Love snoopy!

Shlomo,

You explain yourself very well, but you explain it in absolute 12 step disease model ways of understanding things. You make it that you are your biology and if you reach out to your higher power then he can save you, and you state is fact.

I'm not here to argue about your experience, but in my personal experience I did much WORSE subscribing to that and much better subscribing to the idea that it's my responsibility. I was in twelve steps with two different sponsors, everyone told me I was an addict (and I may have been and still have some of the stuff that you describe) but I'd just wonder if you might leave room for the possibility- both for those reading you and maybe even for yourself- that maybe with work it CAN go away.

One of the biggest deterrents for me right now not to act out is......because I don't want to. I may still at some point, and it's not like I never struggle, but right now I wouldn't want to hurt my insides because when I act out it makes me so anxious and I like serenity, I don't want to hurt my wife which didn't used to stop me but we have a better relationship so I actually care more now, and so I've seen in MY experience that I play a huge role.

Of course old habits still die hard and there are some challenges that I'm not getting past, but overall things are headed in a good direction. You're more than the sum of your biology, and I think people also need to be told the possibility that you might be triggered if you're in that space, and no one should do it on purpose, but it could be it's up to them.

Workingguy wrote:

You sound exactly the way I used to, our stories are only vise versa, I at the end of the day came to realize that I am in fact an addict and you went the other way around.

What I learned is that an addict lives in a total different reality than normal people, normal people can take a few shots of vodka over kiddush, get a little high, and move on with the rest of the day, an addict on the other hand, once he takes that first shot he's done, he cannot stop, I'll repeat, HE CANNOT STOP, no matter how much he understands the harm and how much he wants to, he just can't.

​My point is that you not being an addict B"H cannot understand this concept, so while to you it's a bad habit and you CAN control the situation, addicts don't know what the word control means once we take that first shot, and very often that first shot - a TRIGGER as we call it - is something we didn't choose, but it's still a first shot nevertheless.

Workingguy wrote on 21 Nov 2016 15:36:

You sound exactly the way I used to, our stories are only vise versa, I at the end of the day came to realize that I am in fact an addict and you went the other way around.

What I learned is that an addict lives in a total different reality than normal people, normal people can take a few shots of vodka over kiddush, get a little high, and move on with the rest of the day, an addict on the other hand, once he takes that first shot he's done, he cannot stop, I'll repeat, HE CANNOT STOP, no matter how much he understands the harm and how much he wants to, he just can't.

​My point is that you not being an addict B"H cannot understand this concept, so while to you it's a bad habit and you CAN control the situation, addicts don't know what the word control means once we take that first shot, and very often that first shot - a TRIGGER as we call it - is something we didn't choose, but it's still a first shot nevertheless.