Mazel Tov Eye!
I just read your post and it is beautiful; Pure Emes. The things you write are yesodos in recovery. I hope you continue to share them in the future with fellow struggling addicts. Your story is really inspiring.
The first point you made is so crucial. I remember myself when I finally realized it and admitted it. It was my passageway for recovery. Two nights ago, a friend of mine who is struggling with this addiction wrote to me:
"I need help understanding and feeling that nothing will happen if the Yetzer Hara is trying. I don't have to relieve the urge... I really need to work on dealing with knowing that I will be tempted, my blood will be boiling, and that nothing will happen if I don't give in to that."
I was so happy when he wrote this, because he is beginning to understand this necessary step. I hope he learns to internalize it just like you did.
May you be zoche to continue growing in inyanei kedusha and avodas Hashem in general, and continue being an inspiration for all of GYE and all of klal yisroel.
This important "truth" that Eye.nonymous and Yakov found so helpful in their recovery, is a Yesod that we have brought in the past in the Daily Dose of Dov, where Dov wrote:
It seems to me that the greatest useful change within myself from recovery so far, is the (imperfect) acceptance that "things will be OK in the end, no matter what."
Sounds overly positive/optimistic? Maybe. But accepting that G-d is in charge is the only satisfactory nechama to my body/heart in response to it's searing pain when lust "strikes" and I cannot give in to it. If I use lust, my life is clearly over, so I do not have the freedom to use it. But it still hurts terribly and at times I feel I must use it! I then tell my body/heart that "don't worry, it's gonna be OK, He'll take care of me and make it OK." Before accepting step 2 ("We came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity"), I was out in the cold with no answer to this pain. So I almost always acted out. I had to. How can a person suffer so?