Day 612. I want to share a story of something that happened to me today. I was at home earlier today working. Out of nowhere, I started feeling taivos to act out. Lo and behold, those same old fantasies I had fantasied about for years were filling my mind. Coincidence? Of course not! As I always say, FANTASY IS AT THE ROOT OF IT ALL!!! Fantasy is always at the root of every battle!
A true desire to go act out really began to overtake me as I was caught off guard by the fantasy thoughts. I actually heard a voice in my head say, "Just go ahead! End your 612 day streak right now. Who cares anyway?" The lust addict in me was awakening just a heroin addict can lapse after years of being sober!
Realizing how quickly this could spiral out of control, I sounded my internal alarms to awaken myself to the fact that I was treading on thin ice. I attempted to calm myself down, practicing the techniques I preach here on GYE. I began speaking gently to myself. "It's okay. These are just fantasies. They are at the root of all your misery, discomfort, and struggles. I do not have to act out. I can feel and be aware of my pain and discomfort. That is okay. Enduring pain to do what is right is part of a life of meaning and truth. Calm your mind. Realize that thoughts and fantasies are like waves that come and go. I can move on with my day and away from these thoughts. I can do it. I am great." The addict in me really wanted that pleasure though, that feeling, that act I have long ago said goodbye to, and refused my attempts to let my mind move on. I began to become enveloped in this physical urge to act out. Ay, the pain! My first attempt at moving on from the fantasies didn't work! "Should I just give up?" I thought. OF COURSE NOT! I've been here many times now on my 612 days journey and the years before that of falling and getting up hundreds and hundreds of times! I've been here SO many times! This was not my first time at this rodeo! "I know this battle ground far too well!" I thought to myself. I am experienced in this battle now. I calmed my mind again. I tuned into the pain I was feeling. I embraced the feeling of discomfort! I tuned into that discomfort. I became deeply in tune with myself. I breathed deeply. I reflected on this addiction, how even after 612 days of abstinence it can rear its ugly head. This is just like a heroin addiction except the substance (lust) is "free"! "I can embrace this physical pain. I don't need to act out. I can embrace this physical pain. I don't need to act out," I said to myself.
After several minutes of battle followed by several minutes of relaxing my mind, I succeeded on moving on from the fantasy and carried on. I got up, washed my face, opened the window, and moved to a new location. I didn't look back.
Another victory.
Hashem, this is 5Uu80*cdwB#^, at your service.
Wishing everyone another day of victory in Avodas Hashem.

The simple reason is that HaShem doesn't want me to do it. I also want a better relationship with my wife, and I do not like being addicted to anything, especially as filthy as P+M... I would love to hear about your journey away from your smartphone. Did you just stop or did you wean yourself off? 

​I have been involved in P+M since about 12.. long before the internet was invented! I have so much I want to do in my life and this takes away so much of the joy in life. I must beat this!!!

Congrats on a clean year... something I can't even comprehend at this point!

I am new here and it was recommended that I start a new thread. I am not much of a talker (or in this case writer) but my problem is P and M... Has been for decades. I am happily married, wife has no idea of the problem and I just have to break free from all kinds of internet smut. P and M is only part of it. It is YouTube, Instagram, Tik Tok.... If I could rid myself of my smartphone, I think about 75% of my problems would disappear. I have tried many times to get rid of it, but my lifestyle and job almost require it. I know that it can be done, I just have not found a way... 

I am pretty tech savvy and find it hard to install a filter that I could not get around easily. The answer is a Kosher Flip phone... I would love to hear from people struggling or succeeding in fighting this addiction. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

I am new here and it was recommended that I start a new thread. I am not much of a talker (or in this case writer) but my problem is P and M... Has been for decades. I am happily married, wife has no idea of the problem and I just have to break free from all kinds of internet smut. P and M is only part of it. It is YouTube, Instagram, Tik Tok.... If I could rid myself of my smartphone, I think about 75% of my problems would disappear. I have tried many times to get rid of it, but my lifestyle and job almost require it. I know that it can be done, I just have not found a way... 

I am pretty tech savvy and find it hard to install a filter that I could not get around easily. The answer is a Kosher Flip phone... I would love to hear from people struggling or succeeding in fighting this addiction. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

It's hard for me to believe it, but maybe the fact that I struggle with p&m is really not my fault. Maybe I'm a good person, and it's not my fault that I was exposed to this stuff as a kid, as a sad suffering kid, and found something that for a few minutes would rescue me from my suffering. It's not my fault that I was suffering, and it's not my fault that I couldn't help but do this stuff to escape from my suffering. 

Rebbi Simchas Torah, 
How holy and right you are! 
OF course its not your fault, there is a reason why beis din doesn't punish a child under 20 thats because he has no reasoning skills to  be able to control his desires. Here for a lot of us were talking about under 13 when we started! I had no idea, and by the time i found out how bad this is, i was in too deep....... 
So what then? I dont know....... im in middle of listening to shiurim about recognizing that we don't really do anything! Most of our tzadikkim mention this idea in their sfarim, every deed and thought that comes into our heads and of course every sight and feeling, everything is from Hashem, because He controls everything! The biggest issue for us is to realize that. 
Ive asked in other forums about this idea and how this matches with the idea of punishment, its a very difficult thing to understand, but whats certain is that we are not at 'fault' nobody is going to be blaming us and shaming us for being addicts. It would be as cruel as making fun of a cripple and yelling at him to stop fooling around and to start walking like a normal person....
No, you are not at fault! But you can still fight and win and get a handle of this addiction so it doesn't ruin or rule your life. 

Thank G-d I've been clean each day for 24 years since I started attending Sexaholics Anonymous meetings in Adar of 1997. But five years before that (in 1992), I called Rabbi Twerski (from a payphone - anyone here remember those?) for help. Of course, the reason I 'bit the bullet' and made the call that particular day was because I had just made yet another round of self-destructive sexual choices (though they certainly didn't feel like 'choices', at the time!) that shocked myself, just a few minutes before...so I felt needed to make another frantic, spur-of-the-moment scream for help. The pain was terrible. And my call was filled with hope.

By that time ('92), I had been acting out with pornography, masturbation and other ways to get erotically high, for about 16 years, 6 of them, as a married guy learning, giving shiurim, and in school for a trade. By '92, I had opened up about (at least part of) my problem to 3 Rabbonim and 2 psychologists...all while succeeding at keeping nearly all my behaviors secret from my wife. Well, getting married obviously didn't help me because my behaviors only got worse over the last 4 or 5 years; the well-meaning Rabbonim and decent psychologists surely tried their best but I was still getting worse, not better. I was beginning to perceive that there really was nothing my wife, my Rabbonim, or therapists could possibly do to save me from myself and my terrible, secret problem. But I had remembered my Ace-in-the-hole, Rabbi Twerski!

By that time, I had already read a couple of his great books (Let Us Make Man, being my favorite) and was very impressed. I had also been listening to a "Daily Reflection on Recovery" phone line he had. I discovered the number scribbled on the wall in a yeshiva somewhere. So I called! Everyday he had another great, 1-minute message about addiction and recovery. Sometimes, I played his message over again because it was very meaningful. And at end of every message, his secretary Kim gave a plug for his latest book, given book. Her voice was very-sounding to me and even though I would occasionally play his messages over again, it was Kim's messages that I would play over, and over, sometimes even while in bed with my wife sleeping nearby...

And 20 years later, when I spent a couple of hours with Rabbi Twerski in his house in Teaneck, I told him all about Kim's part of his message! He laughed hard, and so did I! Addicts in recovery can laugh about our  old behaviors because we are now revealed to be "guilty but mostly stupid' in our efforts. I was never trying to be bad and we both knew it. I was just totally clueless at how to get by in life, and porn, sex, and schmitz were all I really trusted! It's not about whether it was right or wrong, good or bad...it was just a fact. My behavior proved without any doubt what my beliefs were. I wanted with my whole heart and neshoma to be good, but I obviously trusted erratic excitement more than anything else. I sacrificed so much for it, took so many risks, felt so bad and kept doing it anyway for so many years...that's devotion, that's trust. The Rabbi and I could laugh because we're "no longer afraid of the past and we don't shut the door on it" - and we can even laugh about it, at times. We know that we were just doing the best we could, at the time, with our (very) addled minds. Recovery involves lots of behavioral changes (no more lying, no more hiding, etc), but it also involves giving up seeing ourselves as the center of the universe, the narcissistic frum drama of it all...we can laugh again, even at our mistakes. And we can surrender Lust and Fantasy in a fellowship of other imperfect people doing the same.

By the way, the reason I was at Rabbi Twerski's house in Teaneck a couple of years ago was because we were discussing his book, "Teshuvah Through Recovery," that had about 20 pages of my posts on GYE.)

The way I got in touch with Rabbi Twerski in the first place, was only because this same  Kim would always mention that Dr Twerski worked out of the "Gateway Rehabilitation Venter in Aliquippa PA". I called 'information' from that payphone and asked for Aliquippa in Pennsylvania, eventually asking for the Gateway Rehabilitation center there, and then for Dr Twerski's office. And presto, there he was on the phone! I couldn't believe it. The cavalry was coming in, finally. 

Well, I described a great deal of my behaviors to him, there on the street, whispering from fear of the passersby. He told me I'd never get better on my own. At the time, he didn't really know much about Sexaholics Anonymous. It seems to me that at that time he still had not made up his mind whether lust addiction exists at all, or not. But he obviously heard the cyclical and progressive story I told about my behaviors he heard what I went through for 10 years, then for 6 years of marriage, and he understood why it didn't get better, only worse. He heard the same story all the alcoholics and drug addicts tell. And he told me that I had no real chance of success unless I registered myself into a rehab center for intensive therapy, or joined with a group of other people getting better from the same problem. (Later, he became a great friend of Sexaholics Anonymous and I was present in the crowd hearing him speak at Sexaholics Anonymous conferences, as a guest...but he didn't really know what address to send me to back in 1992.)

Well, I got off the phone after thanking him profusely...and went back to struggling with my phone sex, pornography, and masturbation for the next 5 years. Nothing had changed, at all.

I was caught by my wife in late 1995...that didn't stop me, either. I spent about a year with my fourth try with a therapist and even medication, but continued choosing lust and erotic adventure over real life; got worse, not better. I hit bottom in early 1997 and finally went to a bona fide sex addiction therapist. I told her my entire story without holding back anything and she knew how to get even more honesty out of me. And then she broke the bad news to me: she said she couldn't really help me because she can't really save any addicts. She told me that what I needed more than self-control, was self honesty. And that the only place I could learn self honesty was in a fellowship of other sober people getting better from the very same problem I had, myself. 

Rabbi Twerski's advice from 5 years earlier was finally acceptable to me. My own bankruptcy and behavior had convinced me to surrender. To finally give up trying to control this thing...because an addict like me is too ill to successfully use and control their drug. But we definitely can be free of it!

And even if using schmitz were somehow a great mitzvah, I would not be able to control it successfully and would be 100% patur from it. The point is that - unlike normal yidden (or gentiles) - I am just too ill to successfully control it. And Hashem knows that. For me it's not about kedusha, not about Teshuvah...it's about survival and being in life, for real...just like it is for alcoholics regarding alcohol. And when I said this to Rabbi Twerski, he responded, "Of course! What else could it be?!"

I thanked him for planting that seed in my head, even if at the time he didn't yet understand it fully, himself. We shared a hug, a tear, and a smile.

Thank you Misgaber, what a beautiful post! 
I have  question thats bothering me and giving me no rest. 
Whats this giving up my power of lust and saying that im not the one fighting but Hashem? I dont get it.
Yes Hashem gives me the power to exist every second and the brain and eyes to see and heart that pumps and without His constant flow of energy i would cease to exist in a second. 
But, He gives me the liberty to do what I want with that power, V'hu Raye, that I uses to sin a lot, I feel terrible thinking how I used His power to cause Him pain, but it was still me. Otherwise whats the point of it all, if He does everything, then I dont have to fight or do anything.
I JUST DONT GET IT. 

הוֹדוּ לַה' כִּי טוֹב כִּי לְעוֹלָם חַסְדּוֹ

Day 600. Thank you Hashem for bringing me to this day.

Standing atop this mountain I never thought I would succeed in climbing, I want to share some advice with my brothers who are currently on the cliffs or at base camp:
1. Realize that this is an addiction and approach recovery from the point of view of addiction. Until I made this transition in my mind, I wasn't able to make a move. With no other mindset did I have any meaningful success.
2. Realize that fantasy and lust are the core problem and that their grip on a person can be as strong as that of heroin. It's not enough to just guard your eyes. You also have to guard your mind. If you keep fantasizing, you won't be able to quit masturbating.
3. Embrace the physical pain involved in withdrawal from the drug called fantasy and lust. If you aren't willing to tolerate physical pain, you likely won't make it through the withdrawal phase.
4. Realize you can't do it without Hashem. Daven for assistance in recovery every day, all the time.
5. Review point number 2 above constantly. As long as you continue to fantasize, you won't break free.

Hatzlacha to all in reclaiming our lives from this terrible addiction. Remember, it's an addition, and fantasy is at the root of it all.