I am a mental case! I swore to god that I will be clean for 30 days or if I fail then he should take my life because I can’t be bothered anymore, and I still fell! What now?
Dear Yid, you have an illness known as addiction. Rabbi Twerski once responded to someone like you as follows:
Chazal say, "Tzoras rabbim chatzi nechama." I don't know if it applies to this. Yours was the fourth contact of its kind this week. Internet addiction has become epidemic among the frum men AND women! If you have a fax machine, I can send you copies of letters just like yours.
You are right. Promises don't help and nedarim don't help. Psychiatry and psychology are not of much help. It is very much an addiction over which self-controls don't work.
For alcohol and drug addiction, there are support groups of Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous. For lust addiction there is SA.
A frum person will say, "No way I can expose my problem by going to a meeting." I understand. There is a very fine, very frum young man who is in recovery from this problem. He'll be glad to talk with you. He does not need to know your name. The most effective help can come from someone who has overcome this problem. I am away from home today. Tomorrow I'll e-mail you his number. You can call him and you will remain anonymous.
Twerski
There was an incident that taught me something about turning to Hashem for help:
At a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous in Jerusalem, one man who was seven years sober related that he had resisted AA because it was God-oriented, and he was an atheist.
“One day”, he said, “I was walking along the beach in Tel Aviv, thinking whether I should just walk into the ocean and end it all. I had nowhere to go. My wife threw me out of the house. In desperation, I looked toward the sky and shouted, “If You’re up there, then help me!”
And He helped me.
Now, with the help of G-d, I am seven years sober.”
When I heard this, I thought of the verse in Tehillim: “Hashem is close to all who call upon Him, who call upon Him in truth”.
That’s the clincher: in truth.
Twerski
Speaking of “asking Hashem to take your life”, you are not alone. Nura Be’amram (who just reached 90 days this week) posted once:
Not being able to cope effectively with the very really stresses in my life. Is what led me to seek solace in the …u know where;), instead of dealing with what needed to be dealt with.
The aftermath of these crashes were laden with such intense emptiness that I've even had thoughts of (I can't believe I'm even posting this!) suicide!!
I felt that the pain of EMPTINESS was so great that the only escape would be S**cide.
I lift up my hands tzum Tateh in himmel,
Please Tateh continue to carry me and my all "peklach" in Your right hand! Amein
NB
And Yakov Shwartz once posted his story, and I quote an excerpt from when he was in midst of the addiction:
During my first year of marriage, I would stand for long amounts of time at the top of a very tall building, ready to jump. I just asked Hashem to take my life. I can’t bare this anymore. I would get on a bus, and daven to Hashem for there to be an accident and I will get killed. I will first cast away my problems, do teshuva and vidui. This way I can die with teshuva.
Today Yakov is clean for almost 6 months and we recently named him Rosh Yeshiva of the GYE Beis Medrash and has inspired hundreds of people on this forum with his posts! So take HOPE.
But my dear Jew, you must do your Hishtadlus. Are you getting the daily Chizuk e-mails? Did you read the handbooks? And join an anonymous 12-Step phone conference. See this page.
If you do your part, Hashem will help you find freedom from this addiction.
Response to this post by the one who asked the question:
Hi, I just want to say thank you for all your input, its been 7 days since I fell, I can’t tell you how much chizuk you give me and the will to continue, may hashem bless you and the rest of gye with everything you need, your dedication is incredible, this is true how a true yid should be, I can’t believe how another yid can show such dedication to another he does not know. I look forward to giving you nachas. Good voch