I am sober for 53 days. I am attending a single SA meeting a week and I am calling people and doing some step or reading work every day. My sponsor tells me it's not enough and that I need to start attending three meetings a week and that recovery needs to be my main focus in life. It's overwhelming! I want to stay sober, but do I really need such a rigorous program? What I'm doing now is working, but I don't know how long I'll be able to keep it up for. 

I would love to hear if anybody had success in recovery through other means?

My "mo" was visiting massage providers and before that it was occasional porn and masturbation. Long story.....

Well done on the 53 days!!

I went to SA in the past, once a week and managed to stay sober for just over 100 days but was full of lust thoughts.

Now I do a mindfulness meditation for addiction app every day and have a taphsic neder and have been sober for 90 days. I am able to control my thinking much better and, with the help of Hashem, am lusting way less. My phone has no filter on it at all.

I have transcribed much of my program over the last couple of months, over here guardyoureyes.com/forum/2-What-Works-for-Me/327296-Sholoms-Mindfulness-Recovery-Path

So far I have found it necessary to have a rigorous program and that recovery needs to be the main focus of my life. On the other hand once I have really changed, maybe I wont need to spend quite so much time and effort. I will have to keep up the mindfulness practices but the plan is they will eventually become a habit and 2nd nature.

For now I'm not sure that I need the 12 step groups but I read the big book from time to time. A lot of the yesodos in there and in the white book are invaluable. For example, the idea that the addiction is to lust, even thinking, not just acting out and that in order to stay healthy we have to stop lusting altogether, is absolutely fundamental.

The 12 steps are more known and most people who have recovered have done so through the 12 steps. However many shmutz addiction therapists that I know have switched to using mindfulness from other methods of therapy like CBT, so I think that there is potential for mindfulness to become a viable option to recovery from shmutz addiction.

eli613 wrote on 16 May 2018 05:49:


I would say you're lucky... my sponsor told me that I needed 4 meetings per week in early recovery .

All kidding aside, if your life, as a result of your addiction, has become seriously unmanageable, you've experienced severe pain and you can't stop, and you therefore belong in SA then getting real recovery that will keep you sober LONG TERM will almost invariably only come about if you give it TOP priority. 

If that has not been your experience then you may be able to do with less. Regardless, time will tell the true story... The measure we put in is the measure we get out.

May Gd grant you the strength and the courage to take the necessary steps for your recovery and may He bless you with a life of sobriety, happiness and serenity.