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Klal Yisrael's Best & Brightest

Tuesday, 31 January 2012

"shmiratainayim" wrote on the forum two days ago:

Ok, so I accept this addiction as a fact, but it's so hard to fight it. I'm single, in the parsha of Shidduchim, and gifted with the capabilities to create an uprising in the Jewish world (in chinuch, kiruv krovim or kiruv rechokim). But I'm wasting my potential at the computer screen. When away from the computer, I learn from early morning to late nights, with hislahavus, amailus, etc. I can take a Maharal and compile/summarize it into such an understandable manner that even non-religious Yidden see it as sensible, understandable and pertinent. I can address large audiences and present a powerful and heartfelt message that leaves them truly touched - and with a smile on their face. I have a lot of potential, but I waste it all by not giving up on this one vise!!!! If only for the sake of the people I can help later on in life, please help me break this addiction. Please!

 

"Kollel Guy" Responds:

I have a scary thing to tell you. Being that you are an addict, there is absolutely nothing that anyone can tell you that will "convince" you not to go back to it. It might make an impression on you, you might not do it now, you might not do it tomorrow either, but when it's 'addiction' vs. 'divrei hisorerus', 'addiction' wins - by hook or by crook. Addiction is a disease, and it must be dealt with using a different set of tools than you're used to thinking of.

I tried for years to kick my p**n habit by 'getting my act together' in numerous ways. And while everything else in my life fell into place through 'getting serious' and 'shaping up', this just wouldn't budge. And I'd go through streak after streak, fall after fall, each time thinking that a different 'nekudah' was really what was causing the problem. And then I'd try to work on that nekudah, thinking that had I only worked on it sooner - I would have been done with this long ago. And I'd be confident that now that I was going to develop that new 'mindset' or start that new 'hanhagah', I would no longer have the problem.

Needless to say, I'd be back to the same question of "where did I go wrong this time?" a week, or a month, or 3 months later.

And this continued until I found this site and learned what an addiction is, and it's nature, and how it controls a person's thinking, and how a different set of tools are necessary to beat it.

Until we don't recognize that distinction, we are like people trying to blow up a tire with a hole in it. No matter how hard you try, unless you patch up that hole first, you won't get very far.

I seriously hope you read the handbook and "Hit bottom while you're still on top".