I can relate to being married in my forties having a nice period of sobriety and would go into major depression if I would lose it.
I can relate to the feeling that having an intense period of gashmiyus makes me feel cold in my ruchnious as a result.
Most importantly, I can relate to the feeling that if I don't act out know I don't know how I'm going to survive.
Which means youre at a cross roads. It means you have to be honest with yourself. If you are you will see that 1) acting out never made your life better in the long run and probably not in the short run either; 2) there is no such thing as a little acting out once you start there is no telling where you'll end up; 3) you can make it to tomorrow without acting out; 4) Hashem has done lots of undeserved kindness to you in your lifetime and He is capable of doing it for you now even if you feel undeserving of it; 5) being in the presence of a chevra that understands you is itself a sobering experience. If you contemplate these things you should find enough to allow you to be able to move yourself away from the vulnerable spot your in certainly until tomorrow.
Hatzlacha and thanks for sharing the sobering reality that sobriety is a gift from Hashem we receive on a daily basis

the mind has alot to do with the urges if you strengthen your mind the urges will be much easier to control. find where the urges come from and work on that. good luck rember one step at a time

ur-a-jew wrote on 14 Sep 2011 03:38:

I can certainly relate to the above. I especially agree with points 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5.

Yochid,
The response below is copied from chizuk email #461.  I thought you might find it helpful:

....You may indeed feel like you're starting all over, but you really are right where you left off. Let me explain:

The Vilna Goan asks how a person can know what their purpose for coming to this world is. How are we to know what our most intimate and personal challenge is; i.e. the very reason for our creation? The Vilna Goan answers that we can know this by seeing what areas are most difficult for us to control, and what issues challenge us most frequently. It is for those areas that we were sent to the world to fix.

So Ari, if this struggle is a major issue in your life, it is likely that this is your own personal Tikkun in this world. And if this is one of the main issues you came down to the world to fix, it stands to reason that you may have to spend a long time in this struggle. But how? Once you've made good progress, what is there left for you to do?


So what Hashem often does, is that precisely when we have made serious strides, our successes are taken away from us and saved in our spiritual "bank" so that we can start over again from scratch and earn yet another powerful "spiritual" coin in the struggle. And that is why the old excitement disappears, the same struggles come back and it seems that we are starting all over again.

But Ari, when we have enough coins, we will finally have fixed what we came down to the world to do! And when this happens, Hashem will save us from this struggle forever.

So don't be discouraged, this can take sometimes years. You are not back to square one as it seems. But rather, as you said, you are "right where you left off". You may be only one step away from the finish line, but for that one step to be a decisive step, Hashem makes it appear again as if you are just starting out.

It is brought down in the sefer menucha v'kedusha, written by a talmid of R' Chaim Volozhin, that even a person who sins his whole life can still be considered a Tzaddik, as long as he never gives up and always continues to fight. We like to think of success in terms of results. But Hashem looks at our efforts, not the results!

And that's the ultimate test:

Hashem wants to see if we only take steps when we feel are getting somewhere. But a real warrior understands that Hashem doesn't care that much for the "results". Rather, it is little steps we take each day - the new Hischazkus that we have to keep summoning anew - that truly give Hashem pleasure and make us into Tzadikim.