So I was looking at my notes from last year Purim. Some pretty nice stuff. Amalek is that which the Y"H is more powerfull than us and only Hashem can save us, also his decree was never annuled and every year is a new salvation - like how we always need Hashem's help in our struggle. And more along those lines.

Great ideas, but didn't get me one bit sober. In fact, I had the regular post-Purim spree last year too, if I remember correctly (why not?). Well, this year I may also fall after Purim, but that makes sense, cause I just may fall pretty much every day, and all the more so when the girls are dressed so acctractively and are so frivolous and are still not all wanting to have sex with me one after the other.

I think I must learn that even if Purim doesn't contain the final solution to my lust problem that is driving me nuts, and even if it's not the inner source of the Steps to recovery, and perhaps even if the message of Purim is something other than the brilliant insights I have came up with in the not so far past - it's still a happy day and a time to be close to Hashem in a very special way.

Hey, there are other people in the world besides me, and even in me there are things I can learn and grow from the day besides the notion Hashem made Purim just so I can reach the spiritual high necessary to get me to stop masturbating once and for all. So Purim might not just be all about me, oooooof, that's annoying.

Happy Shushan Purim,

Chaim

Yeah. Sweet.

I have never met a guy who got sober from inspriation from Torah or from insights into sobriety. The only adicts I have met who got sober are the ones who acte out enough that they finally got insight into their lusting and acting out. Self-honesty through the humiliation of being brought face-to-face with their own problem. Woo. That helps alot more than all the 'gazing upon the beauty of sobriety'. So mussar sforim won't help, Torah won't help - until the self-honesty is finally there.

And once the self-honesty is fionally there, the addict does not need Torah to stay sober any more! Mi-moh nafshach.

Finally, finally...Torah becomes a choice he or she can make. Out of love, like on that first Purim, rather than like the first time 'under the mountain like a barrel' (when we followed up with the eigel 40 days later!).

And I have never met a person with comfortable sobriety who is not involved in service-work and giving...in other words, sobe people stay sober if they busy themselves with slowly becoming true lovers of Hashem and people. Olam Chessed yiboneh. Loving (which is the translation of Chessed) build worlds.

Hey - got too serious there, sorry.

Yeah Dov, it's action, not understanding. Right now I'm in a pretty confused state, thinking isn't gonna get me nowhere. But made a bunch of phone calls, asked Hashem for help, wrote and read a fear and gratitudes list, and now the rest is up to a Power greater than me. I don't think I can live much longer with the pressures of life and wife, without the soothing effect of "woman" (hey, ther'e half of the human race, must be here for a reason!), but Hashem can still keep me sober for one more day. Take that, my dear addiction, you've beat me to a pulp all right, but I still can have a life and a wife!!

Ooooooooof, it's so confusing to be an addict. Today I went back to obsessing about religion and recovery, it's bothering me again, albeit a little more subtley. Ya know, every Yom Tov is tough, I really like hashkofoh and the like, and am rather knoledgable in those realms of Torah, but I see more and more how I am so sick, I learn about the Chag just so I can "steal" the holiness and inspiration for myself, I don't see Hashem or His Torah or anything of the sort, just my brilliant SELF.

So soon is Pesach and this year I haven't learned a word, I'm too scared, I know that if I get too in to it my sobriety will suffer tremendously and I may act out and die. But I thought the whole recovery thing is all about connection to G-d, so why must every holiday be so dry for me if I don't want to act out. I'm serious when I say that for me, the better and more uplifting the Yom Tov is, the more I masturbate and worship the Goddess of Lust.

So here I am again mired in the stupid philosphy of what is the correct approach for me to take, and of course I am widening the issue to include all of Judaism, and making myself dreadfully confused because I don't know how my Kollel torah study classifies as helping others and maybe it's making me more self-centered and I need to drop learning and go work at something that'l help others, maybe I should stay at home and do the dishes all day, at least that way I'll be getting out of myself, etc.

Hashem, please help me have a simple Pesach, to taste some true freedome which I guess for me means to not be stuck in my silly brain. Please help me give up lust and my resentments.

I give up my lust and resentments by doing things for others, especially together with praying for them...sometimes all I can do is pray for them - but at least I really, really mean it...hey, one day at a time means patience, too.

I wish most of the people here who are white-knuckle kedusha-crazy and scared to death of the yetzer hora - and failing - would read your words and see ourselves in them, CC.

Wow.

With time, we learn to relax and let Him run the show more and more, and it gets better. A lot better.

Hi CC,

I'm just dropping in here to say hello.

--Elyah

Thanks Dov for the encourgment. Especially the paitence and time thing, I am so impatient even in recovery, today on Pesach and tonight I was/am pretty restless and uneasy and agitated, so I'm busy feeling bothered that there is something amiss in my recovery work today, and I better do something about it. But that's the disease again, cause hey, I did a lot of work and prayer and maybe even surrender to prepare for the chag, and I didn't get upset even when there were many many triggers that I don't want to mention on the World Wide Web, and of course there were all those beautifully shaped women who I wanted to have sex with and they didn't offer - and so far I'm still clean today. So that's progress, and that's great.

It kind of makes sense that I'll feel that tell-tale uneasyness when in davening for 3 hours this morning, of will get annoyed ay my wife tonight (like right now, I'm not just saying theoretically). And that I'll take one or two extra looks when waiting on line at the store for a half hour (also tonight, but that's instead of 10 million extra looks and have a dozen masturbations like I would have before SA), and will feel that if only I would have all my sexual desires met then life would be good. And that I won't be able to sit still for more than an hour learning gemara, and that I can't just have a simple Pesach experience but have to make every simple thing dreadfully complicated...

All this makes sense, cause I spent most of the first 23 years of my life lost in the world of lust, worshiping the G-d of the Beuatifull Woman (it's more lustfull than that, but I don't feel now like saying all sorts of bad words, and then feeling all cool that I know how to be honest and get out all the dirty stuff...). I am powerless over lust and over running me and my life in the way that normal people can, in case that is too fancy the idea is that I have a serious problem with no way out.

So it sort of fits together that things might be a bit tough for me during a stressfull period, and that I'll want to relieve that stress in all sorts of funny ways. Do you know any normal person that when his wife annoys him he goes and masturbates to solve the problem?, and then when if doesn't work and just makes him more irritable - he goes and does it again! That's what I did for a decade, so now I don't really have the כלים to cope with life, I've ran away and am in pretty big trouble.

So thank you Hashem for keeping me sober for 5 and a half months even with all my sillyness, and showing me that there really is another option to help me l=ive life besides finding comfort in thinking about certain shapes and colors of doing certain movements. Thank you for the hope that I too can have a real spiritual experience which can actually stay and not blow away in the next cloud of mastubation or whatever. Thank youu for SA and all the friends and patient sponsor (yeah, you!), for those many moments of true, simple freedom after getting out something that was making me insane. Thank you for doing for me what I can not do for myself, for making every day a step foward and not a day closer to when I will be caught with porn of worse - because my sick mind thinks "porn of better", so if left to myself that's exactly where I'll go.

Gut moed

Good morning. So my wife is in a strange mood because of some really sad and bad things that aren't really my fault. But I got a bit annoyed yesterday at her unnaturalness, and then didn't change the sheets as quick as she would have liked - so now of course her whole lifelong issue is all my fault. But you know what?, I don't really care, because explaining my point won't help anyone, and also the truth is that I was being a bit selfcentered, not because I'm an especially bad person and desperatley need a complete spiritual overhaul, but simply because I'm human and make mistakes, yeah, mistakes. So I apologized and understand how she feels, and that's that, now we skipped a whole day or days worth of bickering, and she told me that she loves me and gave me a big hug. It very well may happen that something else will come along in a few hours or minutes and overturn all of these serene feelings of mine, but I'll have to deal with it then, because thinking about it now won't help anything.

Oh, and just to remind myself that it's dreadfully important to stop thinking, and not to start again at all.

My wife wants some attention now it seems, so I'm gonna run for now. but not to forget that I am completely powerless over lust, which means that I cannot stop by myself because my disease tells me that sex is the best thing in the whole world and if only....
Also powerless over resentments and fears, thank you Hashem for every daily reprieve.

Bye Bye for now.

Do you use Elyah? I think it'd be a great idea to, more often, maybe...but there I go meddling again...

It's really amazing how powerful acts of love are. Simple ones like patience, a kind - really kind - word (without any strings attached) are. We do or say nice things with strings attached for so many years, that we become oblivious to it!

Your communication w her was so effective probably just because you let go of the strings for a minute...and your wife probably saw it. They always do. So do our kids. So does everybody...except us. We have sexual strings, tolerance strings, butt-out-of-my-business strings....all kind of strings we attach to good things (favors?) we do for others. Even for our own children. Gevalt. True, simple Chessed is so foreign to us, and we do not even see it. We refuse to believe it, and the frummer we are, the more vehemently we deny it!

Ashrecha...at least for this minute. Life is good.
Gut moed!

Dov wrote:


Well, it's not quite as bad as suggesting that someone use breathmints, Speed Stick (or Right "Guard"). Has the same sort of ring, though.

Good Moed,

Elyah

Maybe....but this issue is a bit more desperate than bad breath.

What do you mean "use Elya", to speak to him sometimes? Well, I spoke to him today, and two days ago, and I think 4 days ago. It could be that the last 6 months Iv'e spoken to him for hundreds of hours, read through more than one book together, and maybe even followed countless suggestions from him. It could even be that he is my sponsor, but that might be breaking anonimity, so I'll stop here.

Should I use him even more, Dov?

Gotta run

Yes. Whatever u did in the past is over. O-v-e-r. It's not cumulative, but one day at a time. Use him today, is what I mean...if u can reach him, that is. These relationships are more two-way than you may realize, besides.

I'm really confused, Mr. Dov. But I love you even more, OK?

Oh, by the way, I'm right now powerless over lust, my life is unmanagable. The lust has me in his grip, I cannot get out by myself. I saw a beautifull woman on the bus and immidiately closed my eyes, but now I know that every time I see her husband I will be really jealous. That happens a lot, I rank all my friends based on how jealous I am of the intimate sex life they just must be having, all night and every night.

I'm sick, and only a power greater than myself can restore my life to sanity. It's as simple as that. I need lust like air to breathe, I am in a dreadfull situation whenever I try controlling my life and everyone else around me too.

And today the resentments returned a bit, I felt back at home again, I was missing that feeling of not being able to continue living like this for one minute, and that only a few hundred orgasms can calm my frazzled nerves. I was sort of missing the excitement of writing out my deep anger against certain people and thne realizing that that which it was killing me is really all my fault because I amn't letting them live their lives as they would like - what a relief. And knowing that I can't jsut let it go, that there just must be a Higher Power out there... It was sort of dull, and I was as restless as ususal, if not more.

Oh, but something pretty good that came from it all, during my 4ish days of reprieve I didn't build up anger and act out and ruin my life and everyone around me's, and I was nice and loving to my wife and actually cared and thought about her, and actually "packed some good things into the stream of life" (see BB on step 11). And that's really cool, and G-d made that possible. And what's even cooler is that it could all happen again, and again, and if it doesn't the only one to blame is myself.

So when during Maariv tonight I'm spacing out about how hard it will be when my wife has a baby and we go to her parents - all complete nonsense, becaues she's not even pregnant and when she is and has a baby who know's what will be - I can be assured that if I do a proper inventory and get the necessary help, when all those dreadfullt things happen and are a terrible reality - they may not be so terrible and dreadfull after all.

Take that, my dear addiction. I love you and the lust you give me, but I love G-d as I understand Him even more. Gook night, man. G-d save me from you.

chaimcharlie wrote:


Wow, a BB quote! Very impressive.

--Elyah