People! Use Jack's experience so that you don't have to get your own, the hard way!

In SA they speak about lust as being the culprit for our downfall.  Life will be full of ups and downs.
The purpose of recovery is to understand how to cope with these ups and downs.  Your journey has just begun and slipping is part of the journey sometimes.  BUT that is no excuse to continue to
tempt lust because the next time a person has painful feelings they will feel entitled to act out again.  And repeated acting out is not the road to recovery.  The road to recovery is not paved with good intentions, it's paved with sobriety.  Not acting out and not putting oneself in a situation where they are tempted to act out.

So I applaud your courage in realizing the slip for what it is, a lesson in the reality of this addiction.  All falls in life are learning experiences.  But we cannot keep heading for the open pit in the road... we have to take another path home.

As the saying goes: "Look not where you fell, look where you slipped."

from living each day nisan-iyar, p. 17 in the pamphlet.
he quotes tosfos in pesachim 2a about why the laws regarding chametz on pesach are so stringent.because chametz is all around us all year long, we are used to it and the slightest contact with it on pesach will cause us to slip.therefore, we must obliterate ALL, and the torah means ALL, traces of chametz, so we'll be absolutely sure not to stumble.this can surely relate to us, can't it?

I got an e-mail today from Yaakov L. he writes:

Dear GUI,

I spoke with Rav Wolfson this past evening about your site. For 10 minutes. His face was glowing. He said the same thing I did... minai u'bai shadei bai narga.
(Which means something along the lines of "we use the thing itself to destroy it")

I sent this to Boruch and he replied as follows. (And Jack, this is an answer to what you wrote above)


The Alcoholics wrote back in 1939 in AA p. 101

"Assuming we are spiritually fit, we can do all sorts of things alcoholics are not supposed to do. People have said we must not go where liquor is served; we must not have it in our homes; we must shun friends who drink; we must avoid moving pictures which show drinking scenes; we must not go into bars; our friends must hide their bottles if we go to their houses; we mustn’t think or be reminded about alcohol at all.
      We meet these conditions every day. An alcoholic who cannot meet them, still has an alcoholic mind; there is something the matter with his spiritual status. His only chance for sobriety would be some place like the Greenland Ice Cap, and even there an Eskimo might turn up with a bottle of scotch and ruin everything! Ask any woman who has sent her husband to distant places on the theory he would escape the alcohol problem.
      In our belief any scheme of combating alcoholism which proposes to shield the sick man from temptation is doomed to failure. If the alcoholic tries to shield himself he may succeed for a time, but usually winds up with a bigger explosion than ever. We have tried these methods. These attempts to do the impossible have always failed."

And that was exactly the experience of my accountability partner and I. For over a year my partner and I spent serious money, hundreds of dollars, on the best filters, accountability software etc. and our system was a real failure for a very long time, no matter what we tried.

As we made improvements, so we found loopholes, and even now it is very far from foolproof.

It only started becoming very successful when we stopped using it as a "preventative" and started using it as a "heker".

Think of what Chazal tell us about Palti ben Layish, Sanhedrin 19b.

כתיב פלטי וכתיב פלטיאל אמר ר' יוחנן פלטי שמו ולמה נקרא שמו פלטיאל שפלטו אל מן העבירה מה עשה נעץ חרב בינו לבינה אמר כל העוסק בדבר זה ידקר בחרב זה

He was misyached every evening with Michal and yet he was never nichshal because of a sword that he placed between the two of them, saying whoever bypasses this sword should be run through by it.

Was that sword a preventative? Certainly not. Nothing stopped them at all. The sword was there as a heker.

Our system is our sword. It is only a sword because it is totally wholehearted, it is the best system we could create. Half-hearted systems are worthless. They do nothing and they show nothing.

So once we had created our absolute best system, we realized just what it was, it was a heker, a reminder that we are wholehearted and serious.

That way I was no longer tempted to look for loopholes, it was not there as a prevention, we knew that it could never prevent us and so it was no longer a kuntz to break through something that we anyway knew was not perfect.

It was no longer a kuntz to break through something that was a reminder that I am serious and that I do not want to break through it.

guardureyes wrote on 04 Apr 2009 21:52:

This is such an important chiluk.  I, too, began understanding this chiluk in the past two months.  Thank you for sharing.  If a person finds himself trying to break through his filter, r"l, he is far from recovery.  If a person sits at his computer and does not even think about porn and does not even attempt, then he know he is on the road to recovery. We need to publicize this more.

i cant get on this site at work anymore - it's filtered out. so i'm in the library and want to tell all of you that i'm doing ok - no falls since that one about a month ago.that's almost 8 months with only one slip.i have joned an eating disorder group - so i'm starting a new 90 day trek with a different addiction.i've already done it once, so this time should be a bit easier - after all, i know what to expect. jack

We love you Jack. Keep in touch whenever you can...

thanks guard, you truly move me with the messages from your heart - they are nichnas into MY heart.

there is a very interesting comment in the beginning of the mesilas yisharim.the Ramchal says that people spend too much time learning and not enough time on figuring out what they're supposed to be doing here what do you think he means?

Hey Jack, you're using Torah to bring out a point! I like that. 

wow - it's been 9 months since i found GUE.it seems like only yesterday that i 'stumbled' across an advertisement for GUE on the yeshivaworld.com. i must say that the strong desire to sin is almost not there anymore.but, as i said, i have to watch out for triggers.depression is a big one.and having no structure in the day, like on a day when i'm off work, can also be a trigger - batala mayve liday shimum. and depression we know from the egel hazahav - the jews got depressed when they 'saw' moshe's coffin.how much more is this true for addicts. take what i said above for 'normal' people (people without addictions), and multiply by 1000 for addicts.addicts are like everyone else - only more so, much more so.and one more thing - dont look back, and dont look (too much) forward. those times are not in our control.the only thing we have control over is NOW.

Hi Jack Hatzadik! You're 100% right and it couldn't have been said better!

to all the singles out there:
if you think r' guard was making it up when he said that being single is easier, take it from me - he's right! because i daven and learn BETTER when my wife is unavailable. when she's available, all i can think of is when the next time we'll be together.it consumes me.so - for us addicts, being single is actually easier to give up the addiction! so do it now, while it's easier. guard was right again! jack

ok - here's the dope. some of this is from michelle, some of this is from my other experiences with therapy, and some of it is just my own thinking. What purpose does addiction serve? Because we wouldn't do it if it didn't serve a purpose. I guess you could say 'ayn adam chotay vlo lo'. Addictions serve to remove the necessity for us to feel reality, because reality for people with emotional problems is too difficult to deal with - so we obsess, we do things repetetively - over and over, we dont have to feel, we dont have to feel anything. In extreme cases, a difficult reality may lead to suicide. We have to learn how to feel again - so we dont need the addictions anymore. In my humble opinion, ALL 12-13 year olds are emotionally weak and can be formed very easily by their environment - that's why it's so important for a kid to have the right environment. If a 12 year old kid from the home of the godol hador sees a porn mag, you think he'll throw it in the garbage? Maybe - there are no 100 percent rules about anything. But usually he will devour it. That's why the age of the ben sorer umoreh is so important - we can tell from that age what will be in the future. If it is not dealt with at an early age, the emotional problems stick with us into adulthood, and we need ways to deal with it. Unfortunately, addictions is one of the ways. So there are all types of anonymous groups - debtors anonymous, AA, OA, EDA (eating disorders anonymous), you name it - and it's there. You want to come up with another one - drawing-on-the-wall-with-a-crayon anonymous. You know, eating can be an obsession not only through over-eating, there is also LACK of eating - this, too, is an addiction and an obsession. Some people won't eat one raisin because they think they're too fat. Emotionally healthy people DO NOT NEED addictions or obsessions. They will see a porn mag and throw it right in the garbage and say - 'TRASH!' Or they will enjoy their food without feeling guilty. Yes, there are people like that. At 11 or 12 years old is the last time we have control over our kids - after that, you better hope you gave them the right stuff, because if not, all sorts of things can happen, rachmana litzlan. Most addictions start at 12-13 years old, you think this is a coincidence? So what to do? Along comes AA and ingeniously sets up a system to help people deal with their addictions in the most brilliant way imaginable - it's nothing less than a stroke of genius. Anonymous group support, a system of steps. Where else can you find complete strangers coming into a room with people they never saw before and unleash their most secret of secrets? And break down in tears in front of total strangers? For the first time in their life, they have a safe atmosphere, where they will not be judged, where they can be understood by people who are going through the same thing they are. Because people who are 'emotionally healthy' can not understand people who are not. Even therapists who are not trained in addictions have no clue about addicitve behaviors. I should know, I tried. Michelle Rapapport is the therapist from Tennessee who introduced me to the 90 day concept on the phone call about 9 months ago. The 90 day concept has become the centerpiece of this forum. We have to thank Elya K. for asking her to be the guest group leader on that call. It was on that call that I took it upon myself to try the 90 days. And you want to know something? It works. It works if you work it, so keep coming back. Go to meetings, open up there, get a sponsor, you'll only be helping yourself and your family. The 12 steps are ingenious. Your life may be on the line. You think I'm over-dramatizing? You think people can't die from addictions? Just get caught with a prostitute when the criminals come in to rob her. If you're there, you'll get it too. There are people on this forum who got caught, and their lives are not the same. There was a story with a bays yakov girl who had to marry the person she was baby-sitting for because he got her pregnant - an 18 year old girl with a 40 year old man! And he had to get divorced from his first wife. (Guard, is that the way it went?) And some people are lucky, and never got caught. Which group do YOU want to belong to? Sometimes an understanding wife may be a problem, because it doesn't let the person hit bottom (so says Rabbi Twersky in 'Addicitive Thinking'). Try anorexia - you think this can't lead to death? Or bulemia, throwing up food, it can tear your esophagus and you can bleed to death. I'm sorry for saying these things, but the rashi in achrei mos speaks to us - the first rashi about nadav and avihus' deaths. This is d--- serious, folks.