My plan

Step one get thirty days of sobriety at all cost. Will than analyze step two

I am a long time member here under a different name. After falling a few years ago. I left the forum. So I need to address the most important question. Why this time is different than last time ? Until today the whole thing was about Yiras Shomayim. In my world PME is the most important thing in the world. I would spend all the money in the world and go to gehenom for my lust. That is why I could never get anywhere. Even though I had done all the twelve step work, I hadn’t hit rock bottom. I had no real reason to stop. I believed that I would never be caught. Now I have been caught. I have seen the results. I have seen my wife’s face, her disappointment, her disgust. I have seen mirrored in her face what I have really become. I have seen how I have been hiding from myself. I am sick of all the hiding the secrecy. I have seen that my marriage is in danger. I have realized that there are things more important than PME. I thought that I can have my cake and eat it too.

All this is not enough. I will get over the initial shock and be back where I was. I have too do much deeper work. I have to work on connecting with my core values.

I have come to the realization that I have been brainwashed from very young into thinking that PME is the most amazing thing in the world. I am convinced that I have a secret weapon to get through life. I have a clip playing in my mind that without PME I would never have survived life. All the twelve step work that I have done has done nothing to move that basic premise .Most of the time when not using we think about how much fun it is to use, and how miserable we with out it. From age 16 until 24 I was fixated on how much fun porn is. No wonder that I fell. It is time to create new images in the brain about how great life is without porn. After all the work I don’t need PME, but I still want it. I don’t lust a whole day, but I will still grab any opportunity. I will be working on changing this mindset.

The addictive brain can sneak op on me any minute and throw in the garbage all these beautiful thoughts. That is step one, that essentially I am powerless. I need help forging new pathways in the brain

 Step 1 an addict cannot trust himself and will never be able to trust himself. Even after changing all his core values and rehabilitating his essence, there will always be something rotten deep inside that can undo everything. An addict has a rotten apple inside that can spread disease to all parts. The disease is so insidious that it is impossible to be completely on guard. An addict has to rely on an external stabilizing influence to stay sane. He is too messed up inside. And that leads to the second and third step.

Today I want to try and map out my triggers, cravings, behaviors and rewards in terms of the science of lust addiction that we know today and the associated feelings with them.

Part of mindfulness is learning to recognize what’s really going on inside of my brain and body and even though our current scientific knowledge of the brain is pretty limited, we have a small idea of what’s going on in the brain so we can use that to explain the feelings and sensations we feel.

Lets start with a negative feeling as an example that often triggers lust triggers for me - anxiety. What does this feel like in my body to be gripped by anxiety? A contracted, closed down feeling most often mainly in my chest.

What’s happening in my brain? The posterior cingulate cortex becomes more active during anxiety. This is a hub of a collection of brain features called the default mode network. This is the area that gets active when we think about ourselves, or something to do with us. It gets activated when we get caught up in repetitive worries about the future.

This anxiety can trigger a lust craving, which my brain has learnt over the last 15+ years is a way that will mitigate the anxiety at least temporarily. This happens because there is a release of dopamine in the brain when I lust. However, if I bring a curious awareness to this tightness of anxiety in my chest using mindfulness I can notice a little letting go and it therefore wont necessarily trigger a craving. This is because mindfulness causes the posterior cingulate cortex to quiet down.

Now lets look at the positive reinforcement side. What is the experience that causes cravings of lust for me the most. Probably lusting. Like if I lust after a inappropriately dressed woman who walked by, even though I didn’t have any cravings before, now I have big cravings to think about her and maybe look at similarly dressed woman on the internet and then I get bigger cravings to maybe look at women who are even more inappropriately dressed. This habit loop was formed because when I lusted when young, a neurotransmitter called dopamine was indirectly released in a part of my brain called the nucleus ucumbens. When this happened over and over it lead to addiction. This is because my brain wants to keep that good feeling produced by the dopamine release going.

So firstly I have to keep away from lust actions, reading an even thoughts or else I will start large amounts of the dopamine to fire in my brain causing my brain to want more which is cravings for lust.

And if I do get cravings for lust either from positive or negative reinforcement, I can bring a mindful curiosity to these lustful cravings, to my brain's want for more dopamine. What do these lust cravings feel like inside my body? I will learn that these are just sensations in my body that are my brains way of trying to push me to lust more and produce more dopamine. And I will learn that if I don’t feed the cravings even with thought, the cravings eventually die down and go away.

Yerushalmi wrote on 09 Mar 2018 12:12:

This is still called white-knuckling in my dictionary, which was my point - please re-read my entire post including the first quoted parts

I believe that there are many in gye who do have a lower scale addiction (I wouldn't call it non-addict) where they are stuck in a cycle and the body needs training to learn that they can live w/o any sex drug - and 90 day white knuckling alone with chopsticks, chatroom, even calling gye friends daily etc can help them "break free"
There are many others on Gye that tried all these mentioned tools and are still struggling mightily for years

Either way, if someone recognizes they are white knuckling,  give him a high 5 for admitting it ​​​​

Could it be that  are not sober because you have practically nothing that many successfully recovering addicts have? Your work on gye is to a great extent mainly discussion and philosophical. True commitment and honesty exists in the mind and heart, to be sure. But it is not created there. It is learned only within the context of real, living relationships, not in the mind, nor certainly in typeface. True support works the same way and is found only where facades are removed. Vulnerability - not self-protection - is the basis of the truest, safest, relationships in life. 

You'vee got practically none of the ingredients I have had over the years that the AA's found they needed and gave me. Hashem gave us AA and SA for a reason.  I suggest you do what I did and take these things for yourself. Put down the things that are just substitutes for it, and take the real thing. I joined a meeting of recovering sex addicts after 20 years of playing with honesty. You can do this on the phone at first, but I suggest that getting real friends will be necessary if you want G-d to be real to you one day.

GYE sent a Ted talk around a few years back, titled something like, "Everything you thought about addiction was wrong," and (ironically) it was about the fact that every true change that exists in recovery only happens in the context of real relationships.

Perhaps you musunderstood me in the previous post. It's not about honesty, but openness. If you want a G-d you can really trust, then make relationships with people who you can really trust and cultivate them regularly. Don't let them be virtual - unless a virtual G-d is all you want. Hiding is the way to prevent real change. The fake name thing here is only the tip of the iceberg, the badge of shame one wears as long as comfort is our truest priority.

You can get past that, I know.

So long as we are fighting and winning we have a problem. Some of us are ok with such a life, and can survive 120 years like this

would you please care to elaborate on this isnt this always a fight regardless of how recovered as
well as non addicts ?

BH I had an amazingly awesome conversation with a program brother this afternoon. 
This conversation helped crystallize for me:
1) the desperate and pathetic reality of my current situation as a "lustaholic" 
2) the recovery process is a major commitment of time and energy
to learn "healthy" attitudes and develop healthy connections
3) Recovery as well as therapy must be self-driven
4) how much my family is suffering b/c my attention, time, and energy are consumed by the hours spent on phone sex, and looking at porn.
5) how my addiction has destroyed my ability to be attentive and supportive to my family

"I'm not addicted to Potato Chips...

I'm only going to have 1 now and that's it...

Now leave me alone"

Rabbi Zecharia Wallerstein - Creating Your Own Super Highway
https://www.torahanytime.com/#/lectures?v=39225

I heard a really beautiful story today. It’s printed in Chassidim Anshe Maaseh by Rav Kitov.

Reb Zisha and the Noam Elimelech were once sitting after tikkun chatzos and Reb Zisha asks his brother Reb Meilech “Meilech my brother, Adam Harishon included in himself every single human being. So that means that you were at least a cell somewhere in his body. As he reached out to eat the eitz hadaas, which caused so much misery and death and destruction in the world, couldn’t you have sent a very sharp pain? And if he would have paused for a moment, he would have gotten over it and he would never have eaten it and the world would have lived happily ever after. Why didn’t you do that?

Reb Meilech answered “Zisha my brother, I remember that moment very vividly and not only didn’t I cause him to stop, I pushed his hand to eat from it!”

“Well why did you do that” asked Reb Zisha “It caused so much misery and suffering in the world”

The Noam Elimelech said “Imagine that he would not have eaten and the world would have come to its tikkun and shleimus and we would stay in oilam haba forever. So we would be sitting there in oilam haba munching on the fruit and the nochosh would slither by and would say, “You know it’s really nice here, but it would have been A LOT nicer had you eaten from the eitz hadas. And there would be this tiny tiny thread of doubt, in our minds.

NOW we have no doubt as to how much pain and suffering and bad there is in the eitz hadas. Better to suffer for 6000 years and to be CERTAIN about the truth, than to be in gan eden and have some sliver of doubt about whether it’s right or not.

When a person does something and he suffers the consequences, the ONE thing that he has is there is NO DOUBT.

What I took from this story for me is that somebody with a lust addiction is really the lucky one. We are lucky because we have seen lust bring so much suffering, guilt and destruction in our lives. And we are so affected by lust that we cant even as much as have a lustful fantasy in our heads without it bringing on more and more craving which is most likely to eventually lead to more and more lust until we end up doing things that make us totally miserable.

I have seen all of that but often after a while sober I start to forget that this is where lust brings me. I start to think, “ah a little bit of lust won’t hurt. I wont get affected by just a 5-minute fantasy. Who can control their brain anyway? Surely just a few immodest pictures wouldn’t do any harm? And besides nothing really terrible ever happened from the lust. You are still in one piece. Nothing bad really happened. You were never suicidal. You never got divorced. It was OK. Everything will be OK. And these cravings! They have been so uncomfortable and are just getting worse. Every day more cravings. You can hardly concentrate on your learning anymore. You are a nervous wreck! Just a short news story about something immodest wouldn’t do any harm! Go ahead.

If I had really hit rock bottom then maybe I would never take these thoughts seriously. I would know deep in my bones that lust will kill me. And maybe I would have surrendered myself to Hashem if I really had hit rock bottom. And maybe if when I saw other people who had hit rock bottom from lust and I really believed that this is where I am headed then that would have been just as good. But that is not the case.

So should I just act out some more and try and find out and truly learn that lust will kill me or not. I would rather not. I have had enough with all the suffering. The guilt. The disconnection. The disappointment and the waste. The sholom bayis problems. The feelings of inadequacy.

But maybe there is another way!

If through mindfulness training I can learn to take my triggers and even their underlying causes less seriously and my feelings of cravings less seriously and I can start being mindful when remembering that even though the rewards of lust were quite a good feeling (OK maybe even a really really good feeling...) they weren’t THAT amazing. There are OTHER good feelings in the world. Connecting to my family. Connecting to Hashem. Learning a beautiful piece of Torah. And was it really good enough to warrant all that suffering that I had.

“And look you can control your brain now. Look how strong you are at controlling your brain after all that mindfulness training. You can easily divert your mind to other thoughts if a lustful thought jumps into your head or even if an inappropriately dressed women walks by.

And if that disenchantment is going to stay. If taking triggers, cravings and rewards less seriously is going to remain and that aversion to lust, I am going to have to keep this mindfulness practice up. Even when I’m not motivated. And if I want to keep up my ability to control what I think about, I will need to keep my brain in tip top shape by exercising it with mindfulness practices every day.

Hello Yerushalmi. Thank you for your response. I struggle with masturbation. Also Porn addiction. I feel that after collapse on a clean period, the urge to do it is even stronger. It's like I have to get back for what I missed the past days. 

I haven't done a lot in prevention strategy. My phones are not filtered. 

grateful4life wrote on 07 Mar 2018 23:30:

grateful4life great advice! chaimyid also try find a partner to! also you should try contacting people on the chat, will help a lot:) your doing great! by doing this 1st big step! hashem should give you blessed path to recovery!  

Happy to hear that you're more motivated than ever to recover. Hashem has many ways to bring us back and He makes sure that we dont leave until we get to where we need to be, with all our weaknesses.

If you are a hardcore addict as you say you are then you're best bet is joining SA and getting to 90 meetings in 90 days. Start getting some real recovery into your system. Connect to others on a daily basis and find a sponsor ASAP.

If you need a temporary sponsor please PM me, I'm available.

Hatzlacha rabba and may Hashem bentch you with the strength and courage to recover long term.

I was finally caught!

After all the years the chickens came to roost.

My dear wife found something on her phone linked to me and confronted me. I tried to wiggle out but she didn’t budge. I finally admitted that it was true. She told me that she had always suspected but didn’t want to confront without proof.

So where do I go from here? I am a hardcore addict for many years. I have been through the twelve steps. They helped but not enough. That is the same question that my wife askes me.

Am I happy that I was caught? Very happy! It was time for the madness to end. The timing couldn’t have been better. My wife is going through very intensive therapy for her issues, so she is in the best position to deal with this. Previously my marriage was in very bad shape and would have never survived this.

After many years of work my emotional health and emunah are in very good. All the years I felt justified in acting out. However recently I came to the realization that I really don’t need this anymore. I was just continuing because it was fun. It really was time to stop. In our house we don’t have broadband internet, just cellular internet. This obviously has put a damper on my acting out. Most off my heavy acting out was opportunistic, meaning when I would have access to broadband I would chap arien. Recently however, there appeared in my bedroom an open broadband connection. After taking the appropriate precautions I have been having a party. My Ellul was ruined my shovavim was a wreck. (yes, even an addict can have a shovavim chizuk. I am sure Dov will think that very funny) In the past couple of days I felt like I was going over the edge. I was having trouble keeping the acting out separate from my normal life. I was taking time off to act out. There was no hope in sight. The broadband wasn’t disappearing. Then I was caught! Thank you, Hashem, for saving me! Sometimes I wasn’t sure if Hashem cared about me. This was the biggest miracle that I ever saw in my life! Thank you, Hashem.

Hi, my name is Eliyahu. 
I struggle with this problem since I'm 15yrs old. I'm 27 now. It's very hard to control myself when I feel pain or hurt or neglected or don't understood. 
My goal is to become clean. I am probably addicted to it. It's very hard for me to not touch myself in these situations. 
My goal is from strength to strength. 
I was clean for 16 days before today. 
2 times I collapsed today. 

welcome,
Thank you for writing your story, i know it's hard to do. Joining GYE shows great strength and courage to want to get out of this bad habit/addiction. There are many tools on GYE too help you through. Everyone here wants to help you.
Feel free to email me 360gye@gmail.com i would love to help you

Hi Paul
Where have you been since you recovered did you still spend your time on GYE or did you feel confident that you passed it all ?
I think this is a lifetime goal even for non addicts as the world out there is terrible and always a chance to fall so even in times that i feel better there is always that fear and thats why i try to stay connected maybe less time but still around i know and recognize my weakness and don't ever want to go there again