Welcome Home!

I am a fellow addict and I would like to welcome you to our forum. Now take a deep breath and relax, you have taken many important steps already.

1) you decided you had enough and needed to change.
2) you decided to seek help (ie posting here)
3) you took definitive action.

These 3 steps are more than a day's work. Keep posting here about your struggles and you will receive tons of Chizuk. Change will not happen instantly,(many people fall in the process of gettng better) but here you will receive hadracha on how to slowly implement the change you clearly desire so strongly. The Guard (who is in Israel where it is 5 am) always advises people to read the Handbooks (which are BTW amazing and help me immensely). We look forward to joining you on this journey and having you join in our's. I personally look forward to hearing more about you and will BLN read everything you post.

Wishing you a lot of Hatlacha
With much love,
hoping

me,

Gr8 comeback line.

Its actually makes more sense what your saying.

But to Farentfer it we can say that they are both true.

The Maan De'Omaar that says that they go to Olam Ha'Booz is talking about a Alcoholic that did Teshuva and went to his AA meetings regularly.

And the Maan De'Omaar that says that he goes to Olam Ha'Shiker is referring to the Alcoholic that OD'd & never worked on the Addiction.

E.L.

(any questions , insights & suggestions about this thread,feel free to email me at taryaga@gmail.com)

There are many reasons we need to be where we are and who we are,most are unknown.Why do we even have to be in a situation or have in our soul so much darkness and a pull toward self-destructing negative behaviors?

I saw once an amazing thought in a sefer.Moshe Rabeinu came from a union that after the Torah was given would have deemed him a mamzer(parents being an aunt & nephew).He could not boast of his lineage.This is one reason that let him be the greatest Anov that ever lived.  

We who have to deal with the stuff that's in us that we would rather not have in the first place-this pain and shame over the course of time -makes us realize that even when we b'ezras Hashem pull out of the addictions-we will never look at another Yid that is struggling with this in a negative way

We catch a Yid looking where he shouldn't be looking and our hearts are full of compassion.We will daven for him,treat him with respect,gently try to get him out of it.We would never disgrace him-not even in our hearts-because we were there.We know what it's like.In our eyes he is a potential tzaddik.

This is surely one reason Hashem gave us this urge towards baseness with all it's shades of ugliness.Yes you are special-like every Yid is-but never ever judge harshly My son or daughter that is struggling-because I love him or her - he or she is part of Klall Yisroel.Just as indispensible as you are.

1st
I don't know how simple that Blemish is after all!

2nd
He might be referring to a Talmed Chochom or Bochor that has a small Yerida every now and then so its only a blemish or a few blemishes. But some one like me that got addicted to the extreme that it was taking over my life I'm not sure its only a blemish. and yes like your questioning it might become part of me.

About children I heard from Satmer Rebbe Z"L (Reb Yoil) that Matzah has to be "Shmira Mishas Ketzirah" from when they are cut. But Good Children has to be even before that "Shmirah Mishas Zriah" at the time that they are Seeded. The Zohar speaks about it a lot. and who from us can say that we were on the lookout then to make sure it was a secure download. V'Hameivin Yovin

But we cant go around blaming ourselves. I have seen Very Erliche parents struggling with there kids. just imagine how hard we adults are struggling on our own with the garbage out there. how my kids will fight it is beyond anything I can think of.

The answer is "Let Go & Let G-D" the only thing we can do is

1) Pray

2) set a good example.

3) Unconditional Love (I know its hard specially when we have other siblings at home. Talking from Experience with a sibling)

4) Did I say Pray?! yeah! Pray Pray & Pray

I also heard a great story about a couple that came to a Tzadik and asked for an Eitza Or Segulah to have Good Erliche Children.

So the Rebbe told them to "wash there faces 3 times a day!"

When the Rebbe saw that they were wondering how washing ones face 3 times a day has to do with having Erliche Children he told them.

"Not With Water Should You Wash Your Face, But With Tears!"  3 Times a day by Shmonei Esrei.

Efshar Letaken!
Chazak V'Emotz!

Dov,
The elevator is not broken.  You just have to step inside for it to work.  But this takes commitment.  But seriously, I think at this point we have all realized that everyone's struggles are different and everyone's recovery is different.  From what I read of your posts, it seems that your elevator is working, B"H.

Hoping,
As we like to say, "Fixing the addiction is not about getting one away from the aveiros but from creating a new person within yourself". B"H, you realize that.

But, it is important to understand that you need to live this every waking and sleeping moment of your day.  Breaking free should  be at the forefront of your mind.  It is not just 2 hours of your week.  This is not a class that you attend twice a week.  This is your life now until you begin to feel internal change.  Wherever you are you should review the step that you are holding on.  You need to internalize each step.  During my first 40 days of accelerated recovery, I was so intense about this recovery. I put so many parts of my life on hold so that I can address myself properly.  I have used the 12 steps, albeit in a very different fashion than it was intended for.  I have been blessed with no urges and nisyonos for close to 150 days, B"H.  But I still work on uprooting inner emotions. I look deep within and deal with my inner self. My focus is not about the addiction.  B"H, I have broken that cycle very easily.  But I am focused on changing myself.  But this requires commitment.   

Begin by writing out the the parts of you that require alteration.  Obviously, the first issue that comes to mind is lack of self control. This bothered me to no end.  How in the world did I not have control?  By discussing  this (with myself) I was able to start to change that aspect of me.  This is in fact how Rav Dessler dealt with his own addiction to smoking. Very inspiring to read. 

The most helpful thing for me was creating a daily routine that revolved around recovery. I set aside 45min - 1 hour a day to focus on important things that I felt were required.  I spent part of the time expressing all my emotions through tehillim.  But the point was this was real to me. 

Believe in change and put in the efforts.  Do not rely on others alone; take the advice of others, use your sechel to internalize what is right for you.  If your truly desire this and you put in all your efforts, IY"H, Hashem will answer your call, and you will see miracles within a few short days.

But remember. Daven! Daven! Daven! Relying on Hashem, means davening.  Daven to Hashem to remove the urges from your heart.  And daven that if C"V you have those urges, you get the strength and wisdom to free yourself from them. 

You should be zoche to change that person within yourself and begin to become your true self.

Lover of All Jews,
Yaakov

Today was 18!
that's chai =
I am proud to be alive for these 18 days, thanks to you guys and this site - a sense of control and calm I haven't had for a long time.
I would like to warn about a possible pitfall, when looking up S** addiction stuff, some stories can get me thinking in the wring, arousal mode. So I just click out, and remember that I have to stay clean, and put off my urge to understand everything about the addiction (etz hadaas)

I am inspireed  by you all
thanks

Dov, your input is PRICELESS to us all. It is worth a lot more than the big bucks I am paid (which big bucks was that?? ). I think you summed up beautifully here what the goal of our network is. It is TWO fold.

1)


2)


Because of number 2 above, that is why we make such a big deal about the 12-Steps here on GYE, and that is why we keep quoting people like Dov in our daily Chizuk e-mails. We are shouting: Yidden!! Stop putting band-aids on your cracked skulls!! If you are an addict, (and that means that when faced with lust you are pulled into it and can't control yourself - i.e. you don't have free choice anymore, once you taste it you can't stop), then we want you to be aware that, as Dov says "their problem is actually much more deep and serious than they cared to admit". We are shouting to these Yidden who think that "more of the same" will eventually get them out of their addiction "FIRE FIRE WAKE UP!!". The Torah can't help us if we aren't ready to let go. The Torah is a Be'ar Mayim Chaim, like a Mikva, but if you hold on to the SHERETZ it can't purify and heal you. The 12-Steps help us LET GO of the Sheretz for long enough that Torah can start to heal us. Once we regain sanity, we can THEN start to become "frummer" again...

Thank you Dov for taking so much time to post answers to us hopelessly tangled minds, and for giving it to us in SIMPLE enough terms to understand  ;D

Bingo




This site has educated me about the many different levels of adook-tion ;D (a rather funny play on the Loshon-Kodesh, no?) : many folks peruse this site and look in quiet curiosity at this forum where people frankly talk about the same issues that they have been hiding for years. Others are ready to do something, but figure they (and their rovs) need to just learn the Torah Tricks, Torah advice, as long as they can remain the same Yid they are now and somehow solve this problem in the "beis medrash" together with a group of yidden. They do not care if it's more of the same. (For some - probably for many - it will work, but for many others it will be just more of the same silliness; but leaving their comfort zone in any meaningful way is still out of the question...). Others "have it real bad" and have had enough; they are ready for anything and need the steps before they lose their homes, jobs, lives etc.. All this was not really obvious to me before I came to this forum.

So, for the kind of person who really is not sick enough to be addicted and their lives are not out of control, they need someplace to turn for Torah advice, chizzuk, and whatever, to get wise to the YH for pritzus, and to do teshuva, fast.  This site does a great job of this, I figure.

For the folks who really are hopelessly hooked, and their lives as they have known them are really over but they just do not realize it yet, this site may be a double-edged sword: they may hang on in their folly much, much longer, putting yet more band-aids on their cracked skulls. On the other hand, our posts may help those folks get their inhibitions down sufficiently to finally know that their problem is actually much more deep and serious than they cared to admit, that strong medicine is likely needed, and that as we are not running away from their bitter medicine, maybethey do not have to keep running either!

For all these latter folks - which I think are many - No, I do not think sending them to SA-type groups has any risk of hurting their yiddishkeit. These folks are the ones who will eventually, get divorced, ruining their wives lives, not get divorced and ruin their kids' lives too, reach old age (and death) with a very strange and depressing life behind them (though to the non-immediate family observer it seemed quite run-of-the-mill!), go to jail, or even be in the paper. The pain and chilul Hashem potential is quite staggering. No, I feel that if a yid is truly addicted, his yiddishkeit can only get better from that point on, really. If they go to meetings and get less frum in the short term, I think they either have a secondary problem that led to it, or it is really a good thing because they were totally hypocritical in addiction, anyway. I know this is terribly painful. I think it is extremely rare for frum addicts to drop yiddishkeit upon getting sober. Weaker and colder, yes - that is a common side-effect. But with time, as in my case, it reverses and their yiddishkeit really, finally grows to become really powerful. But really, (here I go): what value does Hashem have in the avoda of a yid who has empty avodah, parrots things, and does not keep the the six constant mitzvos at all because he is too busy hiding the fact that he is looking at po-n, mast--ting, and other stuff? Anyway, in the long term, frum addicts who I know, tend to get frummer in later recovery.  




This post is already too long, but the AA big book says something like: "We are not experts, on anything". Once we bocome experts, we are in real danger of losing it all. This has been found to happen. So, I'll discuss this idea with my sponsor and ask Hashem for a lot of help to do the right thing, though, I still don't know what we are doing!

As far as the rest of your comments, that is what a secretary, here: reb Guard, is "payed the big bucks for"....
- Dov

Dear Holy Brother Momo

I used to feel like you and your sadness and despair has touched me, and I feel for you.  I also used to play with "technical" sobriety, I will look and not touch, but it only made things worse and eventually I was going to act out.  Today my bottom line is any porn / nudity image is a relapse.  A very sober member in SA says, the SA bottom line is "no sex with self or anyone other than the spouse" most people understand that sex with self is masturbation but he says that looking porn without masturbating is sex with self.  The only reason why I would look at a porn image is to get the hit the adrenalin rush - this for me is sex with myself. 

Today I look at the blessings I have in my life and try and get of my pity pot.  You have a job which is a major thing to have in this climate.  Try and imagine not having a job CV and worrying how you will pay your rent / mortgage, gas electric bills, food bills, try and imagine the stress of trying to find a job whilst struggling to live hand to mouth.

My dear Momo, thing of the positive things in your life and thank Hashem for them, see the glass half full.  Your life is classic unmanageability of the addict, work on sobriety and get sober and the answers will come, they always do if we let Hashem back in.  A small challenge to you, please post 10 things that you are grateful for, I will share 10 things that I am grateful right now: 
1. I am sober today
2. The unending and unwavering support of my wife
3. My beautiful children
4. I am alive
5. SA
6. My sponsor
7. My house
8. This forum
9. Bardichev who made me laugh last night with one of his responses to me
10. The weather is beautiful in London

Keep sharing

London

Let me explain better what I meant in #1 above:

There are unfortunately many people who their addiction took them so far from Torah that they don't want to hear about "Torah ways" to get better. They became disillusioned with it, they had tried for years and didn't get anywhere. For such people, we offer them the 12-Steps (from goyim), they get back their sanity, and then they automatically find their Yiddishkeit again in a whole new way! I have seen this happen many times. All the 12-Steps do is give us back our sanity so that we can then choose what we want to do with our lives. Real addicts have developed a mental disease that nothing but the 12-Steps can help. And if we try to turn it into a Torah or Yetzer hara issue, they won't be open enough to accepting the medicine.

We want to help these yidden too on GYE. So there is a benefit in "disguising" the spiritual renewal that the 12-Steps offer us as simply "regaining sanity" and not Yiddishkeit.

8 symbolises "Lemaalahmiderech hateva" -supernatural, which is what beating the addiction is all about!

Dear Philpher -

1- On the benefit of posting: you yourself answered it when you wrote "sufferring in silence" is no good. "we are only as sick as our secrets" is a big motto in 12step circles. think about it, cuz it is a very different nekudah that you are bringing up. You are talking about the pain, not feeling as bad when you share about it, no? AA is referring to the long term solution we grab hold of when we get the insides OUT. Theirs is a message of hope while sharing "to get it off my chest" can be part of my typical efforts to feel better right now - which is the basis of addictive behavior, too. Don't get me wrong, I want to feel good now too - and there is nothing inherently wrong with that. But it is not the end-all and be-all of life and it certainly has nothing to do with recovery (or yiddishkeit), particularly in the beginning (what you'd call the "teshuvah" phase). Again, certainly being besimcha is a yesod of yiddishkeit (and as AAs say "if you are sad all the time you are not working the steps right") but nowhere do we see any Torah source saying "if it feels good do it", and "if it is hard, or painful, then it avoid it!". Rather, we see things like lefum tzaara agra, etc.... get me? Life and certainly living right, is not all about feeling better right now. It is about being fulfilled. The "feeling good" comes memeila - cu if it's our goal, forget it. remember, you and me did all our acting out to feel good, right? We addict-types obviously have no clue (functionally speaking) about what really makes us happy in life.

2- On the YH being our friend: Look, I was frum before and I'm frum now. But it is clear to me that my relationship w/Hashem was not personal and not real to ME before sobriety. All addicts who recover through AA feel the same way, it seems. So, I say w/o what you call "the YH" - I call it "our addiction" - I obviously would not have had a true relationship w/Hashem. This was because I did not percieve that I needed Him. Period. In this respect, the addiction is our friend. Who needs Hashem when they think they are OK? Make sense? Let me know....
Love and respect to you, a man who is really trying to do the right thing (now how many of those are there??!)
Dov

I am at day 30 whch is definitely a good frst step.
I am pretty sure, however, that I must use this newfound time of separation from lust as a springboard for real change in my life. I have come to realize that even the relatively mild level of my addiction is representative of many significant underying issues that must be adddressed if I intend to stay sober permanently. I risk the danger of thinking "I'm cured!" which will surely be a recipe for disaster. I know that Guard says that we should try the tips in order, but I don't think that I can stop before making changes at the very deepest levels of my person. It is almost more difficult to be commited to these necessary changes while I am not acting out. I have joined Boruch's 12 step program and I hope that this will provide the proper structure for the change which I need to implement.

Dear Dov and Battelworn, I have been giving this thread some serious thought and I would like to try and explain both Battelworn's approach and Dov's approach, and the concerns that each one has with the other...

It seems to me that people like Battelworn have a hard time accepting that the work done in the 12-Step groups is really just "sanity" and not "spiritual" in nature. After all, step 2 and 3 are very spiritual (for example). So Battleworn feels, that if the 12-Steps are really spiritual in nature, why not approach them from a Jewish perspective? In other words, the SAME 12-Steps, but instead of in a Church with Christians saying "may your will not mine be done", we do it in a Jewish home or shul with Jewish people and say something like this:

Step 1. Kimat Shachna Duma Nafshi.... Ma betza bidami be'riditi el shachas?
Step 2. Im amarti Mata Ragli, Chasdecha Hashem Yisadeini.
Step 3. "asei retzonoi kirtzonecha".
Step 4. Cheshbon Hanefesh.
etc...

So you'll say, well we knew all these things before and they didn't help, and you're right. He is not suggesting we use the old approach. He is suggesting that we use the 12-Step approach EXACTLY. As we go through the 12-Steps, we explain each one in a completely DIFFERENT light than what we had been fed while growing up. For example, Step 4 - Cheshbon Hanefesh, we wouldn't approach it the way we always did which was in the context of guilt and of changing ourselves. Rather, it would simply be about getting honest about who we really are, the good and the bad (as Dov always says). And if you'll claim, well this is not the Cheshbon Hanefesh of Chazal, well, for the sake of making this program work, we are indeed making changes in the NORMAL way we were taught. But as much as we CAN use Chazal, we will (and I'm sure we can find sources for those changes as well in Torah, for example "emes me'eretz tizmach". Before you can start to grow, you need to face the truth about yourself squarely).

Now I believe Dov has some legitimate concerns about this approach:

1) Because we had been trying Torah approaches for many years without making progress, an addict will initially be reluctant to hear about "yet another Torah approach". He will find it hard to trust that HERE is something finally in Torah that will help him. That is one benefit of completely separating the addiction from Yiddishkeit and calling it an illness (and not a Yetzer hara issue) and calling the 12-Steps simply "the medicine".

2) The fact that we are forced to join non-Jewish groups and learn this all from the goyim brings home the fact that we are missing the most basic yesodos and need to get off the tractor trailer and back onto the bycicle. But if we try to turn the 12-Steps into Torah, the addict will think it's just "another type" of tractor trailer.

3) Joining non-Jewish Roman Catholic perverts in the basement to regain our sanity is the best way to really drive home the Lev Nishbar that is such a neccecary component in the recovery.

4) Even if this approach is right for those who are "in between" type 1 and 2 that Dov mentioned above, but as soon as this Torah option exists, no frum Jew will ever try option #2 again, even if he is far gone! And then this may become a case of Yatza Scharo Bihefsedo? because of 1,2 and 3 above...

Just thinking out loud friends, obviously you can see I am not taking any sides, I am just spelling out what I think all of Battelworn's and Dov's concerns may be...

Finally, whilst I still have a few minutes, I want to post a reply I received from a helpful individual who is considered on this forum as a maven in these areas. I want to submit some of the queries to the public. Most of the content (which was very helpful) has been removed, but that which remains should make sense on it's own:

   


Rather fortunate, under the circumstances. What is more difficult is suffering in silence, which is something that I intend to (verbally) break out of today. BTW, does everyone have similar difficult tasks - which are imperceptible to everyone else, or is this really an area of difficulty that is genuinely  more difficult than the "average" spiritual hurdle?

   


How does this tie in with being constantly told to take one day at a time? A bit of a palginon somehow or another. Please explain.

   


Realizing this is strange. Is there anywhere on the forum that discusses this more?

Thanking in advance any repliers.

Philpher