DOES ANYONE ELSE HERE HAVE A "GYE ADDICTION"???
Yes, I know it's far better for us than the other addictions dealt with here, and may we all be blessed that GYE should be our worst addiction, but...
What about spending HOURS literally H O U R S a day on this site, and neglecting work, home duties, Torah learning, and other important things (even missing mincha minyan)
I was Just wondering if anybody has something to say besides "better that than other things... or too much of anything is'nt good... whatever.

Just another one of my problems.

All I can say is that I have some of the same symptoms. I've been late to minchah, late to learning, sometimes neglecting my family ....

I've been much better lately, after about a year of being here A LOT. Something more to say........hmm........well, I found that what we are realing aiming for is real life, and sometimes this doesn't cut it. Lately I've been cutting off very interesting chats with people and friends because the time came ot move on.

It has boiled down to the same good old "One day at a time", one day GYE is real life, and the next it can be part of escaping. It's one foot in front of the other, and we learn the ropes as we go along.

So, I welcome you to the life of GYE!!

When we had a certain way of spending a whole lot of time (and not caring about work, family, minyan, etc.) and then we take away that activity, we are suddenly left with a whole lot of time to fill. A lot of people find themselves substituting GYE for the activity that was taken away.

Hopefully over time, we begin to learn how to live properly and will implement changes in how we treat our responsibilities and the people around us.

Perhaps we can say as the Rambam suggests, that when one tries to break a bad habit, he needs to go in the opposite extreme for a while, until he feels healthy enough to assume the middle path. Likewise, when we come to GYE with our ugly habits, we may need a high dosage of GYE for a while to steer us out of our muddy ways. But after a while (and every individual needs to evaluate at what point they are ready for this), we need to start living 'regular life', with some GYE as needed for spiritual supplement.

Hatzlacha

MT

Not me. I am addicted to political forums.

Yes!! I see myself also sitting long time on GYE,
And then comes the nice clever Yetzer Horah, and starts selling you that it's on the time of ......
Just kick him out the door!!!
Where was he when he forced us, to watch all the ugly stuff on the web???
was he sleeping??? NO!!! He was SUPER AWAKE

To Doingtshuva:

...see next post

doingtshuva wrote:


SHIVISI REPLIED:
But it really IS at the expense of....
Just because the yH ALSO wants me to think that way for his OWN reasons, that doesnt mean I shouldn't worry about it if it's a problem.

Imagine...

A person has a pounding headache and his stomach aches. He can't concentrate on anything other than the pain he is suffering.

So finally, he goes to the doctor. The doctor tells him that he should take a certain medication and rest for a few days.

He begins to take the medication and gets settled in bed to get his much needed rest. But after a few minutes of just laying there, his thoughts begin to race. "I have so much that needs to get done! If I'm just laying here in bed, none of that is happening! Maybe I should really be out there tackling what I should be doing!"

I think this example is self explanatory. Without getting the proper rest, the guy will not be able to recuperate, the illness won't go away, and the stuff will still never get done.

skeptical thats a gr8 piece very well said .

so lets all rest up here on the site and hopefully feel much better be"h

To Shvisi, and to all of us
I'm starting to understand, that you have a strong point about the addiction to GYE, as I feel it on myself spending lots of time here, But what can I do, it helps me and it's worth, but I still spend lot less time on the web, as before I new GYE!
B"H and Thanks GOD
So I decided for myself, to set limits for how long I'm on the site, and I try to stick to them. I have to remind myself that I was, and am an addict for life!!!
I started breaking free from other small things, just to give myself a feeling that I can control myself.

skeptical wrote:


Thank you Skept. for your response. I think my troubles might really lie more in the fact that a great part of the addiction which I am trying to recover from concerns spending inordinate amount of time in chats. The reason I came here to GYE to seek resolve from this was because the subject of these chats was generally of sexual nature, and is part off a larger picture of a general SA struggle.
So yes I agree that it would not be correct to complain about "wasting time" getting rest when that is what the person needs to get cured, especially if LACK OF ENOUGH REST was part of the cause of his sickness, and thus if someone here were to complain and say "I had a masturbation addiction and now I'm "wasting my time on GYE" learning how to recover from it, that would be comparable to your example and would be ridiculous as you pointed out, but since the addiction itself in my case was spending all those hours chatting, the only answer to my complaint of still spending all those hours online on gye is just "better here than there, but it does not solve the problem which I had of spending my time online and neglecting other things.

Whatever you decide the priority issue is for now, you will do better if you devote yourself to it alone rather than run after perfection in everything that's 'off' about you simultaneously.

Is it the time-wasting itself that is your first priority in living better?
Or is it your need for sexual relief that leads you to waste a lot of time that deserves the top-plate status?
Or is it something else?

If it is something global like "Teshuvah" or "To be a better man"...forget it. As RMCha"L writes: "hachassidus ha'amiti - rachok hi mitztyur sichleinu". We would not recognize true success if we tripped over it! We are the last persons qualified to figure out the path we aught to take and manage that path! We are the ones who got ourselves in this mess to begin with! So if we make a broad thing like the RMCha"L's 'chassidus' our goal, we will get nowhere. Nowhere.

So he breaks his book (Mesilas Yeshorim) down into chapters on specific things to completely and solely devote oneself to for a time. Chasing the BIG things is like chasing rainbows.

So whatever it is, shivisi, pick something.

Then take actions to behave and be more and more different in that respect - not for the sake of 'self-betterment', for that's connecting to the BIG thing again, and we end up confusing ourselves that way, as we always have. But just for the sake of being different than that, period. Faith that doing differently is the key will keep things simple, relaxed, and complication-free.

So what are you going to devote yourself to today?

You're talking to a guy who spent hours upon hours a day chatting with women about sex in very creative ways, for 15+ years.

The method (porn, masturbation, chatting with women, meeting women, looking out the window at all the girls walking by, fantasizing in one's own mind, etc.) doesn't really make a difference. Every addict has the same problem -- Escaping real life's obligations (hey, life can be tough!), and desperately trying to live a fake fantasy life instead.

So why is GYE different? Both ways, hours are being spent in front of the computer while real life's obligations are being neglected, right?

Right, and for the reason listed previously on this thread.
When someone who was previously involved in an activity for many hours a day suddenly takes away that activity, it may be very difficult to fill that vacuum, so when he first starts off here, GYE does the trick.

So again, what is the difference? Why is spending time on GYE better?

1) It is a frum site, with frum people in the same situation as you.

2) The content is educational, teaching us how to view and live life properly. It gives us hope and encouragement that the same way others who were in the same tough spot we were in turned their lives around, so can we.

3) It is a community where we can feel safe sharing with others. We can help others and be helped because we can all relate to each other.

So yes, when we first start out here, we may spend a crazy amount of time here.
And yes, at first, we may just be swapping one addiction for another.

But during all the time being spent on here, we are growing. We are absorbing a new perspective on life, we are learning how to learn from the past, we are learning how to live going forward. And all this is very important.

After some time when we are a bit more distanced from our old ways and are ready to live life properly, we could begin to decide how to go about that.

You know, sex-chatters (especially the married and frum kind) become experts at creating fake personae for themselves, learn the subtle art of connecting while not really connecting, and other ooky things like that. So, even if you are right, I respectfully suggest that unless and until he behaves differently for a while, he will probably keep seeing himself in his own heart as the same compulsively chatting szhlob he has always been. Compulsive chatting - even for recovery - will probably keep dragging him down into ego again...whether it is religious ego, or self-bashing ego, or fantasy erotic ego. The question will be can he really stay sober while chatting or compulsively using GYE...only time will tell. If he should compulsively use GYE to ward off the pain of erotica-withdrawal, he will probably slip soon. It's really hard to be disgusted with ourselves and recover, simultaneously. The drug will be needed again, soon.

[Before the censor :evil: removes this, I will tell you that there have been 3-4 guys so far who I advised strongly to stay away from GYE - and they have nearly all done much better when they did. GYE was just part of their sickness. :whistle: They found other help (as suggested) and have come back here occasionally, to report their success. I have no regrets, and neither do they.]

In my case, I had to stay away from frequent phone calling even for recovery for about 2 years, till it was safe. For I had a 10+ year phone-sex dependence. Instead, what I needed was lots and lots of mainly in-person sharing, davka because phone-talk was triggering whenever it felt compulsive to me, even if I could rationalize that I was doing it for recovery (and was sober). Sure I talked with guys on the phone, but I was just not able to use it as frequently as I do now.

After a while, I was able to start using phones a lot more for recovery. And let me tell you, the pendulum has swung back in the opposite direction and I am b"H talking on the phone (and texting) at least 3 hours a day with new guys and old guys in recovery, now.

Similarly, in the case of a friend with over 20-something years sobriety, he sees that after a decade or so in recovery he has returned to being the 'same' guy he was in acting out! He used to make am avocation of talking lots of men (and sometimes women) into bed with him...and now he sees himself as the same: talking lots of men into something (recovery). He finds that funny, and humbling.

So I'd suggest a different possibility for our friend. Davka because he has a history of 15 years sex-chatting his brains out and nights away (and 20 years with other compulsions before that), he may need some abstinence from chatting till he is a bit different. Then, he might return to chatting later on in recovery and may very well find himself a few years from now, sober, recovering - and chatting a lot with recovery prospects as you and I do!

Stranger things have happened...