Hey there, a guteh voch!

Been struggling a lot with porn lately, feeling hopeless, demoralized and defeated. Despite my efforts and sacrifices for staying clean in recent months, I have been unable to do so for any significant period of time. 

On Friday, I listened to a frum dating podcast that discussed porn addiction, interviewing a frum sex therapist. In it she said, amongst other things, that before dating one must be 3-6 months clean, and that one must disclose ones struggle to the girl is dating, obviously not too early. Both of these things were very distressing to hear from a professional, and I had a mini panic attack. As I may have mentioned, after putting it off for quite a while, I agreed to start shidduchim. My mother is looking into a girl right now that already agreed to date me, so the pressure is on...

I emailed this therapist, relating my story and questioning whether everything she said on the podcast applies to me, as I didn't think I was an addict-based on my conversations with many people from this site. She responded pretty quickly and comprehensively, saying that it's definitely possible, even probable that I am an addict. She suggested I see a CSAT (Certified Sex Addiction Therapist) and get evaluated. I'm waiting for her to send me a referral for someone in my area.

The prospect of having to carry the additional baggage of addiction in addition to all my other mental health s*** is daunting and scary. Feeling very overwhelmed. 

I also booked an extra session with my regular therapist to discuss this issue with him early this week.

Will let ya'll know what happens,
Thanks for reading
OivedElokim

Reb Emes, 

Please listen to yourself, why are you giving excuses for the YH? Im not trying to make you feel pressured or anything. I just care very deeply. 

And it really bothers me when people say that they really want to get better and have tried everything but keep falling with the internet because the access is just too easy, yet they cling to it as if its a lifeline and will come up with hosts of excuses why they cant do this or that.. I really feel bad for people like that who cant see that they are being blinded by the internet. Its like the story that the G'mara says about an Tana that saw a little kid during the destruction of the Bies Hamikdash and he spoke to him trying to calm him down and to get him to say Krias Shma before he dies, but the kids refused rather taking out a small iDol (TM) and worshiping it before he died. Thats how blind they were and this is how blind we are. 



Im really sorry for being so blunt, i dont know your exact situation, i mean no disrespect nor to cause any pain,  quit the opposite, I want to show  you that there is hope and light if we will just accept that the use of internet devices is a terrible plague on our society and has caused this addiction and all of its afflictions to skyrocket ever since it came out. Once you see that, you can make a clear decision on what you really want to do and you will be surprised on your abilities to grow. Wasted alot of my day on yt, I don't feel like I have the problem, because when I am busy I just never need or want to go on it. I am not fully removing it from myself which is a different level problem. Like when you are in it - it can be at large times at a shot. 

Bennyh wrote on 03 Mar 2023 14:58:

Thank you. Very Clear and to the Point. 

iwantmeback wrote on 28 Feb 2023 10:37:

Sorry for the pain you are going through,
I can share, that I only started to realize that I have a problem, after that my small and handmade business went bankrupt.
Till then I would lie for all the delays and mistakes, even though it was due to my addiction.
That's call to hit rock bottom, when we fall so strong that we are reedy to do everything to stop.
Even if you pay me for watching porn I wont watch. I have a trauma of it, and I wont let happen again!

Reb Emes a Yid!!

Listen to the brothers here. Many of ius are speaking from experience and were once on the same boat as you.

Like you so clearly stated in your post, this is having a deeply negative effect on your life, both b'ruchniyus and b'gashmiyus.

Spiritually.

Emotionally.

Mentally.

Physically.

You know what the right move here is. It's not even a sheilah in you mind. You just need to take that knowledge and turn it into action.

The key thing here is to restrict as much access you have as possible. When I had access, I was a drunk addict, binging movies and TV shows and wasting hundreds if not thousands of hours. Every aspect of my life suffered as a result.

Until I woke up one day and said ENOUGH! I threw away my smartphone, removed internet access from my home, and started a seder in shmiras eynayim.

I only have access at work where there is serious filters and accountability.

It's not easy, oh no no no.

But you have to make a choice. Do I want to be controlled by tech companies in Silicon Valley or do I want to be IN CONTROL OF MY OWN LIFE?

Looking forward to another Friday of not giving in to the beast inside of me. I'm also b'h staying off of weed.

The basic cheshbon about weed is like this: for some 30 minutes or so I feel much more relaxed, like a weight has been lifted off of my shoulders. This is accompanied by an immediate feeling of disclarity and inability to express myself clearly.

After about half an hour I feel very sluggish and tired, and like I want to smoke more to get back that high. I become irritable, lazy, unmotivated, immotionally unstable, unfocused. A whole bunch of undesirable things. (But at least I had a relaxing half hour, right? )

The next day I have trouble waking up, and often oversleep, which leads to a hectic day, amazing what a difference a few extra minutes of sleep can make. I am tired throughout the day, and don't function well, continueing to feel all of those undesirables I mentioned in the previous paragraph. I get stuck in a mode of wanting to smoke several times a day. I end up feeling depressed. I don't function well. All so I can have a few minutes relief from tension.

It is a terrible way to relieve tension, at least for me, because it doesn't last long, and has such terrible consequences on my life in so many areas. Again and again I make this bad decision to smoke. But it really is wreaking a (not so) subtle havoc on my life.

Now it's Friday, and I think to myself, so just do it today. There's no work today, there's no work tomorrow, jsut smoke a little, it'll be nice. But it's never just Friday. It's Friday, and then it's again that day after a couple of hours. And then it's motza'sh, because hey, it's kind of still Friday, and then it's Sunday, because I'm sluggish anyways, so might as well, etc etc. Until a couple of months have passed, and I'm depressed, and not functioning well. And then I say enough! Never again.... till Friday! lol

I need to break out of this. This morning I was thinking to myself, I feel good! And I thought to myself, I NEVER just stam feel good when I'm smoking regularly. And just stam feeling good is an amazing thing. So what do you think? Should I throw away feeling good so I can half a relaxing half hour this Friday? Should I lead myself into a depression, into emotional instability, into unproductiveness, into sluggishness, into mental disclarity so that I can have a weird sort of out of it feeling that makes  me forget about my tension and insecurities for half an hour? 

Part of what makes it difficult is that I'm surrounded by casual use of it on all sides. Many people around me do it all of the time, like it's nothing, like drinking a coffee, or like smoking a cigarette. (not that smoking cigarettes is nothing, I smoked cigarettes heavily for more than 10 years and it was terrible, but having a cigarette would not ruin my day like smoking can) And maybe for some people it really is nothing. I don't know. But the problem is that when people around me treat it like it's nothing, somehow I start to believe that it's nothing for me either. And all of my cheshbonos go out the window. Ya SimchasTorah, you have a bunch of good points, and it would seem from what you're saying like it's a really bad idea for you to do this thing at all, but hey, they're doing it casually, so forget about all that and just do it, they must be right, it must be fine. What idiocy this is. To throw away all of my hard earned thoughts because someone else happens to see it differently, or act like they see it differently. 

Smoking for me is not a small deal. It's just not true. It's a huge thing, with major life consequences. And if I act otherwise, I'm fooling myself. It doesn't matter if millions of people in the world are doing it. It doesn't matter if they legalized it in 20 states in America. None of that matters. The fact is this thing is terrible for me, I've hurt myself by doing it. And it's just not worth it.

Some of you probably have never smoked before. Normally I'd be quite hesitant to share this kind of stuff with people who I wasn't sure had been involved with smoking. But everyone here can relate to getting stuck in a pattern of doing things that you don't want to do. Of getting stuck with addictive behavior. For me, it has not just been porn and masturbation. It's those things, but it's also weed. It was pills when I was a teenager. It's checking the news all the time. It's going on GYE  more often than is healthy. But the biggest things for me are clearly porn, masturbation and weed. 

It's much easier for me to admit that porn and masturbation are just downright bad. Weed is harder. I need to clarify and  clarify again that point to myself. This thing is bad for me. It hurts me. It makes me less of a good person. It makes me sad. It makes be depressed. It doesn't matter one freakin bit of other people don't feel that way, or act like they don't feel that way, even if they're otherwise very sane people. Like I believe that I am

chancy wrote on 28 Feb 2023 19:47:

Your words are hard to hear, and the mashal is spot on! I haven’t responded because I wanted to think about it. I haven’t stopped thinking about it, and spoken it out. It is a very hard pill to just take. Halevay it was easy. 

sleeepy wrote on 02 Mar 2023 01:49:

Hi,
I am in SA and I know Dov personally, Number one, you don't have to listen to him if it doesn't speak to you. Number 2 you can argue with him if you wish he very much appreciates that. Number 3 When I have argued with him I end up finding out a lot about myself.

Problem with these chats is that things can be taken out of context very easily. If anyone needs to contact Dov please pm me. He has been one of the people who opened my eyes to the very thing I have been hiding from for so many years, MYSELF. Often times he has gotten me wrong, that is when I tell him what I feel and he adjusts to my situation and shows me the correct perspective. Dov is a human like all of us. He effectively made this platform. Rabboisai, my dearest friends, I beg of you not to speak badly of another yid behind his back.
All the very best,

sleeepy wrote on 27 Feb 2023 23:43:

I'm not an addict, but many of his posts have deep truths. Too harsh for many? Maybe. But unadulterated truth.

Reb Emes, 
Please listen to yourself, why are you giving excuses for the YH? Im not trying to make you feel pressured or anything. I just care very deeply. 
And it really bothers me when people say that they really want to get better and have tried everything but keep falling with the internet because the access is just too easy, yet they cling to it as if its a lifeline and will come up with hosts of excuses why they cant do this or that.. I really feel bad for people like that who cant see that they are being blinded by the internet. Its like the story that the G'mara says about an Tana that saw a little kid during the destruction of the Bies Hamikdash and he spoke to him trying to calm him down and to get him to say Krias Shma before he dies, but the kids refused rather taking out a small iDol (TM) and worshiping it before he died. Thats how blind they were and this is how blind we are. 

Im really sorry for being so blunt, i dont know your exact situation, i mean no disrespect nor to cause any pain,  quit the opposite, I want to show  you that there is hope and light if we will just accept that the use of internet devices is a terrible plague on our society and has caused this addiction and all of its afflictions to skyrocket ever since it came out. Once you see that, you can make a clear decision on what you really want to do and you will be surprised on your abilities to grow. 

Continuation:

my years in Israel were transformative. The first thing I did was read biographies on every big Rabbi that I could find a book on. I figured if I’m going to live my life according to what these people are saying then with all due respect, who were they that I should listen to them? As I read through different biographies, the common thread was that these were all people who made an effort to perfect themselves. Many, if not most of them overcame tremendous adversity.

especially striking was Akiva, who went from working as the manager of a multi billionaire’s assets, to his estranged and impoverished son in law, who had the humility to listen to the encouragement of his wife and start learning from the bottom up. sitting in preschool learning Alef bet with little kids and with that same grit and humility rising to become one of the most meaningful and impactful men who ever lived on this earth. Rebbe Akiva is one of my greatest role models and inspirations… but I still couldn’t figure out why I was having such a hard time dealing with challenges. 

maybe it was the fact that I had always excelled effortlessly - I had been handed all kinds of opportunities; I was a natural sailor, crafty builder, too smart for school - never studied and always aced everything. But I was stumped when it came to seriously learning Torah the first time. I was in Shiurim taught by true gedolim… and I simply did not understand. The words made sense individually but for the first time in my life I had to actually work hard to understand and excel at something. I didn’t really know what to do with that. 

the week before yeshiva I went to a bar on ben Yehuda street with some guys I knew and essentially cheated on my former GF who was still living in the USA (she was a year or two younger). I didn’t tell her, and waited  until she eventually called me crying and guiltily admitting that she “hooked up” with someone else. I thanked Gd and broke off that relationship. But why didn’t I have the guts to tell her what I did? It’s not like we were going to get married. It was purely a selfish relationship. Fortunately, even in high school I was not much of a “party guy.” I went to less than a handful of big parties and nightclubs. They were really dumb and kind of gross. One thing that really infuriated me down the line is one of the only house parties I went to, where you could smell the drugs three blocks away. When I walked into the house the parents were sitting calmly in the living room like it was normal to host a teenage drug and s*x festival in their own house. They weren’t stupid people and I really hope they get a chance to do Teshuva before they day. Only Hashem knows how many pure Jewish souls they helped to destroy. So many of my classmates “married” shiksas. And these parents could have helped to do something to stop it. 

Besides the horrible chinuch taking place all around me (I really must give credit to my parents - they h didn’t know  what they were doing raising us as baalei Teshuva, especially at the start of the process,  but they ALWAYS made their best effort to instill morals and values in me and my siblings. My extended family is now in a much better place now BH and it is all due to my parents’ courage to challenge their reality until that point), one of the things that still boggles me to this day is why would not one and not two girls choose to do things to me that would cause them no positive physical benefits and was 100% me taking from them. 

I struggled to understand the picture that was forming before my eyes. 

fortunately for me, I was too scared to buy drugs from Arabs, and not “clique-y” enough to get drugs from the cool American boys so my years in Israel were drug free. 

I spent a few years intensively working on my middle and trying to build the foundations on which I would become a ben Torah in the future. I reshaped the vision of the girl I planned to marry, started wearing tzitzit, put tefillin every day, and in general just tried to figure out what it meant to be a good Jew. 

the concept that success does not equal having lots of money was new to me and took a long time to sink in and for me to clarify the ramifications of that concept. 

I would come home for pesach all fired up, but inevitably would fall. 

during pesach break of my first year in Israeli yeshiva I flew down to the Miami area for pesach. I also had my own rental car and nobody to hold me accountable for what I did and where I went. So I did things like go to the yeshiva get together in one of the posh hotels where a classmate’s family did the catering, then stop by a sex worker on the way back to where my family was staying. 

I was trying to hard to grow but I couldn’t escape from the YH for these things. 

Over the summer I went to a program hosted by a kiruv organization as the “frum yeshiva boy” and found myself laying next to a girl from the trip the next summer when we were both in Israel between semesters. 

I almost had a breakthrough then - it was so close but I got sucked back in!

At a certain point the internal struggle was so great that I blurted out to her “I am sorry but I can’t do this!” 

I got half dressed in the room, then ran out to the hall, past her startled roommates, past surprised people in the hall and was out the front door of the lobby before j managed to button my shirt back up. 

my father gave me a ride to that place and I lied ti him and told him I was meeting friends. 

I couldn’t get his face out of my head when I was laying with that girl and about to do something I knew I should not. 

I felt like crying from embarrassment and shame. 

I felt like a loser! I could not manage to “hook up” with one of my “greatest catches,” but at the same time I was a faker of a yeshiva Bachur. I took a taxi back to the place we were staying, told my parents I didn’t feel well and then shut myself in my room. 

the next day I called a Rav I knew from my yeshiva (I think he had just left and started his own yeshiva that year) and half sobbing choked out the story from the night before. I wanted to do Teshuva! He told me to delete her number and to move on. He gave me chizuk and told me what a special thing running away that night really was. I was hopeful but still broken. 

if only I had chased that lead, so many years of misery and suffering could have been avoided. 

summary: my post high school yeshiva years were full of growth and Teshuva, but I still could not get over the (for lack of a better term) sex and drug addiction. The drugs were on hold due to no access, but between girls, P, & M - I was still addicted to the shmutz. 

I would even sometimes sit by the window in my dorm room and try to get good looks at the tourists below…

that’s all I can write for now - hopefully I don’t trigger anyone but it helps to get it all in writing for the first time. Hopefully it will resonate with someone that reads this, and they will see that a person really can change even if they came from the opposite side of this battle. 

more on the journey later. 

Keep up the great work. The reason it's so hard is because lusting and everything that goes with it is an addiction. Stopping all of it is similar to to trying to break free from a heroin addiction. Our brains have been hijacked by the addiction and re-wiring it requires suffering withdrawal pains. But the PAIN is WORTH IT!!!!!!!!! Cheering for you!!!

Continuation of the thought above:

so how did I end up addicted to marijuana and hooked on sexual escapades? I think it’s a result of a mixed blessing. Although my parents made an effort not to spoil us, my siblings and I were very pampered. Vacations around the world - Florida, London, Aruba, Israel, etc. and the “best Jewish education that money can buy.” My parents paid millions for the combined education of myself and my siblings.

practically speaking, this exposed us to many things. We became very worldly with all the fancy camps, exotic tours, and hotel excursions. 

although the concept was nice, what ended up happening is that I was exposed to many things that were not good for me. Going to hotels meant ogling girls at the pool and trying to “hook up.” Pesach in Florida meant visiting the local massage places / brothels. Vacationing in eilat meant underage drinking, going to exclusive day camps meant sharing cigarettes with strange girls after lights out. Being a part of the group of students aspiring to Harvard, Colombia, and yale meant smoking joints on weekends to wind down from the hectic and overloaded school week. 

I was given everything… except a sex education and tools to increase my resilience. 

I learned about sex from classmates, porn, and first hand experiments with girls in high school. Those parties at teenager’s home when the parents were out of town and the hookah bars - opportunities to pick a mate and practice being selfish. 

I didn’t even know there was a concept of shmirat habrit until I went to Israel for a few years instead of going to some fancy shamancy gehennom college. 

if I ever felt any emotional pain whatsoever, I couldn’t ask my father for help because he usually just told me to be a man and tough it out. My mother was too busy doing Chessed for others to notice anything about me other than my academic strides and struggles, and when the iPhone came out, a big part of my relationship with my parents died because they (especially mother) we’re too busy with their phones to notice ME. 

don’t get me wrong, they are warm and loving parents, supportive and caring about my success but the definitions of success I was built up toward were ultimately not the ingredients to create an emotional successful and happy person. 

We started keeping Shabbat when I was in grade school, but only when I “flipped out” did the family really start to get more frum. 

that’s all I can write for now, more later. 

But main idea is that a skilled and secular educated person might not necessarily have the resilience to face difficulties and failures in life and can turn to other outlets for the good feeling and resilience to overcome. 

A giten Rabbi Simches Torah (Oh how I love that day!) 
I would like to give you a bit of insight that might help you see your struggle from a different perspective. 
1. I see from your original post that you are in a lot of pain, I feel your pain and im sorry for what  you are going thru, May Hashem help you and your wife speedily, in the  meanwhile, the reason that we "deal" with these situations with P* and M* is because the brain knows that everyone needs and wants to feel "good" thats natural and healthy, so when the brain sees that you are in pain, it tells you to go find some pleasure asap, and unfurtuantly once we feel the pleasure of S* and the others we crave that pleasure and since its so easy to get that pleasure, we get addicted to it meaning, the brain developed a pattern that when you feel sad/pained/depressed/angry etc. You need the drug called sex and that will help for a bit, so you get aroused by every little thing, and on and on. The more and the longer you do this, the more brain waves and brain patterns get created reinforcing this idea (sex is good, pain is bad, get sex feel good, forget the pain) and you get stuck in a never ending whirlpool......
The only way to get out of it, is
1.  to stop giving the brain more ammunition, first by stopping to watch porn so the inflow of more poison stops and your brain starts to forget some of
it, then  
2. to stop following the orders of the brain, since you know the its only doing what it thinks makes you feel good, and you are smarter and you know that it doesnt make you feel good at all only for a few moments and then you feel worse, so then you know that this brain pattern is wrong! And the more times you stop yourself from just going down that road, the easier and faster will it be for you to get out of the whirlpool!!! your brain will stop creating these auto responses to pain and you can then rewire it to what you want. 

The main thing is that you need to understand this is all normal, you are healthy, your brain wants to make you feel good, you know better then it, so you stop giving in and slowly your brain will learn. 

There is more to discuss if you want to hear. 

Im in middle of learning a sefer called מבשר טוב- עקבותא דמשיחא. Its amazing and you should look at it. 
He brings out the tremendous power and worth of what it means to be a yid today with all these difficulties.
Especially when people like all of us, who tasted and drank these addictive waters for too long and still crave it, and the world around us is just a cesspool of filth and garbage and yet we resist!!! There are no words in any language that can describe what happens when we fight and dont give in even without feeling or seeing any reward whatsoever... If we could only see, we would be blinded immediately by the light, Im %1000 sure of it. 
Anyway, Keep it up. You are a geshmak to be around, we all love you. I know i do!