Thanks for taking ur time to respond to my thoughts my situation.

I'm missing something overhere if u can please define it, now it can very be that I'm not explaining myself well enough (it is hard for me to express myself in writing).

the state were I currently find myself is, that when i walk in the street and there is a woman which is jogging I don't lust after her, 
in my day to day situation I function through out my day w/o thinking of p* 
i enjoy the daily activities that I'm involved in, full stop! 
Now my question is completely technical, I'm asking is my living a normal life as mentioned above called recovery? Or for recovery purposes do i need to better myself, it may be being more honest with myself, or not getting angry at others (and I can give a few more examples were I struggle with basic human values) is that the meaning to of recovery (derech eretz)? 

(The only way how I understand how to better myself will be through using torah values and I'm not saying that torah is primarily derech eretz but torah (musar, chasidus) can teach us to be better people)

Welcome baruch

If you're an OE addict 12 steps may help
If not a 20000 step program should do the trick

Just because I choose to express myself with an eloquence of speech, in a manner befitting any average person, should not serve as an indication that I have not sponsored some of SA's gruesome cases.  The חידוש, and arguably the difference between us, may lie in our response to hearing a fellow addict's fond memories of 'acting out'.          Whereas every other member in the group laughs his head off, I lower my head an cry for that member's wife-children-parents-friends-community-and I cry for Hashem. Every time we act-out on our lusts (pardon my soft expressions), we are wreaking destruction on our own lives-our spouces-children-and frankly the whole world. The act, the emotional detachment, the resulting domino effect, and most of all the spiritual destruction and perversion of Hashem's holy world.

I am not naive, nor a 'newbie', am I a true בן תורה and עובד השם that has not replaced or changed his religious valued or ethics... despite taking an active part in SA for years. And as such, I choose to express myself in such a manner.

I was exposed to porn when I was probably 5 years old. My older brothers had stashes of magazines that I would find. I didn't start actively masturbating till I was around 11 or 12. I struggled with it for years. At one point after a lot of davening I guess, the crushing need to "act out" left me. It was like a miracle. By that time I'd become a food addict too. Now in middle age I'm obese and I have diabetes. I can usually stay away from hard porn and I think I'm fairly safe from that thank G-d. I have a filter on my computer at work and home. A big issue I have though is getting pulled into to looking at practically naked women whose images pop-up on what are supposed to be "kosher" sites. I go to a news site and the images will either be there in the story or they will link to a story on a site that has these images. At this point I know which news sites generally have these types of pictures and I try to stay away. Usually when I'm angry or depressed I'll be pulled towards these sites more. It feels a bit like rebelling against Hashem because I'm angry with Him for giving me the lousy circumstances that made me angry and depressed to begin with. Today I did a search on the glycemic index for cantaloupe. sure enough a bunch of inappropriate diet ads popped up. Maybe I need some sort of ad-blocker? 
i'm not a stranger to 12 Step programs as I've tried it on and off because of my eating. I actually have a copy of the Big Book sitting on my desk right now as I'm writing.It hasn't worked for me yet though. 
Thanks for your attention. 

I really dont want to get into a hashgafic back and forth but in my understanding, mussar cant help me. I am not a person when i am lusting, masturbating etc. It is not a normal sex drive for me. Mussar cant help me in that state. First i need to learn how to become a healthy person and then mussar can help me. Derech eretz kadman l'Torah. First i need to learn derech eretz. 

Thats where the 12 steps have come into my life. 

welcome to the forum. you are in the right place. 
as far as your weekdays are concerned, is there any way you can block youtube from your devices? although there is no complete nudity, it still keeps your lusting continuous throughout the week. maybe if you at least break that continuous lusting it will be easier to break free on weekends as well.

Day 1: Morning, just being part of a group effort, and having someone to share my success with, made all the difference. What’s the point of climbing the Everest if I have no-one to share it with!

Instead of wasting my time and ‘fluids’ trying to look a shmutz (trying=I have a decent filter), I only wasted time looking 5 times at my own thread! The forum is a ‘decent’ substitute ‘drug’.   A typical start to 90 days…..

The YH makes a great effort to conceal the “details” from me, especialy from me sharing it on this thread and letting you guys know.   So here are the numbers.    2:00am I went to bed without even davening maariv because I ‘was tired’ (too tired to go to bed at 11:00pm, but wide awake to waste an evening on the internet)     8:00am woke up, and wasted and hour and a half on ‘kosher internet’. Only then did a start davening ביחידות a ‘shortened’ version of shachris.        …details mark the precise end to addictive behaviors.

Afternoon: My job is aggravating, and I am looking forward to posting on the forum. Using the computer usually makes me feel good. It’s called “anchoring” in psychology, when I subconsciously make and association between a “trigger” and a “feeling”. In this case using the computer is the trigger, and the ‘feeling’ is the empty pleasure I have looking at sleazy pictures. I am simply confused, I look forward to that same empty pleasure with any time I use the computer. On one hand, if I were willing to ‘act-out’, then every exposure to the ‘trigger’ (in my case the computer), would tempt me to act out. Not because the internet is triggering, but because my brain made the connection between computer/shmutz.

                My first day went well as far as sobriety and even recovery (sobriety=holding back raging lust for consecutive period of time.           Recovery=no “unhealthy” impulses/urges to contemplate acting on, despite the ready availability of “addictive pleasures”).   Simply having an empty board to post on (and a few great guys to read it), gives me a greater sense of belonging, and a desire to provide you all with an honest and progressively improving report.

P.S. if you get the feeling that I “know too much”, it’s because I have come VERY far in my personal journey of recovery in the 12 steps. But I simply stopped working the program. Not that I stopped the step-work, because even I can’t stop using those life skills, they are an integral part of my life (I don’t do them on paper, I almost never did them on paper). I stopped ‘being clean’, I ignored the halachik perspective of it, and acted out in ways that only mildly affected my quality of life. Honestly, let’s call it more than mild, maybe medium.  It’s not rock bottom that brought me back to these boards, rather a vividly clear “calling” from hashem that he isn’t willing to tolerate me ‘acting-out’ with porn. How I came to this realization is pretty easy in my case, but as a policy I cannot share identifying information on the boards at all ואין כאן המקום להאריך…..

Disclaimer: I'm only speaking for myself and people like me who consider themselves Sexaholics as the condition is described in the SA White Book. 

I've been listening to recordings of SA speakers while I drive and whenever I have free time. The positive part of my personality is that I can really throw myself into things. Obviously I have to set limits and always talk with my sponsor about what I'm doing.

Anyway Harvey A.  was pointing out that the discussions in meetings have become very focused on the sexual or lustful act. The problem for a "Sexaholic" is not the act, it's the driving force behind the act and lust is the driving force behind the act. So I need to define what lust is for me and recoil from it like a flame. Someone in SA said to me that lust is a raging fire. 

The definition of Lust is the using of a natural desire for an unintended and unnatural purpose. And lust isn't limited to lust after people. I can lust after money, power, respect and many other things. I can lust after being a Rosh Yeshiva. It's all about the state of mind of the sexaholic. And I can also lust after shlamus as a Ben Torah. And the Sexaholics who don't get this can never stay sober without relapse because as Harvey puts it, we were never sober to begin with.

I hear people all the time lusting after sobriety and it is ever elusive to them. Of course we can't get and stay sober. We don't know what sobriety is and our motivating force in our sobriety is the very same thing that causes our addiction to begin with - Lust. 

Someone asked me how a Sexaholic of the hopeless variety like me can go onto a computer without a filter and not watch porn. The Answer is that it all depends on my state of mind when I go on the computer and the fitness of my mental condition (I avoid the word spiritual condition because too many people here will substitute spiritual for frum.) If I go onto that computer when I know that every time I go on the computer I watch porn then I am just straight out sick and suffering and don't have recovery. Just to be clear the proof that I'm still stick and suffering is not that I watch porn every time I go onto an unfiltered computer. I may never be able to go onto an unfiltered computer no matter how recovered I am. Even Harvey A who has something like 30 years of real sobriety knows that he can't take certain actions without them leading to Lust and eventually acting out. The sickness is thinking that this time will be different. That this time I will have the power. The filter isn't there to prevent from watching porn, It's there because I don't have the power on my own to sign into an unfiltered computer and not watch porn. In the Doctor's Opinion, I have an allergy and an obsession. It's like a guy who has an allergic reaction to peanuts but thinks this time he can eat peanuts and it will be okay. Except that we do this over an over for years on end. I know for a fact that if I watch porn on a computer it will lead me to misery. So if I do that time and time again then there is something really wrong with me. And for me it starts way before I turn on my computer. If I conscientiously pursue any form of lust in my life, it will lead me to restless, irritable and discontent and then I will eventually turn to my drug of choice for help.  Because when I lust after something I block God out, whether that be lusting after having kids who are obedient like the ones I see next door, the guy who is more successful than me in business, or the marriage of my neighbor. Once God is blocked out then I seek my shalmus elsewhere. For a regular person Lust may not cause all that and may be fine and well, but for me it is toxic. 

I used to be jealous of my friend's marriage and wished mine could be more like his.They ended up getting divorced to my shock. My lust after his marriage was all based on the falsehood my addict's mind. 

​Thanks for letting me share. I hope it helped someone. I know it helped me. 

Welcome to the Forum
Great first step and now comes step two etc.
Do you have any other hobbies you could work on instead of going on the computer when your mother steps out? What helped me most at that time was:
1. to find something else to keep me busy, for example surfing the forum
2. installing a better filter
3. telling myself that it is really not worth it
After a while the desire or the feeling of having to watch will get lighter.
Wishing you lots of Hazloche

Good morning Daniel and all GYE fellows,
The counter on the 90 days chart shows 8 this morning, and for some strange reason I felt something like 'Dear passengers, we have reached our cruising altitude'...
And this might be a reason to worry a bit...
From experience in various fields of life, its exactly in those times when everything seems to be on the track, the turbulences and excitment of new beginnings start to wear off, the routine is taking over and then... something goes wrong.
And you are not reacting well, because the attention was off...
OK, but what can I do in order to maintain the high level of consciousness? 
I have asked my sponsor - are we doomed to be in en eternal tension of a recovery process?
We discussed this a bit, and reached the conclusion that we are not doomed to be in a constant struggle. Some of us here are RECOVERED addicts. But to be a recovered addict is a state in itself. It is not that we are erasing our past and starting from a blank page. 
After a succesful recovery, I believe that I can become a much better person, I wont need to struggle with lust because I will have surrendered my will completely and thus developped natural protection mechanisms.
But the allergy will remain and I will forever be aware that a 'sip' is as dangerous as a full bottle.

Well... I still have to work on these concepts and understanding. I believe that I'll get it better when I 'grow up'.

I do not know who works on the 'Daily Breaking Free Chizuk' mails - but he (she? they?) do a wonderful job! To my amazement, I find these very interesting and enriching - and even helpful in my recovery! Yishar Koach Gadol! KUTGW (Hey Daniel!, I finally decyphered your acronym... witout googling it...)

I have daily work sessions on the twelve steps with my sponsor.
I decided to attend the SA meetings weekly, so the second one is scheduled for Sunday IYH (I did get a 'keep coming back' token... so now I must return!).

SO, another wonderful day lays ahead... I am now ready for it.

One day at a time.

Hazak Veematz,

Benjamin

By a "world of growing in the positive direction" it sounds to me that it doesn't have to do directly with the addiction rather it has to do with self improvement in our lives which can be achieved through musar and since I didn't work on my ego and gaining enough healthy habits  5 years ago these defects  become a trigger today in my addictive life.

ok, if that's correct, but after we invited in our addiction in our lives, isn't there a dipper need in us that needs to be filled?

In my experience there is an essential difference between sobriety and recovery. Sobriety is not acting out, not masturbating, but recovery is a whole different world. A world of growing in a positive direction which does include helping people but in my experienced if i am not recovered, i cant help somebody recover. I first need to recover myself which for me includes getting rid of those character defects like fear and resentment. 

Its a whole different ball game. No more white knuckling. Actual living. Real living. Honest living. 

Hakolhevel wrote on 18 Jul 2017 22:34:

Sorry I edited my post after you quoted it
Please re-read

Apparently Taphsic exclusively (with no other tools) works. 
Theres very little proof on the forum to this fact, which is is why I wrote what I wrote

Whoa where is that statistic from?

Lovely Jew wrote on 18 Jul 2017 20:12:

Most Rabbis nowadays are not there to meet out penance...

If the question is about past misdemeanors, i say just move on
If not, I suggest you email theguard (eyes.guard@gmail.com) and ask for his assistance

Apparently 99% of those that break free with Taphsic exclusively from serious addiction struggle do not participate in the forums

BARUCH HASHEM YOU JOINED US TO BREAK FREE BEFORE YOU WENT BROKE