Who is Boruch? Well, for those of you who are new to our network, we called him "our 12-Step Expert" and we cherished his long and brilliant posts on the forum. Boruch was quoted in tens of Chizuk e-mails in the past, explaining the 12-Step program (most noticeably in e-mails #439 - #450 on this page).
When Boruch first joined our forum, he was thoroughly convinced that the 12-Steps were not for him - or for any of us for that matter. He came onto the forum blasting against the 12-Steps, claiming that they were counter-intuitive and had been born out of another religion, while we Yidden have Chazal who teach us clearly how to do Teshuvah.
Well, one day Boruch broke the news of his addiction to his therapist and was given the suggestion to try the 12-Step groups - just once. Boruch was determined to do all he could to break his addiction, and if that was what his therapist asked him to do, Boruch agreed to try it.
Today, Boruch has become the most ardent advocate of the 12-Steps and is working them into his life through the groups with a passion.
Boruch is extremely intelligent and also a big Talmid Chacham, so we asked him to lead a group of members on our network and teach them how to implement the 12-Steps into their lives.
Here is Boruch's inspiring post on the forum:
Shalom All,
It is fantastic after such a prolonged absence to be able to come back here to GYE where everything started for me. B"H today I have 147 days of sobriety and here is the miracle Hashem has done for me:
I joined Sexaholics Anonymous (SA) 137 days ago and I knew then that I was mentally and physically sick. My wife and I had been seeing therapists on and off for 12 years. I was on medication and was going regularly to a counselor for therapy. My wife suffered from serious depression and she too was going to therapy. We had tried going to the same therapist but her therapist had thrown me out and so I had to get my own.
I was seriously overweight. I was down in weight from my all time high but I was eating crazier than ever, going from fasting to binging on the same day and I suffered from high blood pressure. My sleeping was all over the map. Even after I was sober and had stopped acting out I would stay up at least two entire nights every week only to go to work feeling half dead and stay at work the entire day and late into the next night until I would collapse.
My life had ground to a halt amid severe financial paranoia. I was unable to get involved with money at all. I had not recorded at all of any of the checks I had written over the last two to three years. On a daily basis, I was totally unaware of my bank balance and would write checks anyway. I had no concept of how much money I owed Credit Card companies. I was chronically late in paying bills, including credit card bills. The simplest tasks that in minutes would have moved desperately needed money into my bank account to prevent overdraft charges were totally beyond my reach, and in the space of a few months I had racked up a thousand dollars in overdraft fees alone. I ran a small online business on the side that had promise, but I had just totally stopped processing any of the sales. At work I had also ground to a halt.