Hi
Too long a story to explain how I reached here. But b'kitzur, I'm married and in 30s with children kn''h. I managed to stay clean for just over two years. Then for certain reasons had a slip in July 2006 and since then have not be able to shake it off. I've tried a lot of different things and have driven myself mad. I even smashed my iPhone once to punish myself.

Anyway, I have bought a new laptop just over two months ago and - partly driven by my gashmius-loving attachment to my pride-and-joy new computer - had not looked at anything inappropriate on it. That's not to say I have been good because I used my wife's computer instead. However, having set up all manner of passwords that can never be got through short of reformatting my wife's computer, this morning I finally succumbed and misused my new laptop.

I am now devesated. First and foremost obviously because I am trying hard to overcome this problem. Secondly though because I feel I have now tainted my computer and feel like 'it' needs to go to the mikvah as much as me!! Is this totally insane? Has anyone else ever felt like this? I have been crazy all day about it wishing I could turn the clock back. I feel like I now have a 'dirty' and 'impure' computer.

Maybe this is me projecting my depression about my impure neshomo or impure eyes onto a third party. I don't know. But has anyone else felt this? Or am I just crazy? And what can I do about it? There is part of me wants to destroy the computer and another part wants to reformat it and start again but I know this is crazy and can't undo the aveirah I have done.

Please help

Struggling in the UK

Hello and welcome to our community!!

Posting here is the first step in moving your life forward! You get a lot of credit just for that.


About having negative feelings about your computer, I can definitly relate.
I used to feel really uncomfortable bentching in the chair I used to sit in back in my P&M days.
It just felt like a place of tumah.

Is this a healthy and productive attitude? I don't know. I'll leave it to the experts here to answer that.
But it's for sure normal.

Here's a thought that might help:
you're now using the computer to find help for your problems.
It's the ultimate form of a tikkun.
Rather than destroying the ways of your weaknesses, use them to serve your Master!!!

3 YEARS CLKEAN WHAT A GEVALDIGGGGER ACCOMPLISHMENT

YOU FELL??

NU NU ARE YOU STILL HUMAN/

YOU ARE GODD!!

FELL SHMELL

KEEP ON TRUCKIN!!

Shalom Aliechem dearest brother,

I've gone thru variations of your experience.  So........ We are addicts and fundamentally we all have "mishagassin"!! Big deal!! No reason to get down about that!!
Don't smash the computer Instead I suggest put in a no non-sense filter in all the computer's of the house. For help with filters see herehttp://www.guardureyes.com/GUE/Filters/filters.asp

Also u may want to consider joining  the 90 day Wall of Honor and posting your progress everyday. It helped me immeasurably!!

My heart and  prayers to your success

Fiery love

Noorah

Welcome fierce warrior!!
if you make the computer do "teshuvah" by using it for gue and divrei torah, then the computer becomes a dvar kedushah

Dear Struggling,

I am the admin of this forum. Welcome to our community! Once you've arrived, there's no turning back. Everyone here will just grab a hold of you and pull you up, up, up!

See this article where Rabbi Twerski explains how one can get addicted to this from a single use! You are not a bad person who needs to become good, you are an ill person who needs to heal. Welcome to the club!

Scientific studies have shown that it takes 90 days to change a neural thought pattern that was ingrained in the brain through addictive behaviors. Did you join the 90 day chart on-line? Sign up over here...

Make sure to install a strong filter in your laptop. It will be almost impossible to break free of this while having all the garbage within a mouse click away. See this page for one good filter option, along with instructions on how to install it best - and give away the password to our "filter Gabai"... See this page for another 20 (or so) filter ideas and information...

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!

thanks very much for those posts.

I know it's madness but it is really good to read other people's thoughts. The trouble as we all know with szl is that it isn't talked about openly. If it was a Shabbos lunch topic like schools and everything else, then I would know what other people's situations were and wouldn't feel the way I do.

The trouble is I want to be frum but feel a fraud. I wear white shirt and black suit, black hat, have payos, learn every day and look to the outside world like a frum yid. And yet I harbour this secret. I sometimes stand in shul and look around and think 'what would people think of me if they knew what I'd done' and it makes me very depressed.

Of course there remains the possibility that other people have similar problems. I have always beaten myself up and come to believe that no one else was as low as me and that it was probably just me. This forum at least allays that a little bit and shows that there are other people with similar issues. How prevelant it is I guess we'll never know as it isn't openly discusses.

Thanks also for the words of wisdom on my laptop. I am using it now as I type this. I know it is madness but I still feel so upset about using this computer for the first time in that way and I suppose it shows the level of the ruach shtuss that overcame me at that moment as I did something despite my strong desire to look after this computer. As you can tell, I really love it and it was very expensive and I probably obsess over it too much but that's a story for a different forum!!

thanks again. Today is day one for me of the 90 day chart

You remind me a bit of this story.

Read also other stories on our site, here and here.

You will see you are not at all alone, and you will learn how others have beaten this.

G-d luck on the 90 day journey!

I relate well to your feelings of wanting to get a new computer.  But, upon reflection, it seems like an Atzas HaYetzer - you would be spending good money on something for no reason at all.

So, instead of acquiring a new computer, work on acquiring a new you!  Invest in your recovery (time, effort and, if necessary, money), and do whatever it takes to protect your investment.

I know you are right.

What is interesting with my situation - and I don't know about others here - is that my problem has been with pornography more than szl. The former always leads inevitably to the latter - once I started looking at my favourite sites it isn't long of course till it has an effect and I need to do something about it. But it is the porn which is the ikar and which leads to szl.

So without access to porn I am very very unlikely to do anything bad like szl. Other people I suspsect have a reverse problem - that they are addicted to szl and only look at porn as a result. I love porn and only do szl as a result. Am I alone with this? I feel my biggest battle is with internet pornography.

Following on from my previous post, am I alone as a black-hatted frum yid? Or is everyone here like me? I feel such a fraud as I walk around town with my hat, payos and tzitzis hanging out.

thanks to everyone for their help. It is really really appreciated

You're not at all alone.  This addiction affects Orthodox Jews of every stripe.

The common denominator is that we are addicted to lust.  To use a food analogy, our addiction encourages us to make ourselves as hungry as possible.  But unlike making ourselves hungry for food, making ourselves lustful is highly pleasurable.  Of course, once we've made ourselves "hungry" in this area, it is very difficult not to act out.

Just remember that we are allergic to pornography and to other things that make us lustful.  Consequently, just as an alcoholic needs to avoid that first sip, a lust addict needs to avoid that first slip - otherwise, it's usually a very slippery slope.

Hey SIUK. Whats up? welcome to our club. Yes there are others here like you. I speak for myself. I as well go with a hat jacket tziztis out payos the works. But it makes no difference. Were here to work together on this addiction. We accept people of all sizes shapes and forms. To be honest i never felt like a hyprocrite. Why? I dont know. But it did always bother me to no end that here im supposed to be living up to a certain standard and im not. But then i found this website. Check out step one in the handbooks. We have a sickness. So were not any different than anyone else who has a sickness and is looking for a way to heal it. These types of thughts will help you remove your thoughts of hypocrisy. Hatzlach.

I suppose the hypocrisy is in the fact I won't shake hands with women and genuinely struggle to make sure I'm holding something when it comes up at work. And yet I would secretly sit in front of a screen and look at total pritzus and 'act out' as you put it.

Struggling in the UK wrote on 26 Nov 2009 16:52:


It's not hypocrisy - they're two separate issues.  However, keep in mind that, although the Chazon Ish is said to have taken a very strong stand against shaking hands, many Poskim permit it under certain circumstances, such as where the woman sticks her hand out first.  No Poskim, however, permit pornography or acting out.

To our dear brother in the UK:
We here in the “colonies” know exactly what’s going trough your mind and heart. First let me tell you “welcome home my brother” the most importune thing is to avoid the depression. The Y/H has some enjoyment when he gets you to slip, but when you allow depression to set in then it’s a Yom Tov for him.  Because now he knowns he really got you and for a long time.  The feelings that the computer is now tainted or as b’ahava said “how can I bench in the same chair” is right out of his playbook, it’s part of his plan. Instead use your fall to bounce back try to examine what caused the fall and make changes. The world says “the bigger you are the harder you fall” I would like to suggest that “the harder you fall the higher and faster you could bounce back.

Good luck with your journey and always remember the Ribono Shel Olam is on your team!!!!!!!!!!