Dov wrote:
I agree with basically all you wrote, except the relevance of the part about the root cause being arrogance. Sure you are right, as many tzaddikim have told us. And to be sure, the 12 steps is all about bittul of anochius, period, and works for goyim exactly the same way it works for Yidden. But I have never met a person who can really work on his humility directly, to stop an addiction. It seems the actual connection between my arrogance and my acting out of my lust or drinking alcohol or heroin use or gambling, is just too hard to believe. Especially in the moment.
- Dov
In my last year of acting out, I was on this forum and reading some 12 material, trying to adapt it to a more "Torah-true approach" that would fit the way I thought I really was, a really really frum guy with a really big Y"H that is called and addiction. At one point I also saw the connection all those 12-steppers were showing between humility and sobriety, so I decided to learn and "work" the Iggeres Haramban, which I knew from all my super duper shimush chachomim was the tried and true way to become a real "Anav".
It lasted 2 days, I rememember clearly the deep shock that it hadn't worked. Hey, these guys are saying that humility is the key to sobriety, and I'm working overtime to become humble, and here I am masturbating my brains out - again!
I would love to say that now with a year and a half of sobriety in SA, and having been through the Steps with a sponsor one and half times, and having been to at least one and a half thousand meetings and program calls, I now know the exact thing that was missing, why my religious studies couldn't do the trick. But I don't. And the truth is that I don't either really care.
My current sponsor who is also religious told me that he doesn't know why prayer and the like couldn't get him sober, but they didn't, and working the steps
that worked for someone else at his pace did work for him, and if I'd like (and I'm desperate enough) I can try that too.
Now after doing that for a while, meaning listening to others and sharing open and honestly, and doing actions a lot more that I am thinking (maasah merubah maichochmasoh), things are starting to actually make sense. Like that all my "working on humility" was really just another way of trying to control my lust and life, and that when I'm in my own head I'm usually lying to myself and all I really want is lust and sex.
But this isn't something I was able to figure out, even though I really rally tried, for a whole winter I spent most of the afternoon working very hard to "figure it all out", and I turned up some nice sounding and maybe even brilliant "svaros", and kept on masturbating till I could barely walk.
And hi Dov!!!!!
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