Hello everyone,
    I have hesitated a long time before posting here for many reasons.  One is a fear that I am not "frum enough" to be here because it seems so many guys have been in Yeshiva or Kollel for a hundred years.  Another reason is that I am just overwhelmed by the many things I have read on this site. Some of it is contradictory.  But I need help-that I know.  And if you can't jump into something just before Shabbat Yitro,when can you?
    I am a Kippah Serugah kind of Jew.  Lots of time in Israel. A Davening,learning Jew striving to grow always who falls over and over again because of my slavery to lust.  I grew up in a secular Jewish home with hardworking parents,not so great with intimacy and communication. My father and uncles traded Playboys in front of us. We watched a lot of tv and as time went on,the images of women got to be more and more explicit. And I fell into it.
    You know the rest. Along with growing in observance and learning,I also became more and more encased in shmutz. Buying magazines,videos,and then the internet.  Much worse in many ways,phone sex.  All the money,the time,the waste down the tubes. I shake just typing this. 
    I am married to a marvelous woman who knows of my challenges and now thinks I have mostly overcome them...But she suspects and has reason to.  I no longer have the ability to satisfy her without medication and am often distracted and tense.
    What have I tried?  Lots of learning,Mussar,Jewish meditation, calming herbs,some therapy,davening up a storm,Teshuvah with tears,fasting,exercise, and lots more. Some things help a bit, I know how to calm myself,I can have some disciplined days with early morning time with a Sugya or Mishnah,some exercise,lots of things accomplished...and it feels like Gan Eden. Then it stops.
    What doesn't seem to work is Torah alone- I often get tense just as I am about to end a session and know what will be next...The same with Mussar practice. It buys me a little time at best....
      I have no doubt that some of this is about intimacy,ego,spiritual deficiency but what it overwhelmingly feels like is a chemical addiction. My body craves the high and I don't need the internet to trigger it. I shut it down a lot and it doesn't matter because almost anything can set it off.  I practice Shmirat Haeinayim,offer Tefillot to Hashem and do all sorts of things but just saying no to the Yetzer makes it come roaring back even stronger.
      A typical day involves great intentions but time wasted in mbtn and sometimes prn.No need even to spill zera. I get my high. After getting the chemical high,it takes hours for my body to come back to reality. In the meantime,I am disoriented,disorganized,agitated,short-tempered and filled with self-loathing. How could a lover of Torah and one who wants closeness with the KB"H so such a thing? Again and again? How could I become so isolated from my wife,kids and others?

Just wanted to thank you and say that my name of TahorVneeman is what I truly hope be one day...Thanks.

Hi Tahor...Vneeman.  As long as you keep hoping, and really really WANT to be this.....then Hashem will give it to you. Because, there is not really too much that we can do other than have Ratzon. Our ratzon-desire to be tahor will/can bring us to our goal. Nothing, absolutely nothing stands in the way of Ratzon.

Dear TahorVneeman,

It is because you really want to come closer to Hashem, that Hashem has in fact put into your heart to finally post here. WELCOME!

 


What is that you find contradictory here? If  you have read through the posts, you will see that you are no different than anyone else here. Yet, perhaps the only contradiction there is today is that the people here just like you, are functioning, are finding ways to start living, and to really really create THAT closeness to Hashem that we need so desparately.

Have you seen the guard your eyes handbook over here?

http://www.guardureyes.com/GUE/PDFs/eBooks/GuardYourEyes%20Handbook.pdf

Have you seen the atitude book over here?

http://www.guardureyes.com/GUE/PDFs/eBooks/GuardYourEyes%20Attitude.pdf



In these books you find the Klalim that are working for people just like you? If it works....where do the contradictions exist?  PLease post.

Welcome welcome my dear holy yid!!

Youve come to the right place and hopefully youll find some help here!! But im gonna leave that o the big guns!

What i would like to say is; We here are accepting of every type of jew. Beaver hats,b;ack hats, kippa seruga or even no kippa at all. We love everyone on here for one reason and one reason only. BECAUSE HE WANTS TO GET RID OF THIS MONSTER!! he wants to join this slowly growing revolution to overcome what the world is trying to stuff down our throats!! And to that we stand uo to you!! With a hat wihtout a hat its all the same. We need as many soldiers as we can get. And we take all types!!

So hatzlacha on your journey. Stay with us. It will be lifesaving!!

Shavua Tov.

IT25

Dear TahorVneeman,

I am the admin of this forum. It hurts to read your story because it is the exact same story that we all went through on this site. You have truly come home.

As you will quickly learn on this site, an addiction is a disease on multiple levels. Torah and Mussar can't cure a disease. Not because they don't hold the answers, but because as long as the lust is in US, we can't SEE and USE the answers there. We need to stop banging our heads against the Torah and look inside ourselves instead. Once we face the truth about ourselves and begin to heal, Torah may be able to make our spiritual climb faster. But it is important to separate the Torah/Yiddishekeit track from the Addiction/Recovery track.

Scientific studies have shown that it takes 90 days to change a neural thought pattern that was ingrained in the brain through addictive behaviors. Did you join the 90 day chart on-line? Sign up over here...

Make sure to install a strong filter. It will be almost impossible to break free of this while having all the garbage within a mouse click away. See this page for one good filter option, along with instructions on how to install it best - and give away the password to our "filter Gabai"... See this page for another 20 (or so) filter ideas and information...

We get cries for help every day, by e-mail and on the forum. Tzuras Rabim Chatzi Nechama    And that is why we created the GYE handbooks (links below). If you read them well, from beginning to end, slowly, and try to implement what you read, you will find the answers within them to enable you to completely turn your life around. You're worth it.

Also, join the daily Chizuk e-mail lists to get fresh chizuk every day, and post away on this forum. You will get tons of daily Chizuk and support. This disease can't be beat alone. It works best when you get out of isolation!

GuardYourEyes also offers various free anonymous phone conferences, where you can join a group of other frum Yidden, along with an experienced sponsor. See this page for four different options. Our conferences are taking place daily, throughout the week... This would be a tremendous step in the right direction for you and help you learn freedom from this addiction. Not only will you learn the secret of the 12-Steps - which is known to be the world's most powerful program for beating addiction having helped millions world wide, but joining the group will be another way of GETTING OUT OF ISOLATION and connecting with others who are going through what you are.

Let me tell you a little about the two GuardYourEyes handbooks. They lay down the cornerstone and foundation of our work, and they make our network much more effective and helpful for people.

You see, until now, people would often get "lost" when coming to our website, not knowing what tips and techniques to try. For example, a beginner wouldn't jump straight into therapy or 12-Step groups, while on the other hand, someone whose addiction was more advanced wouldn't be helped by the standard tips of "making fences" putting in "filters" etc... So it was essential to develop a handbook which details all the techniques and tools to dealing with this addiction in progressive order. Now with these handbooks, anyone can read through and see what steps they've tried already, and if those steps haven't worked, they can continue on through the handbook where the steps become progressively more powerful and "addiction-oriented".

And the second handbook, called the "Attitude" handbook, can also help anyone, no matter what level of addiction they may have. Often people write in to us saying that had they only known the proper outlook & attitude that we try and share on the GuardYourEyes network when they were younger, they would have never fallen into an addiction in the first place! So we hope that through this handbook, many addictions will be prevented.

The handbooks are PDF files, set up as eBooks, and they have bookmarks and hyper-links in the Index, to make them easy to navigate.

Note: You might want to print them out to read away from the computer. Keep in mind though, that if you do this, you won't be able to click on the many web links in the articles. But you can always come back to them later. The truth is, it's anyway good to go through the whole handbook once without clicking on links, just to get an overview of all the tools available. Once you did that, you can start again from tool #1 and read each tool through more carefully, click the links and study each technique and assess whether you have tried it fully yet or not...

Right click on the links below and select "Save Link/Target As" to download the handbooks to your computer.

1) The GuardYourEyes Handbook
This Handbook details 18 suggested tools and techniques, in progressive order, beginning with the most basic and fundamental approaches to dealing with this addiction, and continuing down through increasingly earnest and powerful methods. For the first time, we can gauge our level of addiction and find the appropriate tools for our particular situation. And no matter what level our addiction may have advanced to, we will be able to find the right tools to break free in this handbook!

2) The GuardYourEyes Attitude
The Attitude Handbook details 30 basic principles to help us maintain the proper attitude and perspective on this struggle. Here are some examples: Understanding what we are up against, what it is that Hashem wants from us, how we can use this struggle for tremendous growth, how we can deal with bad thoughts, discovering how to redirect the power of our souls, understanding that every little bit counts, learning how to bounce back up after a fall, and so on and so forth...

May Hashem be with you!

Gut voch and welcome aboard.

I'm just really starting this journey myself, so I have no expert insights to share.  I only wanted to welcome you because of one thought I've been having lately that I've found very comforting.

You talk about all the times, over all the years, that you've taken steps to change, yet nothing does. Hence, it seems that nothing will.  Well, for me there's a possibility that all the lessons from all those rounds were somehow exactly what H' needed you to have (what YOU needed to have) in order to get to the point were it will be OVER. Like, right now!

If you've been lurking around the site and now decided it's time to come in and say hello, it may be that your cup of tears is full and the time has come for victory in the very next round.  Which is to say, NOW.

Around the site, I sometimes hear people say not to get depressed by the LAST fall and to work on avoiding the NEXT one.  I might get even a little more Breslav on you:  the lessons of all those LAST falls may add up cumulatively to be exactly the tools you need to succeed in this NEXT round. They weren't necessarily failings or failures -- they're part of the story that's going to help you solve the puzzle.

At least that's the thought I've been having around here for myself....

Hope things go well for you here.

Thanks to all of you..The one thing I have not tried over the years to deal with this crafty beast is being part of a Chevra..Your replies are so helpful.  I have read lots here and I think I am just going to begin and take it slow.I guess I had hoped that by dragging the Yetzer into the Beit Midrash (so to speak) that some magic would automatically happen and was dissapointed when it didn't.I do see that more has to change inside before Torah can penetrate as the Sam it is. Thank you for caring.
I had a thought in shul today....Imagine if I could be noticeably along the derech of sanity the next time we have Maamad Har Sinai.....How sweet would that be?  Anyone else think along those lines? 
It is good to be with you....Shavuah Tov

Hi Mr. Tahor, this is Mr. Tahor

Just wanted to welcome you and say that I identify with your situation and your frustration. I also felt for a long time that it didn't matter what tachboulos I did and what strategies I employed, I would always end up at the same place: on the internet. But, as you put it, being part of a "chevra", was a real turning point for me. I think that after enough time of making a sincere effort, and it sounds like you are making a very sincere effort, Hashem says "enough" and then something triggers an aliyah and things just get easier. The strength of the YH is curtailed just enough to let you see some success which builds on itself. Not that life becomes a walk in the park. But Hashem gives you the tools you need. I think finding GYE, and by finding I mean starting to post on the forum, was a turning point and I hope it will be for you too. And there is much more you can do if the Forum is not enough. You can get accountability partners, you can join phone groups etc. etc. Others can explain what GYE has to offer better than I can.

I'll conclude with what has become the watch-phrase here : Keep on Trucking!

  Yes, yes...we also had these hopes. And, it is here, that you will learn, slowly, and then even quicker...if you wish, that the magic does not "automatically happen".....Hashem wants us to "make it happen". And how do "we", "make it happen" when we are basically powerless against this disease?  We attach ourselves to Hashem totally by offering to him our gaiva, our feelings of self righteousness, our strength (which we now see that we do not have), and we can now cry to Hashem. Not the crying that we use to do from guilt, from self incrimination, from the brokeness of being a failure, but rather a new cry. A crying of finally realizing the emes. The emes that I have no strength, I have no chachmos,, I have no more great ideas. I only have YOU Hashem. Please now pick me up. This is the cry that Hashem answers.
  Please stay here with us, and you will see what I mean.

Welcome Tahor V'Neeman

First of all this site caters to all types men, women, Jew, non-Jew, Kipa Seruga, and Rosh Yeshiva, human & 7up (sorry).

We have all tried to "out learn" this addiction, don't we know that Torah cures everything? We have all cried our hearts out only to fail again.

Exactly why Torah alone doesn't seem to help is a long discussion, but suffice it to say that I don't believe that it makes you a heretic if it doesn't work for you.

In truth the first step as "me" and others mentioned to you is to understand that this addiction is bigger then you, that it takes a super-human (G-dly) power to beat it. You can't do it. Sheer determination, will power will not work. It's odd but it's just the opposite  what needs to be done. You have to let go. You have to Let G-d. He can help you.  You also need to employ concrete positive steps. Perhaps you want to sign up for the 90 day chart.

Finally, you need to stay upbeat, positive. The easiest way for the YH to get the upper edge is to convince you how bad & worthless you are. I assure you you are not, by posting here you are already special in fact you are on the verge of being a really really bright star.

TahorVneeman wrote on 05 Feb 2010 20:45:


Well.. I have to admit I felt the same thing at first... And there is much dispute on this forum about these issues. Nonetheless, in combination with the rest of the things in the gye handbook... As well as altering the way I study torah...  IE specifically studying portions of the torah [halacha and gemara] in my case relating to my problems at hand and figuring out how I going to pratically implement them helped a lot...

so in short.. Not only not Torah alone... but I also had to change the way in which I learn Torah.

May Hashem grant you success in this area and Torah as well.
mekubal

Tears,real tears. Ok so it is early on and who knows. But I have been doing so much better.  Just a few days but I appreciate you guys. I really feel less alone....Can't explain it but thank you....

TvN: Thanks for the update.

I've always felt there's no real handbook for real change. Change will be as individual as everyone's stories. But real tears are probably a reasonable indicator of a "real" path where "real" changes happen.  (Or as I just saw a quote elsewhere on the forum, "I don't want to avoid the obstacles; I want to be on a different highway." Amen, brother.)

Things will happen. Real things. Enjoy them. Even the tears.

Its because your heart realizes how many people out there love you for who you are and are not judgemental!!

Keep it going my friend. Wishing you all the best!