cheese is yellow after all

wow the urges yesterday and today are difficult to ignore. trying to keep my head on straight. i need to internalize the words of HHM about urges, that they don't really have any power. each urge seems to me like a big powerful monster who will eventually defeat me. please Hashem let it be clear to me that this urge is not me. this urge is an attack from my enemy. and he's a scammer who's telling me that he's a big monster, but he's really nothing at all. he can't make me do anything i don't want to do. i don't want to do these things. these things will hurt me and make me sad and far from Hashem. even though i feel like i want them, this is an illusion. i'm sharing a body with someone else who wants it, and he's so pushy he makes me feel like what he wants is what i want. he's a parasite. get away parasite. i hate you

Hi ST,

I think a better solution would be to understand this part of you, your brain is just trying to make you feel good and he knows from past experience that this stuff makes you feel good. So dont be angry at this part, it wont do you any good, you cant just get rid of him either, first accept it, it is what it is and you should get comfortable with it, you dont want it but you understand that its there anyway. Its like a family member that comes to live with you whom you dont like and cant stand, but  you cant get rid if them, just accept the fact that its there and it wants to make you feel good, dont be angry. 
I will tell you a fact, every thought that comes into your mind unbidden by you, has an expiration of a few seconds, if you dont fight it and just see it for what it is, "wow this is what my mind ust thought, ok, i  understand that it thinks i want this, but i am not going to keep it alive with adding my own fantasias to it" If you can just get used to this, the battle is half won. 
The problem is always the same , we get a thought and it feels good, and then WE continue to push that thought either away which doesn't help or we consciously start to fantasize, if we can recognize that the initial thought is just 1 second long and it will falter alone if i dont continue keeping it alive, then we have won! 
Good Luck

thank you for the advice, i will try to keep it in mind

Looking forward to another Friday of not giving in to the beast inside of me. I'm also b'h staying off of weed.

The basic cheshbon about weed is like this: for some 30 minutes or so I feel much more relaxed, like a weight has been lifted off of my shoulders. This is accompanied by an immediate feeling of disclarity and inability to express myself clearly.

After about half an hour I feel very sluggish and tired, and like I want to smoke more to get back that high. I become irritable, lazy, unmotivated, immotionally unstable, unfocused. A whole bunch of undesirable things. (But at least I had a relaxing half hour, right? )

The next day I have trouble waking up, and often oversleep, which leads to a hectic day, amazing what a difference a few extra minutes of sleep can make. I am tired throughout the day, and don't function well, continueing to feel all of those undesirables I mentioned in the previous paragraph. I get stuck in a mode of wanting to smoke several times a day. I end up feeling depressed. I don't function well. All so I can have a few minutes relief from tension.

It is a terrible way to relieve tension, at least for me, because it doesn't last long, and has such terrible consequences on my life in so many areas. Again and again I make this bad decision to smoke. But it really is wreaking a (not so) subtle havoc on my life.

Now it's Friday, and I think to myself, so just do it today. There's no work today, there's no work tomorrow, jsut smoke a little, it'll be nice. But it's never just Friday. It's Friday, and then it's again that day after a couple of hours. And then it's motza'sh, because hey, it's kind of still Friday, and then it's Sunday, because I'm sluggish anyways, so might as well, etc etc. Until a couple of months have passed, and I'm depressed, and not functioning well. And then I say enough! Never again.... till Friday! lol

I need to break out of this. This morning I was thinking to myself, I feel good! And I thought to myself, I NEVER just stam feel good when I'm smoking regularly. And just stam feeling good is an amazing thing. So what do you think? Should I throw away feeling good so I can half a relaxing half hour this Friday? Should I lead myself into a depression, into emotional instability, into unproductiveness, into sluggishness, into mental disclarity so that I can have a weird sort of out of it feeling that makes  me forget about my tension and insecurities for half an hour? 

Part of what makes it difficult is that I'm surrounded by casual use of it on all sides. Many people around me do it all of the time, like it's nothing, like drinking a coffee, or like smoking a cigarette. (not that smoking cigarettes is nothing, I smoked cigarettes heavily for more than 10 years and it was terrible, but having a cigarette would not ruin my day like smoking can) And maybe for some people it really is nothing. I don't know. But the problem is that when people around me treat it like it's nothing, somehow I start to believe that it's nothing for me either. And all of my cheshbonos go out the window. Ya SimchasTorah, you have a bunch of good points, and it would seem from what you're saying like it's a really bad idea for you to do this thing at all, but hey, they're doing it casually, so forget about all that and just do it, they must be right, it must be fine. What idiocy this is. To throw away all of my hard earned thoughts because someone else happens to see it differently, or act like they see it differently. 

Smoking for me is not a small deal. It's just not true. It's a huge thing, with major life consequences. And if I act otherwise, I'm fooling myself. It doesn't matter if millions of people in the world are doing it. It doesn't matter if they legalized it in 20 states in America. None of that matters. The fact is this thing is terrible for me, I've hurt myself by doing it. And it's just not worth it.

Some of you probably have never smoked before. Normally I'd be quite hesitant to share this kind of stuff with people who I wasn't sure had been involved with smoking. But everyone here can relate to getting stuck in a pattern of doing things that you don't want to do. Of getting stuck with addictive behavior. For me, it has not just been porn and masturbation. It's those things, but it's also weed. It was pills when I was a teenager. It's checking the news all the time. It's going on GYE  more often than is healthy. But the biggest things for me are clearly porn, masturbation and weed. 

It's much easier for me to admit that porn and masturbation are just downright bad. Weed is harder. I need to clarify and  clarify again that point to myself. This thing is bad for me. It hurts me. It makes me less of a good person. It makes me sad. It makes be depressed. It doesn't matter one freakin bit of other people don't feel that way, or act like they don't feel that way, even if they're otherwise very sane people. Like I believe that I am

Shavua tov

I'm holding my 27 days clean. Yesterday I didn't have any urges. I think that was the first day I didn't have urges since I started. Iy'h day 30 will be Purim. I'll only be wearing one mask this Purim.

After my long post about weed on Friday, and after giving it more thought, and speaking about it in length in tfila, and speaking it over with HHM, and with my wife as well, I decided that that's it. I'm done with weed. This thing has been a negative force in my life for too long. I'm stopping. I really started doing it all the time during the Covid lockdowns to cope. What will I do if another horrible thing like that happens? I don't know. I'll have to find some way to deal. But I am so done with weed. I'm done being depressed because I'm smoking weed all the time. I'm done waiting till the evening so I can smoke. I'm done smoking during the day and then not performing well at work. I'm done lying on the couch because I'm too sluggish because I smoked. Enough of this damaging behavior.

This thing is poison for me. It doesn't matter if it's not poison for this guy or the other. For me it's terrible. And it's about time I stop doing something which I've known for a long time is terrible

Thank you to all of you on GYE for being there for me, for giving me chizuk and encouragement, for kind words that made me feel good about myself. I'm holding in a very different place than I was 1 month ago b'h, and it's without a doubt thanks to you and to the GYE platform. This platform is playing a tremendous role in the lives of so many holy Jews. B'h for GYE

simchastorah wrote on 05 Mar 2023 04:53:

I agree with you 100 percent. I’ve now been clean for the longest I’ve been in a long time (possibly 15 years?) and can’t honestly attribute it to anything other than GYE. Whether it’s reading other people’s accounts, posting my own thread, speaking to other people via chat or on the phone etc. I fully believe that’s what got me to where I am today (122 days clean) and IYH will get me much further. 

I am very thankful to Hashem for helping me find GYE! It’s incredible what difference just talking to other fellow Yiden and strugglers can do! 
I am proud of Rabbi Simches Torah and Everyone else here who is finding the courage in this world to do what’s right for him and his Neshama and doing himself and the whole world a service by becoming more and more holy.

Im amazed by all of you!
keep it up!

I had a somewhat triggering conversation with a friend today regarding the issues of P and M. It's hard to know where to draw the line between healthy openness and honesty and innapropriate talk. Many of us know that the minhag in many yeshivos is not to speak about these things, and while it doesn't seem to be working too well, there is a point to it.

Part of the issue of talking about it is that it makes it into a something. I saw today in v'haer eineinu in the name of R' Avigdor Miller z'l that the yetzer for histaklus is like a baloon who's great volume dissappears with a tiny pin prick. It's only powerful over us because the imagination makes it into a whole inyan, but the thing itself is really nothing.

So when you go and talk about it as if it's something geshmak, you're giving power to the yetzer. The whole power of the yetzer here is in creating a big illusion about how geshmak it is. I need to not buy into that program. 

Hi Reb Happiness (You really gotta rename the thread!)! I absolutely agree that the talks we have with others about these issues must be carefully calibrated, and we should keep in mind this place is full of Tazddikim, but not everybody here is holding at the same level, and some people might not be the right person to be shmoozing with just yet. I will add though that speaking about it, with the right people in the right way, actually has the effect that you are looking for. For so many of us it's the not being able to find somebody safe to talk about these things, to be taught in a open and clear way about all these challenges, that taboo-ness is what creates the fantasy, the secrecy promotes the falsehood that there is something so sweet and precious being hidden here. And when spoken about in a healthy way, when we speak about these things to the right people, that pricks the balloon and all the imagined pleasures are revealed to be just that. Imagined. Keep trucking, my dear friend! 

Freilichen Purim everyone!

Day 30 clean. B'h.

I'm reminding myself of the kdusha challenges particular to purim:

1 - Not letting my eyes look all over the place as I go to deliver shalach manos. There are so many bright colors everywhere that it's tempting to just look around all over the place freely, but some of those bright colors are being worn by people who I shouldn't be looking at! Remeber (self), there's nothing so exciting about seeing costumes! Purim is about connecting to Hashem, not about looking at all the costumes, that's for kids. And I sure as heck don't need to find out exactly what this or that woman is wearing, I really couldn't care less
2 - At the seuda I'll be drunk, make sure not to shmooze are speak to loosely at all with any of the women besides my wife. I'm getting drunk to connect to a deep place, not to feel loose and uninhibitted with women!

May everyone have an uplifting purim and be matzliach in tapping deep deep in and feeling the tremendous longing for Hashem which exists hidden deep within each and every one of us

B'h came out of Purim clean. I'm having something of an urge now to look at P. But I'm not going to look because: 1) my accountability partners would see and that would be embarrassing (i guess mora basar vdam alay) 2) The voice inside which is reccomending it is not me, it not only doesn't have my best interests in mind but it even wants to hurt me and this is a good way to hurt me because 3) If I were to do it I would feel terrible and dirty and down 

Listen here YH I know that it's you. I know you want to hurt me. Just because you're making me feel like I want some garbage doesn't mean I need to do it. You have no real power. You're a big balloon. I'm going to pop you balloon boy.



The v'haer eineinu piece today was a long quote from Rav Hutner about how we don't know the struggles that the gdolei yisrael went through to become who they became. One line in particular I found especially powerful. He says that you should know that when the battle is raging inside of you you should know that then you have most in common with the gdolei yisrael. Not when you feel tranquility in your yetzer tov.

I guess a real relationship with Hashem is forged in fire and not forged by rolling around in a proverbial patch of daisies

I'm tempted to download a sex related episode of an interesting podcast i listen to sometimes. this episode is very likely to have some pretty explicity sexual content. that's the real reason i want to listen to it. but my yetzer hara is telling me it's ok to listen to it because i listen to the other episodes too, so really the reason i want to listen to it is just because i like the show. this is not true. i only listen to the interviews where i'm interested in the guests. i'm not interested in most of the episodes. i'm only interested in this one because it's a woman talking about sex. it would be a bad idea to listen to it. i'd probably have a really hard time to stop myself from fantasizing. this would make it hard to not masturbate. it would also reinforce the wrong perspective i've had on sex for many years, that it's essentially about my pleasure and what i want. which would make it harder to have the relationship that i want to have with my wife. which would reinforce feelings of loneliness. which would make it harder to stay away from this garbage. but it's just because i like the podcast right? 

i'm not going to listen to that episode. i should probably cut this podcast out altogether because there's in often real apikarsus from very intelligent seeming people. the yetzer is such a master at making the bitter seem sweet and the sweet seem bitter. and i feel like i'm sacrificing by not listening or not giving in to the yetzer in general. but i'm not sacrificing anything. i'm only sacrificing as long as i buy in to the yetzers lies about what he has to offer. he's so evil. making the most damaging things seem good and positive. he's the real enemy mamash. the sneaky slick villain. the backstabber. and then he goes and tattle tails afterwards to get is in more trouble. he's the enemy from start to finnish. 

now before someone goes and says that he's existing for a reason, to help us achieve greatness etc. that's true. he's existing for us to realize all of the above. that he's the enemy and not our friend and wants the worst for us

Wow great post. Keep holding strong, we're all with you!