My name is Yossi, I am a 19 year old Bochur, and I have been Shomer Habris for over 6 months B"H - the best 6 months of my life.
One of the main things that spurred me to stop, besides for the extreme seriousness of the sin, was the realisation of how much better life would be without this life-sucking addiction.
Before I was Shomer, I was a different person. My thoughts were perverted, my speech tainted, as were my conversations, and of course, I was naturally attracted to every second girl and woman I saw. But the main thing that was killing me, which I only realize the full extent of now, was the negative effect that masturbation had on my soul. The learning wouldn't come in, prayer wouldn't come out, and Shabbos was boring, as was everything Jewish in between. My life was a contradiction. I knew it, and as both a Jew and Yeshivah Bochur, I had to stop.
One of the ways that helped me realize I could stop was the introduction of the website 'guardyoureyes.org.' This website tremendously helped me become aware of the nature of this averiah, with its clear and thorough help. Joining the daily chizuk emails encouraged and pushed me to strive to complete 90 days clean. Reading the stories of other people helped me, and whenever I needed a source of inspiration and was struggling, I used the website as a source of new encouragement which spurred me further.
So I stopped. And since then, everything has changed.
Learning is now absolutely amazing! In fact, last z'man was the best z'man I ever had in my life. Davening, singing and dancing all comes straight from the heart, and the heilige Shabbos Kodesh is by far my favourite day of the week. IY"H may it continue.
How did I stop? I told myself before z'man starts that I must be clean, and I drummed it into myself a hundred times over. Mikveh, Mussar, and Tikun Haklali all helped, but in order to even dream of beginning such a daunting task, open internet went straight out the window - literally. And if anyone is planning on stopping while you have any form of unfiltered internet access, good luck. You've failed before you've started, and if you think you're stronger than the Yetzer Horah when he's armed with open internet, I'm afraid you're badly mistaken. I'm speaking from experience. Internet is the devil, the fiery dragon that we must slay. I smashed my i-Touch, sold my Wi-Fi phone at a loss, and the very next day was my first day clean!
Smashing and selling all my internet connections was by far the best impulse decision I've made in my life. I didn't think too hard - I just did what I knew was right, leaving no time for the Yetzer Horah to plant his evil seeds of doubt in my mind - such as: "It's not your money to waste... It's your parent's money.... It's Hashem's... it could go to charity... Ba'al Tashchis... you need it for countless other things... how can you live without it?" NO! These things you plan for afterwards - not before.
Here's how I see it: the struggle for reaching Shmiras Habris is like climbing a ladder. Rung by rung, day by day, higher and higher. Sometimes we may lose our footing and slip, but we must immediately regain our balance because we certainly don't want to hit rock bottom; no one does. We must never give up and we'll soon see that gradually, over time, it gets easier and easier, until one day we'll reach our goal of purity in this world - and eternal bliss in the next. But the ladder only starts in midair, and to reach the first rung one has to take a massive leap. But once we've taken that leap and have grasped that first rung, we're already halfway there!
That leap is getting rid of your i-Touch, your Pocket PC or anything else that has an internet connection (or installing strong filters with reporting software on devices that can be filtered). Once this is done, you're halfway there, and I promise, this will be a leap you will not regret.
It's still not over, in fact, far from it. There will always be tests, but the first few weeks are the hardest. The Yetzer Harah will continuously plague and torment you with lustful thoughts, trying to get you to finally give in. The only thing to do is to attack those thoughts while in their infancy. If you're sitting in the bathroom, standing in the shower, or laying in bed and a sick thought enters your head - don't chill with it! Shut it out immediately, shake your head, bang it, jump out of bed and pray to G-d, whatever it takes, but never ever chill with it, because a bad thought is like a poised snake ready to strike - one must shut the door immediately and leave it shut until it goes. The second you open that door, once the head is inside, it's too late; its entire body will instantly slither in and inject you with venomous poison. Don't assume you can fight the snake - you can't, it's a lot stronger than you are.
Another step to reaching full purity is the cutting down of even the most seemingly innocent things, like movies and TV series, and even certain games. Although I, being more of the party animal type, never really had that problem, since I never had the time to watch a movie - I was always with friends partying and clubbing. I used to think that after seeing what I'd seen, doing what I'd done, and watching what I'd watched, nothing as miniscule as a film could really arouse me any more - but I realised that once you starve your Yetzer Horah, the smallest things like a brief movie scene, attractive women on the street, or even a street advertisement could be extremely arousing and lend themselves to severe temptation.
In order to maintain these boundaries, I always make sure to keep myself busy. Since, from experience, boredom is very dangerous. Too much chilling by myself behind a closed door, even with a Gemarah in my hand, and obviously in front of a screen, always leads to temptations, which usually stem from thoughts.
Too much chilling alone is never good, especially for the first couple of weeks. This isn't a haskama, but I personally felt that even spending the night partying in town was less likely to lead to me wasting zera than spending the night in my bedroom chilling alone. That doesn't make partying in town alright, I'm just using it to show how bad it is to stay alone with your Yetzer Hara.
After sticking to these boundaries, together with my steadfast will and determination, I realised that this was time I was actually going to reach 90 days, and it was actually possible! I started speaking about it with other bochurim and friends to encourage them, and at the same time, to reinforce my own faith. It became quite clear that this problem wasn't only limited to bums, former bums and people who don't wear white shirts. It was a problem that nearly everyone I spoke to had, and its seriousness and effect was deeply underrated. Most people's attitude was, "you know, it's very hard, especially in this day and age, and it's practically impossible, G-d doesn't expect us to do the impossible." ... "It's not half as bad as it used to be" ... "most of these curses are exaggerated just to scare us" ... "it's scientifically healthy and therefore it can't be that bad..." ... "it's dangerous not to"... and other rubbish.
There is also a severe lack of information among many bochurim, since the subject is so taboo and not spoken about by most Rebbeim, for whatever reasons they have. The fact is, there is a severe lack of awareness, and since the seriousness of the sin is never spoken about and definitely not shoved in people's faces like it should be, there is nothing pushing anyone to stop.
The extent of people's ignorance really hit me after a certain bochur, a good guy, who understandably had a severe lack of motivation in learning and Judaism in general, confided in me and told me that before I made such a ruckus about this whole topic, he had never even known that masturbating was a sin! And he's turning 20! Of course he is an exception, as nearly everyone is told at some point in their life that it's bad and a terrible sin, but that is definitely not enough to hit the conscience of an addict to make them stop.
I therefore came up with a crazy idea. To celebrate my completion of 90 clean days, I would throw a massive party for all first and second year Bochurim, and all my friends from other yeshivas - to celebrate. The point obviously being, to make it a public event and to be a source of encouragement and inspiration to others. I collected money from avreichim and even bochurim (in addition to my own money), a date was set, invitations were sent, and B"H the party was an enormous success. Together with the beers and l'chaims, it became a public event, and most of the 80 or so people took it upon themselves publicly to be shomer for a certain period of time, some more, some less.
For weeks afterwards, even until today, people come and tell me about the effect it had on them, and how long they were clean because of it.
Due to its tremendous success, I planned to make another, even bigger party. After 5 months, a date was once again set, random friends and bochurim representing nearly every foreign yeshivah in Jerusalem were invited (on condition that they would be clean until the party). I started collecting money from Avreichim, but due to the large scale of this party, nowhere near enough money was raised. I nevertheless decided to go ahead with plans and took out a loan, naively hoping people would gladly want to have part of such a tremendous z'chus.
10 large crates of beer, many bottles of vodka, lots of food and drinks, a speaker system plus generator, and loads of GuardYourEyes handbooks were printed and distributed. The GYE booklets were the very same booklets that helped encourage me. Immediately when boys received these booklets, they had the potential for the same source of inspiration.
B"H the party succeeded beyond all my wildest expectations. Around 200 guys turned up (from word of mouth only), there was loads of singing and dancing, there were very inspiring speeches, the atmosphere was of real simcha and indescribable joy. The main part was that, over a l'chaim, nearly every single person there genuinely promised with utmost sincerity to be clean at least a month. Furthermore, bochurim from a certain yeshivah who all took it upon themselves at the party to be holy, spread it into a wider group yeshivah effort, IM"H may they succeed - and they are still clean today! I personally think that the party the angels were having in heaven must have been a thousand times bigger than the one we made down here.
News of this party spread like wildfire, and the feedback was extremely encouraging. I've had many thankful bochurim calling in saying what a chizuk this party had on them. Every day bochurim tell me how they and their friends are still clean as a result of the inspiration they got at the party, and the fact that that it became a public team effort rather then a seemingly hopeless one-man fight. Boys asked me for more GYE handbooks, thanking me that it was a huge source of help; they also described how useful the website was, in particular the daily chizuk e-mails.A prominent mashgiach of a top yeshivah in Israel thanked me personally over the phone and told me that he is now helping several bochurim from his own Yeshiva, who, before attending the party, would never have entertained the thought of approaching their Mashgiach over such a private and embarrassing topic. Some bochurim have thanked me, saying that it's the best z'man they've had in their lives!
I would like to take this chance to thank all those involved with GYE. Without the website and their source of help, I wouldn't be where I am today - clean for so long. And as seen from my friends and those in the party, the website is for all and can help all; the work and effort of GYE is invaluable. May they continue being a source of inspirations to all Jews. The mitzvah they are doing is done by no one else, and they deserve huge credit.The reason why I wrote this is to show everyone that it's possible. Just yesterday, a bochur who I promised a gathering/l'chaim if he reaches 90, approached me telling me he's almost half way there, his longest streak ever, and he is eagerly awaiting. (We're talking about a boy whose entire life was consumed by this disease; he had a massive porn addiction and would masturbate on average at least 5 times a day!).May we be zoche to purity and may Hashem forgive us for all our sins. Amen.