I need to meet and be around and hear from other addicts who are sober how they did it and how they are doing it.
Exactly what are you doing to help yourself so far these past week or two?
In what ways are you still feeding your addiction? I
need to look at that whenever I am having a lust problem.
1- I needed (and need) to have enough of it. As long as I really do not want to live without it, I will not live without it. It's not about "
wanting to quit" or "
sincerely wishing I'd quit already" - we always did that. Hey - we are frummies!
Rather, it is obviously about being truly
ready to live just one day without it. It is willing to go without it for today - and not being concerned with tomorrow. We put tomorrow in Hashem's hands.
And the ikkar is then to put
today in Hashem's hands. "My pain right now over missing out on using the image that powerful redhead that just walked by me I surrender to You. My shame and disgust with myself as a general loser I surrender to You. My desire to use this erection for masturbation I surrender to You. And You love me Hashem and will take it away. Thank-You." And I trust Him, period. And it works when I want it to (which is nearly always).
And if they say that the "one day at a time" is just a gimmick, ie, that we are saying to ourselves, "live
one day without it now - then live
one day without it tomorrow, etc.", then I say that is just tricking myself - which is silly fantasy! And it doesn't work. We do not trick
ourselves . It needs to be something I really believe, cuz it makes absolute sense to me. This recovery thing is not a religion.
I need to really put tomorrow in Hashem's hands and put my pain of forgoing my right to use porn and sex in Hashem's hands, and put my pain from forgoing the sweet opportunity to enjoy 'her figure', that 'nice feeling of my skin', or whatever it is that I am lusting for - in Hashem's hands. The most common thing I have davened for was for Hashem to remove the pain of giving it up from me while I walk away from enjoying the image of a (probably)
superb looking woman on the street.
2- I needed (and need) to have a phone connection to other sober people like me, from day one. To have a list of 2 or more loving and caring men like me who are perverts in recovery that I can talk to when I feel squirrel-ish inside. When the desire comes to me to follow the very pretty woman in the supermarket from aisle to aisle and I am going crazy inside, I MUST have friends I can call with whom I can be open and honest with, no matter how embarrassed I am. Guys who will understand how much I am hurting, and will empathize without 'pity'.
Giving up lust is always painful and always sucks. Always. It feels much better never to get started, for there is no easy way out once we use it. So we need a nechomah, cuz we tend to lust a lot. And there is nothing to be ashamed of admitting all that to Hashem in the middle of our shemoneh esrei. He wants our
hearts (what we are paying attention to [MaHaRa"L]), not our 'prettiness'. Vayarech es rei'ach begodov -
al tikrei begodov, ella bogdov.
3- I needed (and need) to have a G-d that works. If I cannot talk to Him about my fears - whether they are about parnossah, about my wife not wanting to have sex with me, about my children growing up messed up, about death, about my wife thinking that my penis is too small, about my yiddishkeit being horrible, about my learning never ever 'coming around'....then I do not have a G-d. I may have a religion, but
not a G-d of my very own. The Chovos haLevavos would say that if I cannot talk to G-d of my most embarrassing intimate and stupid-sounding fears and issues, then I missed the entire point of Torah and Mitzvos. It's about getting a relationship with Hashem, not about getting religious and not about doing things right. The getting religious and the doing things right is there in order to create and grow a relationship with G-d,
period. That's not me, it RMCh"L, R' Bachya ibn Pakuda, the Zohar h"k, and others.
More recovering addicts actually demonstrate to me that they have a real working relationship with their own G-d than normal people do. That is, more recovering addicts
even though they are goyim, than normals
even though they are frum yidden.
And for me, it was using
people on the phone that taught me how to really use
Hashem with my heart and mouth.
Willingness to be open and honest with people taught me how I can finally really be open and honest with Hashem. It is not natural to many of us even though we have been believing in Him and davening to Him and doing things for Him with mesiras nefesh for decades!
4- And none of that would have worked (and would still not work) nearly as well had I not been using
writing when things started to get kooky in my head and whenever I got really uncomfortable with life, people, Hashem, myself, whatever. Writing and journaling help me gain a clarity that talking to another person does not even touch! Knowing that nothing I am writing will ever fall into anyone else's hands allows me to write from the soul - putting in on paper makes it separate from me. That is powerful. And I write it - not type it. It is totally different for me when it is 'veyad kol odom chosum bo'.
And writing it is nothing if I am not growing through real struggle in relationships with other real live people. Hermits - which we all are inside at times (for our acting out was almost always totally alone,
even if we were doing it with another person!) - do not get any better, except inside their own imagination. Gevalt.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
So, what actions are you taking to nurture your life without lusting over these past week or two? Are you building these things for yourself? I know of no other way to stay sober. Hashem works through these things.
If it is about not acting out, then Hashem is not there. He's with the life and kedusha, not the avoidance of death and tum'ah.
