Hello everyone at GYE.
I have been reading these forums sporadically for the past few months, and they have been a great inspiration. I am an addict. I didn't realize it, or didn't wish to admit it, for the past few years. Saying it, or rather, writing it, is a great weight off my shoulders. I'm still young and single, and I hope I can get rid of this spectre that hovers over my every conscious moment before it takes me over completely, and destroys my life.
I had been trying to overthrow my addiction alone for some years, with a typical lack of success. At times, I would resign to my fate, and at times I would fight in feeble throes of self-loathing. I knew I must distance myself from my lust, and I did, but ultimately a test would come anyway, and I would fail. My life settled into a holy-unholy cycle, a sort of secret mental routine. The simple knowledge that I was doing something wrong was always enough to make me regret what I did, but not enough to cure my blindness in moments of weakness.
Eventually I found GYE a little over half a year ago. I don't remember how. I didn't pay it much attention at the time; I was at the top of a holy cycle. I had not watched anything in months, I had not done anything in weeks. What did I need it for? I could handle myself!
Eventually I collapsed again under the strain, and sunk so low that I no longer cared. Finally, I rose to float again, a corpse in a sea of sin and self-loathing. I cleansed myself of my sin and started again. This time I read the site. I was determined to find the cause of my weakness, to find a method to control myself for those few moments or hours on which weeks or months hinged. And then I understood what caused me to fail:
I was alone. There was never anyone to help, or encourage, or support. All I had was me. Whenever I finally had to confront my lust, and could no longer avoid it, whenever I felt weak and vulnerable, I could not hear the call of G-d urging me to control myself. I could only hear two voices: Mine and another.
"Do it."
"No."
"You like it."
"Maybe now, but not later."
"Later doesn't matter."
"Doesn't it?"
"It doesn't."
And it didn't. Not to me. The second voice always blocked my foresight. It blocked my connection with G-d. It is a powerful voice.
No one was there to help, to yell "Open your eyes! It's shut them!". There was no one I could look to for support. I knew no one who suffered like me!
But there is someone. There are many: all of you who I know at GYE, though you don't yet know me. All of you who have the same or larger tests, that conquer them, and who would look upon me with my shut eyes and yell at me to open them, to realize what I am doing. And, by remembering them, by reading this forum, I gained the strength to move on.
I distanced myself again from the lust. Yesterday it returned. No stimuli. No precursor. Just some biological cycle.
Today, I barely held it back. I barely won. I know that to win again, I must ask for help. I must throw away my foolish pride, and let people help me.
I am, I hope, NotAlone.

To those that have read this far, I thank you greatly.

Dear NotAlone, you sure aren't anymore!

That was a beautiful post, and you have come to the right place. Many people like you, have seen great success by simply being part of this amazing community of warriors, full of Ahavas Yisrael, and always offering chizuk, hope and sharing experience.

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!

Warmest welcome to a Tzadik nistar who hides behind the holy name of NotAlone,

A Jew is never alone and a GYE member is never alone.

Your post was very touching and my heart goes out to you in our  struggle.  Asking for help is very hard. You took the first step by posting here.

Keep sharing! It will do wonders for you and the rest of us strugglers!

With fiery love to a beautiful soul and a fellow warrior, I extend my warmest virtual welcome hug

Noorah the smallest of the House of Amram

thanks for your honesty and sincerity, you are 100 percent right in coming here, I have felt the same exact way.
When I was in yeshiva I would occasionaly lose control etc
and I though that after I got married it would just go away, boy was I wrong!
It just complicated things in a crazy way if you'd like I can explain why in the next post.
There is a chassidic saying when 2 yiden are together on one task it 2 nefshois elokiois(yetzer tov) against one nefesh bahami (yetzer horah)  since evil always looks out for itself and cares about it own ego contrary to good!
Please keep in touch and stay strong

Dear NotAlone,

Welcome!  You're right that being alone in this struggle is a thing of the past!!

Thank you all for your kind words! I hope I can become a true part of this community of tzadikim.

NotAlone,

Warmest Welcome! You definitely are not alone here on this forum. We can all relate to you from our own struggles.

Thanks for sharing and joining.

Nishmas

welcome!
you're so brave for joining up!
you won't regret it for a second!
keep posting!

letakain21 8)

Welcome tzadik!!!

Its great to have another honest sincere person wanted to change and grow, the Y"H knows your on this sit now so youve got to think of his new challenges to you, I wish yhou much luck on this life loing mission!

Keep us posted , NO MATTER WHAt

Your in the Family now

Bestrong88

Welcome. I am very impressed with your self insight. Being alone is a bigger 'killer' on this road. As long as you post here that problem with be under control.

Hey NA, just saw your thread now. Yes my story almost exactly. Except that you are a much better writer than me.
Hang in there man.

YOU ARE SOMEBODY SPECIAL!!!

Hi. I just saw your post. I am also new to this forum. I recently slipped (33 days ago) after a clean streak of about 400 and something days. It was through this forum that I did not slip again. I found it helpful to find people to speak to on the phone. There are many very selfless people to be found here. Hotslocha my friend.

Yosef

Yosef you put me to shame!!!!  :o :o :-X :o :o

that's a year, complete with bein hazmanim, yomim tovim, downtime, funtime, weddings, vorts, sheva berahcot.....Lo yeuman ki yesupar!!!!

One question, what made you slip??? I know it wasn't a tayvah, because after 4 months i had no nissyonos, except for shmirat einayim in difficult circumstances. So what was it????

My Dear Brother,

You wanted to know what made me slip after close to a year and 5 months? More than anything, it was that I was feeling strong and confident in my sobriety (which was really much more fragile than I knew). It happened when I ventured out of my "comfortable"  Daled Amos. I didn't realize how unprepared I was to be away from my wife and regular everyday routine. Man - I got clobbered and the paper tiger was torn to shreds. You said that you don't think it could have been Taiva in my case, but I have to be honest with you - it definately was TAIVA. Ok, it probabaly started with lonliness and being in a different and more overstimulating environment but you wouldn't believe, or maybe you will, how fast the Taiva came back and it was much much worse than I ever remembered it to be. I can see that I have become much sicker than I ever was before. I went to a SA meeting (where I was staying) and an old timer shared that he has been sober for 21 years and yet he knows that his disease has worsened terribly during this time. I wondered how could this happen. How did he know if he's been clean all this time. But since my slip, I think I can understand it now, at least a little bit on my level. Something that that old timer said just resonated for me with real truth. He said that he still fantasizes, at times, about how quickly his sobriety would plummet (and even turn suicidal) if he had "a hotel room and a alot of time to use it". Something in me started to believe him. So, I started asking other guys with long-term sobriety about this idea that the disease definately worsens even after so many years of being clean. They all agreed that it did. I asked someoe, "why?" His answer,  "I don't know but maybe its that the physical aspect of the disease just progresses even though we're not acting out." I suppose like a virus that is lying dorment in the body - although nothing is activating it, it is still growing (and B"H this guy looks well into his 70's) So much for the "aging out" hypothesis. Anyway be Blessed my friend. You and I together with sex addicts everywhere should merit to learn from those who have so much more experience than we do in coping with this tricky illness.

Luv Ya,
Yosef