Dear "Avraham613",

You are are an advertisement for GYE already, whether you realize it or not, I think. It is impossible to give eitzos on the forum, really. You are still quite a stranger to anybody here, so far. And each person is holding somewhere else! General eitzos are always good, but still, everybody is different...so:

Can you, where you are right now, share a bit more (or a lot more) about yourself here (or elsewhere) and get anything you are hiding about your insides, 'out'? There is no question that the 'details' we hold onto as the most precious secrets, are the greatest poison we possess. And if since using this site has been helping you so far, that's great! Just consider that if you are now having a hard time, this means something. It means that staying in the same tools is not good enough any more for you now. It is the way it always goes. People find something that works for them, but when it stops working, they flop, and are shocked and disappointed.

But how does it make sense that recovery does not grow? When I use porn it always progresses, either in intensity or style - the old schmutz eventually stops doing the trick, and I need a bit 'more' to get the job done.

Recovery is the same, lehavdil. You have grown, sir. That means you have changed. If you are a little different, certainly what you now need is different, as well.

Too often well-meaning people get a bit liberated from the same old porn and shtuyot. They find some relief...and what an awesome mechayeh it is!

But to be so foolish as to think that we are done now? The goyim of AA were gifted with enough humility by Hashem to have discovered long ago, that today's sobriety guarantees NOTHING for me tomorrow. Nothing. There is no real momentum, in the long run. If we do not continue growing up, then we will eventually fall. 100% guaranteed. We can rest on our 'laurels' - for a time. But eventually, we will be made fools of by our compulsion again. Dotage is always a possibility waiting around the corner for us - just as big fools as we were made before we started to grow.

It is actually quite shocking to us. There is no difference between my totally slave-like devotion and trance-like compulsion to search through wickedly shocking porn for hours and hours (or much worse) if I'd do it today vs. what I used to do fifteen years ago. Same pathetic fool. Same sweet, good man. Same powerlessness once I take the first drink.

Posting here is a big step! But what do you aspire to accomplish? The world is actually open up for you, in recovery....it is closed for us when we do what we used to do. Posting here means you are peeling away yet another layer of isolation, of doing it your own way, of going it alone. It was our trip till now -all of us, especially since we are frum. The terrible isolation and shame that a masturbating ben-Torah feels is indescribable to others. This move of yours now, to reach out here, is huge!

Please do not wait around for lust to catch you. You must either continue to grow, or lose. Not grow in yir'as Shomayim - you tried to grow in that before and yet you still ended up in all this trouble. Then you started to open up and and face the truth about yourself and your behavior...and you have 4 months of clean time!

Yet by the same token, running away from lust is not the real answer - a good tool usually, yes. But not the answer. Pretending it is the answer is destructive, cuz it distracts me from the real answer, c"v.

Having desires and feeling compulsions to look at schmutz (or to do whatever it is that you are you are referring to) is to be expected. Humility says to me "what do I expect from a guy like me? It's so great that Hashem has helped me till now....what can I do to get with Him and stay on the right path today?"

Freaking out about it is a big mistake. It is the kind of thinking that got us so screwed up in the first place. ("Oy! How could I ever have such a disgusting desire now?! A guy like me? Clean for four months! I should be far, far beyond such things already! After all :, I only spent ten years staring at porn - with the devotion of 'kriyas Sh'ma'; focused on my fantasies and masturbation - with the focus of shemoneh esrei; and hid things and worked hard for a decade or more already to produce sweet little opportunities to engage in my sexual gratification in the bathroom - with the yichud hama'aseh of the kohen gadol lifnai v'lifnim." It's a nutty expectation, after our record, no? Nutty and stupid.

Nu. Such silly expectations are gayvoh, plain and simple. Poshut not sane. In fact, the 12 steps of the program do not even mention lust (or whatever drug brings us here) after the 1st step! Zip. Cuz the steps and recovery are not at all about controlling lust! They are about learning sanity, period. If we are working on sanity, Hashem takes care of us and we remain free from needing to act out our lust for this day.

Now you tell me: is it sane to expect that I will have no desires and no slips? Me? May Hashem save me from my own gayvoh today, so that I will succeed at honesty rather than more hiding, recovery rather than 'conquest', and giving rather than taking! Amen. 

You are so fortunate so far! It's really beautiful. You are beautiful. Keep doing what works, and please don't get fooled into using the well-intentioned things that got you into the bottomless of your problem in the first place.

Continued Hatzlocha Chabibi!!

Yeah, it's a head-spinner, this "facing that the responsibility is entirely and totally our own - to let go completely and let Hashem run the show for us," thing.

But the funny thing is: It works.

Surrendering the nisayon completely, works for a time. But eventually, if continue to be honest with ourselves (for those who work the steps that comes naturally, whether they intentionally try to be or not), something funny happens:

When we stop analyzing and start doing - writing out our stepwork, sharing the stuff we are told to share with others, and taking the actions that recovering people before us took, things change all over the place! We discover that figuring everything out is just another lust obsession we have. Taking action that is not always easy or comfortable is the way things get better.

Or we can just continue to suffer worse stuff...

As the novi once said to us, "Kir'u levavchem, v'al bigdeichem."

May I also always remember that.

The 12-Steps typically shy away from engaging much in deep analysis of what our deep motivations are in our acting out. To me, such study is likely to be mental 'self pleasuring' (sorry for being crass) and often just another righteous attempt at being independent of G-d, again... just like we were while were acting out. During early recovery I believe it is particularly silly and even toxic.

Over the years, I have seen many people give up recovery completely just to satisfy their desire/need to hang onto (what I believe their pride considers) "their right to do only what they understand," and to be able to take credit for their recovery. 

As far as I am concerned, the various 'self-help routines' promoted out there might work fine for many people - but not for me. So that's what I share.

And I see the work behind the 2nd and 4th steps as very different than such analysis. As Bill wrote in AA (where he introduces the steps), "we discovered that self-knowledge was not the key to recovery" (I paraphrase) - rather, it is self-acceptance and self-honesty that we needed. And the depth of the knowledge is irrelevant. It is the simple acceptance of the unadulterated truth about ourselves that is the only thing that matters, for it helps us give up and become dependent upon Hashem, for a change.

So why the self-analysis in step 2 and 4?

Because it is not analysis and understanding that we are after, it is honesty and facts. While it may seem semantics to some, it works for me, while the old way did not. In the 'good old days' my 24/7 inner occupation was self-understanding - learning maseches "me" - so that I could beat this thing... really so that I could finally control it rather than to be truly rid of it. It was always supposed to have been my buddy. I always craved having the power to use it without it using me. That was my true goal. When you boil it down, I still just wanted to lust - but without paying the price. Like my many attempts at enjoying masturbation - without actually spilling seed, 'chalilah'. Oops! Too far... That way never ever worked. It was all about finally figuring it all out. It was playing a game and lying to myself. It was just another sick part of my addiction, nothing more.

Nowadays, rather than trying to figure everything out, I need to simply face facts about myself and about reality. I am told by recovery people that admitting the truth about myself and my situation will open the door to getting better. I am a sick person getting better.

We need to accept that there are sick values, attitudes, and thought processes that are driving our addictive behaviors. Everyone I have met who is in successful recovery, admits more and more that they are sick - meaning that they come to see that their thinking and attitudes are perverted. Addiction demystified. OK, maybe it must remain a bit mysterious - we do not really gain control over ourselves just because we understand how sick we are. Rather, accepting the true extent and manifestations of our own ill-ness helps us do one precious thing: give up on our own ability to beat it. To rely totally on Hashem to enable us to succeed. Much as we are supposed to in parnossah.

As long as it was just an aveiro that we did, it was a 'pet project' of ours - and we failed miserably. But once it became a disease, we saw that we were the problem, not the girls in skimpy dresses, nor the yetzer hara, nor anything else. We need fixing, and we need it badly.

We had - and have work to do.

Those who just get caught and stay clean out of fear of further humiliation never, ever stay better. Getting humiliated into sobriety does not work, until there is some humility added. Humilty (in hachno'oh to the truth) is the underpinning of the steps.

Dear Yossi

Not sure where you are going with this. Are you bashing GYE? I hope not. We agree that a virtual forum has many weaknesses as a comprehensive soultion (I mean solution ) to true addiction. I feel that insisting upon doing my recovery work b'chashai (secretly) is a tom-fool of a way to expect to outgrow a lifestyle of secret sexual adventure. As Chaza"l put it so nicely, "ein kateigor na'asoh saneigor". For many reasons:

1- Doing it that way puts me just where I want to be: in the driver's seat, defining myself based on my own research and offering myself my own favorite solutions. [Hey, that's exactly what all we frum liars have been doing all these years: trying our guts out to stop by gimmicks and compromises that "seem right for me". Who we are kidding eventually becomes clear...]

2- By never having another real person to face who isn't us, we never end up really having to face ourselves. [Convenient, no? Ask Captain Kirk, he'll tell you all about it. ;)]

3- By never admitting it all to another person, we never really admit it to Hashem. [Say, haven't I been davening shacharis, mincha, and ma'ariv all these years? Doesn't He really know everything about me anyhow? Well, apparently he is not that powerful a personal force in my life if I can still hide in the bathroom on my knees and masturbate to my sweet goddesses of schmutz... Nu.] 

4- By never meeting real people face to face who have been there, done that, and are making it through life without acting out with lust today, I never actually have to face the fact that it really is possible to live without it. We all keep on doing it precisely because we believe in our hearts that we cannot live without it. Period. That's why we keep doing it. [Phew! Saved by the bell again.]

5- By hiding behind a username and never peeping out from behind it to meet and create real relationships with real, sober people, we are doomed to forget. A friend of mine says "this is a disease of forgetting."

Far from bashing GYE - my point is that GYE is great as a 'gateway' medication for addicts. Good things start here. Friendships in person and by phone, and lots of other things become available to those who want them. GYE can also be also a great help to non-addicts who are swimming in desire and despondency. But again, a certain degree of 'coming out' is the price we all must pay for real friendships. One can pretend his 'friend's' name is really "Taikwondo613Help!" for only so long. Eventually it just gets stupid saying the fake name even just in writing, kal v'chomer on the phone. But some folks are just not ready to take that step. It's a kichsak'l self-imposed 'prison', if you ask me.

I did not get clean and sober on GYE. The recovery I have been given so far, Hashem is giving me through SA. IN SA I am a bit anonymous. The frummies I know there from my home town know where I live, and most of my identity, of course. Hey, I just met a guy there three nights ago who I have been davening next to for two years! One might say that only now do we really know each other.

But to all the majority of the members in the SA meetings I attend, nobody knows my whole identity. All they know is that I am a recovering pervert and that my name is Dov. Funny name. Maybe they think it is "Taikwondo613Help!" in Hebrew!  ;D

Anyway, we in SA are mostly anonymous, and it still works. Why? Because we are physically present. That is real enough. 'Virtual' is a bigger limitation than it seems to be.

Agree 100% with everything you wrote, Serene, and see no stirah with anything I wrote.

And here is a three-day long post, by far my longest, and quite preposterous. It was fun, so enjoy!

Al derech avodah, I might be able to explain where the fuzziness lies here. I know too many sweet and good chassidishe/yeshivishe and otherwise frum guys who are sex addicts. They are (as am I) completely unable to stop, and are very confused. The fact that what they are doing is assur makes no difference in their struggle - it could be assur, it could be mutar - either way they do not stop even though it is endangering or even destroying their family life, their integrity, their olam habo, their olam hazeh, their sanity, whatever...

The insistence that a Jew learn the derech to recover davka from Torah is a major block to many of these guys. Major. The reason I call it a block is not simply because it has not worked for them till now (which is also true). But rather, the reason I call on them to davka take a secular approach to recovery is this:

Most of us learned how to use porn, fantasy, and to masturbate ourselves WHILE we were defining our relationship with Hashem and WHILE we were defining what Torah means to us. This is why what they (we) have often felt so sure was destined to be our answer repeatedly failed as a working way out for us. Absolute devotion to Hashem and His Torah with hisbatlus gemurah simply did not work for many of us. For if it did, why are half of us even here at all? Hey, I am not a ba'al kichsatah on this and am not asking for anyone to agree with me on anything. I am simply reflecting the experience of many, and spelling out what many simply fear to face. If you see it in you, don't give up - seek for the truth about yourself, instead of more truth about Torah, Hashem, or other people. Self-honesty has been the missing ingredient for us all along. Of course, hiding from others and faking to get by has been poisoning us, too.

Yes, yes, yes, of course Torah is the answer. Because Torah (and Hashem's Will) includes derech Eretz. And Torah is His Tif'eres, the mitzvos are shaife' d'malkah - the Zohar haKadosh calls them kevayochol "limbs of Hashem's Malchus". So what of 'secular recovery work'?

The approach is key here, not the content. Sure the content can be found in Torah - but we don't find it! Only addicts do! This is why for many, the 12 steps work succeeds where the best shrinks and 'recovery programs' fail! The content that is actually needed, is just not the stuff that the 'oilem' typically focuses on in Yiddishkeit. Certainly not normal people in the oilem.

No matter what Rav Twerski writes, Torah authorities cannot speak undiluted program concepts from the pulpit. The Torah community must uphold a standard, and should not naturally cater to the truly spiritually sick people. A rov cannot speak of many of the things that I and others share about, even though it saved my marriage and my life - simply because they are not the typical Torah derech. They would irreversibly damage the normal people by sending them the wrong message.

For example, if your personal experience in the steps is one that you believe a goy could not possibly understand, then you and I have very different steps. Humanity and self-honesty is included in Torah values, I believe. And the steps are about self-honesty much more than anything else. And a goy can be as honest with himself as any Jew, if he needs to be. So, they can recover.

I have, b"H, very close relationships with so many frum Jews in recovery over the past ten+ years and it seems to me that, ironically, we frum yidden in recovery typically have a much harder time being honest with ourselves than the average goy does, in recovery. We often love cheshboning ourselves into a pretzel, driven to interpret Torah ideas to explain us and the entire recovery thing, and thus we complicate the simple. Elokim boro es ho'odom yoshor, v'heim bikshu cheshbonos rabim...

I read parts of Kuntress uma'ayon mibeis Hashem, by R' RaShaB, zt"l. Nu. Perhaps you have, too. Perhaps we could compare notes on that sefer, which touches on this issue a bit. But still, it would not change the facts of what I keep seeing guys experience. The ones who keep trying to do it in a way that seems to them like the Torah they are familiar with, get complicated to pieces, and fail. But the ones who accept simple principles in a secular (that means spiritual but not religiously dogmatic) context make it, over and over. And they stay frum and grow in all aspects of avodas Hashem. Not just from being clean - but from being honest with themselves, with others, and with their G-d.

And the goal of any frum yid's recovery is usually to live a real life of an ehrlicher Yid, and nothing else! But then why are we driven to lust and act out our lust? Why are we all here? The addiction confuses so many here to see it differently than they view alcohol or drug addiction simply because zera levatola happens to be assur! It turns out to be practically irrelevant, in the end. The real problem is that we are out of control and can't stop. That sickens and frightens us, makes us lie, and ruins our relationships with Hashem and with people, especially with the ones we are 'closest' to. It is the difference between the guys who are just ba'alei tayvoh and masturbate cuz it's fun, and those sad ones (like me) who do it habitually and compulsively, while it takes over little parts of their thinking and their lives. One is quite normal, while the other is sick, sick, sick.

And the recovery that I am familiar with is based completely on the acceptance of the fact that even if porn-viewing and compulsive sex (with myself or others) were mutar, I still have no other option but to stop...even though I can't seem to stop. And all the yiddishkeit I have is on a wishy-washy foundation. No Tatty wants that for His child.



As far as Torah describing the addict clearly in a few select places, that may be so - but that was not my point. Sure, aspects of the thinking and process of addiction and recovery are all over the place in Torah. So? Where is it all put together? And who uses it? I went to rabbonim and to shrinks - and none of them had any idea what my problem was! Cuz none of them were addicts - only one had the guts to tell me I was very messed up and need professional help of some kind. Nu. So two years later I got the help...

My point is that the word "teshuvah" applied to an addict is vastly confusing for a good yid who happens to be a sex or lust addict. Azivas hacheit simply does not happen for an addict - we become "periodics". The hachno'oh needed to really give it up completely just does not exist because there we have too much mental and emotional pain when trying to give up our sweet addiction! What, after all, can Torah promise us in return for such a sacrifice? To an addict, all the platitudes of Olam haBoh, madreigos, and the glory of conquest l'Shem Shomayim, fall on deaf ears - or deaf hearts. We realy believe there is no substitute for it. And we all know that giving it up is the only way, and that takes a gift from Hashem. The White book of SA puts it nicely: "When we prayed, it was always, "Take it away G-d, so that I do not have to give it up!""

And Charotah has no context, at all. What charotah do I really have if the truth is that I , poor guy, still want to use porn, fantasy, and masturbation again more than anything else in the world?! The addict knows that he will feel just as crazy for it again in a day, a week, a month, maybe a few months...off to the races again....how can he talk of 'charotah' or of 'kabolah al ha'haboh'?

And vidui? Puleeze. How weak is a vidui that a guy feels he is only willing to do if he can keep his head deep inside a paper bag? That's what "SpunkyTeshuvahbrovah" is: a paper bag over my head in a virtual setting. Ooh, so safe. So 'safe' from everyone but ourselves.

Here we are among others who know exactly what it means to see your tztzis dragging on the floor while masturbating on the bathroom floor and fling them behind us so we don't see them in the act....who know just what it is like to sneak a peek at porn on the internet (during bein hazmanim only, of course). We are fellow frum yidden! And yet so many are of us are still hiding behind usernames! OK, some use them because it's the style on forums, I know. But I also know that most guys (not all) are deathly afraid - some viscerally unable - to actually admit their real names here. Heck, posting at all is such a hard thing for many to do. And of those few who can or do post with their real first names (see my Captain Kirk thingy if you still can't fall asleep yet), most of them would still not consider actually meeting another recovering yid in their community to talk of the truth about themselves with...that's why I say this vidui has 'short legs'.

Besides being a mitzvah, vidui is a powerful tool to help a person let go of his current sickness and get free of his past mistakes. The Tzetel Kotton speaks of it, and countless addicts the world over use it properly as one of many program tools. Yet some frum guys bring with them a RMB"M that says that speaking out my mistakes or my ills to another person is assur if they are only bein odom laMokom! It's a busha to the King to publicly admit my transgressing of His Will!

Ashrei sh'bo v'talmudo beyodo? They will come to Shomayim and say "I couldn't get free of my addiction to prostitutes, schmutz, or masturbation because the tools were assur! So here I come with my 15,000 sins - and a RMB"M! Then they'll tell him that the RMB"M was not talking about addicts!

Ashrei sh'bo vetalmudo beyodo, indeed.

My life was drek punctuated by 'religious victories', my wife and children were fooled, and I never realized that the RMB"M was not referring to addicts in the first place! He was not referring to a person who is sick in the head.

Ooh, but admitting we are idiots or nuts is just too insulting. "Hashem, what do You expect from me? To even let go of my self-respect for recovery?! Heck, it'd be  chilul Hashem, for I am a ben Torah and known in the community! (And RBs"O, if You are not sure of this, please just see Ch 5 of Hilchos Deyos.)"

Ein milim.

Does any of this address the issue?



Finally, I will share two Torah thoughts about recovery and addiction, be"H. Some may not like them.

The Sfas Emes describes (via the Zohar that refers to No'ach as "Shabbos") that Noach was a tzaddik who needed syu'ah. He walked with Hashem, cuz he could not walk before Him. He needed direct Divine assistance to be a tzaddik, says the Sfas Emess.

Avraham Avinu (even though the initials on his briefcase were AA! ) was different. He could walk before Hashem, and did in his lifetime.

Now, I admit I cannot approach a real havonoh of Noach, and what he did with the drinking after the mabul and what tikkunim he was trying to achieve for the b'riyah after the eitz haDa'as, and it's nutty to say he was an addict of any kind! But...

Noach's derech, I see as a model for the recovering addict. Yes, I can be a tzaddik - but dependent on Hashem. Passive, like Shabbos. Relying on kedusha from above, like Shabbos. Nukvah, like Shabbos. Naturally 'Osah Retzon Ba'aloh'....like Shabbos - it's naturally 'kidshoh vekaymoh'. And when an addict relies on his own da'as, he soon ends up drunk and naked in a tent somewhere (if he is lucky).

This is upsetting to some, who say it's unfair. They are not willing to 'just' be a tzaddik like Noach. Nu, he was sort of like a goy, no? They feel it'd be an abrogation or failure of their very Jewishness. (Even though the Sfas Emess refers to contemporary tzaddikim in this bechinah, as well!) Well, to this I say that these people are not ready for recovery anyway. They put their 'madreigo' first, and their hachno'oh second. That might be avodas atzmi, not avodas Hashem, anyway. Basics, basics.

Second vort for anyone interested (and awake :):

I see the analogy of yetzias mitzrayim applying to Hashem taking us out of the house of slaves, as most do. But with one difference that few choose to talk of:

I see the comparison of the addict (that means me) most closely to what Hashem did for Par'oh, rather than for the B'nei Yisra'el. Par'oh promises over and over again that he'll let go. But he holds on. He even swears that Hashem is 100% right, and that he is dead wrong, yet then hangs onto his beliefs that the Jews can't possibly be given up!

He makes a bankrupt fool of himself over and again, with every makkoh....and still doesn't just let go! How much he suffered! How unmanageable his life and kingdom became! Yet he just could not accept it.... this is my story, and that of most addicts I know. We are exactly the same. "Es asher his'alalti bemitzrayim" - "how I played with/made fools of mitzrayim" We were deep into dotage. It is disgusting, really. How I am 100% devoted and running after seeing the right picture of a selfish and shameless prusteh shiksa and feeling myself to my orgasm - it all becomes so precious and beautiful to me, even with the lying and fakery it usually entails, not to mention my little mess on the floor... How debonair.

Then Par'oh seems to finally hit bottom. He suddenly realizes that he cannot afford to keep holding onto his precious Jews! He runs to recovery. "Go! Go! Get out of my hair now!"

This time he is really contrite. He takes action, puts on a filter, tells his wife all about it, starts going to meetings, a shrink, whatever.

But it does not last long. As soon as he sees the first glimmer of freedom, he interprets it in the funniest way:

"I am cured! Maybe I was a bit ill before, but now, finally, I see things rationally and I am in control!" We see that Par'oh felt cured of his Jew-fetish! So...how did he react? The RaMBa"N points out, "what kind of fruitcake lunatic (OK, so I paraphrase a bit) would surge forward into a miraculously split sea after his quarry? Did he actually think it was split for him, to catch them?!" What does this mean? It means he was reduced to an idiot and a fool. A Captain Ahab crazy with 'Jew-fever', he was.

How did that happen? Didn't he just 'let those people go'?

Simple. He decided that if he were no longer sick - if he was actually able to let go of his Jews, that proves that he is no longer powerless over his lust to keep Jews. He has truly learned his lesson. So now he can recapture them and not fall prey to insane suffering - if they cost him too much next time, he'll just let them go! Just like the smoker: He says to nagging relatives who say, "Harry, you're addicted!" that he "could easily give smoking up at any time! So shut up!" Hmm. Touchy, isn't he? Then he coughs his guts up one night too many and decides to test himself. And behold! He gives it up for a whole week! Will this guy quit? Maybe. But if he is truly an addict, he will most likely take a lesson from his success that he can now control and enjoy it like a gentleman, like everyone else. Just a single smoke after dinner, once in a while. Of course, soon he is back at the races chain smoking again, and his 'control' phase is a distant memory a raspy year or two later.

Par'oh ran after his Jews as soon as he saw he could let them go! "If I can let them go, then why quit!? Control and enjoy it!"

Get it?

This is my story, and I am not alone.

Par'oh ends up in Nineveh, helping the horses (and people!) do teshuvah of some kind - and here we are on GYE helping addicts  (and lots of non-addicts, too) learn that it was never the last drink (schmutzfest) that got them in trouble, but it was always and only the 1st one! We - if we are indeed addicts - are powerless to control the first drink we take. That takes a lot of humility (or humiliation) to admit. Admitting we are actually powerless over the first drink is not normal. Normal people (even normal yidden!!) can take a drink of lust without ending up in the toilet bowl. Not me. That is the 1st step of a long, slow, and beautiful recovery.

Have a nice day!

Just wrote this to a guy. It may be relevant here, cuz "living mussar" sounds easier than it really is, as I am sure you know. Heck, we have been failing at doing just that doe years, most of us....But what is it? Maybe this is the the first step to finding out:

Getting honest with someone else is important for everyone, for only by getting honest with another person can we ever have a chance of finally getting honest with ourselves and with Hashem.

The real reason our desperate and heartfelt tefillos have not bee working when it comes to this stuff (as many peiople have reported here), is that we are lying most of the time. Lying to ourselves, and hence, lying to G-d. That obviously can't work. We do not even know we are lying! But that is no 'loophole' - the tefillos are not really real. HaOdom yir'ah lo'einayim - vaHashem yir'eh laleivov. Tzoreif kilyoseinu....this is precisely what we just finished asking Him for.

Go for it. Let's use each other!

So it's a process and takes time, but mostly practice.

OK, so you are making a point that divulging all aspects of our identity is the only way to make a full disclosure of self and be truly honest with others.

But we all know that is not true. We all know that we do not have to tell a friend all about us, in order to be close with him. There are other ways to get truly intimate.

So you are trying to be docheh my words with straw. Intimacy is not what I am talking about here, at all.

Please bear with me and I'll tell you about Captain Kirk in a minute.

First, I will share that I have seen dozens of guys who have had the hardest time just saying their right name on a phone call. I have heard the hesitating, quiet voice on the other end of the line finally admit that "yes, my name - the one the real people in my everyday life know me by - is Pinchas". It is a terrible strain for some - and I hear myself in their trembling. That same hesitancy - fear mixed with shame. It's mine, too. It's just that in my case it is behind me - in theirs it is still in front of them.

What is really going on here?

I have seen frum guys finally drag themselves into live meetings and start off the first few meetings using a 'fakish' name - their English name that no one who knows their frum persona really uses. Only to later change their names in the meetings to the Hebrew name that their wife and friends use - cuz they began to see the perverts in the room are like they are, that they need what the guys in the room have been given just as desperately as they do. No difference in that respect. That is when the walls go down and the real juicy work can finally begin. Until then, they are still unattached to what goes on in the meeting, for on some level [b]it is not really Pinchas who is sitting there, but 'Robert' (the bad guy who is subject to porn worship). [/b]

How to bring them together?

Which brings me to Captain Kirk.

There was once an episode of Star Trek in which there was a time travel shtick, and the Kirk of the present, went 10 years into the past. Now, there was another Kirk then, too, right?

That was a big problem. The scientists told him that normally two of the same people cannot coexist. It just does not happen. But as this was an exception (it was a TV show and they were getting paid $15,000 per episode) as long as the old Kirk did not actually meet the present Kirk, all would be fine. However, if they actually met each other, the entire Time-Space Continuum would be 'ripped asunder' (chas veSholom). Under no circumstances could they be allowed to meet!

I do not remember what actually happened to Mr Shatner, but everything turned out OK for there were another few seasons of the show (and also we are all still here, no?). But my point is just this:

How does a frum guy get all drawn into his very private porn, admitting by his actions its awesome, sweet power for him, and privately have sex with himself (masturbate) with such intensity and imaginative pleasure and power? OK, so he has shame, self-loathing, and sadness afterward. But how does he do both tefillin, teaching Torah, being mekareiv and really davening for others hard and really crying for the churban, and really working on his middos....and masturbating himself with a fantasy that could only mean he (secretly) also worships the beauty and power of those naked shiksas and the act of sex? How does such a contradiction survive in him?

How does it survive in us?
My answer to myself is simple. We learn to lie a little. We lie to others and we lie to ourselves. We'll quit really soon. We won't do it any more when we are twenty....or fifty. Never on Shabbos. Never with masturbation. Etc. All lies, to ourselves. And over time, we learn to lie more and more without even noticing it, just as you cannot see yourself grow.

When we are being good, we feel good about ourselves and we wish we could forget the bad stuff we did last night - we call that a hirhur teshuvah. Really it is just so we do not hate ourselves so badly, but that's OK. We learn not to face it right now by pretending that we are 'forgiven' by Hashem. That way, one persona does not invade the other so much. It gets put off till the next time, if we are lucky.

When we are being 'bad', we wish we could forget how devoted we are to Hashem and His Torah and to our wives and children and to honesty with society - because it just feels so good to do the porn and we really see no way out of it. We know we need it and do not in a million years believe there is really an alternative for us, in the end. We end up 'ignoring' our kedusha during the act. That is lying to ourselves, and again, one persona does not see the other simultaneously. Pretending we are really rotten to the core is a much more comfortable way to act out. Nu. Who wants to hurt so much?

We walk about for years and are tortured inside, for we know the dichotomy we are hiding - we are the dichotomy. But we do not really know what to do. We fight to make one side gain mastery over the other and call that hisgabrus al hayeitzer. And we fall. Then we assume we are horrible Jews, and assume that Hashem agrees with us about that. That mistake is a hard one to shake...(see step 2)

So now about the time-travel dilemma.
When we open up to others under a username (or fake English name in a meeting) and share the entire truth (which most rarely do) about our addiction, we are still hiding our 'good' persona - the real me. It's OK to let them know the horrible dirt - yeah, all of it - as long as they do not know the 'good' persona too well. The two are just incompatible.

Thos who got caught by their wives or children know exactly what I am talking about. They understand why they getting caught was so effectivbe for a time - the desire to use the porn left them as a result of getting both personae dragged into the room at the same time. The horror of getting caught with my pants down by a co-worker, son, daughter, or wife is truly intolerable to anyone who has experienced it. Why?

Because the hypocrisy is mercilessly forced to come to a bitter end. The Time-Space Continuum has ripped asunder. We look frantically for a place to bury ourselves. It's hell.

It is the two Kirks being forced to see eachother by a third party - and only a party who knows both personae can possibly do that. Till that happens, we are all players. Lying a bit about the 'real us' to ourselves and to others. 

Some of us insist on solving our problem without bringing the two personae together. Perhaps they are just avoiding the terribly painful end of their hypocrisy, perhaps not. I do not know what is best for another. But in my own case, I got caught, and it still didn't help. After a few weeks I was back at it and it got worse and worse until I couldn;t take it any more. i was begging for someone to rip off my cover and get me real! My wife could not do that, for she does not understand what I am talking about when I describe the desperation to get the sweet porn in my mind and heart and does not understand the allergy to it that I have.

So I needed real meetings - with real addicts. Perverts for decades who chose the path of sobriety because they had no choice. Just like me. People who can hear both sides of me. And I use my real name, wear my normal Jewish outfit, and talk with them freely about my real life.

And that flows out into being real with everybody else in my life, whether they know about my problem, or not.

And that is why so many of us are OK with goyim in meetings, but shrink into a corner when they meet a frum yid. There is a common strong desire to avoid and evade. And I do not blame them, for I had that, too. Here is a guy who can bring them even closer to the true full self! It's more pain to go through. But more healing, too. 

Interestingly, I have seen newly recovering program-guys meet people from the meeting in public places just 'out of the blue' and totally ignore them, as if they didn't know them at all. Those guys did not remain sober. I think they may have been shocked by the cross-over from their 'meeting life' into their 'real life'. They were not willing to smile discreetly and say a polite "Hi" to the other guy. Instead, here was trouble - "so get away from me quick." Oy vavoi.

This is precisely why AA has a strong tradition of real anonymity. We do not reveal the identity of anyone else we meet in the rooms to non-members. Ever. But it's not about shame, at all. It's because sharing the secrets of others will not help their recovery at all! Only the truth that they want to share will help them.

Those who just get caught and stay clean out of fear of further humiliation never, ever stay better. Getting humiliated into sobriety does not work, until there is some humility added. Humilty (in hachno'oh to the truth) is the underpinning of the steps.

And that is why 'accountability groups' are nice but will ultimately fail, as long as they are based on avoiding shame - which they can easily become all about.

And that is why opening up to the wife (and remaining consistently open with her) is so very powerful - when done at the right time. It is powerful medicine for my recovery and powerful medicine for the marriage. Honesty there removes yet another layer of hiding from ourselves that has to go to the boards for true freedom.

Sharing my credit card number and address would not do any of these things for me, and neither would pulling up my pant-leg. It's not about compromising my security, nor my anonymity. It's not about getting hurt nor for the sake of being punished for all my wrongs until I can finally be good. This is not Teshuvah and it is not sigufim. It's all and only about being the real me with everyone that I can be, to the extent that I can be without violating the health of my family and others. We do the best we can in that, and ask Hashem to make it work right. And it works, period.

Do you get what I am talking about? 

(Really I know you were just playing devil's advocate, YosefhaTzaddik, but I humored you to get it all out there be"H. May it be helpful to someone, Amein.)

Look at how many of the beautiful and essential aspects of a proper avodas Hashem, I use in my addiction for my lust and sex:

1- tzniyus (kept it private, hidden);
2- t'midus (consistency and regularity);
3- kavonah (focus - and what focus/kavonoh we have while searching and finding the sweetest porn we can and then using it for just the right fantasy!);
4- Yichud hama'aseh (putting real life, the kids, job, wife, all on 'hold' once I start to plan the evening's escapades - that is true yichud hama'aseh [misused, of course] - see Chovos haLevavos);
5- Mesiras nefesh (taking so many risks for it - I endangered my job, marriage, respect of the community, chillul haShem, and even my bodily safety and often overlooking or tolerating tremendous physical discomfort just to get my fix, many, many times);
6- kana'us (I'd get resentful at those hindering my attachment to my sweet, loving, porn women [ie, my wife and kids] and often lash out at them);
7- Deveikus (being attached to it as to a chain, it eventually takes over my thought, context of living, relationships and motivations for living); and more...

Hopelessness is the only hope we have.

...we may admit that we have so much pride, that others must be idiots, unworthy of our trouble, and unfairly demanding on us. We need desperately to learn how to connect and be useful, rather than see everyone else as 'competition';

...we may admit that the main reason we feel we are such failures in past, present and future, is because (in our pride) we cannot accept that we are in fact mediocre in many ways! We put expectations on ourselves that Hashem never intended - then we find we cannot live with ourselves - cuz we are living as someone else! We cannot get comfortable in our own skin, because we insist on wearing someone else's! Perhaps we heard a mussar schmooze - and misused it, got yelled at by a raging parent and internalized it, whatever. Oohh, those things may be hard to die. We'd rather blame ourselves for moshiach not coming yet, for our parents' marriages falling apart, for our wives unhappiness, for not being an outstanding guy in the beis midrash or the respected talmid chochom we 'should be already' or the posek ha'ir yet... We'd rather fantasize that we really should be those things  or that we have all that power, livro olamos ulhacharivon...just what the nochosh tempted us with back in the garden. Nu.

Pride destroys us on the inside - and they told us we needed more self-esteem to 'feel better'. How wrong. What we needed was to get right-sized. To really accept Hashem's Will for us (step 3). Our biggest obstacle was and is our pride, not our failures themselves. Hashem forgives aveiros and mistakes - He does not have much sympathy for pride, as the sforim tell us. Many of us have pride in spades, and we do not even know it. And for prideful people like me, there is no pleasure like the pleasure of getting right-sized, and knowing who I really am and being reasonably sure about what Hashem really expects from me today.

It sounds nice, but it is all just theory and useless, thinking and cheshboinos - until it is out into real action.

Enough theory. Thinking about the problem is poison. It has its limited place - but this feels to me like trying to figure it out and beat it with new insight....it doesn't work for any addict I know.

We need to take the actions and the feelings and thinking will follow, as a gift. That is the experience of most people I know. And I spent a decade learning about this and only got sicker and sicker. It was disgusting and silly.

What real actions can you take according to your idea above? Now. Today.

Go to it, man. And quit figuring it (you) all out. It is a waste of more time and just mental masturbation. In my experience.

Yeah. You are thinking too much, as you are always doing (if you are anything like me), and you are convinced that you need to 'understand' something in order to succeed at getting better.

Make in-person friends with another person in successful recovery from a problem like yours and speak daily with that person at the beginning of the day (before or after davening or breakfast) and then again near the end of the day sometime. It doesn't need to be every day, but most days would be great.

Love yourself, take good care of yourself, and stop burdening your poor self with the weight of the world. Nobody really understands all the stuff you are struggling to gain mastery over. Least of all, you.

Learn what to do, not what to think.

You cannot think yourself into right living. You can only live yourself into right thinking. (emphasis mine) Hashem will give you the gift of right-thinking. But it will be a gift that you will be able to hold onto only after you take the right actions without needing to understand.

Na'aseh venishma is not a mitzvah anywhere in the Torah, but it underlies everything.  Especially recovery.

Trust G-d, period.

A filter is not recovery. It doesn't even come close to anything like recovery. If anyone who really has a chronic problem "works on their problem" just by putting on a filter, they are kidding themselves.

In that way, putting on a filter will actually perpetuate their problem and mess up their recovery completely - they will think that putting on a filter is all the real action they need to take.

"Phew! I had an alligator in my basement that would sneak up at night and bite my leg. Then someone gave me a great idea and I finally shut the basement door! Finally I can sleep at night."

This alligator-fellow is a weirdo. Who wants an freaking alligator in their basement?! Eventually it will chew through the door, and everybody knows that. Gotta get it outta there.

A filter is only as strong as my acceptance that I cannot afford to test it. Once I test it, I might as well not have it at all. My alligator will eventually get through, guaranteed.

So I say, get any decent filter (I like K-9), and throw away the key, give it to your mother, wife, brother, anybody. Then realize that the filter is just a reminder, nothing more. Evidence to myself that I do not want to screw up my life with crazy obsession with porn and sex with myself, any more. Nor with the struggle against it - which is just as poisonous. (emphasis mine)
Recovery is my main work now - not learning, not my marriage, not my davening or anything else - just recovery. For it is obvious to any ba'al seichel that if an addict does not get deep into real recovery and take real steps and do real recovery work, he will not have any of those important parts of life anyhow! 

In other words, either I will learn how to use a relationship with G-d to save me, or I am finished. 

Dear 'Nafshi',

You wrote that you have had trouble since sixth grade. Would you care to elaborate on exactly what the 'trouble' was? I find it very hard to believe (and don't you, too?) that any effort or sincerity on your part can sensibly be expected to overcome a decade of wrong thinking about sex. For crying out loud, if you have been making a god out of porn and orgasm as many of us have since around that age - and exercising worship of sexual power by regular masturbation....how do you expect to "beat this"? With sincerity? Whose sincerity? Your fox is watching your henhouse, my friend.

If you can elaborate, great. Then I believe you can begin to consider that ratzon - no matter how sincere - is not nearly enough. Hey, anyone can punch the waves. You are going to need some kind of a real plan of action, if you want results. And if you are anything like me and others I know, you may also  need to start getting something quite the opposite of the 'privacy' (ie., secrecy) that you have been getting till now: openness and help.

Hatzlocha - and much love to you,

Dov 

If you are uncomfortable with doing that on the forum, you can PM me (or anyone else OK with that, for that matter).

It's the Chazon Ish's kichsatah against Mussar yeshivos. The avodah itself creates the basis for middos correction.

So in sobriety for an addict, he or she comes to the point where there is no other option but to stop (and not start up again)...though he knows that he cannot stop! So he stops thinking so much and takes one day at a time, gives the entire struggle to his real G-d by explicitly opening up to other people about it, and stays sober by a miracle.

As the days go by, this often messy thing called "life" starts to happen. It starts happening in a more and more real way, too...cuz he is no longer hiding physically and emotionally inside his old fake porn or sex habit (and 'valiant' struggle for 'kedushas bris ham'or'). The sweet distraction is gone! It sucks, doesn't it?

His wife is a pain (and boring), his kids are a pain, everybody is a pain...except maybe the 'hottie' at work....OK, but he knows he does not have the ability to go there any more, so what to do, what to do....

He remembers the steps and that the guys who seem to be doing well are the ones who talk about them (though what they say usually makes little sense to him). And he starts to work them by taking direction from others, instead of just try to 'understand' : them well enough to start. (finally)

This fellow soon discovers that it is by surviving through real life that he learns how to be a normal person. A normal person deals with real life and does not react to fear, resentment, and desire, by running to his mommy-god of nudes and orgasms. Nor does he react to them by raging or blaming. The steps point the way for addicts to face real life. But those who know operand conditioning theory know about this little thing called "extinction burst". Right before a real change, the 'homesickness' for the good-old (sick) way is extremely strong. Painful, actually.

But if he reacts to the pain without hope and trust and just goes and has sex with himself (masturbates) or is inappropriately sexual with someone else, he will again slip real life under the rug. There will be no growth and he will remain a seven year old...for now. That's why they call try to call it "adult entertainment"...it is a joke, really.

So it is the pain of staying sober that makes the growth have to happen. One little step forward at a time that adds up to shockingly major changes. We are surprised by how we have changed. Then by how much we are still the same. Nu. KOT, right?

With respect to the old mental trick of "I am such a disgusting stinker that I might as well do worse and get it over with," I have a surprise for you. You will discover it yourself when, c"v, you "finish off the aveirah and move on," as you put it. The secret is that you will not 'move on', of course. We are not books. Everything we do has a reaction that is real and stays with us, no matter what. 'Finishing the aveirah' is not a finish of anything, but actually a start! It will 100% guarantee a new need within the person, instead of 'satisfying' him. This is just the way it is.

Ironically, this is the other side of very same trick that people like me fall for when we just hold our their breath! I mean when we are not really giving anything up, but just postponing it. Gevalt. The more days we 'tzaddikim' are clean for, the worse our situation grows - the stronger our belief that we have 'sacrificed', and deserve a break...so eventually we must explode. Waiting to exhale.

Which reminds me that when I think of a women as an object, I am really thinking of myself as less of a person and more of an object: A sexual pleasure-being rather than a real human-being.

The nuance of the 1st step written and shared, is that it brings some people to the conclusion that there is no evidence that they will ever "get better". Even given more time and more effort. For me - I'm not speaking for you - the idea that "I should have not abused my sexuality so," might not be as relevant as the fact that it was done, "again and again". When I ask myself "how is it possible that I could do that?," or, "what's wrong with me that I feel I gotta have/do that?" The answer I am comfortable giving myself eventually became, "because I am an addict, and that is what addicts do." In fact, it is the most valuable response. The deep stuff is nice, but never got me free. Accepting the fact that I lost against lust allows me to finally really get dependent on G-d for a change - it changes the playing field so I get out of His way.

No one can put you in recovery. Meetings, maybe, but not recovery. Either you want it, or you do not. If you do, anyone can take it, and so can you.

Just as an aside, if you have not used the word "masturbation" in your personal bakoshos in sh'moneh esrei yet, I submit to you that you are not taking this stuff seriously. G-d knows, and using fake terms like "coming lidei zera levatola," or "aveiros chamuros" is pretending that Hashem is yeshivish, frum, or some other silliness. He is G-d, period.

Maybe insted of saying "I watched porn", I should say "I watched naked people having sex" cuz that's what I did. (I hope no one is triggered by this)

Calling a spade a 'well defoned gardening tool' just don't cut it.

If this desire or behavior screws me or somebody else up in some way - and I want to do it anyway, then it is lust.

If it has nothing really to do with my love for the other person, then it's lust.

If it's sneaky, then it is lust.

If I can't stop taking it, then it's lust.

If it causes a fight then it's lust.

If it kills love, then it's lust.

Slip = Sobriety Loses It's Priority

Someone wrote:

Although I am clean just three weeks, I feel like this whole tumah thing is a million miles away. Like it was just a bad dream. I try to imagine it and I think to myself, "what, I did such things?". So I guess I am ripe for the Yetzer Hara to catch me of guard . Please advise.

Dov replies:

It never ceases to amaze me how my entire perspective - my entire reality - can change drastically, should I lust. There is no regard for how long I may have been sober, nor for how "sober I feel"... It can all change in a shocking way.

"Slip" stands for Sobriety Loses It's Priority. The priority doesn't change just because I seem to be better.

It sounds like you do not want to be a korban on the mizbayach of "the recovered". I say, "Good for you!" I have seen enough well-meaning guys lose it all after getting smug, and I wish to have no part in it.

Practically speaking, this little guy advises: Consider working the steps with a sponsor, if that is the derech you choose. If not, then at least adhere to whatever derech you want, but for G-d's sake, do something, and do it all the way. And keep it "one-day-at-a-time.

Ultimately, we all live with ourselves. There is no escape from ourselves - even by suicide, I believe. The discomfort we all feel being surrounded by real people in recovery (in SA groups) is just having a mirror shown to us, as the Ba'al Shem Tov taught us. We sense our own ugliness, but we "see" only theirs.

I take advantage of every opportunity I get to admit openly, in a safe environment, that I am a sexaholic, that I naturally gravitate toward using lust, that I am allergic to it, and that my disease is progressive, chronic, and guaranteed to be fatal should it progress enough c"v. Doing this frees me to let go and be free of lust's power. It gives me life, and it gave new life to my family.

This post is probably going to sound particularly judgmental, pig-headed, closed-minded, and will not be understood at all unless the reader can stop being judgmental of me, first. Good luck:

ShemiratEinayim an Old friend wrote on 18 Nov 2011 10:12:


So I bolded the words that hit me the hardest in your post. Maybe I am reading too much into them. I know that I am not attacking you, or anybody - only trying my best to help by sharing what did not work for me and what does. So be"H, here goes:

What gives you (me) the idea that you (me) - a guy who fantasized and masturbated his own way into this mess - has the ability to solve this problem with any tools?

You use the words, "the 12 step attitude" - what about "working the 12 steps" in your life? When you write "attitude", it makes me think that attitude is the sole thing you need to change - and that you can do that. It makes me think that you are a really good man who is trying very hard to use your own mind to change your own attitude so that you will be fixed and your problem solved.

But this is not the program I know, at all.

It is not even the way I can see the steps being read. Seriously. The words say G-d does it, not our efforts. That either really means something, or it means nothing. The program is not like our yiddishkeit is: we go to work, but say we have bitachon that Hashem sends all the parnossah and our hishtadlus is ultimately just motions we are going through for Him to do the whole thing....just words. The party line. Empty, really.

That is not where recovery is. We do not get healed from our problem with that same old parroting.

I know the 'self-help' method (with G-d's 'help', of course ) is the program many talk of, particularly the more psychological, religious, or cerebral types. Frankly, all the recovery I have seen tells me that these folks speak this way because they simply refuse to take their personal credit and power out of the equation.

The book (at the start of Ch 5) says dependence on G-d (and not on ourselves) is what makes all the difference. It says letting go of old ideas that didn't work (like needing to perfect my sex in order to be free of the pain of lust; like being the one who can fix myself, like believing that Hashem can't love me like wild unless I am fixed, and many other mistakes) is necessary. It says that letting go absolutely (not trying like crazy) is what is needed.

And it also says that taking action (not figuring it all out clearly) is the only thing that works.

So I ask you, what behaviors have you undertaken for the sake of letting go of your sexual lust that changes a beautiful brocha (sexual deveikus - as the Torah refers to it - with your wife) into torment? What action-steps have you undertaken so far to be one with her - to love her - so that the sex will make sense?

If you already have that clear, or can get that clear, then it will also become clear that even if we take these steps, they cannot work at all unless G-d does it all for us, when all our efforts at giving up our ego and power are over.

Hakol tzafui - G-d does it all, yet v'hareshus nesunah - it's up to us (ein hadovor tolui ella bee); ubatov ha'Olam nadun - everything He does is always to do Good and he always loves and gives; yet - v'haKol l'fi rov hama'aseh - humans must take action to allow His Will to flow through and work in us (lo hamirash ha'ikkar, ella hama'aseh). As the Kotzker put it, "G-d is only found where we let Him in!"

Taking action may be to learn how to love your wife while the two of you agree to let go of sex for three or four months and learning how to enjoy holding each other and loving each other without the sex. Just to come to know in your very bodies that it is the truth. We have done this as have many. It helps tremendously. We both need to grow up quite a bit. That's recovery.

Maybe the action you need is to really work these 12 steps instead of just 'seriously thinking them through'. Too many talk about the steps, study them, and 'work on them' - but take no comprehensive and consistent written and practical action on each of them in order. I have done that a lot, and think that's a pity. Most of the 12 steps are not just attitudes, but actions. They need a few days of real work, cannot be skipped around to our convenience, and most need a sponsor to allow us to truly let go of our ego. Holding up a mirror is useless for stepwork - one friend of mine says "the most important qualification my sponsor has that makes him the most useful, is that he is not me." It is partly why meetings are so popular in 12 step fellowships.

Maybe you need therapy to take the right actions and help you grow up, as we all are in recovery.

Maybe you need medication with some of these things, simultaneously.

Maybe you already have been doing all these things!

I do not know you. I just read a few words you wrote, that's all. But please, please forgive me if I misread you. I do not look down on you or have any reason to attack you at all.

Hatzlocha,

Dov

Kedusha is right, of course.

And what are you doing to live better? Just 'not looking' is no plan at all. Sure, it will not work at all if we reach for our drug, but the AAs discovered long ago that 'negative sobriety' (just not drinking) does not work. It's almost like holding our breath and waiting till we screw up again, hoping against hope that it'll be a very, very long time from now....lo zu haderech. The way AA puts it (and the White Book ch 4 makes this point very clearly), if all we needed to do was stop drinking, then life would be grand as soon as we quit drinking! But as every addict will attest, life starts to get messy because we stop drinking! Our drinking (lusting, fantasy, porn use, and compulsive sex with ourselves or others) is nothing but a coping mechanism to our real problem: Life, on Life's (Hashem's) terms. That is why none of the steps is about stopping drinking, at all! They are about sanity and accepting G-d as my Trusted Leader. No mention of not needing to drink... though that's what happens!

In other words, for the addicts among us there is an uncomfortable truth that runs contrary to the call of the Gedolim on behalf of GYE, the mussar sforim on shmiras habris, and all the shmiras einayim slogans in the world: Our real problem is not lust or sex or fantasy. Our real problem is sobriety(emphasis mine) - that is, living without those things to medicate us and make life bearable for us.

Until this is admitted and faced, no non-addict can understand why a great guy, frum, with a nice loving wife, nice job, nice kids...would be sneaking tons of porn and masturbating on his knees in the bathroom so often. Just like those sneaking liquor or heroin. Stupid, no? Well, that's me! I do that. I am an addict. But I'm one of the sober ones today by Hashem's Chessed (Grace).

So you wonder how you'll handle sobriety. Well, at least you are taking it seriously!

But first of all, who says you can't do it again for the rest of your life? That kind of goofy thinking is what got people like us in trouble in the first place. One day at a time is simply reality - there is no such thing as "ever again" right now. It just doesn't exist except in fantasy-land. And that is the same exact land that all those nudes live in....

Oh, so then am I saying, "go ahead and act out your lust"? No. And anyhow, whether you go ahead and use porn, fantasy and sex with yourself, or not, is not my business, at all. Kol Yisrael areivim and hocheyach tochiach certainly do not apply to addicts. For addicts do not ever quit because others tell them to. This is poshut. We quit when we are ready to quit, not before. 'Inspiration' will stop us once in a while for a time, but does not save us in the long run. Only a real, personal relationship with our own G-d does that - and that is the only thing that the steps are for. It creates integrity.

But first we need to have sanity. And "forever" is just not sane, cuz it isn't even real...till it happens. And 'forever' only happens when this trip is over.

So take it easy, amigo. One day at a time is not just a slogan, or to break things into manageable pieces. It is the truth. Something we who have faked so much to ourselves for so long (fantasy) have a hard time recognizing.

We need Hashem to help us see it. Only our G-d can restore us to sanity.

So take it easy. You can live without having sex with yourself today, and that's all that matters. Today is the best day to be sober of all. Not just a slogan, but the honest, simple truth.

I'm Just Me; Hashem's Little Guy
Someone posted about his progress - and struggle - on the forum:

You'd think I'd be HAPPY that certain urges are going away and my ability to walk away from certain aveiras is strengthening. But I've realized-- er, um, I'm NOT.

Why not? Because for so long I had been wearing my challenges on my sleeve.

> As a badge of honor for how "different" I was and how "amazing" I've been for conquering so much for so long.

> As an excuse to avoid all kinds of growth in my frumkeit.

> As a convenient tool for avoiding certain flavors of emotional (not physical, emotional) intimacy with my wife.

> As a way to feel special, different, deserving of G-d's love as compensation for the challenges He gave me.

> I could go on and on.

What a bunch of ego, ego, ego mess to have to tackle. Yuck.

The bottom line is, if I'm no longer going to be able to "define myself" in terms of certain sexual orientations, preferences, fantasies, whatever... then maybe I'm scared I've lost my uniqueness, my excuses, my... ahdunno, I gotta think about it.

Just when I thought I'd have an easy time of this work for a few weeks.... Darn.
 

Dov Responds:



That post was a shocker. Not just for it's plain realness, but for how true it is for me, as well. I wrote about it to someone else, once, crassly saying that the way it felt to me years ago was that if I couldn't be recognized as the next gadol of the generation, "could I at least be a porn star?" Yeah, it's sick. But that's the way I really was before recovery: Desperate for something outside me to give me Reality. And schmutz - being my drug of choice - felt very real, and vital. Those acting-out moments seemed larger-than-life... till they almost killed me.

And like you shared, in recovery there is a temptation to remain struggling to get people's attention, to get G-d's attention, and to stick with what our gut feels is the only thing that "works". It's our comfort zone. That struggle defined my relationship with Hashem. In fact, the only way I could see myself being able to approach Hashem at all, was as a guy who just did horrific things! "Take me back! Iv'e sinned terribly! Please take me back!" Hey - what nice god could resist that?! The idea that He just loves me like crazy no matter what, and living with that all the time, was - well - crazy!

Somewhere along the way early on, an absolute need for something outside me had infected my very core like a virus.


I really needed that image, that woman, that [imagined] warm approval, that exact pleasure, or else. For some folks it's $1 mil, acid, Blue Marlins, TV, whatever. For me, it was a feeling, a trance, that I could secretly tune into using a part of my body and my imagination - whenever I wanted to. Kind of hard to run away from. Probably everyone here knows exactly what that's like, and that's why they are here. After a while it doesn't work any more, but we still feel we really need it. That's insanity and blindness.

So, Recovery held out the promise of 'self-discovery'. Of actually growing to be comfortable without anything outside me - with just being me. Even w/o "being" anything important to anybody else. Just me. Hashem's little: guy. And at first, that idea seemed like the stupidest thing I had ever heard. I didn't want it. I didn't believe it, either. And maybe that was a good thing... I shudder to think what it would have been like to actively "work" on that! It had to happen naturally for me, like most gifts of recovery, and kind of bite me on the behind. Like: "Surprise! So, you are not a useless piece of crap after all!" - that kind of subtle discovery is nice.

The way it is turning out, the self-discovery is happenning slowly. And the person I am getting to know is pretty, and ugly; impressive and pathetic. And it's kind of cool. Lust never offerred me that - it taught me I was just a desperate guy running somewhere. Either from something or to something. "That's all there is, buddy!", is what my disease would say if it could talk.

So take it easy, and consider not working on the outcomes so dang much. Or maybe not at all. Outcomes are Hashem's. (Sounds like it should be a possuk somewhere...) It does say in Mishlei, "birtzos Hashem darkei ish, gam oivav yashlim itto!" - When the ways of a man are approved-of by Hashem, then even the man's enemies make peace with him! Does the man do that? Apparently not. Hashem does it. It all works out cuz G-d makes it work out when the time is right.

I was sleeping, why'd you wake me up? What kind of friend are you anyway? You call this.....oh....wait a minute. I was having a dream arguing with my wife there.....

OK, so instead of writing a speech about mushy stuff, I'll keep it really practical.

If you feel you are not in trouble, then why are you searching for anything at all? What are you? I only do things when I am forced to do them, for example, when I see that if I do not do something I will slip and drown, then and only then do I start doggy-paddling faster. Are you some kind of mentch, or something?

OK, so that was a big tongue-in-cheek. But seriously, I am suspicious of the entire business of being interested in "growing higher in kedusha and marital bliss", for sex and lust addicts. It so often descends into a mess of self-centered self-aggrandizement, and the payoff of kavod poisons the entire affair. It is great for normals, but if being a recovering person, I see it as something that I need to use 1st gear for. Madreigos are best left to those more qualified to handle them, just as the 12&12 describes righteous indignation.

This may be a disappointing attitude to have for some folks, because so many apparently come to GYE with great and high hopes of winning and being catapulted up to the heights of Torah and yir'as Shomayim as a result of their clean time...in fact, people have already told them that "those like you, who are attracted to this schmutz, are often deeply spiritually sensitive people and have great, great potential - and that is precisely why the YH is trying to 'get you' so badly!"

And I do not disagree with the facts of any of that stuff. It's just that they are nice selling points - but spell only trouble, in real recovery for addicts like me. Simcha shel mitzvah is the secret, as Bardy will tell you any day - and "heichereh madreigosshcaft" is not a place of simcha, for most addicts. It's lonely at the top, you know.... That's where ma'alos lead....and lo sa'aleh b'ma'alos al mizb'chi (asher, etc.,) never was better applied than to a drunk like me!

So. Back to earth. Why do you want to grow more? If what you have is working, and you are clean, why mess with it?

Are you just restless? That is not good, chabibi. Time takes time, real improvement takes patience. Keep working what you have so far and the fruits will come be"H. Just stay clean at all costs one day at a time till you die. That is good enough for me, is it good enough for you?

I mean, bishlomah, if you have thrown yourself into a program, then you have the steps to work, and that means a bit of writing, sharing and some more writing, more sharing, and more practical work, etc....till you are using those tools in your every day life and life becomes much, much easier and better.

But you are not giving yourself to any program - and that's fine!!! But then, what is the rush to do x, y, and z? You are living a full life as a frum Jew! Is there not enough real work for you to do?

On the other hand, if you feel you are stagnating and it really bothers you to no end, then work is in order. You will not like yourself and you will not like your life and you will eventually not like the people you are with,and they will eventually not like you much either, and then...you will certainly act out.

So if that is where you are, then you have work to do. Though I have no idea what to suggest, for I am not an expert, as you figured out so well, only sharing my experience.

I suggest you pick and choose what to work on from wherever you wish, try it out for a month or two with earnest, and then see what happens, reassess, and move on.

That sounds nice to me. I just do not know what else to say.

dov wrote on 23 Sep 2011 16:27:

Just because I have been sober, doesn't mean it has been easy.  There were times that without the fear of having to fess up to my wife, I surely would've fallen.  I know all too well that one fall leads to another and it's difficult to get back up.  I'd rather not tiptoe on the edge of that cliff.  Before I came here, I was certain, that without my wife's help, I could not stay sober.  It would just be a matter of time.  Now, B"H I am meeting some people here, talking on the phone some, and even met one person (you know who you are).  I can not do it on my own.  I need people.

dov wrote on 23 Sep 2011 16:27:

"been there, done that". Just never realized it, until I came here.

dov wrote on 23 Sep 2011 16:27:

(nodding my head).  Here's a good example of an idea, but how is it done lemaaseh?  It's not just going to happen by itself.

dov wrote on 23 Sep 2011 16:27:

I think I answered above.

dov wrote on 23 Sep 2011 16:27:

Here is where I think I can gain, but wish there was a way to do that without SA meetings.  Not because I'm afraid to face people.  It's hard, but I can do it.  I just don't think I need the whole 12 step package.  Maybe I just want something that doesn't exist.  I don't mind meeting people, writing, sharing, working etc., but again, I need a plan lemaaseh.  I can't beleive that all the 12 step tools are useless outside the context of a full blown program.

dov wrote on 23 Sep 2011 16:27:

You've said quite a bit. Thanks!

I think I need to make recovery more concrete.  Not just hearing great ideas.  How can I implement them?

Here's a try.
1) Speak on the phone to someone from GYE at least once a week.  Even if it's just a hello.  Staying connected to someone (or someones) that I can share my feelings with without fear of being judged will help a great deal.

Maybe that's where I should leave it for now.  Any other idea that I think of, smacks of what you said above...
dov wrote on 23 Sep 2011 16:27:

Great quote!

Thanks again!

gibbor120 wrote on 23 Sep 2011 18:50:


Is there such a thing? Yeah. It's called real friendship, and we humans have been using it successfully for thousands of years. It's where GYE needs to lead (for addicts), or I think it's all a joke. Yeah, there will be plenty fellows who will not need it, and the chizuk is enough. You are apparently setting yourself into the category for whom the chatting is not enough, who need more, for one reason or another. I salute you! (salute)

GYE has PM system just for this purpose. Lots of guys get to know eachother better that way, without pesky noseybodies like me posting all over their threads. They even trade phone #s, and I know more than a handful who have taken the plunge and actually met each other! You may know one or two yourself .

Yes, your plan sounds great. Agreeing to daven for each other every day is another thing that helps, and yes, written journaling and written and unwritten stepwork will help you a lot, too. SA has a text called "Stepping into Action" which is sort of a workbook on the steps. Stay away from long, mushy checklists that shrinks and the folks who are dying to be in every addictions 12 step group there is love. Keep it simple, in writing, and share it with your friend. Make it doable and regular. Oh, and none of it really gets as far unless we keep our zippers up, except when needed for health care functions. (details, details... )

Megillah Alert Warning Will Robinson:  :

Along those lines, a famous story:

There was a poor man. he was so destitute and suffered for so long until he had a turn in business and got a decent job. One thing led to another and to the joy of his wife and children he became a partner in a growing business. Life was a lot better and no longer were the kids going to bed hungry, wondering how much worse the morning stomach ache would be.

His business was thriving and after a few years he was a wealthy man!

But every year on the day he got that first job, he celebrated with a se'udas hoda'ah and dressed funny for the occasion: he wore the last threadbare shmatess that covered his body that first week on the job. He dressed completely as a pauper in the comfort of his own home at the table with his family and friends, and ate.

They asked him, "mai hai? Why the old clothes?"

He said that he knew in his gut that would he ever forget where he came from, he'd start to believe that he is intrinsically a wealthy person. That he deserves to be rich - that somehow, his being rich is one of the things that is 'right' with the universe.

But none of that would be reality. We are all blank slates without Hashem's Will that we be wealthy (or poor) at this very moment. Nobody must be rich. Just as easily as he is wealthy now, he really could be that same poor guy again.

We are not G-d.

He understood that gratitude isn't just 'being nice' or 'good middos' - it's just plain sanity.

My sponsor told me that no matter how long I have been sober or how long it has been that a fantasy has crossed my mind, I ought not ever say, "when I used to act out, I did thus-and-so..." Rather, he suggested that when sharing my sexual acting out history to help another addict open up, I should always say, "when I act out, I do thus-and-so..." Pretending that I am immune and fixed now, is prideful and irresponsible. It may be true - but I am no one to judge that. Sadly, too many good people like us have been 'surprised' and lost it all after years and years of sobriety and recovery.

And here is another interesting an application of this idea: When I see a pretty woman and become aware that I could feel the real desire to stare and take her into me deeply (like mountain air) and use her in my mind...some would whine, "Gevalt that's so tomei, it's evidence that I am a shkotz. How could I still be having those thoughts?! It's the first day of Pesach and the seder was so uplifting! Yet here I am with this trash?" But I do not do that, cuz my sponsor taught me by example. He reacts to the deep disappointment he is tempted to feel over a stray desire (no matter how vivid), with this: "Well, what do you expect from a sex drunk, and addict?! From a guy who lied to everyone for decades, desperate for sex with himself or others whenever he could, for years and years? Nu. It's amazing that I am still sober, at all! Boruch Hashem!" ...and to let the lust and regret over the lusting all go. Drop it humbly. Who am I to be prideful now and cause myself to become sad, c"v. Madreigah pride is terrible for addicts. Walking humbly with my G-d as someone who doesn't deserve to be counted, at all - now that works for me.

This is a bit harsh, and I hope you know that I have no ulterior motive in this - I purely wish to help and want the best for you cuz i respect your openness and your honesty, see your pain, and know the frustration you write of very well. So I will try to share with you exactly what I need to be aware of, OK?

Here goes, be"H:

You find it therapeutic to speak to anyone....you feel trapped...you find yourself alone again and again...

From your post, and those of SSBT, one thing rings truest to me:

you both make being as isolated as possible your #1 priority.

Sure, when the pain gets bad enough from self-loathing, you reach out a bit - to a rebbi (who is not free of a masturbation habit because as far as you know he doesn't have one to begin with) or you 'reach out' virtually, here on this faceless forum.

Staying as isolated as possible is so important? Why not really reach out? Why not study in a library or with another person? Why not meet face to face with other guys who masturbation problem as you do and are trying to give it up, too?

Nope, gotta use charts on my wall with 'x's that only I know what they mean, reading my old journals to understand myself better, chizzuk to remember who I really am,
. To hell with you and finding yourself. Instead of jumping into a pool of emunah, I think you need to jump into a pool of real live people. Any people. As long as they are not you, it's good. If you are anything like me, right at this moment you seem to be your own worst poison.
 
I am full of shame, full of gayvoh, and full of lust for self-awareness and self-esteem. It gets me nowhere, so I have something else to fix me. It's called "my G-d". I was taught how to use it by addicts.

Rav Twerski told me 5 years ealier to go to them to learn how to use this thing (G-d)...but I was too afraid and too ahsamed. Five years of suffering for me that I can't describe to a non-addict. Five years of suffering by my wife that I can never fully understand. Nu. Finally, in 1997, I came to the addicts to teach me recovery and my life, our life, my relationship with my G-d (Hashem) is completely on a different footing. Life is good.

So I ask you: What are you so ashamed of? Of meeting yet another man who admits that he likes unzipping his pants and masturbating to porn so much that he eventually does it again - and again? Why the fear? G-d is already watching you full in the face while you are sneaking the looks at the sweet porn (and it is very, very sweet and he knows that, too); He is in your zipper when you pull it down; He hears your thoughts as if they were being spoken out loud mamesh, always - He always has and always will. So? He has not struck you dead, has He? He pardoned Kayin who murdered his own brother with rocks till he bled to death - you are worse? No matter what the sforim say, you have not murdered your own brother. You are a tzaddik'l trying to be good, and He knows it and loves you enough to create an entire world just for your sake. Even while you are on your knees masturbating He feels this way, for sure. So he wants yo to have the good life, not the trash of self-loathing and porn slop.

Contrary to the nevi'ei shekker of your comfortable isolation tell you, you have no evidence at all that He is actually disgusted with you. For all you know, He still loves you like crazy. So?

What is this shame? Why the preservation of the isolation?

I can suggest an answer, but only for those who really want to hear one. I can keep a secret, in the meantime...

To Thine Own Self Be True 

Rabbi Twerski shared with GYE today:

Every so often there is a news item that research shows promise of a drug that can cure alcohol or drug addiction. Thus far, nothing like a cure has materialized. The possibility of a drug that will cure behavioral addictions such as compulsive gambling or sex addiction is even more remote.

But I have come across something that holds promise for all addictions, and it is surprisingly simple: TRUTH! I believe that if an addict commits to absolute truthfulness and adheres to this, and will not lie under any circumstances, not a white lie nor a lie of any color, he can beat the addiction. No rationalization can justify a lie, and one must be willing to be truthful even if it hurts. One must know that any lie constitutes a relapse.

Lying is an integral component of addiction, just as coughing is to pneumonia. Unfortunately, lying in addiction is so habitual that the addict may not be aware that he is lying, and it requires great alertness and total honesty to live up to the commitment. Of course, one cannot lie to G-d or to oneself. I have found that it may be more difficult for an addict to abstain from lying than from his addiction.
       
Because of the propensity to lie, addicts cannot have sincere relationships. The latter require trust, and there can be no trust in absence of truth.

I would like this to be put to the test. I have high hopes that it can work.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

We responded to Rabbi Twerski:

Thank you for this insightful advice.

I just want to point out, that even if the addict decides to tell only the truth from now on, he will probably find it almost impossible to stop lying to HIMSELF without group support and working the steps. I think that what the Rav wrote should be incorporated into the 12-Steps groups (and in many cases, it is). They tell you that every time you feel like acting-out you should pick up the phone and call someone. In the same way, every time an addict feels he's about to lie, he should pick up the phone and call someone (or his sponsor). And if he catches himself having told a lie, he should tell his sponsor as well.

If he works on his integrity in the context of the group and in conjunction with working the program, this can increase his chances of success in a big way.

Dov (who is sober for 14 years in SA) once said that sobriety really all boils down to integrity. First with others, then with one's self. As they say "To thine own self be true."

Thank you for sharing this.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Rabbi Twerski responded to the above with two words: "I agree".

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 

Daily Dose of Dov

Integrity Yes, Beating it No.

Dov responds to Rabbi Twerski's idea above:

Thanks, the Rav's words are so yesodiosdig to me, too. So thanks for reminding me how important it is for me to tell the truth to myself and everyone else today!

But there is something I want to share with you and the Rav.

At the very beginning of Ch 5 of AA Bill wrote that the only way out of this disease is self-honesty. Period. He posits that the only reason people fail this program is that they are not honest with themselves. Period. So the Rav is saying what Bill wrote at the beginning.

But it seems to me that Bill would not have written it the way the Rav did. The phraseology the Rav chooses here implies personal victory: "I believe that if an addict commits to absolute truthfulness and adheres to this, and will not lie under any circumstances, not a white lie nor a lie of any color, he can beat the addiction."

This "beating" thing - it is not written anywhere in the "Promises" after the 9th step. Sure, it is attractive to the newbie - promises of grandeur, being in the winners circle one day... but there's gotta be a reason that it's not the attitude of the AAs I know. "Beating it" is exactly what the newbies all over GYE love to hear, but I feel it does not serve the average newly recovering addict well.

It is attractive lingo to a despondent, still-masturbating frum yid - the promise that he will finally be able to flex his bechirah-muscles again! He'll be a bit of a tzaddik - finally! Hey, and how many times have people with this problem called me a tzaddik so far? (If I had a nickle for every time...)

They do not know, or believe, that us drunks are just trying to live, period. For the non-addict it is so much easier just to live. They need s'forim and Rabbonim's fiery shmuessin to motivate them not to just live, but to strive for higher madreigos! And it's funny how many of them see an alkie's not drinking as 'a madreigo'. I figure they just do not know what it means to be thoroughly beaten. And by the same token, it is not 'brave' for a drunk to finally, finally admit that he is a drunk - his drinking lifestyle has beaten him to a pulp and now he has no choice but to face the music! Like by giving Haman the ring, G-d did for us what we could not do for ourselves. And He does this right in the drinking. He hides the bottle and starts to beat our ego right out of us right from there. A funny example of z'donos na'asim zachuyos!

And the addicts who keep referring to it as a "battle" and to the sober drunks as "tzaddikim" have missed the boat. And it is no wonder when they don't get sober.

The recovering addicts I know, are beaten - they do not beat. Sober no matter how many years, they are drunks - drunks who do not drink. And it is a daily reprieve by G-d, allowed by the drunk - if he recognizes that he is beaten today, too. That is the way it works for me and others I know. Of course, to a non-alcoholic/sexaholic person, that attitude does not seem to 'shtim' with self-esteem, and it is not very attractive.

To the layman, a drunk or a pervert living thirty-five years and dying a sober man is called "beating the addiction". It sure seems beaten, no? I understand that - it's really the way the scorecard reads, of course. But it seems to me that the reason the Alkies do not talk of 'winning' or 'beating' is that it re-invites the ego. And letting go of my ego was what the entire journey was all about! We may as well drink a l'Chayim to celebrate thirty-five years sober! The premature l'Chayim is the most dangerous thing I see people do, and it happens over and over. As Chuck C the alkie joked, "the only thing worse for an alkie than bad fortune, is good fortune!" Making the difficult calls to people and to G-d (that Guard referred to above) and really opening up to another, working these steps faithfully, learning to really depend on my G-d rather than just being 'religious' - they are all a diminution rather than a feeding of the ego. At least this is the program I have absorbed from my sponsor and friends.   

I have not yet met a recovering member of SA who said "I used to act out." The victory feels like it is Hashem's, not mine. Sure, if I am zoche to die a sober man, it will technically be in the 'win column'. But I cannot see it as my win, at all. All I do is suffer enough to allow him into the room, as the Kotzker would have put it. 

If I get there sober after 120 and they hoist me up as a victor in Shomayim, I hope and pray that I hop right off the pedestal onto the floor and just bow low to Hashem...and stay there.

Respectfully,

Dov

Perhaps the 'problem' inherent in the 12 steps for frummeh yidden is the fact that the steps imply that one can have complete success with living even though he believes in a false god. I believe that is the real reason that the 12 steps are placed outside the framework of Torah by many frum yidden.

I deferred using them many times over the 15 years of progressive acting out, too.

To me, the sad thing about that is that many of us very same frummeh yidden defer the 12 steps while we are serving a false god, ourselves! We are completely given over to the image and awesome power of young, attractive females with perfect, beautiful bodies. It is more than a desire - it proves itself as a 'need' by our track record of cyclical, repetitive use. In our bodies and minds we feel the tremendous power these images and women have, and perform - for the sake and in the service of our lust - many of the things our religion demands:

Tomid - regular cyclical service; 'lishkod al dalsosai, yom yom'...

D'chilu uR'chimu - we all know how our hands tremble and hearts race in excited anticipation of a juicy, really dirty schmutz site, the fruits of our desperate searching. The dryness of the mouth doesn't lie. It proves a powerful devotion that we have to it and obviously comes from our intense love and desire (r'chimu) plus our awe of and fear of losing (d'chilu) the precious, hard-won images and very real lust pleasures;

Tzniyus - very private porn use and sex with themselves (masturbation);

Kavonoh and Yichud haMa'aseh - there is no focus like the single-mindedness of our trance in search and use of our lust objects;

Emunah - faith in it actually working for us even though it may have failed many times before - we keep on trying and never give up;

Mesiras Nefesh - the money spent, embarrassment taken, the tolerance of excruciating pain of our own hypocrisy and physical discomfort. Many of us remember these things endured in the desperate search for our fix;

These values, bastardizations as they are, are no less 'Torah' values than are the 12 Principles of recovery. They are the values - not the Rules of Torah, and are forever independent of the Mitzvos. They are the property of all people, not just yidden. I call that Derech Eretz. Derech Eretz includes the tools for keeping the Torah successfully. That is why these values must at least be accepted 'kodmah laTorah'. And every lust addict I have ever met has excelled at living by these very same values - for their lust.

We already have demonstrated that we have the values. Recovery is called 'recovery' precisely because we are recovering the ability to use the values we already have to live real life, not the fake one. We are being restored to the sanity we once had... maybe as children.

That is why I agree with R' Twerski that the 12 steps are a great tool to use for living. It's just that I have not seen many non-addicts have the motivation to actually use these principles. Frum perverts-in-recovery like myself are a strange lot: the lowest form of human life in disease - and yet the very luckiest people in the whole world in recovery. (Reminds me of Chazal on "k'chochvei haShomayim  - vs - chachol asher al s'fas hayam" - the extremes of Klal Yisroel.)

rebdovid wrote on 22 Nov 2011 20:38:
If you truly believe that you are like a drug addict, then what would you say to a drug addict who begged you to help him quit?

Would you say "hang on for five more minutes - if you can do that, then you can hang on for five more!"? Or would you say that he cannot sit on his behind and wait till he plotzes, but that he needs to do something about it. Something different, cuz waiting and fighting it till you can't any more is exactly what he has been doing for ten or fifteen years already!

What are you doing that is actually an action for your recovery from this crazy compulsive behavior? Would that be 'good enough' in your opinion for a drug addict, or not?

Hatzlocha, chaveri!!

Dov, I read the Big Book and 'the 12 and 12' on the 3rd step. I was also on the call this morning but couldn't talk because I was with other people... I have a difficulty with step 3 when trying to put it into action, perhaps you can help: The third step says: "We made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him". Doing Hashem's will 24/7 is a really really high madreiga.  As a frum Jew in a very Yeshivish affiliation of Judaism, this means learning every spare minute, no bitul zman, learning halahcha, mussar etc.  davening 3 times a day with a minyan, from brochos all the way through to the end, etc.  My point is, that right now, I do none of those things, I can hardly get up for shachris, and to all of a sudden do G-d's will 24/7 with the way I understand G-d's will to be, is kind of impossible. So I'm stuck with not doing G-d's will. I hope you get my point.

Dov Responds:

My pride takes all those motivational 'mechuyav shmuessin' and beats me over the head with shame! Shame - not the Torah - tells me that it's either perfection, or I am a rasha. That sounds extreme, but hey - that is what is really going on inside many of us. It is part of the typical addict tendency: all is either black or white. 

If you have any shaychus to kiruv, you'd never tell a ba'al teshuvah that there is no room for imperfection in this religion, would you? So why can't we understand our own development in the same way? Why do we bash ourselves? I think it is a combination of being typical perfectionist addicts - and because we grow up in yeshivah hearing well-meaning shmuessen that tell us we need to tow the party line and live up to a standard of greatness, at all costs. Chumrah and halocha are blurred, for a standard must be upheld. And they are right, of course, for there is a place for that in a growing person. Chumrah can become more precious than halocha itself (see B'nei Yisoschar in a few places). But that just doesn't work very well for the addict. He just doesn't shtim. He is busy with the K'tzos, the Reishis Chochma... and with sex videos, and lusting his brains out. He may call his involvement with the latter, "struggling" not "using" or "being occupied with" them. That makes the stirah tolerable. Somehow his big, very overworked brain strikes a deal - a detente - between the two lives he lives. Eventually, though, the game must end when it no longer works. 

Recovery was the (unpleasant) time for me to finally stop running and begin choosing between:

1 - absolutely insisting upon being the man I wanted to be (perfectly frum and naturally respected in the popular yeshivish environment, adored by Hashem, my fellows and my wife in every respect, and powerful) - and masturbating (cuz they apparently inexorably go together)

vs.

2 - accepting my limitations and being the man G-d (the real One, Who is smart, realistic, loving, and patient) wants me to be - and sober!

Choosing #2 means I will need to give up the madness of living a double life without any real intellectual resolution to all my years of struggling to understand why I do this mishega'as. Giving up all my research?!!

But I lost, no? That's step 1. So it's time for shlach al Hashem y'hov'cha and let Hashem.

And that huge job requires me to learn how to be honest with people and with my very own G-d. That is where the 'steps' come in. It also means trying to be open to learning His Will for me and asking for His help to do it imperfectly. Cuz I will always do every mitzvah imperfectly. Even the mitzvah of emunah! I am a man, not a sefer. And a man of G-d is always ready to learn and change, and grow, with his Best Friend's help.

The third step helped me accept that G-d was really interested in me, no matter what I have done - even more than he is interested in the Shulchan Aruch. Yup. The Torah - His Will and Way of Life - is for me. He gave it to me to use it and grow close to Him, not to destroy me. And it is a process. And he knows that. The sefer doesn't, and neither do some learned yidden.

Maturity - growing up emotionally and spiritually - is the main fruit of my Program, besides sobriety. Grown up yidden understand that when they wrote in Pirkei Avos, "never see yourself as a Rasha" they were even talking to Tannaim! Even they were not perfect. Even they could be subject to the temptation to fall into black-and-white thinking and look at themselves as resho'im, c"v, just because of a davar meguneh in their character or over a personal failing. Just because we are not very good in our yir'as Shomayim doesn't take away our beauty in Chesed. Just because we are resentful, fearful, prideful, and lazy, does not mean we are not getting better - and possibly on the very best path of avodas Hashem possible for us (Rav Dessler talks about the nekudas hab'chirah - but we often have too much pride to apply it to ourselves, and only apply it to others!). We can be as close to being tzaddikim as we can be right now, even though yennem is doing so much more. We need to appreciate that in ourselves, and know that Hashem is on our side! (Rav Tzvi-Meyer Zilberberg Shlit"a talks about this n'kudah very often, davka in our imperfection.)

But to us, that is usually not nearly good enough. We say we accept our imperfection, but in our hearts - where the truth is - we do not. We do not allow ourselves any greyness, the room to be imperfectly doing His Will, even though we are just humans - and addicts yet! I feel that our gayva is really quite shocking. We believe b'emunah sh'leimah that Hashem expects us to suddenly be getting to shacharis every day, on time, and with proper kavonoh, this week. We do feel that.

It's nutty. And the Torah is not nutty. So what's sanity? We reach for it using the 3rd step decision.

... may Hashem protect you from righteous finger-shakers, personal criticism and from goofy chizzuk to 'keep fighting for the glory of beating the YH!'

Hey, taking that step forward is awesome!

But for SSBT's point, I will highly recommend starting a regular relationship on the phone with at least one other sincere guy who is as stupid as I am when it comes to porn and masturbation. Lots of us qualify here on GYE. I know many who have such relationships that make all the difference for them. It's relatively painless, makes the fact that we are doing something about our problem all the more real to us, and always helps.

It is amazing what that'll do for you - it truly is a game-changer. Of course, our resistance to taking that step is proof of the it's power as a 'medicine'. We are often shocked to learn that our overwhelming desire for privacy is actually the most powerful tool to protect our ability to keep using our dirty little secret friend and all the imaginary starlets that come with it.

Go for it. Pischu li pesach kechudo shel machat - just start that little phone call with a real voice of a real recovering person on the other end, and see what happens.

Chatting misses the point completely, unless it to create a more nearly real relationship (like on the phone or in person). Why do you think sex-talk is so incredibly popular in chatrooms? It's cuz we are still fake and using a fake (therefore very imaginative and not shameful at all cuz it can be fake) persona. More fakery, we don't need.

No breaking out of comfort zones, no gain.

gibbor120 wrote on 28 Nov 2011 15:17:

I write that in order to point out that a frum guy who considers himself normally a rather holy person - but with a porn problem, is actually playing a little game. He is looking up to and even worshipping people that he'd probably never even want to talk to, feeling they are the lowest of the low. Now, I do not consider them low personally. They are trying to make a living and misguided, I believe. But that's not the point here.

How many guys have I met who want to play the game of looking down on these nudes or badly dressed women - and yet put them on a high pedestal, valuing them enough to be l'hutim achareihem? Many. I played that game for years. It is a game that perpetuates the addiction. It is one example of kol haposeil bemumo poseil, looking at the nudes as low and disgusting people - while still using them with such temidus and mesiras nefesh. Their images are precious to us! That's why we want them so much! So, struggling not to stare at them in the street, while saying they are 'disgusting' to me is a lie and a silly game. And ultimately, it allows people to keep staring at them and using them. It's very sad. I want people to be sopber, and that is the only reason I am pointing this out. 

I am not judging - hey, I know and tell anyone in recovery that I am a recovering pervert. That I cannot do it without a daily reprieve from none other than G-d Himself - cuz I do not have the madreigo/moral fortitude/yir'as Shomayim to resist temptations, and particularly for sex. I have no superiority at all over you or anyone here, even over a guy who is still masturabting daily. That could be me - and should be, by all rights, as far as I can tell.

Here, I am only hoping to rip the hypocritical cover off the game some good guys are playing. My cover is already ripped off today, I hope.

startingover13 wrote on 29 Nov 2011 02:45:

Gevalt. You may be suffering from what I and others here and everywhere suffer from, at times:

1- the belief that the motto "one day at a time" is smart, sweet, nice, and encouraging - but not really reality. That is is a gimmick.

That's too bad. See, there is no looong road ahead. There is only today. As long as we smile wryly when we hear that, and pretend to agree to just focus on today - just cuz it makes things easier - we still don't get it. Gimmicks do not make for a new life. There are no gimmicks in this business.
Only confrontation with reality.

and perhaps also,

2- that belief that "distracting myself from desires is what it's all about."

Too bad. That derech is truly fine for some people, many of them ba'alei madreigoh and serious b'nei Torah. But for me and many other folks with chronic lust problems, it means it's all still all about me, me, me. King baby still rules the day. And sof davar, it doesn't work. Cuz when I feel like being really good (cuz deveikus feels great!), I'll serve myself up some great 'avodas Hashem' experience - and when I don't feel so good, I'll take a sweet serving of porn.

And that's exactly what we do.

I know people like to imagine that we are far more l'shem Shomayim than that, but methinks we overestimate ourselves...especially we of the predictably masturbating crowd. "Vayigbah libi b'darkei Hashem" is not an excuse for sticking our heads in the sand...

Well, that path of salvation - fully relying on the game of distraction to prove I am doing something about my problem - is probably 100% fine for most frum yidden out there - but not to addicts. It's too little, too late.

Perhaps it's a question of focus. For an addict, focusing on being a ben aliyah seems to be just plain stupid - for the simple reason that we'd be putting the cart before the horse (as usual). But there we go again, imagining that hechereh madreigos is what we really need! Ignoring the faoundation is just too tempting and too easy. No bedrock of true G-d-awareness, a wish-washy honesty (that has been tolerating being two-faced for years!) at best, and immaturity galore? No problem! "I'm busy crying real tears of d'veikus in the middle of L'cho Dodi right now, so please leave me alone!" That's too easy. Before we know it we are back in the toilet....

Rather, living with Hashem is never defined by 'being good'. Being good results from it or helps lead us to it - but it is not it, itself. It happens in the mind, where nobody can see. As they say in AA about recovery, "it's an inside job."

So it's a paradox. On one hand there is no way to think ourselves into right living - we can only live ourselves into right thinking. But the actual recovery is a state of mind. Of surrender to G-d by way of surrender to the truth, one little step at a time.

It's about being a little more real, a little more honest, and a little more focused on Him than on myself. Sounds like a madreigah, but it's not. Plenty of goyim do it - most of the sober drunks and drug addicts (and sex addicts) out there eventually get it to some degree, and that's how they stay sober for the rest of their lives. It's G-d who does it, not them. But simultaneously, "ein hadovor tolui ella bee!" I am the only one who can surrender to Hashem and let Him in to take care of me. And I can't learn how to do it by myself. I needed to learn how from other drunks on recovery, and still do. I forget so, so easily.

And frum Jews have a harder time than most in doing this. We lust to understand it, to retain some mental control, to not seem idiots - even neged Hashem. Of course, as any of us will agree, porn and masturbation make total idiots of us all. Nu. So it bleibs a kashya.  :

And the dumb farmboys surely have it easier. Nebach for them...?

Some 'madreigo', huh?

May Hashem bless us all with protection from all mistakes and with at least a tiny bit of joy in the truth, no matter how it looks or feels.

The battle lines must, must, must be drawn back. Further and further back every day. It takes patience, but really has gotta happen.

I am not one for struggling at all, and feel it is not what recovery is about. But if I must struggle (and I sometimes do, indeed!), then I need to struggle with the abizrayas rather than the arayos. For example, if lusting is what I see as the problem I am concerned about, then that means that touching myself in a sexual way is no longer an issue for me - I do not even wonder of struggle with it. If looking at myself or at my privates is my concern, then I will not be even thinking about touching myself ina sexual way. If concern for others is what I am really trying to do, then using their images by staring at them and undressing them with my eyes is not a thing I will be struggling with as much...etc., etc.

If I struggle with the same thing that is the sign of not being in recovery. My battle lines either draw back, or I have not really accepted that anything is out of bounds for me, yet. That means I still believe that I can afford to use it, cuz I really still think I can control and enjoy it. And that is stupid (besides being not true).

If I cannot be clear about exactly what my uncontrollable sick behavior habits are, then I will never even get close to this.

And if I cannot admit them to another safe person, then chances are that I have not really admitted them to myself yet, either.

Blah, blah, blah....

Yup.

Wow, the things you wrote which hit me the hardest:

aamallen wrote on 01 Dec 2011 16:29:


My what beauty. You are such a fortunate mentch! What you write is full of diamonds far more beautiful to me than any mussar shmooze could be. This is real experience rather than just well-meaning. Y'karah hee mipninim.

My tefillah for you, chaver, is that you continue to grow in the things you have been given as gifts through your bitter experience thus far. If you use this gift as a 'bank account',c"v, you can draw from it for some time safely....but it will eventually run out.

If there is any value at all to me remembering that I am an addict even though I be clean, it is that accepting that allows me to accept that I really need to keep swimming in the things that got me sober in the first place: honesty, openness, and willingness. Getting caught helps us get willing, open, and honest. Staying in recovery-living allows us to stay willing, open, and honest. I hope we never again need the humiliation in order to choose humility.

I believe we deserve to live life as it was meant to be lived, too!!

You are describing Keep On Trucking, I think.

I have accepted for many years that one of the worst michsholim to staying clean is the guilt and going nuts over messing up a bit - and even over just seeing a schmutzy woman in the street or having a lust desire. What gayvoh it takes for me to be so stupid to expect anything near perfection for myself! What an insult to Hashem is it for me to assume that he is c"v oblivious enough to expect me not to have lust desires, give my attention to half-naked women that I pass in the street, and screw up a bit once in a while! Hashem is very, very smart.

He knows I am a guy who tends to porn my brains out and masturbate. That it is ingrained in me and that every day that I am free of it is a miracle and wonderful thing.

Sadly, all it takes is for a real good frum guy (with a masturbation habit) to go berserk inside over having seen a very pretty woman or one dressed half-naked, to get all focused on it and eventually guarantee that he'll need to resort to some sex with self.

Add to that a little broken 'kedusha' and 'tahara' fantasy, and you have a recipe for unbearable guilt that will keep the poor guy focused on his lust for hours and days.

Add to that shame, and you have a guy who can't even bring himself to admit it - being such a shanda! - and will not let it go!

And paradoxically, it is absolutely clear that the first drink is the one that always got me in the toilet, not the drink I took that brought me to orgasm! So that first drink is the one I need to avoid. The guys who are always struggling (and continuously 'falling' as a result hear this and get even worse, because they become convinced that super-vigilance is the power by which they will finally smash this yetzer hora! Of course, nothing could be further from the truth.

As you point out so simply, your main inner hanhogah with respect to lust is 1- ignoring it and 2- not getting angry at yourself for noticing she's pretty!

It makes perfect sense to me.....maybe you should really start worrying, now?! 

Exactly my experience, and it has been getting better and better, each year a deeper appreciation for Torah and Chassidus (my chosen path, though not a chosid [yet]). And the emess of recovery has opened up sifrei Emess to me, b"H. My shrinking duplicity is allowing growth of all the Emess in my life. And it is slowly recreating all the relationships in my life. Our house has transformed, the way I feerzoch with the wife and kids is transformed...where is this leading? Life is spontaneous now, interesting, and actually beautiful.

Before, it was the same predictable crap (excuse me), with the same, predictable dang (excuse me) cycle and the same predictable porn and 'adventures'. My existence was shifting from one crisis to another - here and inner crisis, there and chitzoni one. The only really exciting part of living was all the new and interesting ways I'd get in trouble for what I was doing ! Aside from the anxiety, life out of recovery is just boring. In fact, having fun and being anxious were hard for me to tease apart for the first few years sober.

This is what some addicts mean when they say that "the worst day I have sober is better then the best day I could have being drunk". It's not the drinking that is the problem, but the stupid thinking that feels so natural. It always kept me apart from real faith in G-d and connection with others.

It took a year or two for me to start learning that I really can approach Hashem as neither a grovelling 'rosho posheya', nor as a high-flying 'm'vutal liRtzono' - but as 'just me'. For reasons only known to Him, we - as we are right this second - are good enough to have a relationship with Him! We all are, though most of us really don't believe that, and deep down inside we tend to only believe that we are really good for having a relationship with nudes and porn, and stuff like that. No wonder we kept trying that over and over....but you and I are past that today. Boruch Hashem!!

I pray you (we) keep taking it just one day at a time.

Your thinking is exactly how you ended up this screwed up. It is not your friend. You think too much. Let it go. Arguing is not the derech. I do the same thing. So I need to be like Chushim ben Dan. Do you know how he responded to his uncle Eisav at m'oras hamachpeilah?

He was deaf.

So while the other Shivtei Kah (all great tzadddikim, greater in many ways than Rav Elyashiv and the Chofetz Chayim) were standing around and "dealing" with Eisav and his arguments in a mature and sensible way....Chushim who could not hear, saw it all for what it was: nothing but more BS from a rosho.

He took up his weapon and knocked Eisav's head clean off.

Problem eliminated.

The only humble way to deal with it.

If you are an addict like me, then most arguments (especially the ones in our heads) do not need to be won and most problems do not need to be worked out. Surrendr is the way. Letting go and leaving such discussions to those more qualified than me, is what I need to do.

It takes some humility rather than pride, and some ability to tolerate a touch of discomfort rather than being a baby. But hey, I can use some exercising of those good muscles as much as anyone does!

last try(hope) wrote on 07 Dec 2011 22:54:


1- You certainly are afraid, a bunch. So am I and everybody else. And only by continuing to move through that fear (as your efforts here show you are starting to!) do we get anywhere, it seems. And we need to keep moving through our fears if we are to keep growing. Hoping you continue to get support and learn how to use Hashem and how to use people. Virtual is very nice and may be enough for some, but you may discover that you need some real relationships with real people - you know, the kind you do not know only by a fake name like "Nisayon613", etc...

The real relationship you have with your wife is obviously not working for you as a recovery tool (it rarely works for us, so don't feel bad!). It sounds like the time to grow some real, real relationships for your recovery from this obsession and problem. Let her be, don't explain it to her - just grow out of your obsession and become a better husband. You can do that in many more ways than watching movies with her. Walks are nice. So is listening a lot. So is washing dishes, coming home on time, and being real good friends with her.

Not looking at schmutz is just the startof life as it should be - it does not even come close to defining it. Get me?

Go for it.

2- Yeah, I know, those 'pesky' women who don't seem to realize they are dressed inappropriately, and do not seem to realize how powerful they are....!! Really? Is this the truth about what we think of them?

I think not.

You are saying they are endowed with power, right? They have an effect on you. You see them as a danger to you. But they are not sitting on you, are they? You are the one looking at (and up to) them, right?

Face it, when we drool after them - or desire to, but struggle not to - we truly harbor a worship of these people. Voluptious means powerful, to us. Face it. It's a pity, it may be seen as "ossur", but that is actually irrelevant. We see them as powerful people - otherwise, they would not vex us so. 

Blaming it on "the yetzer hora" is just childish and dishonest. Only once we accept our tendency for what it is - the giving away of great power to people with just the right image - are we aware of what our problem actually is.  And as Sun tzu said: "know your enemy"...it helps to know your real problem, if you want to know what to do about it. Of course, further study to try and beat it - the decades long proccupation of many a good frum sex and lust addict - is fruitless. We all know that one, right? Learning teshuvos on what's really assur and really mutar, doing 'teshuvah', tikkun keri...all eventually levatolah (pun intended).

In that vein, I'd like to suggest that you may be making a mistake when you say


Of course Alexeliezer is 100% right: without shmiras einayim, we will get nowhere! But it is not your eyes that are your main problem. The core of the issue is that we want to see them and connect with them so badly! As long as we still hang onto our long-standing and deep-seated faith that they are powerful (because they have the right, perfect, beautiful image), we will be toast.

Recovery is not about knowledge of the truth, but only about acceptance of the truth - and then, the acceptance of new ideas. This is what AA refers to in Ch.5: "we tried to hold onto our old ideas, but the resut was nil...till we were ready to let go absolutely."

These very things I am referring to are some of those ideas we so badly want to hold onto. First, we want to use fantasy and sex to get what we believe we need. Then, we struggle with it, but though we really wish we'd stay stop masturbating and using porn and fantasy - we still hold onto our faith, believing as we do, and still see women (and sex) as we always have. Unfortunately, our first goal is always to change or surrender as little as possible. I see this in myself all the time. This will not work, at all. It is "white-knuckling". My 'philosophical comfort' is so precious...and talk is cheap: as long as the new ideas remain in theory, all is OK - we can say we agree with anything. And this is where much of our yiddishkeit is laying (or lying!). As soon as it means lemayseh giving something up or changing a behavior and to act as we believe...look out! Gevalt. Truth is chosamo shel HKB"H, no matter how ugly it may be.

As for me, I cannot survive unless I 1- see and accept the unvarnished truth about me (steps 1,2,4,5, and 8), for that makes me become willing to: 2- open my mind to discover new truths about me and new options (steps 3, 4 and 5 [again], 6, 7, 10, and 11) and then to 3- humbly beg for G-d's help to live by it just for today and  4- take simple, simple, simple actions to accept His love, His power, and His help (steps 5 and 7 [again], 9, 10,11 and 12).

And though it is truly impossible for me to succeed living by it, there is a real G-d in the world, as the Rebbe R' Elimelech used to like reminding (frum) people. And with a real miracle, one day at a time, I can....and do live by it. Imperfectly, but here I am. Life has never been better. Just like so many other hopeless addicts do all around the world(and 95% of them are goyim, so it's clearly not on the condition that we be tzaddikim!).

Maybe it comes as a chiddush to us that these pesky women are not so pesky after all. That they are dragging themselves to work as we do: to make a living, put food on the table, and to just 'get by' - and not to be sex goddesses, at all? Maybe they are as frail and troubled as everyone else and not really powerful, at all? Maybe Hashem loves them as deeply and meaningfully as He loves us? Hmmmm, that's new...

I needed to hear all that, thanks.

Oooh, one more thing regarding all these deep changes in us:

Some start to occur rather quickly and suddenly, while some take many months, sometimes years to really progress. As long as we stay sober for today while we grow, one day at a time, and exercise patience for G-d....life will change to the better and better.

The 90-day conversion idea might be true for the breaking of a habit. But that is a far cry from any real change. Change is on the inside, not the outslde, and ho'odom nif'al achar p'ulosav is not on our timetable, but on His.

If you had a choice to finally get free of this stuff even without the deveikus, would you agree to that? Or would you still hold out for better - while simultaneously acting out?!!

Some innocent, well-meaning folks here are blinded by the light of Torah and d'veikus. They need to stick a pair of sunglasses on their noses to see that they are tenaciously holding out for gold while sitting in excrement! Is this acceptable? This is where a Jew belongs? Get out of the excrement at all costs, I say! A lifestyle of acting out with lust and lying to our loved ones (and everyone else) is just no place for a Neshomaleh!

After we are out, there will be time for madreigos, on the condition that we remember that it's good enough just to be out of the excrement. Lusting after d'veikus can also be a mistake if the timing is wrong.

Is there teshuva? Have you read the opening of Chovos Halevavos on Teshuvah? He basically says there that teshuvah is just going from doing your own will against His, to doing His Will (or even just to doing His Will better than before). It sounds to me that you are equating "Tikkun" with Teshuvah. You want to get rid of the horrible guilt, I understand. But I ask you how you know that it would that be a good thing at all for you to lose that guilt before you are on the derech of Tahara that you desire so much?

Perhaps the Tikkun will have to come many years hence, and till then you (not any person, just you) will need to retain some of that guilt in order to remind you of the pain and stupidity of acting out so that the next time it strikes (later today) you might get help rather than just isolating and falling again. Is this a possibility you can entertain?

Finally, I'd like to share with you that dumping our guilt, doing "teshuvah" and being accepted again into the life of Tahara, etc., can be a purely self-centered pursuit - just like the screwing around we did before. That has been my experience.

True, getting a filter and the other stuff you mention below is the only way to really exercise commitment, but if you really want to change, then I'd ask you to consider keep working on changing your motivations, rather than mainly on changing your behavior. Looking at the number of days we were sober is silly. It's great, but not a proof of anything. "It is an inside job", they say, and pointing to externals can be a way for us to remain far away from the real problems we have that screw our lives up. And the main motivation many of us share is total self-centeredness. The fact that it's for kedusha or tum'ah is irrelevant, in the end.

Bombarding this problem with energy often just gives it more power. The ikkar might be in remaining busy in being useful to Hashem, His people, and yourself. Focusing on not focusing on the aveiro is probably the silliest thing we can do.

If I Look Down, I'll Fall and Die

Counting the days we are clean can be wonderful for some, but I hope you realize that it can also be - deep within our hearts - a counting of how long we can actually tolerate the (inevitable) buildup until the next time we act out. I believe this is very frequent. It is exactly like climbing up a ladder. I am afraid of heights. If I look back down as I am climbing, once I get to an impossibly high height, my hands and feet begin to shake. I know that I would fall.... so I never climb that high! How high do you want to climb in sobriety? If you are looking back, you will not get very high. We all know that being sober 5 years in a row is just plain impossible... for each of us, the last barrier is the "impossible height". Sure it's BS, but our feelings do not care about sechel very much. It's our Reality, so why pit ourselves against so powerful an adversary?

Instead, my experience in sobriety is like that of a guy walking across an abyss on a 2x8. Now, I have no trouble at all balancing on a 2x8 if I see it's on the floor! But if I see that it is suspended between two high buildings I will certainly panic, lose my balance, fall, and die. Looking down is just plain ossur. So I don't. And I do not count.

For about three years, I didn't mention my starting date in the groups. I'd just introduce myself and say , "...and I am grateful for today's sobriety"... till my sponsor suggested I start saying my starting date (Feb 28th, 1997) in order to encourage newbies that it really is possible.

OK, so I think I rarely do this, but here is some plain old advice:

1 - Get far, far more connected to people than you are right now, SG. This will take time, but it starts right this minute. You are way too isolated though you may not see it.

Funny thing, being married actually creates more loneliness for us types, rather than feeling more connected. For we chronic masturbators know and love isolation and mis-connection only too well. In marriage, the differences between us and our spouses that may have seemed insignificant while we were going out and engaged - get progressively clearer to us as we are married for longer and longer. Sexually, our spouses are always more different than us than we'd like to think. And that's really the tip of the iceberg! The monetary, philosophic, religious, and familial differences between us become more apparent with time. And they are real.

Welcome to real life! Marriage is about how we deal with differences, not about whether they exist.

Marriage is supposed to be a new connection. A connection that leads to what Chaza"l say, "ein ish meis ella l'ishto, v'ein isha meisah ella l'ba'alah". Heck, it is created by a monetary connection, legal connection, or sexual connection (kesef, shtar or biyah) and consumated by the most intimate of connections, sex. But after watching total strangers having sex with total strangers - in front of cameras used by total strangers - for years, as we have...the relationship and intimacy associated with sex is all but reversed! But that's sick, not the truth about sex. And the detachment we cultivate in our own marriages by hiding and faking, is not the truth about marriage, either. It's poison.

If we are normal, we work life's natural problems out with whatever help we can get. We talk about them with our spouses, we go to a rov, friend, parent, and/or shrink and we work on it - whatever we need...and it remains OK to be alive. Sometimes it is even fun!

But if we are addicts, we have this handy-dandy set of tools that are always ready to be used for immediate, fake relief from 'pesky' real life. And we have been running to our fake best friend for years and years! We have one of the tools on our bodies every morning in bed. We have other tools inside our minds from the second moment in the morning till the last moment before we fall asleep each night. We discover other tools when we walk out of the house and see real people on the street or in the office. We discover well-honed tools made out of our resentment, fear, and obsession in shul, the beis midrash, work, our families and in our own homes. These 'bad' tools only multiply - they never get fewer or shrink...until we start to recover from our craziness and self-centered way of seeing everything.

So you have nothing to lose by confronting more and more things that you prefer not to communicate about, not fewer. And that means really connecting with more people in your life, and banishing isolation and self-pity. They suck. And then life will get easier, not harder. It's all about relationships.

Along those lines, I suggest your mornings to be spent with a chavrusa as early as possible for a few minutes before shacharis in the same shul every day so you have a routine. Davening with the same group of guys so you can daven for them is very, very helpful. The nameless, faceless minyan factory is almost as bad as the closet, for me. The connections early in the morning help people like us, a lot. I have a short chavrusa with another recovering pervert in the morning before shacharis. It's a good thing. And we actually learn (when we are both there at the same time!) :.

2- Minimize the time you spend thinking. Mulling things over while you drive, daven, walk places, talk with someone else, are going to sleep...is usually a bad idea. We are never more alone and isolated than when we are deep inside our our thoughts. And they are usually just obsessions, obsessions, obsessions. Replaying stuff, worrying, gnawing thoughts about matters we are not yet willing to actually do antything about....

We need to have something else to do than think our useless and obsessive thoughts. Praying to and talking to our own G-d and really talking to people, are therapeutic. Even thinking about what it is that I am doing right now is a great alternative to the usual stewing and gnawing obsession, that is so typical for us. They say that someone once asked the Kotzker what he should be willing to actually give his life up for. The Kotzker told him, "Whatever you are doing right now." Real life should be one in which we are connected to (that means loving) what we are doing - cuz it is supposed to be precious to us. Right now.

Obviously, any guy (like I can be) who can be on the way to the supermarket, see a pretty woman and go and follow her like it is real important, drooling - does not appreciate the value of going to the supermarket and buying food to eat. Any guy (like I can be) who can be studying for a test and get distracted by a thought of "Hey, wonder who is really pretty on the internet, right now?" and just go check it out...back at athe races - does not appreciate the value of studying for a test. It's precious! What we are doing is precious. There is eternal value in it - Rav Noach, zt"l always talked about how that is just basic yiddishkeit, not 'madreigas'.

That's also the fruit of recovery. For an addict, it is just the entranceway in the lobby - the bottom floor. It's part of his 3rd step (see AA's 12&12 on it).

3- Give up at least a bit on perfectionism.

Especially in recovery, yiddishkeit, and marriage, I need to surrender my goofy and childish perfectionistic expectations. It kills me. We need to be allowed to screw up here and there - be honest and open about it, and go on. All I need to do - all we can do - is keep trying to do the next right thing - not to "be good", or to "be recovered".

4- Don't take unsolicited, free advice from strangers.

If every time I lust in any way, I would react by considering it tantamount to a "fall", there will be many problems. First, it would show that all this is about is what it was always about: Me and my goodness, or badness. As an addict in recovery, practically speaking, I cannot afford to be focused on the scale of the ShLo"H (which I love learning now!), the Yesod Yosef, or anyone else whose goal is kedushas hamachshovah almost as a goal in and of itself. I completely lose my humility that way. Before long, I find myself truly believing that I am "busy with great things (madreigos)", yet masturbating all the same. I went that way for years, gave shiurim for ba'alei teshuva, and masturbated (and worse) until one day by G-d's Grace I grew up a bit and decided that I'd rather be a humble sober kosher Jew, than a star-crossed, kedusha-struggling Jew who isn't sober. I spared myself the hashkofah. I know it sounds horrid to a pumped-up truly well-meaning d'veikus-seekers of today, but it works. And paradoxically, in all my life I have never been as successful in trying to really serve Hashem as I am today. I am not sure I am serving Him, but I sure am trying harder and enjoying it more naturally than ever! B"H I have been able to take on many things and limudim that previously would lead me down a path of "greatness"! Hah. I hope I'm not fooled any more. I am just a sexaholic who is trying to learn the depths of Hashem's Torah and serve Him with all the heart I have left, if he lets me. Even if I will never "get" any reward for it from Him. Being in that army is worth it. By all rights, I shouldn't be allowed in at all.

In SA, our sobriety definition includes no sex with myself, and none with anyone other than my wife. Of course, progressive freedom from the preoccupation with lust is necessary for success with remaining sober, so: If I were to be forcing my wife to have sex, or if I were to be masturbating up until the point that I don't "do the aveiro", or just look at porn all day today, I would certainly lose my sobriety the good ol' fashioned way, in a matter of time. I will need to quit that, or else. So I always do (so far), with His help.

I accept that sexaholics lust sometimes - we do that. Nu. I need to admit any intentional use of lust to my home group and - if I am smart - will call my friends and talk with them about it and admit this new proof of my powerlessness over lust in any meeting I go to... but then "Keep on Trucking!" is what I need to hear and do!

If being sober is not good enough for me, then I say it isn't sobriety I am after, but my own Pride and perfection, masked in religion. That's the way it is for me.

workingmyprogram wrote on 15 Dec 2011 00:30:
G-d is not as stupid as you think He is. Forgive yourself later, maybe in a year from now. Instead, in the meantime, forgive Him and forgive the people around you for the life you have been given by them and their actions. That'll be a tall order and take you till about step 9...probably about a year. To heck with forgiving yourself and all that stuff. Believe it or not, you are not the center of your recovery - G-d is, and other people are...you are actually in third place. Give yourself a bronze medal and move on for about a year sober and working these steps in earnest. Your life and sanity depend on them, as do mine.

Any self-focusing and analysis in the steps serves only to minimize our place at center stage - not to centralizer us even more. As it says in AA (p. 39), we discovered that we are "absolutely unable to stop drinking on the basis of self-knowledge." The steps ae not for understanding - but for acceptance of our limitations. They get us out of G-d's way. As the Kotzker put it,"G-d is only found where people let Him in," and as we know, self-will is the most powerful weapon against G-d that there is. The steps are mainly to reduce self-will and to make at least a baby's start at accepting G-d's Will.

Get yourself out of G-d's way, where you (and I) have been from day one.

Do you understand what I am saying here, or am I doing a weak job of expressing this stuff?

Dov writes to someone who is trying to figure out if he really needs the 12-Step program:

As for me, the question is not whether you need a twelve step program, but whether you are beaten yet. If you believe that there is still hope for you to quit by your own willpower (with occasional chizzuk, of course), then I see no reason to quit trying. I kept trying for years and years and never gave up until I saw that I had really lost, and would only get progressively worse till I lost everything. I saw that I was coming down the pike for some time already but never really did anything about it (beyond the same old silly "trying harder method") until I was forced to.

If this question really bothers you, I would suggest you do what I did and write out your entire lust-use history. From the very first time you recall doing something with lust that you regret or got into some trouble, and continue each behavior till this very day. After you are done, look at the entire pamphlet - better yet (as I did) read it to a trusted person (who will not vomit). Then I believe you will be able to answer your own question.

The only other answer I personally know of, is to go ahead and try to work the 12 steps with a sponsor in a fellowship (like SA, for example) and find out if it is right for you. 5-6 meetings ought to do it. That's a rather tall order for the uncommitted, but some do it. I do not pretend to know whether anyone needs to go to SA and I would never pasken that anyone is an addict, besides myself. These are decisions that my heart tells me an individual must arrive at for themselves. As Rabi Elazar ben Durdaya said: Ein hadavar tolui ella bi. If you do need it, no one can ever surrender to the facts for you, anyway.

Sorry, but there are no gimmicks for addicts. Yes, one can get saved from messing up once in a while by a tip from Chaza"l. Bu Chaza"l were not talking to addicts. And if you are not one, then that's fine - it is not a 'special club', you know.  I have a progressive and fatal chronic illness. I am a pervert in recovery. I am sober with Hashem's help.

This has nothing at all to do with the tips from Chaza"l.

Therefore, I hope and pray you do not offer them up to addicts as a solution. When it does not work for them - and it will not, for the addicts - then they will lose theior trust in Chaza"l and it will be your fault, for leading them on.

Sorry to be blunt. This is my experience, and I am not here to argue with you. Just trying to point out that you are 100% right - for non-addicts.

Saying that Chaza"l were referring to addicts is plainly ridiculous and I would be glad to explain that any time you like, in person or on the phone.

If "rigzu v'al techeta'u, imru bilvavchem al mishkavchem v'domu selah" was referring to addicts, then why did Rav Elazar ben durdaya (probably one of the few mentioned in Chaza"l who was actually an addict) need to die? Why didn't someone just tell him to "drag the menuval to the beis hamidrash", or something, and he'd have quit having sex with the prostitutes?

Yes, the eitzos of Chaza"l are 100% emess and I believe in them, too. But when I say "addict", I am referring to a very sick person, not one who just masturbates cuz it feels so good - like most of the people who hook up to GYE. I am referring to those who are like me: doing it in order to be rid of the obsession; doing it even though it is torture and they DON'T want to; doing it and feeling like they have to or they'll die - until right after they give in and then tearing their hair out, over and over. I am talking about sweet, good yidden (and goyim) who are doing it and living a double life and hating themselves for it. I am talking about people who know that Tikkun Klali and mikvah are nice - but all the mussar shmuessin in the world and all the deveikus at L'cha Dodi - will not stop them at all from having sex with themselves (you call it masturbating or zera levatola), - or worse - again.

Of course, I have nothing against you, at all. It's not in any way personal. Just please consider who you are talking to when you say the truth. The same truth to one person, is a lie for another person and not Hashem's Will for him. Addicts ned medicine, not advice.

But when I say "addict", I am referring to a very sick person, not one who just masturbates cuz it feels so good - like most of the people who hook up to GYE.

I am referring to those who are like me: doing it in order to be rid of the obsession;

doing it even though it is torture and they DON'T want to;

doing it and feeling like they have to or they'll die - until right after they give in and then tearing their hair out, over and over.

I am talking about sweet, good yidden (and goyim) who are doing it and living a double life and hating themselves for it.

I am talking about people who know that Tikkun Klali and mikvah are nice - but all the mussar shmuessin in the world and all the deveikus at L'cha Dodi - will not stop them at all from having sex with themselves (you call it masturbating or zera levatola), - or worse - again.

As Rav Twerski writes, our behavior attests to what we really value the most.

I believe that He put me in this life and I have this problem cuz it was indispensable to me! I needed to become sick enough to need Him, in order to ever have hope of finding Him. Rav Noach Taught me this idea, and I use it this way.

EMERGENCY TOOLS
1. Short prayer, "I'm powerless, please G-d help me!"
2. Move somewhere else. (Get away from the trigger!)
3. Pick up litter.
4. Sing (or hum) a favorite tune.  Or listen to music.
5. Call someone from the program or the forum NOW.  (Or post)
5. Get to a meeting AS SOON AS POSSIBLE.  (Get to the forum)
6. When you're angry:  Ask yourself, "What am I ashamed of right now?"

I agree that simply not having sex with myself or anyone other than my wife is still not nearly 'enough'. It's a negative sobriety, and not a recovery of anything. But we ought to be honest with ourselves and admit that once we really stop masturbating or using porn compulsively, we find ourselves in a place where - had we really been there all along - we'd never had really felt this desperation for getting all the good things of recovery, anyhow! We'd bleib coasting - like most people are and will be, till they die. Interestingly, then, it is my sickness that saves me from the unexamined life, not my 'greatness'.

By the same token, this is the only reason that this very day I still need G-d as much as I ever did: to live life in a way that doesn't just look or sound good, but actually works. I need it, while the do-gooders do not. And it was the addicts who taught me that being clean from acting out (ie., sobriety) is only vauable inasmuch as it is the gateway to being able to come to live life right - if one is an addict. That's recovery. It's not about 'being good', nor about being 'a better person'.

This is what the 1st step means when it says 'Powerless' (to use lust successfully) and that our lives are 'unmanageable'.

Addicts have a cyclical, repeating, and progressively worsening habit. It eventually sucks the life out of us, isolates us from all others, makes us disgusted with ourselves and with others, makes us need to have a double life... and ruins more and more of our lives every year that goes by.

My biggest challenge was actually believing that G-d would actually take care of me even though I was ugly.

Convincing myself that 'I was not so ugly' was totally not what I needed! Rather, I needed to come to understand that Hashem loves the ugly people, too!

But here is the point: I do not have to see that beauty - I just have to believe that somehow, G-d can see it. I do not even have to ever see it and need no evidence that it exists. That He saved me does not prove to me that I am indeed worthy - it proves that He loves me. And being cared for (meaning: loved) by G-d is the only worthiness that means anything to me.

Also, I did not need to work the steps in order to get sober. The main thing I credit with getting me sober was actually the pain of my acting out. I had enough of it, because it was so bitter. Hashem threw me forcibly on the path of recovery ... He was so good to me, for He made my addiction excruciatingly painful. Until I had no other option than to give up acting out my sex fantasies - though I could not stop.

I can be ugly and He loves me a ton anyhow. He brought me - a masturbating and desperately porn-using, frum yid - to recovery! When did he lay the groundwork for that? After I got better? No. He did it all for me while I was on my knees in the bathroom masturbating. That's Chessed - the teitch of Chessed is that onedoes not deserve it.

I spent decades in yeshivah being told that if only I'd get good enough, I'd finally be able to stop masturbating. If I'd get my da'as clean enough, my mesiras nefesh big enough - then I'd be liberated! I believed hook, line and sinker, that if I'd learn Mesilas Yeshorim, sifrei yir'ah with hispaylus, shimush talmidei chachomin, chumash and gemorah, and did chessed and teshuvah well enough, then I'd be straight in the head enough that this behavior would be below me, finally. I was sincere....I thought.

But it did not work, obviously, and I discovered that I could not stop acting out my lust, because the only fool-proof method I knew to get free of it was to do it!

Finally I could not afford to act out any more, and had to stop. It wasn't that Hashem needed me to stop, but that I needed to. I was losing my humanity and could not accept that - not because of what you are calling self-love, but because of the survival instinct. I do call that self-love, as I wrote to you earlier.

I was ma'arich, as usual. Gevalt! Sorry if I lost you, or anyone else. But I have no interest in heartwarming drashos or what sounds nice - all I want is what works.

For about three years, I didn't mention my starting date in the groups. I'd just introduce myself and say , "...and I am grateful for today's sobriety"... till my sponsor suggested I start saying my starting date (Feb 28th, 1997) in order to encourage newbies that it really is possible.

Yeah! i finally know when dov is turning 14!
seriously gibbor thanx a mil for this thread. You're doing a great service to humanity [those who r trying to keep their sanity].

strugglingandstrivngBT wrote on 28 Dec 2011 22:07:


Some things are worth a lot of trouble. Gibor120 is so right, friendships are so precious. They are worth a lot of trouble. I daresay SSBT, that your pining for G-d, your need for the comfort of clarity, and your troubles making truly meaningful and useful friendships are related.

You obviously have a lot of hard-won insight into yourself, your challenges, and your needs - so little I'd say would be a chidush to you. But 'inspiration' is the last thing I'd wish for you. It never lasts.

Instead, I wish for you to discover the meaning of friendship like you never did before, this z'man. I believe that however much you feel close to Hashem, you will feel quantitatively and qualitatively closer to Him, after you finally grow close to some of His people. It is so easy for us to 'feel' deveikus. But who knows what we feel - emotions are so hard to really understand and qualify. But once the template has been struck of some true friendship, kinship, and devotion to real, live, members of G-d's people (friends) - you will come to know Hashem in such a way that when depression happens, you will remain close with Him. You will still know that you are depressed - perhaps even severely, R"l, but closeness to my G-d is not as dependent on my feelings as we are often led to believe.

"Rabim mach'ovim lorosho - v'labote'ach baShem, Chessed ysovevenhu." Chaza"l comment that the pasuk implies that even if one is a rosho - still, if he is trusting of his G-d then Chessed (love) will surround him.

If a rosho can have that, then certainly a depressed person can.

Continued hatzlocho!!

If you were born cursed, then I believe the only curse is this:

Women are on a pedestal for you. The 'untouchables'. The seperation from them in school - as if they are somehow poisonous...the story in 1st grade (and your reticence to spell out exactly what happenned)...I guess your definition of 'pure pritzus' is nudity of women...this yearning to be close to an "isha" - it proves that deep down inside, you truly believe  that they and their nudity are powerful and precious to you. But they are not powerful. They are weak, just like you and me. They are not more precious than you or I are. They are just real, regular, people with the same worries and pains as you, me, and the rest of the world. They are not "isha"s and not things to 'gotta get close to'. They are people.

I am not lecturing you - you know all this in your head and I suspect always have. So I am not addressing your head. I am addressing your heart. Your heart is twisted, and sees value where there really is none.

Like most teenage boys with the tabboo of naked woman - they become powerful and valuable to us, and then when we discover masturbation they become like gasoline to the lust engine inside. It consumes, and satisfies...at first. Eventually it only consumes and does not satisfy. So we start searching for kinkier and riskier stuff. It stops being fun any more.

Ashrecha if you are ready to give it up. Please, please drop thinking and figuring it out. Just live clean today and don;t even consider what tomorrow will bring. You cannot do anything about it today, at all. Did anyone in the human race ever successfully go to the bathroom today - for tomorrow?! Never. You can only do today's work today, and will have to do tomorrow's work tomorrow. There is no trick, no gimmick, and no segulah to "beating" this. Sure, many sell such things. They are about "figuring it all out", "making yourself into a kadosh", "building a wall"...if they work for you, that's great.

If they do not, then you'll still be left with today, for today, and that's it. G-d is with you. Few of us allow Him to help us, even though we daven and daven...we do not change our values! The "race of women" and their powerful nudity retain that pedestal and power for us - and we expect G-d to keep us away from our gold?! We are the ones who give them this power. We can give up that right to have them, and choose to give up our lust just for this day. He will help us, but ein hadovor tolui ella bee.

We have some work to do. And it always and only starts with staying clean today, period. As a friend of mine (another drunk in recovery) used to say, "We can't think ourselves into right living - we can only live ourselves into right thinking."

He was right for giving it up and letting G-d. We were wrong for holding on and playing G-d.

Like most teenage boys with the tabboo of naked woman - they become powerful and valuable to us, and then when we discover masturbation they become like gasoline to the lust engine inside. It consumes, and satisfies...at first. Eventually it only consumes and does not satisfy. So we start searching for kinkier and riskier stuff. It stops being fun any more.

Hatzlacha with whatever you are doing, my friend.

BTW, I have never really understood the idea that I have heard many times on GYE that, "I'll try x, y and z... and - if they do not work, then my last resort is the 12 steps."

The fact that one who is not deeply motivated will not get off their buttocks and do some hard work is understandable. The part I don't get is why the 12 steps are looked at as something other than just being honest with ourselves. Can life possibly be expected to work well without that? Especially for a person with a big, bad habit like schmutz - can change ever be expected without rigorous self-honesty?

It is not complicated, very simple, and very powerful to be simply honest with ourselves. I see it as Derech Eretz which is clearly kodmah laTorah, and believe with my whole heart that although there are certainly many ways other than the 12 steps to find recovery and sobriety, those of us who are blessed to have the progressive, chronic, and fatal disease of sex/lust addiction (or really any addiction) and find recovery in using these 12 principles, are blessed with a beautiful and real living experience in every respect.

I see the 12 principles (steps) as coming from Torah just as any advice in Pirkei Avos does. They are just about learning to be real with ourselves, with G-d, and with our fellow man. That's all. Isn't that a Torah value?

OK, Kosher, what would you like to know about me?

But really, I must admit to you that the reason i do not share more intimate and potentially identifying details about myself here on the forum is because I do not consider this forum a venue for my own recovery and do not favor it as such for others, either.

Yup, I said it. 

The forum is virtual. While that gufa provides people with a buffer so they can at least open their mouths to someone, at the same time, it is a huge weakness for reality - we can put on virtual faces (and do). Reality - the stuff that affects us on an emotional level, has been the big difference foe me and many others I who know. The porn makes our hands shake, breathing shallow, and heart race....and so does coming to your first 12-step recovery meeting, SA international conference, or shabbatons for frum, recovering sexaholics and their families. The real thing feels real. The weakness of the forum is that I doubt many here have ever had nearly the phisical reaction while posting something as they did while they were struggling with acting out their lust. So how can it possibly be as real?

Hey, for many of the young fellows on this forum, virtual faces is exactly how they have been acting out all along! Staying virtual is a good thing then? I think not.

And nothing will change that, it seems. And yet that makes the forum and GYE perfect for exactly what it is, as far as I am concerned:

The perfect gateway into recovery for many suffering yidden and their families. So far, I have met (and keep in regular contact with) about 10 guys who have been introduced to in-person recovery groups as a result of their contact with GYE people, and are doing very well, thank-G-d. That is a huge number, really. Huge.

We need to all keep on working together, because we all have a lot more to do for klal Yisroel!

So do you want me to post a picture of myself on the forum? Why? Will it help my recovery?

ben durdayah wrote on 13 Feb 2011 11:48:
Yes. Actually, what other option is there? The only problem is that in this virtual world how do you know that the person (or people) you are opening up to will have any schoirah at all for you beyond sympathy? True, love is very important - perhaps the most important ingredient in recovery. But it is so easy for a person who has never gotten any time away from his own problem to spew tons of well-intended advice to every other person in the universe. There is no evidence that any of it is 'battle-tested' for you cannot see the look on his face and do not know this person, at all. All you've got is a kitsch username and very nice sounding words!

Nu. Support and encouragement it certainly is. But anybody who R"l has cancer and wants a support group goes to real cancer survivors. Not a group of folks who just read some books written by cancer survivors and felt very sympathetic to the problem.

We all share a precious thing here on GYE: we are all people drawn together by different expressions of the exact same obsession: lust. I am only really interested in sharing what is actually working for me to keep my zipper up or my eyes closed. That's the only schoirah for me here.

Thanks for the chizzuk, though!! :o

Ok. It does a few things. First and strangest, I owe something to the person I am lusting after because lusting is always an act of "taking". I am using their image for selfish ends. (And saying that "They are obviously begging for it cuz look at how they are dressed!" is BS. I am reasonably certain that the average slutty female out there intends to be lusted after by who they want to be lusted after, not by some compulsive, perverted Jew boy like me.) So how better to show my gratitude?

Second, lusting is the single most powerful, portable, and dependable way I exercise my MEEEEE muscle (the one in my head, not somewhere else ). It is my drug of choice for entertaining myself, for covering up stress, fear, and boredom, for controlling my inner environment - in short, it is my most trusted Power source. Otherwise, why would I use it so much?  So how do I sacrifice it? By just saying "no"? Nu. OK. That's what I always tried to do.... it didn't get me very far away from it. If you know anything about operand conditioning or habits, then you know that I choose to go a step further and use my lust as a guide and tool for giving power to others. To helping me learn to care about helping others. What better way to weaken the MEEEEE muscle than to do what little I can to care about the very people I naturally worship as my (false) Power Source? I turn the tables as much as I can.

Finally, it gives me something to focus on rather than on lusting. And that itself is worth everything, even if my prayers for her are of no benefit to her. Treating a lust object like the real, live person they are is one of the most powerful tools to help me to stop looking at them like pieces of meat (with skin on them). We need to be reoriented. The entertainment and porn industries have succeeded in getting so many of us to believe deep in our hearts that pretty women are all dolls; that above all else they are libidos desperate to be used by us; and that they don't have real lives with obligations, pains, joys, sadness, and dreams of real people... and that perspective entitles us in our hearts to treat them as objects. Is it any wonder then, that most lust addicts grow to expect (no, demand) sexual bliss from their wives as though their feelings are just an obstacle? I looked into the shulchan aruch to see what I could demand of my wife, rather than looking into her heart... now what kind of BS is that? No wonder we were so miserable back then! She was an object, in some respect.

We need exercises to change, it will not happen just because we wish it to. And it takes a long, long time. But it works and it is worth it.

A caveat: I was once walking with an SA beginner who was staring at the rear end of a lady out in front of us, and mumbling. I asked him what the heck he was doing. He told me that he was praying for her.... I reminded him that he might be praying for her butt, but not for her. Ha. We both had a laugh went on our way. So the praying can't be done as an excuse to keep staring! A sweet dufus, he was.

Asking for help is a great thing to do. But it is unlikely that anyone can expect help if they are calling out from behind the safe walls of their impenetrable castle.

If I hide behind a username - that's one stone wall;

If I use no other person to tell the full and actual details of what I am doing, to - that's another stone wall; 

Thinking I can get away with just saying "I looked at porn" - that's another stone wall;

Conveniently isolating by not staying in regular communication with other safe people who share the same problem I have - that's another wall;

Engaging my brain in lots and lots of deep, personal "teshuvah avodah" - that is another impenetrable stone wall...for it builds a giant edifice of self-centered isolation - a romance with my "neshoma". Gevalt. That is not yiddishkeit. It's actually more like Buddhism...perfection for the sake of achieving perfection. Hashem asks not for us to be kedoshim, at all - but rather, to be kedoshim leylokeichem. (see Sfas Emes on that pasuk) And guilt and fear of punishment may have worked to make good Jews in the time of the Shaloh haKodosh, but not today. Not with any guy who can look at movies of naked people. Sorry, it doesn't work that way. Enough with the ruchniyusdikeh roller-coaster...from rosho muschas one minute to Tzaddik Yesod Olam the next....that's not real Yiddishkeit, either. It's all a game in the head, till it's over.

It's over.

Alexeliezer is so right. So how about looking for actions to take instead of wishing or even begging for help? Ein hadovor tolui ella bee.

Sadly, or luckily, I cannot keep myself clean. I am an addict, and cannot stay clean. My G-d must keep me clean or I will lose everything. This is not just a game or 'religious-sounding' talk. The ein hadovor tolui ella bee means that I need to let Him in - and only I can do that...nobody can do it for me - even Hashem Himself! He does not do that.

It is quite possible that you are not an addict, and that you really do not need G-d to give you a daily reprieve from your obsessions, as I do. But you are failing, sir, and need more than just 'asking others to save you', now

Take healthy, real actions today. And I hope you do not give thought to trying to stay clean for a week, a month, or the rest of your life...just today. And that's not a little mind-game, either.

You are really trying, really reaching out. You are one of the lucky ones, chaver.

Blind Beggar wrote on 17 Dec 2011 17:09:


There is a very tznuah non-triggering girl sitting next to me and she is in great distress about something. I feel the tears almost coming out of my eyes and I was able to daven for her sincerely.
I am not such a monster after all.

No, you are not. And I daresay that your requirement for demanding sincerity is a bit weak. Funny. I have seen atheists become men who have a G-d - simply by following their sponsor's instructions to just "pray anyhow, even though you do not believe in G-d!".

But "oh, no, I've gotta be sincere..." - coming from a person who is accepting using women's images against their will to feed his sexual fantasies - that's OK?

Yeah, so one may say that,

1- "Wadayamean!? It's not against their will. If you saw how they dress you'd know that they want me to imaging them naked and use them!"

Then I simply ask you to speak to them and plainly tell any one of them that you are imagining her wearing no clothes and that you are fantasizing about her in bed with you....see how that goes.

That "they are asking for it" is a subtle and convenient lie we tell ourselves, plain and poshut. A lie. Yes, they are wrong for dressing that way - but their intention is not our way of interpreting it. The same excuse is common among religious fundamentalists the world over: "She asked to be raped by dressing that way". A lie. She did not really want it to go that far. Why is it so OK for us to have our cake and eat it too - yet when other people do things like that, we demand they pay the consequences and take away their right to play the game of acting naughty without being treated that way. It's like saying all mountain climbers (yes, it's an idiotic thing to do to risk one's life climbing mountains because they are there) deserve to die (just as idiotic). That is not what "damo beroishoi" means - and anyhow, that is only for the beis din shel ma'aloh, never for us to take action on. Theydon't want to die!

Just like we guys have wanted so many times to look at porn, or even to touch ourselves - but without actually spilling zera. And so many times we got to that point of no return with shock and disappointment: "Hey! I wanted to stop a second ago! Iv'e been cheated! Ayyy!" I have certainly been there many times.

C'mon. Why the double standard? If I can be a little dishonest for my lust escapades, then I feel it's OK for me to be a little dishonest for recovery. If you must, "L'olam y'hei odom orum byir'ah."

and when people say,

2- What? I don't "accept"my using women - I am fighting it in me tooth and nail!"

To that, I remember that when I habitually do something it proves that for all practical purposes, I condone it in my heart. That is what na'aseh lo k'heter means. Yes - morally, intellectually I may fight it within myself, cry, etc. But if I tend to do it, if I do desire it deeply, then it is part of me. Sorry. Not a good part of me...but I gotta face that and ask G-d to remove it, cuz I don't want it any more. And incidentally, when guys say, "I have asked Him to take it away so many times, and He hasn't!" It hurts to say it, but the truth plainly is that they are not really ready for Him to remove it. Or they are - and then they take back the luxury if playing (and fighting) with it. Yes, it is a luxury. A luxury that I cannot afford. But we all think we can play both sides of the fence at some point. Growing up is very, very hard...at least it is for me.

Hmm...Maybe people praying for me should be discouraged! After all, the unvarnished. whole truth about our lust problem - especially at our worst moments is - so ugly that maybe only the greatest tzaddikim could be sincere loving us - and praying for us? Hmmm...can they?

Yes, they can - and if they can't, then I beg them to read the first part of this email and pray for me and you, anyhow.

Maybe it is time we went a bit 'above' seichel sometimes, for our own recovery. But it is scary to let go of even that, no?

Ooh, nice. That's beautiful!

But asking yourself if you could do what Yehudah did is unfair to you, for these reasons:

1- Yehudah was certainly not an addict and he was not in a battle to save his own life and sanity. No one deserves a medal for 'having the bravery to run out of a burning house and save themselves'. Is it 'brave'? Well, sort of...but we don't generally reward anyone for having enlightened self-interest and doing what is totally and overpoweringly natural anyway. But what Yehudah did was much, much harder. The guy who really has a bad problem, is really in trouble - and all he is willing to do about it is veiter hide behind a username and give hidden people a peek at his virtual dirty laundry - really does not even care about himself enough to sacrifice a bit of his precious ego to save himself! That's a pity...

A CPR teacher once told me that if you are ever at a dinner table and one person surprisingly and silently rises and walks away, presumably to go to the restroom...follow him. For he may be choking on food. Usually people excuse themselves when they really need to go to the bathroom. The fact is that a person is often so ashamed of choking in public - it is very embarrassing, kind of like sneezing and having mucus on my face right there in shul! I desperately cover my face looking nervously for a tissue - don't you?

Many people would rather hide while they try their hardest to cough it out, even if it means they may pass out in the bathroom - they (we) always believe in our heart of hearts that right before we really pass out we'll run out and get that help, should our private efforts utterly fail.

Same thing here. We have mucus all over us...our maybe another bodily-fluid-that-shall-not-be-named...  And the first thing we are instinctively desperate to do is HIDE!! Quick!!

Gevalt. Hiding behind a username is perfectly OK for those who don't need to get more help. But I watch some who are failing and see it for them as a slow, safe, death. Like the guy who will eventually pass out in the bathroom choking, R"l, and be found later by someone...too late for him, too late for the wife, too late for the children.

2- On the other hand, Yehudah was not admitting that he was a mess - just that he did a single very embarrassing thing;

2- Yehudah had no electricity so he could not log onto GYE even he wanted to. So he had no other breyrah.

2- how many 2's are there?

2- k    i    c    h    s    a

Some people have found that when they cannot seem to accomplish what they'd like with their wives verbally - they write their feelings and what they'd like to say, to their wives. Then they ask them to write a response back to them.

I would strongly suggest handwriting, not emails. There is something cheap about emailing - people say things they do not really mean, do not really believe, and then "click!" Kind of fake, like I am behind a mask. That's why people get into so much trouble at work firing off nasty emails at co-workoers or bosses...then regretting it. They'd never have said that, nor written it in a real letter.

Also, when my wife and I get into a tizzy and cannot communicate, we have "a meeting of two". Adhering to the Robert's Rules of Order (as in typical 12-step meetings), we each take turns sharing our feelings and thoughts and are careful not to use the second-person. We speak about how we each feel and make reference to each other in the thrird-person, only. We do not interrupt ach other, and we do not have cross-talk. No cross-talk means that we do not respond directly to anything the other person said. Rather, we express how we feel and think - rather than trying to pull down what the other person thinks or talk about our reaction to what they feel. See, that's where arguments and self-centered power-struggles take hold.

It was very effective, and opened us up to real intimate talking, eventually. It works in marriage and any relationship where the parties feel seriously enough about the relationship to actually take the time to respect eachother enought to do this.

Continued hatzlocha!!

No, I do not believe in levels of addiction, as I hear them described by some people. I believe that addiction is like pregnancy. A woman is no more pregnant an hour after conception than she is at her ninth month. If I use lust and cannot stop, then it does not really matter to me whether my compulsive behavior is exposing myself, having regular sex with prostitutes, etc.......or if it is secretly stealing a few minutes searching for the perfect porn images at my sister's computer when she is not home. If it is making me miserable and my life unmanageable, then I am a sick man.

If I have secrets, then I am sick. Period.

The only question is when I have had enough - or when you have had enough. It is so easy for soem people to act as if "no one else can understand their pain" - but I do not believe it. When I cruised around nightly for scenes of prostitution (I was not ready then to actually use them, but lusted after watching the action and seeing pretty women on the street and in cafe's and drove around frequently for that purpose [hoping that moshiach would not come "right while I was driving around like this idiot I am!"]), my life was already not mine. I was out of control. If any of you would have been watching me get into my car after the family fell asleep, and drive around, you would have scratched your heads, maybe thrown up. It was just plain idiotic. But I was absolutely convinced that doing that was in my very best interest - nay, that I needed it!

To me, that is just as crazy as the guy (was me) in the shower who really feels like he needs to masturbate there. That it is bad, ossur, whatever - but if he keeps doing it anyhow, ends up doing it over and over....he is obviously only doing it because deep down inside, his gut is convinced that having sex with himself (what masturbation really is) is in his very best interest. That he needs it. That Hashem does not really understand.

That's sick in the head, no? But that's what we do as addicts.

So who is sicker? Niether fellow, I say. I see the 'progression of the disease to worse behaviors' as just new boredom with the old stuff - but the need driving it all is exactly the same!

So Guard calls it "hitting bottom while still on top". Because he is such an oheiv Yisroel, he is hoping that at least some people will see they are on the same street to destruction - before they have to lose their jobs, make chillul Hashems, lose their marriage and families, or even die. He is hoping that some people will open their eyes and see that they are already losers - they have already lost, and have no hope at all in just "trying harder". They need G-d as does one with cancer. It's over and only a miracle can help them. Fortunately, that happens all the time. Just read the stories in the back of AA, or "recovery Continues" frok SA. We who have given up do get sober and we do get healthier. It works if you work it.

So I think that R' Guard hopes that maybe, for a change, those who need to will finally open up to other people and to themselves (that's the only 'admission fee' to recovery), and reach for G-d for real (that's the only solution).

And just being really frum is neither of these, for the guy who is already an addict. For he had all the frum tools while he was learning how to get so screwed up in the first place. He needs special help, which is available - if he knows that he is as powerless as the guy who is arrested with hookers. The hooker guy may go right back out there (and I know many guys with peyos who have) - but I have met many who have 'only' messed around with porn and masturbation, who have given up and gotten the help they need. Some people are low-bottom drunks, but many are high-botttom ones. Not everyone needs to go through as deep a living gehinnom. But there is no easy way out. 

So if by "levels of addiction" you mean people with a low-bottom or a high-bottom, I am with you 100%. But both are just as sick in the head and unmanageable. Otherwise I make no sense of it, at all.

In dog training, they say that "if your dog has not yet learned that he must come when called, then you do not have a dog." He will get lost, hit by a car, or bite other people and have to get put down. It is the smart dog owners who go through the simple but not easy work of training their dog to return when called even before they have to learn it the really hard way.

I am not saying what cannot work for you - just sharing my experience. If you want it, take it. 

Whoa...to try and answer something for Obermottel and Gibbor, no I'd never suggest SA in a blanket sort of way to any guys who are having a hard time stopping the fantasy/porn/masturbation/'teshuvah'/withdrawal/fantasy merry-go-round. I sincerely believe that everybody is different and that there are truly a lot of guys out there who simply need a warm, loving approach to trying harder.

The porn industry is huge, huge. It can't possibly be powered all by addicts. Look in the dictionary for "addict" and you will typically find that it is a psychological or physiological dependence on something that damages a person's life in some way, and causes trauma when ceased. It is also described as "progressive and chronic" by the American Society of Addiction Medicine. Therefore they call it a 'disease'. I and some other people have a disease. The way I see it, it's just plain silly to say that basically all the guys out there who like the way porn makes them feel, are ill. Mistaken, yes, but mentally ill? I think not. That would seem to me nothing more than a giant cop-out, or a great way to make a lot of money selling a lot of "Johnson's snake-oil for addicts like all of you!". Surely most people must simply try harder and fight for their morality! And I believe that most of the long-term chronic losers at that are probably addicts....like me and others I know. A good frum guy probably should resist a ton before arriving at the surrender point of an addict. But to say that lust addiction is different in this respect from say, drinking, cuz this is a tremendous aveiro? That's silly. It is not the aveiro/evil itself that finally gets guys like us into real recovery, but rather it is the painful unmanageability we see in ourselves and our excruciating glimpse of our own powerlessness that finally bottoms us out - not the drinking, sexing or drugging behavior itself. Hey, I could have gone on for quite some time masturbating, using sex phone calls, and meeting women - but my own pain is what I could not handle any more. I insist that pain itself was the greatest gift Hashem could give me. Dayeinu, it would have been enough for eternal gratitude, even without recovery.

So I guess any decent frum guy should end up going into the Program under 'duress' and jumping up and down screaming, "No! I can and must beat this! I can, I can, I can!"....all the way into the arms of their sober recovering friends who know they can't do it either - but are sober by Hashem's Chessed today.

I also cannot accept that the tools the Torah and Chaza"l gave us to fight the Yetzer Hora are so imperfect that they do not work at all for some people. It makes more sense to understand that the the losers at applying Torah are sick people. Torah does not typically work very well for cancer and diabetes - and it does not typically work very well for addiction. Any idiot can see that.

But as has been discovered here on GYE and elsewhere, saying this causes some decent, Torah-loving people to become completely unglued. Though they themselves are still not clean which they admit is pretty bad, actually coming out and admitting that it's not working for them or for some others is just the last straw! (I know that sounds crazy, but that's what I have seen over and over). Too threatening....can't be. Nu. If you want to get all cooked in that maclokess, look elsewhere on GYE. And those who have found sobriety and long term success using the same Torah tools we all know and love are few and far between. They need to stay here and keep sharing their exact methods of success. Often they do not. I feel strongly that they would actually serve the oilam better by shutting up until they themselves are sober for six months or so. And when they share their success, they also admit the exact nature of their sexual acting out and describe their failure and weakness, their struggle and their pain. Experience is the key here, not wisdom. Wise and frum people who are still masturbating their brains out are unfortunately a dime a dozen. Get sober, then share how it worked, otherwise the remonstrations and exhortations may just be really frum-sounding poison. Maybe not. I suspect it's OK for normals, but more likely poison for addicts. Finally, I feel strongly that anybody granted long term success in this problem - whether addict or not - aught to feel they need to actually meet with others in trouble in order to share their success, even if it means sacrificing a bit of their feeling of personal safety. Addicts in recovery do this all the time. In fact, it is the 12th step. Why should a 'Torah-method' be OK to share behind a fake name and only virtually. Too few pure mussarnicks here have done this, and I say yyasher kochacho to the braver ones. B"H, I do it all the time with those who believe they are addicts.
 
Now, back to the issue.

If believing that I am, in fact, a very sick man were just a way for me to keep on playing with myself and porning out, then I agree with the naysayers who insist that it's a cop-out to say "I am a sick man." But that is not at all what we 12 step people do with the label!

Because I and those in 12 steps see themselves as sick people, we get the medicine we need! In other words, the type who never get that lump checked out for they know they'd never be able to deal with it, usually drop dead after it's too late. You do not even hear much about them for they do not last very long. Hence the horrifying news stories of sexual abuse and arrests with porn, hookers, etc., even among our rabbis, R"l (like some of us right here!).

The ones who feel a lump and get it checked out are the ones that get treatment. Does anyone say that admitting that one has cancer or diabetes (both absolutely chronic, progressive, and fatal disease) is a cop out?! NO way. And the earlier the better. Yes, there are hypochondriacs - but if the true signs of the illness are there, then there is treatment.

But the treatment - in my own case, the steps - is not for sissies. So we who desperately want to live, we get clean and live life as mentchen as a result of out own hard work - at surrendering. Surrendering our right to have sex with ourselves, surrendering our right to use others for sex, and to demand sex from our wives; giving up our deep belief that we have the right or ability to successfully use porn. We get help from others to stop feeding our disease. Turning to others is itself part of admitting we are powerless - that we do not possess the ability to successfully control and enjoy it. Plugging into lust only and always makes our lives more unmanageable - if we are addicts.

There is no escape from personal responsibility, least of all in the steps! On the contrary - it is usually the ones who refuse to give up their romance with beating this thing 'for the glory of G-d', who are still in the bathroom on their knees masturbating to their precious porn! But their advice, chizzuk, and encouragement keeps right on coming and with great force sometimes...

Nu. As I wrote above, I believe that such advice is probably fine for some people, but probably not for addicts.

So, is anything more clear now? I'm up real late tonight and figured I'd just finish this post that has been waiting for a few days. Hope it made some sense to you two amigos...

Very true.

But for me in all those years of countless masturbations and desperate, dry-mouthed porn-searching, I always took nechomah from "I'll start from today! Hey, even those Breslovers say that! It feels great to be clean from today! The past is irrelevant! Here I go!!"

...Plop.

Plop-plop-plop....oy...... 

If "starting fresh" is not accompanied by any real action that is different, then everything will stay the same. It's not 'a start', at all! Instead, it is just a cop-out to feel better. Blech. Useless. Poor me never got me anywhere, and it still doesn't. The emess is as Chaza"l say:  "kol mi (me!) sh'ein bo deyah, asur lerachem olov!" - especially if that one is me!

Real change hurts - or it is not real change. It is mechayev - otherwise it is just a show of willpower (more shtuss, for 'willpower' never worked before!) If I am the one making the neder, or rewarding myself, or punishing myself, then the fox is guarding the hen-house. It's goofy. May work for some - but if it doesn't work for me, I know that it's not that I need to try harder - it means that the entire thing is garbage! I obviously cannot be my own mechayev!

That is why rehab rarely happens alone. Joining with other people face to face and admitting it all to safe people is the only way for so many. It is really the only thing we have not done! The ikkar problem for us is that we hide!

The porn and zera levatola are actually tofeil - our common standby of hiding and lying and disconnection is ikkar!

                     

So, start today! Definitely start from today. But starting today does not happen in the attitude - that is just more land-of-make-believe. Like the porn is.

The only real starting is in taking new, meaningful actions. Not promises, not hopes, not talk. Different actions.

As I heard a wife of an addict say once, "If nothing really changes, then nothing will really change."

I have a piece of paper in my wallet. It is well-worn and in front of my credit card so it is seen frequently.

It reads:

Hashem, please help me:

1) admit why and for exactly what purpose I am going wherever I am going before I go there,

2) to think periodically "am I staying true to me purpose now, in what I am doing?"

3) admit gratitude for having the opportunity to do whatever it is that I am busy with and ask You for Your help to do a decent job at it.

This is simple, relaxing, not intense at all - if it is, then it is just the same drivel I always used to strain myself with: trying to be frum or good enough to deserve His protection and care.

That doesn't work cuz, guess what I discovered?:

I will never, ever be deserving of His protection and care. Yup. Never. And I find it hard to believe that anyone I know can ever be good enough to deserve it - and probably never has, either. Thinking that I could, is just plain gayvoh, and docheik raglei Shechinah. We love to pretend we will deserve it a bit, if we only try hard enough or do just teshuvah well enough...but we always eventually fail. Then deep in out hearts we blame G-d Himself, though we turn it on us, of course. More pain, so eventually, more lusting! Especially for us perfectionistic (that is: prideful) addicts. All our lives we have abused yiddishkeit to make it turn us into resho'im in our own demanding eyes. And it was not frumkeit, nor yir'ash Shomayim all along - it was just gayvoh and immature expectation.

So I use my card and say the words. That way the teenage committee in my head eventually shuts up, cuz I am actually more busy doing what I am doing that doing what we all do best:  stray thinking.

A mentor advised me to keep my brain on a short leash, once. My sponsor and program buddies reminded me to stop thinking so much a hundred or so times, over the years. Now I do both those things, still. After a year or two of gentle work at this, we are shocked to discover we have changed a bit and really stray-think a lot less.

The relaxation is palpable. Life is much easier and more comfortable this way.

Someone asked the Kotzker (I think): "Rebbe, what should I be ready to give my life for?" He answered, "Whatever you are busy doing right now, this very minute."

No tricks, gimmicks, just repeated and unnatural work at proper focus. It is worth a year or two of 'work' to have a much better life. And the best part is we are working basically for ourselves, not another person!

strugglingandstrivngBT wrote on 04 Jan 2012 02:12:


So. The alcoholics say like you:

"Our alcoholism is but a symptom of our disease, and not the disease itself."

So, one more angle on your post:

Treatment centers all basically use one tool. They keep the drug away from the customer (patient) for a long time. After a day or two, it's not so bad, and the patient usually is irritated at the demeaning insulting insinuation that the "no alcohol in here" policy makes: that he can't get along without booze.

"Hah. Silly fools. I'll show them."

After a week, it's really irritating. The patient begins to feel his white knuckles hurting. He innocently blames it on the food irritating his stomach. After all, beer is missing from breakfast...

After the second week, he may use one or more of a few tactics, because this is really getting serious - he (just like we) truly, honestly believes in the depth of his gut that he cannot survive without a drink. And why do so many guys keep saying, "I have never gone more than x days."

Why do they (we) keep relapsing after "x days" passes? Because we actually, honestly believe in our gut that we need to have a feeding of porn, sexual excitement, or orgasm, or...or...or...or what? Will we die? What is it? It's hard to say. The bottom line is that no matter how well we know "b'veiur klal chovas ho'odom b'Olamo" by heart from Mesillas Yeshorim, the (sad) truth is that we still really believe that we simply cannot do without it.

So what does the rehab center do about it?

Nothing, really. They just keep prevent the addict from getting any bit of his drug. As long as they do that, the scary, scary truth will have to eventually get vomited right out:

That alcohol was never really his problem in the first place!

He is afraid of people, afraid of the alone-ness of his own self, afraid of his own death, afraid of success, afraid of failure - that he is terrified of G-d. He can't love or be loved, for fear of getting attached and losing those people. Or because he cannot possibly be loved. He hates certain people to death, so he believes he is hate-able. He is filled with pride and really believes that life is essentially unfair - even though he knows the words "gam zu letovah" very well! He, like most of us - essentially believes that G-d screwed up, and continues to, daily in his life - it is not fair, at all. Deep inside, he sees that he really believes as most of us addicts do, "If only people (and G-d) listened to me and my directions, then my life would finally be as it should....but no, they all have to be stubborn!"

Or they say they will not pay for the treatment. Or they say they will have a heart attack.

Or they say that as they have not drunk a drop of liquor in two weeks, they are cured!!

Whatever.

Taking away the masturbation, the porn use, the active and exciting fantasy in our heads....forces the real things we were running from to come to the surface. It is often a bit ugly. To be painfully aware of the things that make the life we have unacceptable on life's terms - it's not really the masturbation that makes it unmanageable, after all. Actually, the lusting is the coping mechanism: I as an addict have learned to use lust to make my life acceptable.   

It stinks..but there are the steps to help, and the experience strength and hope of many other hopeless but sober and growing addicts for those who want to be part of a 12 step chevra. Or there is therapy, or whatever works...who knows till it works. I just took the road more traveled, cuz my preferred, safe, and comfortable private road was too bloody already. After years of loneliness in the bitter struggle.

Hashem has harbei shlucim to breing refua'h to a sick mind.

I heard from someone who is sober for many years in SA, that for the first 7 years he sat in SA meetings and didn't gain anything from the groups. He was "too smart" for the program, and it didn't make its way into his heart. Finally, at wits end, he decided to just nulify his da'as and do whatever he was told. He said to the group and to his sponsor, "just tell me what to do, and I'll do it". Suddenly he began to truly internalize the program - and he is sober since then!

The 12-Steps are about "surrender"; recognizing we can't do it ourselves and being willing to let go of our "self" so that a Higher Power can do it for us. How do we let Hashem do it for us? By letting go of our "selves".

This same person told me, that today, he doesn't do anything on his own will. He listens to what his sponsor tells him, what his friends tell him, what his wife tells him, and even what his CHILDREN tell him. He asks - and he listens... He no longer relies on himself to run his life.

By doing this, we learn how to let HASHEM pilot our lives.

This is the core of recovery.

Most nisyonos require (as the ba'al haTanya and many others say) a bit of suspension of our Da'as. We seem to lose our brains at the point of nisayon - and are left to proceed on what feels like blind heart, alone. I cannot count the times I went without the lust temptation for what felt like no rational reason whatsoever! When I have a lust temptation - at the actual moment of true choice - it boils down to me feeling that I really need this crap. It truly seems to be in my best interest and there is no logical answer I seem to be able to grasp onto. The mussar is all slippery in my hands. But when I "overcome", it is usually by me just figuring that there were so many thousands of times that I went with the lust 'just because', and that it was now my turn to suspend my judgment of what's better for me and go without it - just because.

In other words, sometimes, all the hundreds of meetings, thousands of hours of step-work, and thousands of shares in meetings I have made, all boil down to a moment of letting go of my judgment and accepting Hashem's judgment instead of mine. And doing without what feels like it'd be soooo nice.

Suggestion:

Stay clean. If you have a problem with that, like you think it is really unfair, silly, or evil, then say it. Open up about what you really believe about it. And if the only problem with it that you have is that it is hard for you, then get help and support to stay the course.

But that is just the ticket in, and probably not the help that you really need.

The help and change will start and grow after staying clean gets very hard...actually maybe impossible for you. If you stay the course, then it will be time for you to start writing down and then opening up with others and with G-d about what really makes life, people, or G-d annoying and/or stupid, to you. And that is what Hashem wants more than anything else. Chosamo shel HKB"H (is) emess.

BTW the steps are all about that, and nothing else. They are just a recipe for honesty and dependence upon your G-d, rather than just being 'good' or 'religious'. We've all had lots of those things, yet we are still here in this mess! Writing and openness are different. If nothing changes, then nothing changes.

Just a serving suggestion for life, for you. Take it. leave it, whatever you like. Nothing to lose by writing these things out and admitting them.