Good evening.

This is my first post - yey! I just wanted to say that this is a great resource something that should have been online a long time ago.

I just wanted to share my experience and if it helps others, well that's just great.

So I used to watch material fairly regularly and often until I was about 22 it would end in wasting seed.

For a short time I started learning with a chevruta in the morning, 6am. I'd then walk to shacharit and the off to work. I recall at some point during this learning schedule that I was walking down the road after davening and as you do, looked at a billboard advertising something like paint removal products.

So naturally, there needs to be an image of a woman advertising the assets of the product.

But....

Rather than the image transcending into more graphical imagery (there was enough in my mind to tap into) a strange thing occurred.

MY MIND JUST BLANKED, totally blanked. I tried to tap into an erotic image but simply could not. Now I've never had that kind of experience before, almost like a filter in my head had switched on.

So what did I see instead?

Well, I had a very clear vision of a salin bag, you know the kind of thing that people are given when they are in hospital that allows fluids to get into the body.

The bag was clear and very vivid. I shook my head tried to access my bank of smut again but to no avail - I truly had a filter in place.

This lasted a good few weeks and to go through the day with pure thoughts was a revelation. I kept up my learning and the filter stayed in place. Slowly though, it made way and as I accessed things in my mind I still had a vision of the saline bag however this time the water colour had changed somewhat darker, polluted almost.

By the end of the episode,the water colour was black and I went back to my usual thoughts. but I learn't some very important things:

> Most of your addiction is in your mind - it can be turned off with a little work
> During the time when I couldn't; think of smut, my mind felt like a void - it took up so much of my conscious thought and I new it was important to fill it with Torah

It's been over 7 years since I spilt seed but I still occasionally look at material which is odd I guess.

The way I stopped the first part was by having a milestone. I was getting married and well, just didn't want to bring it into my marriage - so I stopped. Becaseu i knew after that experience all those years earlier that the behaviour pattern was simply in my head. I didn't need to act it out, didn't need to conform to what my mind wanted.

If your thinking of doing it, think about how you ALWAYS feel afterward, low, empty, beaten etc. Also remember, that these films are fake, nothing about them is real, no love, no emotion, nothing but what you are doing is very real.

So my tips to summaries are as follows:

> Try to recall how bad you'll feel after... BEFORE you think of the act
> Don't be righteous, don't think your challenge is to watch but not interfere with yourself. The challenge is not to be up late on your machine
> Keep busy, get a hobby, volunteer, learn Torah though I'd suggest learning in the morning rather than the evening personally
> Realise it's only in your head - you don't HAVE to do this at all
> Talk to Hashem. When your blood starts to bubble and you get aroused in the midst of this madness stop for a second and say - Hashem, PLEASE HELP ME NOW - I NEED YOUR STRENGTH NOW.

Be strong guys.

J

Hey EyesOnly, thanks for your post and welcome aboard. I hope you stick around for a while, because you are very much like many of us -  who need the community and what it can offer. Many yiddin here have had this problem (on far worse levels than you), and have worked completely through it (not just minimized it to an "occaisional" level).
I think you might be surprised about how nasty this habit can really be. It sounds like your underestimating the concept of an addiction when you say "it's all in the mind". Is an alcoholic's addiction all in the mind? And if it is really all in the mind, why do you just randomly find yourself "occaisonally" coming back to it? Doesn't that sound a bit strange to you? Your married, you have a sexual outlet, you don't mb, but you "find yourself looking at p**n occaisionally"? Did it ever occur to you that there might be something very wrong with this story?

I'll let you wait and see what Guard and Dov have to say, because they have a way with words when it comes to this point.
They should be posting here very soon.
Till then - It's great to have you join us, and please let us have the honor of giving you any type of help we can.

Dear Eyesonly,

Thank you for sharing your experiences.  I do agree with KG that a true addict (which you may not be) will almost certainly need to address the addiction with stronger measures.

Since this is your first post, I have the distinct honor to welcome you to the GYE forum.  So here goes!

Welcome to our community! Once you’ve arrived, there’s no turning back. Everyone here will just grab a hold of you and pull you up, up, up!

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.

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!

Dear eyesonly,

It sounds like you have no actual problem. Ashrecha, friend!

Thanks for the tips, too.
Yes, I agree that "it" is all in our heads, but to me, the word, "it", clearly needs a bit more definition, as the guy in Kolel implied. And that "it" is something that guys with a real problem that doesn't go away as easily as yours did need to admit to themselves and others, or else they don't get better.

With much love and respect,
-Dov

Hi guys,

Thanks for the welcome!

I think what's got to be clear is the following.

As mentioned in my story, I had a small period of time within which My mind had a filter experience of sort. Post that experience, I realised that for me, the issue was a mental one.

RE an alcoholic, of course it's in his mind but there is thought and action.

The reality is if guys could limit the issue to their mind without the action, they'd be considered to be making progress.

My experience HELPED me to realise that for me I COULD control my thoughts. Hashem helped me, took it away and then said , right, get on with it.

Now on a practical level, that meant watching what i watched, to the level of regular magazines etc putting strategies in place etc.

I'm not one to play down how hard this is for people to deal with, but was rather my two cents on what helped me.

Regarding watching occasionally but not doing anything, yeah it's puzzled me to be honest but it's a huge step from where I was.

I think the best advise on this site has been the one where you compartmentalise your time into things that are save to do and things that are certainly an issue and then things that lead to sin - that's great for being honest with yourself should the moment arrive.

That's my 4 cents ;-)

What your saying here, is probably the most practical advice one could possibly give someone - to help the standard struggle. Not only that, but it happens to be a generally true concept in life. Things often seem impossible, or at least much more difficult than they are in reality - before one has actually stood up to it once and experienced success, but afterwards, once you know without a doubt that you can win, it's a whole different battle.
Just realize, that many people here are in a completely different situation, and for them to enter into a day of life with a battle plan of "I will try my absolute hardest today" even if they really truly mean it, is irresponsible and asking for serious trouble. For some, a real system or recovery program specifically designed to deal with this thing is absolutely neccessary, and nothing less will suffice. That's really all there is to it (in a basic sense of course).
Please don't refrain from giving us chizuk though. Specifically, we have a Beis Medrash you can check out and add your thoughts.
Wecome again!