Eslassos,

I am asking the following. I think its pretty clear that percentage wise more frum jews join SA than other sects. What is it that drives frum jews to join SA? Is it not the fact the judiasm and its values plays a vital role in our daily lives? (It sounds like you are suggesting that its our stronger yetzer hara leads us to sin more?) If its the fact that our rules are stricter aren't our rules stricter because the torah teaches us whats more moral. Thus breaking those strict moral rules makes our life more unmanagble (whereas your secular individual deosnt feel low about masterbating thus life is not unmanagbel to him). So in essence our strong moral values bring us into SA? Lastley why can't we incorporarte it into our recovery?

waydown wrote:


Once again, hypothesize all you want, and perhaps there's merit in your logic, but please, don't make up statistics: I have been to many sa meetin's and I never saw a Jew, let alone an orthodox one. Yes, there are in Lakewood, and in Brooklyn and Monsey, but there are in thousands of other cities, and some of them don't even have a Chabad (meanin' there are hardly any Jews there).

found this:

In an effort to combat the effects of terminal uniqueness, I thought it might be interesting to provide a few lists (absolutely and completely non-scientific and 100% subjective) of the folks who show up at Sexaholics Anonymous meetings. I’ve been to a lot of meetings and I’ve met a lot of recovering sexaholics. This is the makeup of the people I’ve seen there.

If you have a “little porn problem” but don’t find yourself on any of these lists, well, you should write a book about it! Congratulations! Now your job is to help the rest of us. Help us overcome this thing that is destroying our lives. Or maybe give this whole idea of terminal uniqueness some serious thought.

Without further ado and in no particular order:

Top Five (or So) Religions in SA:

Catholics
Mormons
Other Christians of all shades including evangelicals, Baptists, Methodists, Episcopalians and quite a few other denominations
Jews
Muslims
Hindus
Buddhists
Those who are “spiritual but not religious”
Casual believers in some higher power
Agnostics
Atheists

Top Five (or So) Jobs, Professions and Occupations in SA

Doctors from surgeons to psychiatrists
Lawyers whether litigators, government, private, small-firm, big-firm, family law, criminal law, transactional, etc.
Teachers (primary, secondary and higher education)
Truck drivers, bus drivers, mechanics
Office workers
Programmers, IT
Artists, photographers
CEOs, officers and executives
Self-employed
Entrepreneurs
HR
Writers, authors, bloggers
Full-time and part-time workers
Unemployed
Retired

Top Five (or So) Educational Backgrounds in SA

PhDs
MDs
JDs
MBAs
BSs and BAs
AAs
High School diplomas
Less than high school diplomas
Self-taught

Not Quite Top Five Priesthood Offices of Mormons Who Attend SA

Elders
High priests
Priests and prospective elders
None

These are useful lists for me because I find myself on each of them. There are other guys at SA just like me. I am not unique. I am a recovering sex addict just like a lot of other people.

I'll try to answer respond point by point.

waydown wrote:

I have no idea about the statistics. Do you have a source?



My meaning was only that we have more restrictions. There's a cliche called Catholic guilt the same as Jewish guilt. The guilt can be a factor in making life unmanageable, but it's not productive, and I suspect may not be what Hashem wants from us even if it was productive.


That's a humdinger. There's got to be a hundred people here who can answer that better than I, but here's my 2 cents.
I have a feeling that we are not only spiritually but also emotionally weaker than previous generations so guilt tends to become counter-productive.
A component of lust addiction is being self-centered which precludes a connection to the Torah that is strong enough to influence our behavior. So first we have to get rid of the parts of our character that interfere - selfishness, fear, resentment. Once those are out of the way, then we have a chance of implementing the values we were taught.
Additionally, those negative traits are what drives escapism, so it's a double whammy.

Enough philosophizing or Cordnoy won't let me back into his calls

eslaasos wrote:


At this point, I'll let anyone back on the calls - even me!

cordnoy wrote:


B'karov.

I appreciate ur point cordy, and i may be wrong, this is my speculation and experience. I also feel defensive based on ur posts. my feelings aren't ur problems and it's probably my s*** that is causing these feeling but ur all inclusive post i feel was directed at me and i wouldn't have done that. even if i agree with the bolded statement, i was never contradicting that.

i will ask someone who has been sober for 24 yrs as to what he saw in terms of the ppl in SA.

i know at a certain jewish spirituality weekend we had 370 ppl (around 45% women so around 200 addicts) and at the last SA national event there was between 400 and 450 ppl.

Shlomo24 wrote:


t'was not directed at you, and it was a direct quote from a site.
the only thin' I did was bold the last sentence.
I specifically said I am not gettin' involved in the philosophy of the debate.
I was commentin' on the statistic regarding Jews in SA.

eslaasos wrote:


Amen v'amen!

Just to throw another monkey wrench into the ring... There are other groups for sex addicts besides SA, (SAA, SLAA, etc.). however SA has the strictest definition of "sobriety" as compared to the other groups, so maybe frum people are attracted to it because it most closely matches what they aspire to from a religious standpoint. It would be interesting to compare stats of SA membership to those of the other groups.

Cords noone is denying that there are lots and lots of other sects in SA. And perhaps at your meetings there were no other frum jews present. I don't think its an hypothosis when I see on the SA website a strong demand in jewish neighboorhoods. Of course there are only a few strongly populated jewish niefghboorhoods in the USA. Therefore the ovewhelmingly majorty of SA meetings have nothing to do with frum yidden. But I think its clear that within jewish nieghboorhoods that demand is far greater. Just look at the website and see for yourself.

Statistics is a bad choice of words because thats always heresay and you bend it. I think its more like quite obvious just from going on the SA site that within jewish neighboorhoods the demand is higher.

Its similar to buying diapers. I would venture to say that pampers sells more diapers in the small section of willamsburg verse say shepsheadbay. Or in Lakewood verse Toms River. That doesn't mean that ist primary customer base is frum yidden. But if you compare neighboorhood by nieghboorhood who buys more?

Eslassos,

Re do I have a source?

Yes my source is the SA website. You think its purely by chance that out of the only two towns in NJ that SA meetings are held one of them is Lakewood?

Oh and re guilt I'll simply refer you to the link below. But suffice it to say guilt is a good thing not a bad thing.

guardyoureyes.com/the-gye-program/the-30-principles/21-principles-for-the-struggle/item/principle-18?category_id=279

WD did you check the link Cordnoy provided? Unless I'm missing something there are more than 2 towns in NJ where there are SA meetings.

I don't have access to Cords link. My filter blocks it. Here is where I went,

www.sa.org/top/United%20States%20of%20America/New%20Jersey/

Afterwards click on NY on Maryland and check it out.

The link he provided lists no fewer than 30 different cities in NJ that host SA meetings.
You can even get to that page by clicking on one of the links on the page that you yourself provided.