forum addiction, now on must use more self control, b briefer:

story, hashgacha pratis: I did cbt, other therapy, gye w/ 500 posts, mekubalim mind readers, intense torah and chizzuk approach, and now God has given me the 12 steps, that are mamesh changing my life on a higher scale than all i mentioned. true, those things laid foundations, but thank u God for finally showing me these steps, just two weeks ago.

so my sponsor said i need to get big book. couldnt buy it anywhere, it was a hassle. two weeks, i still didnt have one.

two nights ago, i take out an old box of papers and lo and behold a big book, white book, and another SA book (recovery continues).

where it came from? shamayim?
then i remembered, 2 years ago, my close friend from GYE, URI, said "avi, youre messed up-here take these books and do 12 steps, please"

i said thanks, and had no idea what 12 steps were, and threw the books that night into this box. and now hashem returns them to me!
then, i clean the next day and i find a book that a rebbentzin once forced me to borrow and she lectured me that i need to listen to her way of life to succeed. tucked in her book was notes of what she told me. one thing written on the paper was the 12 steps!

God, so you DO believe in the twelve steps! thank you for arranging all this for me, what amazing hashgacha that YOU GOD arranged so that I can do the 12 steps to serve YOU. thank you.

this story is going straight into your Artscroll bio! (unedited)

two thoughts on forum addiction:
just because you are working in recovery and seeing success doesn't mean that you should necessarily change every last thing in your life to be 100% perfect. you gotta leave some stuff for next month too.

also, if you are spending time on the forum and now you will stop, how will you replace the 'constructive activity' and the camaraderie?

tzaddik90/Special Weapons And Tactics wrote on 13 Apr 2011 15:51:


I think Rav Twersky is coming out with a new book soon about this topic.

much to say, still no time

big book is changing my life

it also adds self knowledge, which itself is dangerous

these steps are so good for me that they give me a will to teach them to others, and then they dont nec. want to, and because of this, i get rid-so with the steps, i am working them against myself

i can do the steps bec. god brought them to me
if someone else should or shouldnt dothem is gods will, not mine

if i still have any will then im destroyed, wont ever heal

why am i still acting like god?

just let go-he gave u some nice tools to serve him with, he can and will give tools to everyone who needs, to each their own


i cant have any more self

it will kill me and my marriage

no more

erev pesach, gotta go

ben durdayah wrote on 17 Mar 2011 20:05:


durdaya, there's a mitzvah then to see me over the regel, no?
just come over, we can have a little araq together

tzaddik90/Special Weapons And Tactics wrote on 20 Apr 2011 07:02:


Let's all stop in on Reb Guard!

i am scared to death

i just spoke to a relative who is of the most fascinating people on the planet

he has so much knowledge about supernatural or even natural things and programs; he knows the 12 steps amongst over fifty other type programs and techniques, sich as various meditations, the ability to program your own brain with chosen thoughts, the skill of creating energy w/out ruach tumah but naturally to heal a person across the world, he knows how to go back in time in his mind or across the world and see things or speak to the dead naturally, without kishuf.....

this guy always shows how much more there is to the world every time we see each other

he is also friends with all types of wizards and eyin harah ladies and people who have found the fountain of youth and reversed their age, palm readers, people who can utilize the power of attraction, spoon benders....iv'e met them on shabbos at his house
he can show exactly how everything is rooted in the Torah, where it is found,

i can spot charlatans, i know when s/one pulls my leg, but this guy is real and all these amazing techniques that are designed into the world by Hashem, i not only believe but see how they are all real, you could not deny it if you saw
_________________________

why am i scared?

i mentioned i began to work the 12 steps. He began to say how this ploni has s/thing called blah blah that way surpasses the effectiveness of the 12 steps, and this method can make you go back in your mind to your real self before you were an addict, and this method can let you go to har sinai and talk to tanaim (im not makin this up, and neither is he).

AND I SAID TO MYSELF AS HE WAS TALKING

that this guy, with more knowledge than 10,ooo,000 people in these things, lives a life that is unmanagable.

his shabbos meals go too long, the family is bored stiff when he spontaneously decides to deliver a half hour kabbalistic sermon to his young children,

he is in incredible debt, and has a real anger problem
___________________

so although i have in my life experienced the supernatural and am in touch with rabbeim with ruach hakodesh, and r abuchatzeera once read my partzuf for me, and i had a dream from a dead friend who told me directions what to do for tshuva, and other zany things,

NONETHELESS

there is one little teeny weeny thing missing in almost all of these people's lives

it's called "results"

skill, theyv'e got it

but are they becoming "mushlam"? complete? better to their wives and family?

do they have the ability to meticulously follow halacha? the yiras cheit to stay miles away from temptation?

i  see that most do not, save for the gedolim and gedolei mekubalim that you have already heard about, like the baba sali or the gra.

so the 12 steps, is it the end all? will it teach me how to converse with dead tzaddikim? read palms? maybe it can give me tools to do those things on my own, maybe not.

but it CAN do one thing

it saves millions of people's lives from lives of insane binges of sex, alchohol, gambling, narcotics, and more, and turns them into mushlam, religious people, devout to whatever their conception of GOD, and makes them wholefully usefull to God and the people in their family and nation

so i'm not gonna get lured into this man's attractive world of remote thinking and whirling durvishes (he once gave me a book about whirling durvishes)

forget the fact that im not emotionally healthy enough to not crack from this stuff after ten minutes

forget that

it all boils down to one point, and r' nachman said it so simple, so i'll just quote him:

chazal say "ein hamedrash haikkar elah hamaaseh"

r nachman wrote likutei moharan, highest and most esoteric beautiful wisdom, piercing the heavens and higher

YET, he asked that his talmid write a sefer called likutei eitzos,which cuts outs ALL esoterics, and offers only immediate and practical advice

bec. only that will help us grow

esoteric maharals in the seminaries and high falutent vorts are useful and geshmak, but if they cannot help me grow then it's no good. it's poison. AND I dont care if it is a chavrusashaft with r elyashiv. I DONT WANT IT.

Wow.

Rachmonah Liba Bo'i. On the inside of us, that is all there really is.

On the outside of us that comes out as:

Being pleasant neighbors and useful to the people around us;
paying our debts on time;
loving our wives the way they want to be loved and reminding them by our behavior that of all the people in the world, they are #1 for us;
smiling at our kids, telling them how awesome they are and exactly in what ways, hugging them sometimes, and teaching them the best we can - by our own example;
by asking Hashem (with words) to help us do those nice things today;
by at least sometimes coming a little early to davening to be alone with Him for a bit first; by smiling sometimes while we are alone in bed...alone with the Ribono shel Olam, that is;
by sometimes saying tehillim like we are making it up about ourselves right now and really need it;
and by keeping the halocha even when we do not understand what the heck the difference makes in the universe whether we do this or do that.

Hey, it's gonna be OK.

I think you're really smart to stay clear of all this stuff, even though it's very tempting.  Even if it claims to be based on pesukim and gemaras, it can very easily be tapping into the powers of Tuma, even if it doesn't look like it.  And I once had a Rav who said about certain segulahs (regarding one for marriage), "Even if it DOES work, is THAT the way you want to find your wife?!"

--Eye.

Sounds like you're doing a lot of work to find your clea path. Keep on rocking, and have a guten mo'ed!

i have done something stupid today.
i must publicly confess.
i am a sexaholic, a sick person.
If i even take just one look, i'll binge for three months and then die.

i am powerless. i forget it, but it's already proven.
I want to go in there and look. It can kill me. I have an allergy to this. it has already ruined my life, split my personality, caused me to do prosecutable actions if not that i was under 18 then....

i cant

im dying

so i cant take even one look

i am a sexaholic
i lose control and act like an animal, furiously lusting to take it all for my self, me me me

i love myself, and kick out god
god get outta my face, i want to lust now, so leave

God, thy will, not mine, be done
God, if it is your will, help me attune myself to your will,

and do your will the way that you want

God, help me be useful to you as wholefully as i can, and be useful to my fellow man
if it is your will, help me place principles before personalities
and help me accept the things about myself that i cannot physiologically change-that i am a fatal sex drunk, and that although i want to go in there and just take a look at....i can't

i am a sex drunk

i have an illness

i have a sick mental obsession

i have a sick urge to kick god out of my house and pull down my pants and make myself into a god-i worship myself-me me me give me more more more-i want it! give me!

god, help me be true to myself,
help me do your will

thy will, not mine, be done

if only i allow you into my life, i know that you will come

this world is yours

here Hashem, i'm storry. i stole this world of yours and all of the women in it for 15 years. i 'd like to give it back to you now. Really, this world is yours. all of it. Even the women.
Thanks god for understanding, your'e really nice to me. Good to see you. Let's keep in touch.

Hashem loves you so much that he even loves you while you were looking at those images, chaver. That must be true, no?

If you see that, then you must accept that as you are trying to be honest and give it up and go His Way now - He must be plum incredibly in love with you!

Admission of our sick-ness is essential, to be sure. But that is just the point of the spear. Eventually it leads to weariness and depression. It is just the point of the spear - the spear itself is recognition and admission that He has a good plan for us as we really are and is with us 100%. That is the 2nd step, my friend. We will be OK and part of His good plan. One day at a time. That is the 3rd step. Without those, we die.

And the 3rd is not about giving Him our addiction to handle, but all about giving Him our lives to handle. There is so, so much more to our lives than our addiction and our sick-ness. That's what recovery means to me. recovering our real life from amid our very sickness.

So hang on to your sanity and look for whatever you can do right today. Not perfect - just right.

I love you and so do many others, no matter what you ever do. We are just taking Hashem's example, here.

Thank you dovon, smithsonian negro museum hero member. Thank you. you uplifted me and added ingredients to my big chulent of recovery. Here are 3 more posts to make your hair turn white.



7up, if you see this, I think this post can help you reach out easily to another, because it's mamesh up your alley. Save Rambo, and send over some cookies if you please can. 7up, your'e good at turning the tables on the poster and able to say "you know tzaddik90, i think this is all because YOU eat snails..and that's why...". And that is what i need here.

I am in alot of pain right now. I am not about to act out because of it, because by the good grace of God, I am a RECOVERING sexaholic, and my front lines are now drawn mostly beyond the lust fronteer to hatred, fear, resentment, and shalom bayis.
I am not posting like I used to because I was DEPENDANT on the forum or others to survive my bumps in life. Everyone needs friends, or so they tell me, but being DEPENDANT on something and impulsively using it to help you is a drug, an addiction, as well.
I am posting it in order to heal.
I don't know the steps well enough yet, esp. the fourth, to come out of this unscathed. I saw a lady in SA who related that by doing her 4th step the wrong way, she just seethed with anger and fury.
I don't want to get angrier, nor do i want suppression. I want surrender. Now, the story.
I hate my brother. More than anyone in the world. I cannot easily let go of the hatred; I carry it with me to bed, to the makolet, to the shteeble. I am not putting it down.
I hate him so much, the day i saw his face step foot here for his year in Ey during Elul, i could not look him in the face. Only with my abusive father, who added hell to my life so much and to my family, was there a period where i couldnt look at him in the eye. Even now, i can look at Dad, after having done lots of work. But my brother, it's like deja-vu, the same seething hatred all over again.
Let me do this 4th step right here and now, at 4am, in pain from stress at boiling point, typing to you. It will only be per my understanding of the 4th step as it is now.
Who? My little brother.
What? I hate him so deeply. I don't wish him dead, God forbid, but i wish i never knew him.
Why? What, according to my perception, did he do to me?
Answer-he is my  brother. Therefore, whether I like it or not, i have a natural love and care for his wellbeing. Therefore, seeing him in such a terrible state of recovery and depression all the time, along with his other unsightly character defects, i just cannot bear to see his face. His face constantly reflects sadness, resentment, confusion, anger, lust, selfishness...to the extreme. It's too painful to me.
I will write two paragraphs now. The first will describe how my brother and his problems is making my life unmanagable. The second paragraph will show how really it all has to do with my own faults and lack of healthy living while i am placed within this test. I cant be too rational, or i will lose all the feelings that i need to express.
Paragraph one:
Since my brother has landed here this year, he has been pathetically helpless. Because of his inability to cope in slightly difficult situations, like acclimating to a new envirement or yeshiva, PLUS his complete lack of social skills and common sense, he has been the burder par excellance.
He needed a dira and couldnt find one on his own, big brother comes swooping down to help.
He felt his rebbi wasnt ever gonna make a kesher with him, big brother calls rebbi, tells him, and puts brother and rebbi on phone together.
He doesnt know when or where anything is, ever, and too cowardly to ask directions-big brother helps him on phone.
He acts absolutley nuts and unbalanced and has crying fits all the time, big brother finds him a therapist.
He has no money for therapist, big brother pays for therapist, hoping to get paid back soon from some tzedaka money out of the sky.
He is unpleasant to be with, a real freak, who can stand next to you and tell you boring stories about the rabbeim in his old yeshiva, the demi-gods they were, their quotes and breathing habbits, all the while following you around the house and relentlessly talking AT you these stupid stories. Every meal is an hour of these stories, uninterrupted. He laks the common sense to know how to shmooz, make friends, enjoy himself.
He comes for shabbos and leaves the toilet seat up, reminding me that he is like a beast who grew up with the wolves, making me more pained.
He makes number two in our house and doesnt care to clean up what he left on the inside of the bowl that the water didnt bring down.
He ALWAYS leaves his plate on the table, or cup, for us to gather, even when everyone has taken away their own plate.
He gets upset at me that i dont treat him like a brother, which is true. I see him as a mental patient, and so it it a challenge. If only he knew how to go for a smoke, chill out, shmooz, i can do that with just about anyone. But to want me to shmooz with him every time i see his contorted face, and without his shmooozing back about anything of normal or interesting semblence.
He's got no friends, is highly dependant on others. he asks thursday if he can come for shabbos, the answer may be no since wer'e going away ourselves, and then he gets offended.
He just walks in when he comes. No pre call. After shabbos, he can just live here for hours until we use the right techniques to safely remove him.
He once admitted to me he fantasizes about men, and acted out with men, which to me is vomit inducing, and then he wanted to....hug. So he hugged me, and i just stood like a statue and felt the way a woman must feel being the object of lust. What a sick feeling. I wanted to throw up.
On the phone, to give advice to him when it is convenient for me, no problem, but in person, i just cant. Whem he comes by, i simply dont talk to him, my tzadeikess wife feels bad for him, and tries to talk a bit with him while i sit there and pretend to learn.
He is such a nebech. A needy selfish, annoying, unpleasant person. Unless youv'e got true love for this kid, your'e not gonna get anything back from this relationship. Not even enough to just encourage you to invite him again and give him some tlc that he needs.
He gets defensive about just about anything in a good convo. -"what! i never said the rashba holds it's mutar!!!" when he says this he gives you such a look of contempt that you wish you never met him.
I used to think if i did not help him, no one would. God gave me so many tools like a good therapist, gye, sa, best friends, rabbeim, etc.-all helped me be able to live semi-happily and marginally normal, still growing.
But no one helps brother. He's got no friends, rabbeim, internet support forums, SA, or just about anything. his therapist is a load of junk. Mine was real amazing, but who will pay 130$ hour once a week for my brother to see him? not parents, not me. How did i pay for my own therapy? simple-my tzaddik of a rosh yeshiva took 5000$ out of the yeshiva account, and saved my life with that money. He had to go fundraise it all back.  For my brother, no one has waved even an agoorot to him yet.
He wanted to go to one of these weekend life coaching workshops, he says i know its 500 bucks buti got no money, and i need this more than anyone here-look at me. Guess what? they gave him a 100$ scholarship, very nice. They didnt do for him what my rebbi did for me. You know, of all the rabbanim on this planet, i dont know of more than a handful that would finance someone like my brother. He went to his workshop. I lent him 200$. When will i get it back? dont know. But im pained that by his own efforts and by the lack of interest of those around him, he still needs so much, and almost no one is helping him. I used to get horrible rid, thinking his burden was upon me.
Now i know that God will take care of his child better than i can or will. When? how? i havent figured it out. But i dont want to be a kofer, so God will hopefully help him somehow.
He also has an identity crisis, so he lives yeshivish but knows its not for him, and get a really yeshivish haircut even though he never made any transition properly into that group, and he doent even want to be yeshivish-so he's just an outward expression of confusion and mismatched fashion.
He also has this skin condition where dandruff in the truckloads is all over his shoulders at any second. and he Doesnt brush it off. ever.
Lastly (or else i wont stop), to boost his self esteem, he walks around like melody from archie comic books, always singing. He'll sing by himself, with you, at you, when there's a lull in the convo. , and he always imitates shwekey. It's one thing to sing with what ever God given voice you have, but when u imitate shwekey mamesh, and you tell everyone at every meal you go to that you have such a good voice and you used to sound more like shwekey, now you just have a cold... .And you praise your own voice as if your'e yossele rosenblatt 5 times each shabbos. I can't stand it. I hate it. It's so fake.
____________________________________
Now, to just intervene before 2nd paragraph,
my brother called me up on erev yom tov, 11 am and says "iv'e got gastrointiritis, what should i do?" big brother tells him how to go to doctor, etc. Then brother basically tells me he needs a place for yom tov. Can you please explain to me what he thought his plans were for yom tov before 11am erev yom tov? answer-he thought he was coming here.
Okay. Well, my son has been sick for over 12 days, he's a baby, so i aint letting bro sleep here.
Well, my shviger doesnt want him there either, even though they are biggest baley chessed, bec. their child died of meningitis and so shviger has a phobia for sick people and germs. okay, so now lets have stressful conversation with wife, plotzing to find a place for the brother to say at, this close to yom tov, just four hours before licht.
That's my brother. Even when i am not involved, Hashem involves me. And of course we neglected him the whole yom tov, because we had to go to a family bar mitzvah and eat all meals there and make the rounds of hi how are you. And my son got sicker after taking amoxipen for ten days. he started getting rashes on his body,......was difficult yom tov.
So now he feels again like i didnt spend time with him.
______________________________________
Now, for step five, i think i want to take him out on an all day trip together, just me and him. So that i can try to love him and give him the love he needs. and take right opportunity either then, or after in a restaurant, to apologize, big book style.
______________________________________
Back to step 4:
Paragraph two: i told you what i hate abot my brother. He is really a nice guy, a nice brother.
It's just that my love for him is enough that when i see him in this state, i cant bear to look at him, and i hate that pain that he reflects to me. My pain, which i get from seeing him, is what i hate. So i dont hate him really. True there are undesirable things about him. But i hate what i feel by knowing him.
And there are many behind the scene asociations with my own days when i was that messed up, and asociations with my father abusing me, etc. So it's really all in me, this hatred. I hate the way i act from him.
So i shift perspective:
I am no longer his brother, you see, because brothers at this age usually have some reciprocal relashionship, even just going together for shawarma.
Instead, i am like his loving father, who has a child who is not doing well, and a fahter never gives up on his children-bec. he loves them so much. He gives them care, his ears, and attention. So i started saying i hate my brother. i see now without rationalizing that i love him, and i hatehow i feel when i see him. For that hatred, i can work on shift of perspective.
I know being the father figure cannot ever interfere with my marriage, i know that type stuff already the hard way. As 7up once told me, no one can replace a husband and a father, so u gotta be %100 there for mrs. wife and kids.
But when im with him, i can have the love of a father. He anyways has no father, since we are orphaned with parents from abuse. I was the father and husband of family for many years in an unhealthy way, in the old days. Now, to be a father means to lovve him like a father would. From my fahter i got no clue how to love a son, but by beng a father myself and loving my children, i DO know.
Yisrael, I do love you. How are you feeling today? What's going on? Did you read anything interesting lately?-avi, in SA, sober 6 weeks
For the next post: a mekubal tzaddik niflah told me i think that i am king of the world, now a little less, but its that filthy ego that is preventing me from all my rum maalos. He said i am a worm, im klum. Just the day before  i saw this tzaddik with 24/7 ruach hakodesh/hasaga, i said to myself about 100 times "avi, surrender your ego." i am a tola'at. i want to say this here more to work on it. i am a tola'at. another 2  posts to come, unrelated to brother post.

I gotta be happy. I have had some hard times recently, while ever growing in recovery. So after reading the whole big book for first time, I realized something.
While the 12 step program seems to discuss hapiness in the way that by doing the steps you can become happily and wholefully usefull, it does not seem to write anywhere there that one needs simcha in the first place, before step one, or alongside all of the steps, in order to survive.
I have been finding this to be the case, that when you are deep in the program, and trying to hold back your anger, or surrender your huge ego, and it is hard, and youv'e already made your wife cry, and now you know at least how it happened...and if you only work on....you'll succeed...until you do get better in surrendering your ego and fears and become more lovable and selfless,you gotta utilize Bard's simcha secret.
My point is that we are in a program which gives results, sometimes immediate, but it will still take time to get signifacantly better and squashing our ego's or letting go of our self-will propulsionary lifestyle. Since doing these things and succeeding signafacantly will take time, so until then, we must use Bard's simcha secret to just do simcha.
When my ego will be crushed and i will be a proper loving husband, i will be able to be happier much easier, and give simcha to my wife and kids how they deserve. However, until that day, while i work at this program, i gotta be besimcha, to at least mitigate the problems, domestic, and in self, if i cannot repair them properly till later.