Reading thro some of the older posts from years before, one can see that this and similar issues have been discussed and debated.

I found this from ur-a-jew or blind beggar regarding the remedy for addiction and a mekor.

I've been meaning to post this for a while just haven't had a chance. This should get the posts rolling. I recently came across this Chofetz Chaim and it blew me away:

והנה כל זה הוא למי שעדין לא הרגיל נפשו בעון זה, ונקל
לו להנצל מעון המר הזה על ידי עצות אלו. אבל אם
הרגל בזה, וקשה לו מאד לפרש מעוין זה, יתנהג במחלתו הנפשית הזו, כמו מי שיש לו חלי הגוף והרופא רוצה לרפאותו,
הוא דורש את מקור המחלה, מאין באה אליו, כדי שידע איזו
תחבשת לזור על המחלה. כן הוא בענין הנפש, צריך להתחקות
על שרשה, מאין באה למדה רעה זו, כדי שידע להזהר לסור
ממוקשיה עוד. והנה לעון הזה נמצאו כמה סבות, וסימנם
״כ״ל גיהנ״ם״. כעס, ליצנות, גאוה, יאוש, הפקר, נרגנות, אומר
מתר. ונבאר דברינו אחת לאחת.

Applying the Chofetz Chaim's words linyonanu.

All the mussar I've given until now is great for someone who isn't addicted to this but for the addict that's a different story. An addict has to approach this like a sickness.

"All illness of this sort—and we have come to believe it an illness" Big Book, Chapter One

Now how does one treat this spiritual illness. He looks to the source of the disease.

"Our liquor was but a symptom. So we had to get down to causes and conditions" Big Book, Chapter Five

The source of this spiritual disease is our anger, our pride, our laytznos, depression, etc.

"Resentment is the number one offender. It destroys more alcoholics than anything else. From it stem all forms of spiritual disease, for we have been not only mentally and physically ill, we have been spiritually sick."

Dov wrote:

Just for today I am living proof of this, and I am grateful to Dov for where I am today. I have no guarantee whether I will be clean and sober tomorrow but the facts are that 1)I AM sober today 2)I have met many guys in SA who are sober against all odds and 3)despite my best intentions, willpower and determination; before nothing worked for me long-term; not davening, learning, mussar, Yomim Noraim, marriage, you name it.

Guys, I resented(and sometimes still do) the fact that Dov was right. But I think that for me that was part of the opening words of the first step "who cares to admit defeat?" Believe me that it hurts me still today that all my Torah and Yiras Shomayim (and I think that I am genuine)did not and cannot help me stay clean and to this day I do not know the answer.

But I prefer to be a loser and sober, than a winner who is acting out, with all the heilige hihurai teshuva and my holy thoughts about how I have been entrusted with a tafkid to beat this Y"H.

If I've understood you correctly Dov, you're saying that all the musssar seforim, while being 100% emes, are written for sane people not for people who have mental illnesses, be they addiction or OCD. It's easy to see how someone with OCD will not be cured with shaarei teshuvah because even though it is 100% emes it doesn't address his specific problem. In the same way addicts need something that addresses their illness directly, ie the 12 steps which is perfectly in keeping with sifrei mussar but is not written explicitly in them. The only difficulty then becomes identifying who is an addict and who just needs chizzuk in their battle with the y''h.

If I've understood the other side of the debate correctly, it seems to be that of course the torah approach is always right and that should be all you need, how can it be harmful. But I don't think Dov is saying that learning torah is harmful, just not helpful for this particular problem. I mean, we'd all agree that learning bovo kama is a good thing to do, but equally I don't think any of us would say that it would teach an addict how to overcome his illness. Torah is always right but it's not always easy to know which part of torah will be most helpful to a specific problem.

Note that there is a distinction between learning torah and following a torah approach. The mishna says a person should be humble like Hillel and not a kapdan like Shammai. Does the mishna mean that Shammai had the wrong approach? Of course not, he was not ruled by his y''h, he thought about it and came to the conclusion that he should be a kapdan (maybe it was to guard kovod hatorah). Both Shammai and Hillel knew kol hatorah kula, and they both acted in the way they decided was most appropriate, and they had different approaches. The mishna is telling us that for us, in our situation, we should adopt Hillel's appraoch, even though Shammai acted perfectly in his situation.

The is a story about the Chazzon Ish that an ill man went to him and said he was ill and the doctors couldn't operate on him. He looked into it and then had a meeting with one of the best doctors in E''Y and explained the procedure that needed to be done, even drawing a diagram. The doctor was astounded and asked where he had studied medicine, the Chazzan Ish told him it was all in meseches chullin! My point with this story is that of course torah is 100% emes, and it contains the knowledge of everything, but not everyone knows it well enough to get the right idea. If you came up to my with a knife and say ''don't worry I learnt this in chullin'' I'll run a 4 minute mile.

If a frum man studies medicine is he saying that the torah doesn't contain all this wisdom? No, he's saying that he doesn't know torah well enough to know what to do if someone's having a heart attack. That doesn't make it against torah though. In the way same way, a psychologist might recommend 12 steps to an addict, not because torah is not enough but because he doesn't know from the torah what to do for him. Does that mean he's against torah? Of course not.

wow, I was just going to write 2 or 3 lines. I think Dov's rubbing off on me.

No, Doc, that email was still way too short. U need more work...

It seems that we are talking two different languages and have extremely different ideas of what living a Torah life is or isn't.

Therefore, I think it's futile to argue my point here on the forum.

For the record, I want to point out that for the past 8 months and several days, I have been clean. Sure, I had a fall after six months and another one about a month later, but both times I got back up immediately and continued being clean.

Before I started being clean 8 months and 13 days ago, I was "falling" several times a day. Whenever I had a free moment, I was busy falling. When I didn't have a free moment, I was busy thinking about when I would have a free moment. I would put off work and people in my life to pursue falling. My wife gave me hell for all of this, and I didn't care. She left me one night with an ultimatum, and even after that, I continued to fall for several YEARS.

I am what anyone would call an addict.

But I am not using the 12-steps. I never attended an SA meeting. The closest I've gotten to an SA meeting is listening into a few GYE phone conferences without saying a single word.

For the most part, I am using Torah ideas that I have always known. You can have all the knowledge in the world, but unless something clicks inside of you that says, "Enough is enough, I'm going to be honest and do what it takes to get out of this," none of that is going to help. Until one reaches that point, efforts to stop are not real efforts, for what we are really saying is, "I want to stop, but I also want to continue." Until you are ready to actually apply that knowledge, the knowledge is useless.

It's like walking. A kid could pull himself up to his feet and watch others walk around. He could have the knowledge that by placing one foot in front of the other, he could walk, but until the day comes when something clicks in his mind, he's not going to walk. Then when he tries to walk, we expect him to fall, but we encourage him to get right back up and learn how to find the proper balance.

This is not edited and I have more to say, but I need to get to work, so I will continue later.

Can I ask you a question skeptical, and please think about it before answering. When you say you haven't used the 12 steps, is it possible that you have in fact done all the 12 steps without realising it, without calling what you did '12 steps'?

What I mean is, in the course of your recovery (congratulations btw, I'm impressed) did you feel like the y''h was more in control of your life than you were, believe Hashem (torah) can help you, work on bitochon, did a cheshbon hanefesh, spoke to people about the issue, forgave people who you were upset with, davened to Hashem, and kept posting chizzuk on GYE?

when you say you used torah ideas, do you perhaps mean the things I've mentioned (and many others as well perhaps)? If so I commend you for finding all 12 steps in the sifrei mussar. A rose by any other name...

skeptical wrote:


sorry it took so long to get back. um, the truth is that i don't know exactly the answer. that means that i can't tell you what was the specific screw that was missing or loose (and still is, cause it's just "a daily reprieve"). but i know what i had to do to live with the fact that there is something very off about my deep intense relationship with Hashem. and that is to give up fighting. i was on GYE for around 9 months, and was getting a bit better and more sober, then last Rosh Hashonoh I was stressed and masturbated in the bathroom during davening, and started a roller coaster the likes of which i hadn't seen in many a moon.

so i realized that the Torah approach i had been doing until now just wansn't working, i need to get help from someone else. until then i had been reading some 12 step like material and GYE stuff, and then worked seriosly by myself to adapt the goyish zachin to more Toradik ideas. for example, they say in the 12 & 12 that humility is the basis for all the steps, so i set out to work on ענוה. and since i need a Higher Power to keep me sober, i worked on my תפילה. and i mean real, methodical, sincere, honest, work. thinking up ideas to try, writing them down in a sort of diary, trying them out, recording the results, etc. this is a big problem, and i was taking in responsibly.

and it seemed to be helping, i was falling less and less, and i was even getting a bit more stable in my ability to keep a schedule. but it wasn't perfect. so last rosh chodesh elul i commited to trying these methods until after chanukah (around 4 months), i thought there was deep mystical significance in choosing this span of time for my last try to get sober (all the mystics here can probably guess why, the rest of you muggles will just have to remain in the dark until me and my ego enlighten you). if i would get sober - good, if not, i'll have to get help from someone else.

but then when i had this crash i felt that something was really wrong. i was not getting better. i have a problem deeper than my sex drive, one that holding back won't solve, because it'll all jsut pop out like a volcano afterward. and i saw that after 9 months without a big binge - as a result of GYE and Torah methods - i was tumbling out of control, masturbating my brains out everywhere, i think in the sukkah too.
this wasn't a figured-out proved pshetl, one that i could put my finger on and say that this proves without the shadow of a doubt that i must go to SA today, no it wasn't.

but i was sick and tired of fighting and losing, i wanted something that would actually work, and i had heard from guys here that the Steps in SA is something that works. i didn't want to admit defeat, i can't tell you how many times that thought had gone through my head all through the years: "you'll beat this yourself one day, don't ask for help cause that means that the person you ask will know your secret forever, and why tell him if you can save the embarrasment by doing it yourself". but now i gave up, found out when the meetings were, and decided to go.

did i get sober by deciding to go? no. i continued acting my brains out until i actually went and started working the program. since then i'm sober, for 10 months and around 3 weeks. and i'm a different person, i hardly reckognize myself.

i used to need to understand everything in order to think about doing it, now i enjoy listnenig to the advice of others, and doing what works for them.

someone explained to me that it's not that it's wrong to have it all figured out (like it's wrong to masturbate, turn on lights on shabbos, etc.), rather that i don't need to have it all worked out. it's just not necessary, and i have more fullfilling and worthwhile things to do with my time.

got a lot more to share, but gotta run, my wife's calling............................................................................

chaim

I really tried to keep this short, but failed.

skeptical wrote:


It sounds to me that you are simply saying that Torah is not what is saving you, but your sincerity in applying Torah ideas.

Sincerity itself is not 'Torah', and it is not in the Torah. I believe it is what the Shaa'rei Kedusha writes is the reason that the Torah does not clearly refer to tikun hamiddos. He says it need not be (and cannot be) shrunk into the Torah because it is the entire underpinning of it! Same with sincerity and self-honesty. Without it, you and I have nothing. But it is in us, not in the religion, nor in the Torah. In fact, goyim who do exactly what you are doing get better as well, sincerely following what they call their bible, as well.

The point is not which religion or spiritual principles the addict follows (you and I choose 'Torah'). Rather, the experience of many addicts has been that the turning point is our surrender/giving up of following our own old, preferred principles. Those principles include the ones that tell our hearts that "I sure want to be frum and good and go to heaven, but things are only really OK if I am having adequate sexual stimulation" - so whatever our religious beliefs are, we will run to get it when we feel like we really, really need it. Unfortunately, we believe those principles with a pure faith that is at least as strong as our faith in Torah min haShomayim, Moshiach coming, etc. The faith that things are horrible if she doesn't like me. Shekker. The faith that if she is not giving me the sex I want, she must not really like me. Shekker. The faith that our pay should really be higher, that our kids really should be healthier or better, that we should have been better-looking...whatever. All shekker...but until we truly surrender those ani ma'amins, we have pain that can only be assuaged by our sweet porn and sex-with-self. There is just no way out of that, as the AAs wrote:

"We thought we could find an easier, softer way. But we could not...Some of us tried to hold onto our old ideas and the result was nil until we let go absolutely...Half measures availed us nothing. We stood at the turning point. We asked His protection and care with complete abandon." (5th chapter of AA, p58, 59)

That is the principle of the 2nd step. We have some insanity and can't lose it. We will need a Power greater than ourselves to help us with our pure, misguided faith in some really stupid ideas. You, skeptical, have found a Power greater than yourself and it restores you to some sanity manifested in you not needing the same feeding habits. Same for goyim the world over.'12 steps', 'AA meetings', etc. are all just tools. Men here and there have been finding these answers since the beginning of time without AA, SA, shrinks, or anything. But look at how many are dying every year of alcoholism and sexaholism and wrecking whole families on the way? What kills me is all the hundreds of frum - very frum - men I meet through GYE and SA who are perverts as I am, but can't stop. Your eitza is that they just will not get better from Torah until they are ready to really be sincere about it. OK. I agree in principle. But it seems that there is a place that - unlike the beis midrash - manufactures sincerity and sobriety: 12 step groups.

The main difference between AA/SA and the men who discover it on their own, is that they are rare individuals! Like Noach in the mabul. Yet I know dozens and dozens of frum men who are living as you describe: clean for years and with marriages on a new basis, growing, open, honest and fair with their wives and kids, for a change. And they see they could do this only becs they were part of a chevra that openly faces and works on this precious thing you found: sincerity in spirituality.

All I want to show is that the Torah has no monopoly in any way, shape, or form on that thing that enables people from all walks of life to do exactly what you have been doing. And incidentally, I do believe that the actual principles most successfully sober people follow are based on Torah - be they christians or whatever, the ideas are found in the Torah and are holy. But the actual gift you found is not Torah, but sincerity. And that is the equal inheritance and property of all mankind.

Finally, I want to say that I have met many men through GYE who had great delays in getting better precisely because their masturbation and porning habits developed in tandem with their frumkeit - or at least with their adult version of connection to Hashem. As I tried to explain in the post called "The Nuclear Reset Button", one feeds the other. I'd say that it is asking a bit much to suggest that these guys 'just get sincere' about their clearly addictively-enmeshed Torah ideals. Sincerity is as likely as the chovush being matir atzmo mibeis ha'asurim...not likely. What ma'aliusa is there in encouraging people to keep trying that? I see none. So I share this 12 step chevra message, instead of 'Torah'. And in the end, after they are sober from their insanity for a while, these frum Jews will certainly use their newly found sincerity for their Torah, if they want to. That's not my eisek, though, but theirs.

I just want to say a few things, not to really get into this whole thing.

1) I don't think Dov would call me an addict, I had a big problem that wasn't being helped by challenging learning, or mussar, or any Jewish literature.

2) The reason I want to stop was and is ONLY because it is assur, and I want to be a ehrlicher Yid who does the Ratzon Haboreih, if this would have been muttar I never would have thought of stopping (maybe if I were about to die from it, but watching porn and masturbating, don't think it would have pushed me to stop)

3) I don't think that any seforim would have helped me even after I truly wanted to change, because my veiw of Torah and mussar was already so warped, and my mind was so twisted and everything was superficial, that would have continued. Only after seeing and reading truth, from whoever it be, was I able to re"install" emunah and bitachon into me, and can utilize it correctly. I have to be in touch with other people, because I don't trust myself not to become entirely self-centered again. the other people are all Frum and it is in a frum setting, and we are all moving forward together.

that was my experience, if you can relate then please learn from it.

Just one point, Derech Eretz Kadmah l'torah, true. What is Derech Eretz though? one example, the goyish world tells us that Derech eretz is womens rights, no mechitzah, minyanim, postions, for there has to be equality. The Torah tells us that is not true, women have their place and men have their place, and it is not a breach of Derech Eretz not to shake a woman's hand and not to daven or eat together. We have to learn what derech eretz is and make sure it is line with Torah, if not it is not derech eretz.
That being said, I think it is important for us to realize when we are being fixed by goyim (ar anyone for that matter) that we make sure that we are indeed getting Derech Eretz, if not then why get "fixed" only to be getting a different problem? So for me, being together with a group of Jewish and frum people is just an added bonus, I don't need to worry as much about getting the wrong Derech Eretz.

Pidaini wrote:


Everything else you wrote makes sense to me. I just want to know exactly who "whoever it be" actually was, in your personal case, please.

"Whoever it be".......I can't really say exactly who it was.

I will try remembering and get back to this when I get back from seder, Iy"H.

Dr. Watson


This was actually going to be the second part of my post, before I had to run out.

I became clean by basically giving into my desire to really stop. We all have that desire, but sometimes the desire to continue with the pleasure we have come to know is at least a tiny bit stronger. After all, it is our default, what we are used to.

A lot of the tools I used were from what I was taught in yeshiva or from my parents growing up, and others just felt right. In most cases, I would find out later that one or another mirrored some kind of idea in therapy or the 12-steps. Or more likely, the 12-steps or therapy mirrored what I had been taught.

For example, when I decided to become clean, I was just winging it. I had the motivation and I committed to stay clean at least until a certain date. By the time I got to that date, I was feeling great about being clean. I decided to focus on the good feelings I felt being clean and to remember how disgusting and guilty I felt when I would fall. This is a whole different approach than what most of us were initially used to. We would get a thought in our mind to go look at or do something "exotic," we would think about how enjoyable it was, fall, feel like dirt, and then (either right away, or after resolving to stop but not being able to) go make ourselves feel better again, conveniently forgetting or putting aside how much like trash it made us feel. Now, this may or may not be a Torah approach (I don't know), but it didn't conflict with my Yiddishkeit at all. A short time later, I heard a segment on the radio about Cognitive Therapy and it sounded awfully close to what I just described - creating new associations for things that we do or don't do. (Incidentally, just after hearing the radio program, there was a whole discussion on here regarding Cognitive Therapy.)

From when I joined GYE, I recognized how powerful it is to have a community of like-minded (for the most part!) people who can really relate to each other. I didn't really utilize it very much for the first 3-4 months or so that I was on here, but when I signed up for chatting (shortly before going clean), I began talking to others and I offered my thoughts, feelings, and advice (if you can call it that.) As I told Dov in my first chat with him, "I've always enjoyed giving others chizzuk. It's easier to encourage others than it is to encourage oneself, so I kind of hope it rubs off on me."

A couple of months into being clean, someone on chat asked me what my method was. I told him,

"Me: Rule #1. Don't think about it

Me: Rule #2. When it comes to mind, tell it you're not interested

Me: Rule #3. Remind yourself that you're happier without it

Me: That's pretty much it

Me: Oh, one more rule

Me: Rule #4. Find other people who are struggling and try to help them with their struggle."

He wrote back, "Hey! You skipped straight to Step 12!"

I responded, "Is that the 12th Step? I find that I cull stuff from lots of places. Some of the stuff I say come from the 12 even though I never really looked at them, some is from cognitive therapy even though I never read anything real about that and some comes from Chassidus."

Obviously, I have developed things and have read a lot more since then. I have taken ideas that speak to me and I use them in my journey to continue being clean. I have no problem taking ideas from other sources as long as it doesn't conflict with Yiddishkeit.

This is a journey. I am constantly learning about how I function and what works for me.

Dov wrote:



It wasn't one specific person. It was a lot of reading here on the forum, from you and the others who were where I was and worse, and they got out, where as I hadn't. I read no further than after Bill's story in the BB, it could be that that had an affect, but I don't think it was as much as from being interactive here on the forum. I don't remember a certain time when it all clicked, it was when I once fell and realized I wasn't getting anywhere that I decided to see what others had to say.

BIG EDIT

There is one time period that I do distinctly remember. I was down, really down, totally bombed out. I called my friend (whom I had opened up to about 4 years before joining GYE) and started complaining about life, I realized then that that was where my life had been for quite a while, complaining about life and complaining, and complaining, (and I was right) and that I could continue that way forever if I didn't change something. I think that was a big turning point in my stopping. if that helps any.

Fair enough. Thanks.

I would stop posting