Hi Dovek. You sound like you may be in the whipsaw we all get into here. And we struggle so hard to "figure" our way out, to try to understand what's happening. My experience has been that my understanding "availed me nothing" (as the AA saying goes).
It sounds like maybe you are understanding that this 20-some day cycle is a problem that's bigger than you, than you can't fight, no matter how hard you try. You sound like maybe your life has become unmanageable, that maybe it feels a little crazy and out of control.
If you have come to that conclusion, that you are powerless over this cycle, and that this whole getting clean business is just too much, then you are, I think, starting to bottom out. You are blessed. Because you are bottoming out "from on top". You're feeling the craziness this addiction puts us through--up, down, clean, falls--and you are getting so upset that you are ready to make a decision to let Hahsem restore you to some kind of sanity. We pray for peace constantly.
If you want to stop, then you will probably need a lot of fences--filters, accountability partners, SA group, virtual, real, people you can call when you've forgotten and are lost in the hypnotic trance of lust and porn and the conviction, the KNOWING (as you so honestly put it) that the answer is shtus. And nobody can tell you different in those moments. so thinking, and resolve doesn't really help. It has to be as impossible as possible to get to the stuff that's triggering. We need to have our phones with people to call on speed dial. Picking up the phone is way easier than struggling for half an our in front of the screen.
This is such a lot of work. At first. And we have Hashem helping us every step of the way. Yes, even though you are caught in this cycle. You are growing, and He is right there next to you. But, like I said, to a worm in horseradish, the whole world is horseradish. To a Yid in front of shmutz, the whole world is shmutz, and there's not much room for Hashem. So we need to turn to the phone, to the group, to our chevra at GYE.
I understand the terrible struggle. We all do. And you will ultimately find your way to the closeness you seek with Hashem. Just keep on struggling. It gets easier. Any sense of clarity I may have, came AFTER I got a little sobriety, Bz"H. I don't think most of us get clarity, and then stop. Maybe I'm wrong about that. And even so, the clarity is kind of the booby prize. We want to be DovekBaShem, the real prize.
Just keep on trucking. Just keep struggling. He's right there, right here.
Hatzlocho holy Yid
. There is nothing worse than an unproductive day! Still clean but had an urge to act out at a certain point today. Still determined to "