I am brand new and getting started. Having been 'sick' for many years, the road to recovery appears to be out of reach. However, the thought of being 'clean' brings a huge smile to my face.

I have printed out some of the material from the site and get the daily email. I think my next/first step is to get some form of Internet Filter for the home.

What is the best advice for a filter considering my wife uses the computer sometimes and I need the internet at home for work?

Thanks

shalom helpless and welcome to our family of Hashem's warriors
We all thought we were helpless in the begining,believe me.
Years of fighting without fruit.
People who suffered for over 30 years are now months and months clean!
There is something about having this family of supporters that makes the impossible possible.
You shall be clean sooner than you know it,with Hashem's help of course.
We at the forum have found K9 to be the most effective filter www1.k9webprotection.com/
It's safe and strong and free and it has many different levels so you could set it according to your needs.And you can email the password to the moderator of the site so you cant break it if youre buggin out.Or give it to your wife if you feel comfortable.
Looking foward to accompaniying you on your road to cleanliness
shavua tov-uri

Dear Helpless - NOT,

Welcome to our community! Once you've arrived, there's no turning back. Everyone here will just grab a hold of you and pull you up, up, up!

Your name is close, but off. You may be "powerless" but not "helpless", as Uri so beautifully said. In the 12-Steps we learn how our admission of powerless is our first step. In that we find strength and learn how to give over the fight to Hashem.

And like Uri wrote, K9 is pretty good. See this page for details on how to set it up in a safe and effective way. Read also the comments at the bottom of the page... Also, you can see our filter section and choose from over 20 options there!

Scientific studies have shown that it takes 90 days to change a neural thought pattern that was ingrained in the brain through addictive behaviors. Did you join the 90 day chart on-line? Sign up over here...

We get cries for help every day, by e-mail and on the forum. Tzuras Rabim Chatzi Nechama    And that is why we created the GYE handbooks (links below). If you read them well, from beginning to end, slowly, and try to implement what you read, you will find the answers within them to enable you to completely turn your life around. You're worth it.

Also, join the daily Chizuk e-mail lists to get fresh chizuk every day, and post away on this forum. You will get tons of daily Chizuk and support. This disease can't be beat alone. It works best when you get out of isolation!

GuardYourEyes also offers various free anonymous phone conferences, where you can join a group of other frum Yidden, along with an experienced sponsor. See this page for four different options. Our conferences are taking place daily, throughout the week... This would be a tremendous step in the right direction for you and help you learn freedom from this addiction. Not only will you learn the secret of the 12-Steps - which is known to be the world's most powerful program for beating addiction having helped millions world wide, but joining the group will be another way of GETTING OUT OF ISOLATION and connecting with others who are going through what you are.

Let me tell you a little about the two GuardYourEyes handbooks. They lay down the cornerstone and foundation of our work, and they make our network much more effective and helpful for people.

You see, until now, people would often get "lost" when coming to our website, not knowing what tips and techniques to try. For example, a beginner wouldn't jump straight into therapy or 12-Step groups, while on the other hand, someone whose addiction was more advanced wouldn't be helped by the standard tips of "making fences" putting in "filters" etc... So it was essential to develop a handbook which details all the techniques and tools to dealing with this addiction in progressive order. Now with these handbooks, anyone can read through and see what steps they've tried already, and if those steps haven't worked, they can continue on through the handbook where the steps become progressively more powerful and "addiction-oriented".

And the second handbook, called the "Attitude" handbook, can also help anyone, no matter what level of addiction they may have. Often people write in to us saying that had they only known the proper outlook & attitude that we try and share on the GuardYourEyes network when they were younger, they would have never fallen into an addiction in the first place! So we hope that through this handbook, many addictions will be prevented.

The handbooks are PDF files, set up as eBooks, and they have bookmarks and hyper-links in the Index, to make them easy to navigate.

Note: You might want to print them out to read away from the computer. Keep in mind though, that if you do this, you won't be able to click on the many web links in the articles. But you can always come back to them later. The truth is, it's anyway good to go through the whole handbook once without clicking on links, just to get an overview of all the tools available. Once you did that, you can start again from tool #1 and read each tool through more carefully, click the links and study each technique and assess whether you have tried it fully yet or not...

Right click on the links below and select "Save Link/Target As" to download the handbooks to your computer.

1) The GuardYourEyes Handbook
This Handbook details 18 suggested tools and techniques, in progressive order, beginning with the most basic and fundamental approaches to dealing with this addiction, and continuing down through increasingly earnest and powerful methods. For the first time, we can gauge our level of addiction and find the appropriate tools for our particular situation. And no matter what level our addiction may have advanced to, we will be able to find the right tools to break free in this handbook!

2) The GuardYourEyes Attitude
The Attitude Handbook details 30 basic principles to help us maintain the proper attitude and perspective on this struggle. Here are some examples: Understanding what we are up against, what it is that Hashem wants from us, how we can use this struggle for tremendous growth, how we can deal with bad thoughts, discovering how to redirect the power of our souls, understanding that every little bit counts, learning how to bounce back up after a fall, and so on and so forth...

May Hashem be with you!

welcome and shavua tov.
look forward to helping u through this journey.
u cant be helpless cause u turned here and there is a lot of help here.
looking forward to ur contribution as well as part of the gye family.

struggle

Warmest virtual hug of welcome
Shalom alichem dearest chaver,

For me the filter was the single most important factor in my reaching 90 days. The second. Most important factor was and is the posting and the support of the forum.

May the Almighty carry you in His right hand and protect us all from all Harm!!

With tremendous love and respect

Noorah from the house of Amram

Thank you all for the posts.

This is what I have done so far.

1) Sign up for the daily chizuk email.

2) Printed out the handbook and started reading it.

3) Installed the K9 web protection. I am the one with the password since I have no one else to give it to. I am hesitant to use someone through GYE since if we need it for some reason what do I say to my wife?

4) Emailed some info to the administrator to get a companion of some sort to talk to.

I have now started reading other posts and will try to figure out a strategy that works. It is far too easy to fall off the wagon and I am not sure how long I will last but I need to try and get my life back.

Hello helpless (gotta change that name )-

You have taken a great first step by posting here.

Commit yourself to post and tell more of your story. Stay with us and discuss whatever difficulties you are having. There are many here who can give plenty of advice and chizuk.

helpless wrote on 06 Sep 2009 04:38:


I started here just a few months ago after 20 years of addiction. I too thought this was jut another strategy in the long list of strategies that I have tried. Obviously, they all failed. But you will see.  GYE is not only about strategy. We can all get real recovery here. YOU CAN GET BETTER! I have confidence in you!

With love,
Your new friend,
hoping

I have some follow up questions as I make an attempt to get going on this journey. I am extremely skeptical I will that last more than a few days but I need to try something.

Am I fooling myself by having the password to K9?
Considering what I have regularly done in the past, watching a 'regular' movie with my wife seems healthy. Am I fooling myself?

I know I am addicted. I want to stop going to 'those sites' and doing what I shouldn't be doing. Does that mean I need to go to an extreme?

I always believed that reasonable goals are better than unreasonable goals. Obviously though, this is a different type of goal than what I am used to.

Helpless

Welcome to the family, glad to have you aboard. As you can see we all take offence to your name, I suggest you change it or we can always set up a poll to give you a name

I vote for "Helpmore"

me3

While I believe that 'helpless' is an appropriate name for me at this point, I have changed it as some of you seemed to be offended by it.

My new name is 'blessed'. I chose this name because I have been truly blessed in almost every other area of my life. Wife, kids, parnasah. I dont say this to brag, but I suspect many people are jealous of how much I have accomplished in my 'outside life'. To say I have had mazel would be an understatement.

As many of you know though, we can never be happy and normal with this sickness. I have never thought of this is as a real addiction before finding GYE. I view this is as my chance to be happy. I need your help.

Now we're talking!

Dearest chaver,

The minhag here is that we don't tell other people what to do - rather we share what worked for us ;D
( that is my "minhag/custom", howeverthere is a "rebbe" by the name of BARDICHIVE all caps, who has no trouble who has no such minhag and he sometimes says it the way it is
;D BEWARE ;D!!!!!!!)


I wasn't succesfull in sobriety until I gave the password to my wife and told her that the I just found out that the  halacha is,  it is "yichud" for a man to be.    with an unfiltered internet conection. I also shared with her the story with Rav Amram Chasida found in kiddushin 82a and its no weakness to say that I don't trust myself. I think she.    respect me more for this. I showed her how to set the filter to cover any "loopholes" since I'm the more tech savvy in the house(I wonder why ) and instructed he that if for any reason I ever ask her for the password - and there can be legitimate reasons- she must change within the hour!

Since then thru the kindness of the Almighty it has been 5 months that I'm clean! one day @ a time

With tremendous respect for you in your courage to join the forum
I pray for your continued success
Noorah

Time will tell. I pray you are not, but for most addicts this is not wise. As we fall, we learn, and we keep making our fences better and stronger.




Check out this entertaining article about today's Movies by Tzvi Fishman.




It is hard for us to tell you to go to an extreme as long as you don't believe you have to. Again, time will tell. Most addicts need to go to an extreme to stay clean, because they are too easily triggered by "normal" things. In AA they say "it took each and every drink I took to get to where I am today (sober)". This turns out to be a big bracha though, in the end, because we are forced to live a much holier life than we would have otherwise, if not for the addiction.

NOOOORAH YOU ARE LUCKY I LOVE YOU

I NEVER TELL ANY ONE WHAT TO DO

I JUST HINT IN A LOUD VOICE

Aha  ;D