Dov. There is not a lot for me to say after your post but I can share my experience.

After trying for two years through GYE to "beat my Y"H", I started going to SA meetings. I went primarily because I realized that on the one hand I did not have any control whatsoever when it came to acting out, on the other hand i was fed up of fighting. So I went to SA assuming that it would solve my problem the easy way. (As far as I was concerned the only hard thing was exposing myself and going to meetings).

I also felt like many of you guys. My life was technically fine, and very manageable; wife, kids, job etc. Since as far as I was concerned, having an unmanageable life was the entrance ticket to SA, I was stuck. On the other hand, I knew that nothing else had helped me yet. So I was pretty stuck and messed up.

But with HaShem's help I continued going to meetings even though I hated going and often felt, what the hell am I doing in meetings with a bunch of addicts? and very very slowly started becoming aware of and sharing (admitting that there are) situations and emotions which I have no control over. And slowly I became more aware of what being powerless is.

For me today, not being able to function as a result of obsessing over resentments, fears, excitement, frustration etc is why my life is unmanageable. And when i am in an unmanageable situation i have a choice; either I run away (masturbate or porn etc) or I admit (to someone else) that I just cannot do this on my own (powerless).

I have thankfully come to believe that my Abba CAN help me stay sober and sane in the most impossible situations and emotions and i ask Him to stay with me. And when Abba takes care of me, life may not become easier or better, but it does becomes manageable again!

Dr.Watson wrote:


Wow, sweet post and right to the point. Can you teach me how to do that, Doc?

I guess the tools here on GYE (WOH, TaPhsiC, 90-day chart, etc) are among the best Klal Yisroel could come up with for working on this problem you describe. So good luck with them.

But Rav Elimelech of Lizhensk zy"a gave a suggestion in his Tzet'l Kotton number 13, for successfully living with a yetzer hora. And he certainly didn't know from addicts and was talking to all yidden and even to himself. He wrote one should have a safe Moreh derech or even a trusted friend with whom he opens up explicitly and completely about all the nutty thoughts he has and about all the despicable behaviors he does, not holding back anything for the sake of shame at all, and to maintain this relationship on a regular and continuous basis fro his entire lifetime.

Hatzlocha with that, or something like it. Everyone I know who has opened up to a real person (and not just stopped with this forum) says it changed his life radically and in particular with respect to this lusting issue. I see this forum as a stepping stone, for most. Not to 12 step recovery necessarily. I have written many times that most people here are not addicts, they just really really love the sweet way it feels to consume naked pictures and to have sex with themselves. As badly as it makes them feel, it's just worth it to them, so they keep doing it.

Something has got to change for them. Opening up and making this all real instead of hidden is often the first step, we have found. The secrecy of the desperate porn consumption and masturbation we do is just so hidden that it is not part of our daily real life. That is why you or me getting caught by a wife and 15 year old son or daughter while at home in 'private' masturbating to a computer image of naked people is so incredibly painful. Imagining it does not a drop of good, though - only when it actually happens to us, do we understand that pain.

Why is this? No, it is not the shame of doing something so bad. It is the pain of being seen as we are in our heads by people (everyone) who we have created a facade for. It's the fake me and the real me getting forced into the same room together. Only a third party can do that. Getting caught does help weaken our ability to live fakely and accept our garbage as tolerable, a bit that a bit - but not entirely.

When you ask how people help themselves stop this aveiro entirely...I want to say that the question is loaded and not reality.Why in the world should a normal person (not an addict) have the arrogance to expect he will never use porn or masturbate again? Where does a person get the idea that Hashem even wants this of him? I know it is in the sforim...but don't you know that you cannot be relied upon to 'never do it again'? Do you take G-d to be a fool? He may know you won't, as the gemorah states...but that is not your business, at all. It says "until He will be mey'id that you will not return to it ever again." All you can ever do is honestly say you wish never to return to it. No promises or expectations are in order...at least for a normal person. In fact, I think that even thinking that way (of never again) is just a trick to bait a person's desire. This is not a contest. You may do it again. G-d certainly is not an idiot, and accepts that you will not go from 0-100mph in a second just because you want to.
Take it realistically, take it slowly, and open up to a safe rav or friend all about it, if you are really serious and want to stay clean more and more and live freer and freer of the compulsion.

Really, I should probably not give advice to non-addicts, but there was my best shot.

Oy, I went on and on again...

Thank you Dov

sincerely,

A NON-Addict

Hi friends. To all those who are struggling with the style of any one poster on the forums, with his style and/or content,(as some apparently are) and are unsure whether a poster is a bit confused about the whole business and in spite of being well meaning, might have veered off somewhere along the way,with various details, there is a much simpler way to sort this out.

Debating does not usually work, when all parties keep on repeating whatever it is that they said to begin with, with little twists and different formats. Debating does not usually resolve confusion between 2 parties. In contrast to a conversation, where each party actually wants to hear the other side of the story, versus a debate, where each party is trying to impress upon the opposition, the legitimacy of their own views.

The easier and perhaps more effective way to sort stuff out(in all areas too) is to approach a third party individual that we know personally to discuss it with. A person that we respect. A individual that we are impressed by all his actions.A greater person that us,one who we know personally. A learned, wise, kind person, that seems to embody all that we would like to embody. We all have the good fortune in our lives to know of at least one such individual bh. Be it in our daily dealings, shul, place of work, family member, friend etc.

This is also written in all the seforim, that to have an individual/rebbe/mentor whoever that may be, is MANDATORY for every single jew, in order for him to have the proper tools in accomplishing the mission that he was sent down here for, and to succeed in all his doings, materialistically,spiritually and every other area as well etc. That will surelt also be beneficial for the topic of kedusha/sanity as well.

No one can be on the right path on his own, without having a greater person than himself (aka as a rebbee) looking over shoulder and having his back. As a person cannot assess himself and/or his views without it being muddled by his own biases and natural leanings.
The importance of this, is stressed over and over and over again in every mussar, chassidic sefer, and is a cornerstone in our lives.

Thank you, sonoftheking.

Your point was a very good and true one.

However, there's no debating going on here. Just communicating and learning.

May we all have kedusha and sanity.

Have a great Shabbos!

Wow, sonoftheking, we actually said exactly the same thing! See what I just posted above? There's no debate here, at all. It is so geshmak when that happens.

Gut voch!

hy guys. haven't been around in a while. just now popped on to check what's new, really liked this thread.

i tried the kedusha way for around 10 years, didn't really work. kept on masturbating my brains out, unable to have any schedule at all becaues when acting out nothing else really mattered and i was accountable to nobody (except that sweet image i saw in the street or on some movie on a plane half a year ago...), and the pain of not being able to have sex with every skinny woman with the proper body form was becoming more and more unbearable.

working the steps in SA has saved my life and sanity, and this "seperation of church (Judaism) and state (Steps)" has been crucial for my sobriety and sanity.

after all, sex and lust was the central thing in my life, that means that lust was my basically my god, because all we really know about Him is that He is the unltimate One and His will in creating the world was to do the ultimate good, and this is pretty much what i feel to the female body - it's the only thing that really exists, and is the source of all goodness.

so basically i had a very real Higher Power who was slowly but surelt killing me.
and since this god of mine was really all about myself, noone else gets too much pleasure from my masturbation (right??), i was really bowing down and crucifying (!!!!) myself to myself. that's what we call self centered - it's all about me.
this is who i am and denying that won't help anyone.

so the whole Torah and Kedusha thing just isn't gonna work, all my crying and begging Hashem to get me sober is really crying and begging the Holy God of the Orgasm to get me sober, it's all lusting after the same old "big fix", just with a different name, perhaps.

so no wonder that many times when i couldn't fall asleep at night from all the incessant masturbation, and i would go to the bais medrash and cry my brains out for an hour to Hashem that He should help me fall asleep right away and give me koach to learn His Torah and become the next Gadol Hador (at least) and find me a zivug hagun immediately who will have a sweet, sexy, smile, and want to have sex all day and will be skinny and have a huge bosom - the next thing i did was go back to bed and masturbate till i was dizzy, and then do it again to straighten out.

it kinda makes sense - cause all that kedusha stuff wasn't about Hashem but about me, myself, I, and sex.

so that's why this 12 step buisness is really saving my life and sanity, it's all about making a connection and giving over my life to a G-d who i know only one thing about Him - he is not me, but a Power Greater than Myself. there lies the serenity, the calmness, the miracle of recovery, cause it's not all about me anymore, G-d has His will and role for me which may very well be something slightly different than what i can cook up in my sex-drunk brain, and that's really awesome.

but the second i go back to the old Torah beats Yetzer Horah way, the game is over, becaues for me that means that I'm beating myself, which doesn't exactly work.

R'H is coming up, always a hard time for my sobriety. Last year i masturbated in the bathroom in the middle of davening, i was tense from something going on with my wife. but it's always been more than that - all the davening and kabalos ol malchus shamayim is very tricky for me, because i think that i'm the melech who everyone should be bowing down too. after all, i'm one of the smartest people i know (for reall!!), and not jsut smart, but also perfect in character and middos, and knows how to control and fix just about anyone and anything.

so i gotta be carerfull here, and if it means missing some of davening to get together with an SA buddy to get out of my head - then so be it, i need to do this in order to daven to Someone besides myself. sorry, but i don't have much of a choice, becaues if i go back to the old way i may very well lose everything i have in my life.

i love lust, the past few days have been a bit tough, and right now every bone in my body tells me that sex-with-a-skinny-girl is just the thing i need now to calm my nerves.
Hashem, please keep me sober today.

it's great posting here again, i don't know how healthy it'll be to come back too much now, though, because since i'm in recovery and sober for a while, i'm already feeling better and more perfect than all you confused fellows. that's another convenient lie, because if you read my posts from a year and a half ago i was one of the guys arguing that we simply must find the 12 steps in the torah since its' the blueprint of the universe, and i didn't buy the half-cooked sources i was hearing. well, i still don't really buy them, and i still think that the 12 step thing is probably somewhere in the torah, but i'm not worrying myself sick that i must find it now and until i do so i must continue masturbaing - i'd rather stay sober today without the proper mareh makom, then to go on a self obsessing search for the deepest 12 step and torah connection ever suggested and then probably go act out afterwards.

chaim

lots of good stuff here to think about
much of what you wrote can be found in dov and chesky's posts all over the site.

really makes me think about all this and how to do it right

Wishing you and us all the best

Good stuff.

Just one thing, it ain't no convenient lie. It don't make the slightest bit of sense. (I hope this comes out the right way in writing) Is this site only for confused people? I wouldn't spend a dime nor a minute on a site that was just full of confused people confusing themselves.

This site where people who USED to be confused can help those who still are confused, BECAUSE they used to be confused and are not anymore. I could've heard everything on this site from the gadol hador, and it wouldn't have made the slightest impression on me! It is only because it is coming from people like me, who have "been there, done that" that I have let a little bit of it to penetrate.

So Dear Chaim, If you are indeed unconfused then you better stay here and help those that still are confused. and if you are still confused then you might as well join those who are looking to be helped.

Stick around, I have found that the more I share what has helped me, the more it helps me. and (Torah, sorry) "Lo saamod al dam rei'echa" if not for you, for us.

cordnoy wrote:

Cordnoy,

I totally object to you putting myself and Dov together.

I want to make it clear that Dov saved my life. Even after going to SA I would not be sober now if not for the time, patience he gave me and most of all his insights and attitude.

Two points:

One, I enjoyed Chaim's post thoroughly. It rings with recovery.

Two, in case you did not notice, you Cordnoy have also changed, since we "met" here the first time.

May HaShem be with all of us, and grant us a sober and sane day.

Chesky: I have the utmost respect for Dov and what he writes
He is like the backbone of this site...setting everyone straight

I hope you both forgive me for the generalities or summaries I am about to write.

If, however, you look at his posts, you will notice that he does not play the religion card; he doesn't come at us from God's point of view. I heard him on the phone; he knows it all....his way (and he obviously can say it 1000 times clearer than me) is for the sick person (such as me) to realize he is sick, commit to stop knowing that he can't, and then take action...and here I will let others explain, for this s a point, and a big one that I do not understand yet. Your posts, however, are filled with God and Abba helping you out of this mess, realizing that there aint a thing in the world you can do without Him.

ChaimCharlie was saying both of these things.

As far as Pidaini wrote regarding confusion, that seems to be rampant around here....it certainly is on this keyboard.

Dov said yesterday: There is a time to think and there is a time to take action.

Humbly,

Avrohom

Thanks for letting me share here with you, Avrohom, Yankel, Chesky, Doc, MBJ, and Chaim! And thanks for sharing your recovery experiences - whether u r addicts or not - with me.

Welcome back, chaimcharlie!

I had just read one of your old posts the other night and I wondered what happened to you. It is said that when one Jew thinks of another, no matter how far apart, a connection is made and brings the other to think of him. Perhaps that is what brought you back!

I hope to get some clarification on your beautiful post, though.

chaimcharlie


chaimcharlie


Personally, I'm having trouble understanding how you came to differentiate that you are not G-d, but that G-d is a higher power. Why is it that you couldn't get that from Torah?
How does the 12-Step method of asking Hashem to take away your lust differ from your crying out to Hashem in the Beis Medrash to help you?

chaimcharlie


Surely, there are thought processes that you go through on a daily basis for which you put up firm boundaries whether or not you may think about. And there are preventative measures that you take when you feel that your resolve is weakening, for example, talking to Hashem your G-d of a higher power, or getting together with someone to talk with on Rosh Hashana.

How does this differ from saying no to your yetzer and being faithful to Hashem despite your burning desires?

Having fun trying to define things as 'Torah' simply because they are wearing a black hat and have Hebrew labels?

Dov


I'm sorry, I have no idea what it is you are asking.