that sounds like a good idea.
I was just reading the GYE handbook, I'm up to the part that begins discussing the 12 steps. The first step is admitting that I am powerless in the face of my lust addiction. I would love to do that. I would love to open myself up to Hashem and say, "Hashem, it's all just a farce. I'm no one, I have no power, everything I have is from you, please take me back into your arms and support me." I would love to let go of the painful prison of gaava, of self.
On the other hand, I feel afraid. I feel afraid that admitting powerlessness is a cop-out. Something that I can use in the future as an excuse to act out. Is this a real concern? Please veteran steppers, share your experience and wisdom.
Also, how do I know if I've admitted powerlessness? Is it enough to just say the words? (Of course not.) How do I achieve a recognition of powerlessness?
Anyway, here goes. I am powerless in the face of my addiction. When an opportunity for looking at porn arises, I am totally in danger. There's nothing that I can focus on that is sure to stop me. I am totally at the whim of my yetzer. I am not even guaranteed to try to resist. Even if I just spent hours (literally) meditating on how bad it is, how much it cuts me off from Hashem's Torah, how horrendous the punishments in the next world are sure to be, still, the moment I'm left alone with a computer that has no filter, with no one to catch me (that I can see,) it all goes out the window.
I don't fall b'poal often. But that's just a technicality. It's because I try to make sure that I won't have the opportunity. I don't have the password to my wife's computer. On mine I have webchaver. And recently I have been doing taphsic. But fundamentally, I am always falling. It's just a technicality that I don't.
Anyway, that was my attempt at admitting powerlessness on the forum.
P.S. A closing feeling: The second Beis HaMikdash was destroyed because of sinas chinam. We all know it. The root of sinas chinam is a sense of being separate from each other (Maharal Netzach Yisrael.)
The root of sensing ourselves as separate from each other is sensing ourselves as a self-contained, self-sufficient existence. In other words, gaavah. The more I (and you) can admit my faults, especially when I can admit them to you, the more I can recognize that I am not a self-sufficient entity. And the more I can learn to love my brothers. And the closer we will be to bringing about the rebuilding of the Beis HaMikdash, BV'A.