I had a thought. One of the main lessons my parents taught me from a young age is never give up and also that I am special.

The result of this is that as an adult, even though sometimes I am feeling bad about myself, or in the dumps, in general, I love myself, and think highly of myself.

 I don’t like speaking about myself in front of others in this way, but it seems like it gives people a lot of strength to see what I write so hopefully this will too. one thing I know is that I have a very strong willpower, and when I am determined to do some thing, one way or another, I will do it. This attitude of self-love and self admiration is the one that I have whatever I am accomplishing great things.

During periods of my life in which I have seen many failures, my attitude towards myself has been opposite. The negativity has not helped me, and more often than that hinders me in coming up with ideas on how to succeed, and to overcome whatever challenge I am facing.

At the same time, I always try to recognize and build relationships with people who are greater than me in the areas I want to improve in. I try to remind myself often that the trait of arrogance should be completely avoided, and eradicated and humility is the ideal. To look at people and see what I can learn from them. And when I forgot to think this way,, my wife reminds me very quickly!

Bottom line, I think that we tend to focus too much on the minutes and seconds of the slip up instead of recognizing the days and weeks and months and even years of success. Recognizing all of the amazing things that we have accomplished is something that will greatly raise our own self-esteem in our eyes. 

Even somebody who slips up daily, or even multiple times a day, how many hours of the day are you not slipping? At least 80%!

We are all people who want to do the right thing, we want to be close to our Creator, and we want to do His will. Why focus on the negative?

a breslover once explain to me, that it could very well be that the depression that comes after a fall is more damaging than the fall itself. It is to be avoided by all means. 

hope this gives someone chizuk and ty for reading my slightly snobby post. 

Continuation of the thought above:

so how did I end up addicted to marijuana and hooked on sexual escapades? I think it’s a result of a mixed blessing. Although my parents made an effort not to spoil us, my siblings and I were very pampered. Vacations around the world - Florida, London, Aruba, Israel, etc. and the “best Jewish education that money can buy.” My parents paid millions for the combined education of myself and my siblings.

practically speaking, this exposed us to many things. We became very worldly with all the fancy camps, exotic tours, and hotel excursions. 

although the concept was nice, what ended up happening is that I was exposed to many things that were not good for me. Going to hotels meant ogling girls at the pool and trying to “hook up.” Pesach in Florida meant visiting the local massage places / brothels. Vacationing in eilat meant underage drinking, going to exclusive day camps meant sharing cigarettes with strange girls after lights out. Being a part of the group of students aspiring to Harvard, Colombia, and yale meant smoking joints on weekends to wind down from the hectic and overloaded school week. 

I was given everything… except a sex education and tools to increase my resilience. 

I learned about sex from classmates, porn, and first hand experiments with girls in high school. Those parties at teenager’s home when the parents were out of town and the hookah bars - opportunities to pick a mate and practice being selfish. 

I didn’t even know there was a concept of shmirat habrit until I went to Israel for a few years instead of going to some fancy shamancy gehennom college. 

if I ever felt any emotional pain whatsoever, I couldn’t ask my father for help because he usually just told me to be a man and tough it out. My mother was too busy doing Chessed for others to notice anything about me other than my academic strides and struggles, and when the iPhone came out, a big part of my relationship with my parents died because they (especially mother) we’re too busy with their phones to notice ME. 

don’t get me wrong, they are warm and loving parents, supportive and caring about my success but the definitions of success I was built up toward were ultimately not the ingredients to create an emotional successful and happy person. 

We started keeping Shabbat when I was in grade school, but only when I “flipped out” did the family really start to get more frum. 

that’s all I can write for now, more later. 

But main idea is that a skilled and secular educated person might not necessarily have the resilience to face difficulties and failures in life and can turn to other outlets for the good feeling and resilience to overcome. 

Continuation:

my years in Israel were transformative. The first thing I did was read biographies on every big Rabbi that I could find a book on. I figured if I’m going to live my life according to what these people are saying then with all due respect, who were they that I should listen to them? As I read through different biographies, the common thread was that these were all people who made an effort to perfect themselves. Many, if not most of them overcame tremendous adversity.

especially striking was Akiva, who went from working as the manager of a multi billionaire’s assets, to his estranged and impoverished son in law, who had the humility to listen to the encouragement of his wife and start learning from the bottom up. sitting in preschool learning Alef bet with little kids and with that same grit and humility rising to become one of the most meaningful and impactful men who ever lived on this earth. Rebbe Akiva is one of my greatest role models and inspirations… but I still couldn’t figure out why I was having such a hard time dealing with challenges. 

maybe it was the fact that I had always excelled effortlessly - I had been handed all kinds of opportunities; I was a natural sailor, crafty builder, too smart for school - never studied and always aced everything. But I was stumped when it came to seriously learning Torah the first time. I was in Shiurim taught by true gedolim… and I simply did not understand. The words made sense individually but for the first time in my life I had to actually work hard to understand and excel at something. I didn’t really know what to do with that. 

the week before yeshiva I went to a bar on ben Yehuda street with some guys I knew and essentially cheated on my former GF who was still living in the USA (she was a year or two younger). I didn’t tell her, and waited  until she eventually called me crying and guiltily admitting that she “hooked up” with someone else. I thanked Gd and broke off that relationship. But why didn’t I have the guts to tell her what I did? It’s not like we were going to get married. It was purely a selfish relationship. Fortunately, even in high school I was not much of a “party guy.” I went to less than a handful of big parties and nightclubs. They were really dumb and kind of gross. One thing that really infuriated me down the line is one of the only house parties I went to, where you could smell the drugs three blocks away. When I walked into the house the parents were sitting calmly in the living room like it was normal to host a teenage drug and s*x festival in their own house. They weren’t stupid people and I really hope they get a chance to do Teshuva before they day. Only Hashem knows how many pure Jewish souls they helped to destroy. So many of my classmates “married” shiksas. And these parents could have helped to do something to stop it. 

Besides the horrible chinuch taking place all around me (I really must give credit to my parents - they h didn’t know  what they were doing raising us as baalei Teshuva, especially at the start of the process,  but they ALWAYS made their best effort to instill morals and values in me and my siblings. My extended family is now in a much better place now BH and it is all due to my parents’ courage to challenge their reality until that point), one of the things that still boggles me to this day is why would not one and not two girls choose to do things to me that would cause them no positive physical benefits and was 100% me taking from them. 

I struggled to understand the picture that was forming before my eyes. 

fortunately for me, I was too scared to buy drugs from Arabs, and not “clique-y” enough to get drugs from the cool American boys so my years in Israel were drug free. 

I spent a few years intensively working on my middle and trying to build the foundations on which I would become a ben Torah in the future. I reshaped the vision of the girl I planned to marry, started wearing tzitzit, put tefillin every day, and in general just tried to figure out what it meant to be a good Jew. 

the concept that success does not equal having lots of money was new to me and took a long time to sink in and for me to clarify the ramifications of that concept. 

I would come home for pesach all fired up, but inevitably would fall. 

during pesach break of my first year in Israeli yeshiva I flew down to the Miami area for pesach. I also had my own rental car and nobody to hold me accountable for what I did and where I went. So I did things like go to the yeshiva get together in one of the posh hotels where a classmate’s family did the catering, then stop by a sex worker on the way back to where my family was staying. 

I was trying to hard to grow but I couldn’t escape from the YH for these things. 

Over the summer I went to a program hosted by a kiruv organization as the “frum yeshiva boy” and found myself laying next to a girl from the trip the next summer when we were both in Israel between semesters. 

I almost had a breakthrough then - it was so close but I got sucked back in!

At a certain point the internal struggle was so great that I blurted out to her “I am sorry but I can’t do this!” 

I got half dressed in the room, then ran out to the hall, past her startled roommates, past surprised people in the hall and was out the front door of the lobby before j managed to button my shirt back up. 

my father gave me a ride to that place and I lied ti him and told him I was meeting friends. 

I couldn’t get his face out of my head when I was laying with that girl and about to do something I knew I should not. 

I felt like crying from embarrassment and shame. 

I felt like a loser! I could not manage to “hook up” with one of my “greatest catches,” but at the same time I was a faker of a yeshiva Bachur. I took a taxi back to the place we were staying, told my parents I didn’t feel well and then shut myself in my room. 

the next day I called a Rav I knew from my yeshiva (I think he had just left and started his own yeshiva that year) and half sobbing choked out the story from the night before. I wanted to do Teshuva! He told me to delete her number and to move on. He gave me chizuk and told me what a special thing running away that night really was. I was hopeful but still broken. 

if only I had chased that lead, so many years of misery and suffering could have been avoided. 

summary: my post high school yeshiva years were full of growth and Teshuva, but I still could not get over the (for lack of a better term) sex and drug addiction. The drugs were on hold due to no access, but between girls, P, & M - I was still addicted to the shmutz. 

I would even sometimes sit by the window in my dorm room and try to get good looks at the tourists below…

that’s all I can write for now - hopefully I don’t trigger anyone but it helps to get it all in writing for the first time. Hopefully it will resonate with someone that reads this, and they will see that a person really can change even if they came from the opposite side of this battle. 

more on the journey later. 

iLoveHashem247 wrote on 26 Feb 2023 05:26:

There's a Yosef Hatzadik moment right there!

Bloody hell! 
I am dancing from joy to Hashem that he didn’t give me these Nisyones and tests! I’m shuddering to even think how I would look like. 
This goes beyond my wildest fantasies living such teenage years….. BH I was always nice and sheltered……. At least from actually meeting girls. 
you are an amazing inspiration for all of us! That You chose to become really frum yourself without anyone pressuring you when you couldn’t been doing this your whole life..
wow wow wow
keep On growing and inspiring us!

Hi chevreh 

i have been away for a bit and have lots to share and think about. 

some near falls and previously undiscovered reservoirs of courage. 

some struggles and some healing. 

more to come later

Hope to share the past few weeks but in synopsis was out of town for a while, second to last day of the trip I found myself in a massage place in a different country (no massage bed rather a real bed, was def a beit zonot) right as we were starting I wanted to say that I am out, but I was choking up a trying to get the words out and then I remembered the promise I made to Hashem help me that if I ever go to one of these places again and experience one of these experience I need to tell my wife. It took everything I had but I yelled out from inside and it came out as a squeak “I’m sorry this isn’t working I’m leaving”

 was cursed out and told I’m wicked and gloom and doom shall befall me

was so hard but I left. I went to the beach and painted the rest of the day.

Today I also struggled a lot. I have not been feeling well today, and I was getting ready to go to a definite place of prostitution, and what I did is I kept delaying. I went to a bookstore, then I went to a food store, then I sat in my car for a while. 

By the time I had been away for a while, my wife had summoned me back home and I was saved for the day. 

i should have called Hashem help me first… anyway a few nice wins but I’m feeling quite weak 

I hope you enjoyed my fascinating tale. Hope I never have to share it again. 

WOWOWOWOWWOW, tears in my eyes...
mamesh a Yosef HaTzadik in our generation, your Koach in heaven is huge, take advantage of this and ask from Hashem for whatever you need.

ytw wrote on 24 Mar 2023 16:40:

Thank you for your kind words, but it is disconcerting that this keeps coming up. Finding myself in such a place even if I leave before anything happens is still not good news

And by the way, I did ask for some thing. I asked to be able to wake up early in the morning. I have been pretty successful at that since I have returned home. Besides for a few days where the night before I was out at  weddings and so on I have been doing pretty well waking up early and it really makes a big difference in the day.

Public accountability - I feel like I am chasing my tail in terms of conquering addictions. If it’s not sex, then it was drugs. Got rid of the drugs, started drinking. Avoiding the drink, stuffing my face with food. Feeling way too fat and want to lose at least 30 pounds kind of weird because I was always somewhat of a slim guy  


Thinking and thinking how to stop chasing my tail and start living my life

Great story happened this weekend

For the first time in a while, I was at my parents house with all of my siblings there. We all got together for a wedding and stayed to have a weekend together.

My teenage sister was sitting on the couch with my wife and told her that she sometimes has an urge to just rip out peoples earrings. It was a bit surprising, coming from the most gentle butterfly of a person you’ll ever meet.

My wife then calls out to me and said hey, she really is your sister! She said that because I have mentioned to my wife several times about the call of the void, the urges I have sometimes but never act on. For example, if someone is talking to me, and it is an important conversation, there’s sometimes a voice in the back of my head, telling me to punch him in the nose as . hard as I can. Or sitting by a beautiful meal and the voice in the back of my head telling me flip the table flip the table, flip the table. 

I recognize it for what it is, and do not act upon it. Maybe sometimes acts of impulsivity might come from the same source, for example, “go to the massage parlor and forget about all of your responsibilities.”

Anyway, I was explaining it to my sister-in-law and her eyes bugged out and she kind of shrunk back for me. Her husband (my brother) was sitting next to her and said I do not know what you’re talking about bro I’m not crazy like you. my response to him was I guess you cannot achieve greatness that I can. Was talking to my wife about it later slightly bummed out and she said remember the line you get back to your brother, you have so much potential that only you could reach, and other people could only imagine.

Looking back, it is encouraging to think that only a person who has those monsters inside of him, trying to get him to do crazy things is able to rise above, and become even mightier than the biggest monster.


So my message to you, my friends is - the bigger you struggle, the greater you can be. Just don’t let it give you too big of an ego

You are something else dude! 
You can make me laugh, cry and scream in one sentence. 

On a serious note, did you ever go to therapy? You seem to either have a great pain that you are trying to hide or numb, or you might have some sort of ADD where you brain needs stimulation and therefore its telling you to do some crazy things to feel something. 
One thing you dont have is a monster living inside you, its just a small art of  your brain that either looking for fun or stressing you out by scaring you of what might happen if you flip the table over and lose control.....

chancy wrote on 27 Mar 2023 15:39:

Chancy, you are a very observant yid  

I'm very curious to know which sentence it was that got you so excited….

I went to therapy when I was younger which really helped me gain a stronger sense of identity and taught me to reflect from a young age. I do also take a daily medication for ADHD. 

I am currently in very constant contact with HHM who is seemingly unendingly patient and also knows when to knock my teeth out when necessary. 

jusy to be clear - I do not feel like I am constantly slipping out of control, rather expressing some raw emotions. As HHM expressed it, it’s like when a person is becoming BT, he won’t talk during davening. Once he’s in maintenance mode and the changes are more slow and long term, not talking during davening becomes a challenge. 

I feel like I passed the initial “Teshuva infatuation” stage and am now pushing through the daily grind of becoming a more sincere and consistent Jew. 

but the crazy feelings are still sometimes there. I’m learning to deal with them and over time to handle my stressors without sexualizing or numbing them. 

just learning to face my life like a big boy.

I like the way you think.
 You seem very level headed. 
I liked how you can see what your brain is telling you and realizing that you dont have to listen to it....

I hear you, Chancy. It must be because I’ve got lots of experience ignoring what people tell me :p

On an unrelated note, I got upset at Hashem today for the first time I can remember. Have been hit with lots of bills and my business has been on a sharp and steady decline for months. Vendors asking me for payments weekly. What should be a busy season for me is super silent. I’m doing all the required hishtadlut… but my learning is down. Haven’t gotten into a schedule since I stopped learning half a day and go try finding something in the middle of a zman. It’s hard for me to focus as it is, and to learn alone near impossible. In constant pain from my accident in the summer. Sick as a dog right now. 

felt jealous of other store owners in my trade today for a minute until I reminded myself of all the stuff I have going for me and all the gifts Hashem has given me. 

was also tested by a very pretty and flirty customer today. Usually never get this issue. Kept reminding myself that it is also possible to gift wrap a dirty diaper and to be very happy with what Hashem gave me. I wouldn’t want a wife who bats her eyelashes at every Joe shmo and Yanky…

feeling blah but trying to remind myself constantly that neither I nor my life really sucks.