Sometimes I wonder, "how can an amazing guy do nonsense like this?" I was thinking yesterday that I cannot really beat this addiction. Even if I put a filter on this computer at the university, there are five computers next to this one. I thought last night, just like a smoker smokes, a p-rn addict looks at p-rn. That is just my problem, and I must live with it. BUT I CANNOT LIVE WITH IT, BECAUSE EVERY DAY I LOOK AT THIS STUFF IT DESTROYS MY DAY AND NIGHT, AND IF I DON'T STOP IT WILL DESTROY MY LIFE AND MY DREAMS, AND I WILL EVENTUALLY GET INTO BIG TROUBLE.
Sorry to bore you with this. I just don't know who to turn to anymore.
Dear Ilan,
I would like to address three of your concerns:
1) The fact that you keep falling and can't seem to control it
2) The fact that installing a filter for you cannot really solve the problem
3) The fear that this will eventually destroy your life
(1) As far as not being able to control it, I just had a similar discussion this morning with an unmarried boy in Australia who also can't understand how he keeps falling again and again, even though he's been on our network for over a year and he had thought that he already internalized all the "Yesodos". But the moment he is faced with a serious lust trigger, everything he learned flies "out the window" and he falls.
Duvid Chaim recently shared with us all on the phone conference, that lust addiction is like an "allergy". If you'd be walking down an isle in a super-market and someone banged into you from the back with his shopping cart, once, twice, three times, you'd get really upset, no? You'd turn around and say "what's going on? Can't you watch where you're going?!"... But what if you turned around and saw that the guy was crippled and that he was trying to shop while balancing on crutches, would you yell at him? No, you'd say to yourself "nebach, poor guy" and even offer to help him.
We have to understand that we lust addicts are crippled in this area. We have an ALLERGY to lust. If someone is allergic to peanuts and he eats them anyway, his face will blow up. There's nothing he can do about it, he will never be able to "control" his allergic reaction; all he can do is avoid the peanuts in the first place. When a lust addict is faced with a trigger, he is powerless and will be pulled into it. Duvid Chaim explained to us that an addict will never be able to CONTROL his addiction, i.e. his allergic reaction to lust. Rather, the 12-Steps teach us how to be FREE from it.