I have observed something over time in my own life and the lives of those around me that has concerned me enough to want to describe it and perhaps prevent its appearance in some lives. I am referring to a ticking time bomb that can be present after what appears to be months or years of sobriety and what appears to feel like successful recovery.
It isn’t that the Steps, the SA Fellowship, meetings, phone calls, or sponsors have somehow failed to do what they were intended to do. But that is exactly the problem. We have assumed that those things were sufficient to take us completely into the full recovery and healthy lifestyle that is described in much of the literature.
I have to admit that many of us arrive in the Fellowship with the early perspective of doing the minimal necessary to get the course completion certificate and then get back to normal life. Sometimes we are participating in order to check a box, meet a requirement, or satisfy a demand from someone unhappy with our behavior. Fortunately, many of us also find that it doesn’t work like that, and will continue with the program because we want to and need to.
The ticking time bomb is our dependence on process and procedures as the methodology for achieving long-term sobriety. It is focusing on the external processes instead of repairing and building the internals. You can plaster and paint over rotten wood all you want, but in the end, it will come crashing down. Granted, those processes and procedures did help us change our habits, adopt new healthy strategies, and establish life-giving relationships. Those processes of phone calls, attending meetings, honest sharing in meetings, working Step 10 daily, all had a great impact in our lives. But those processes alone are not enough. They served you the appetizer, but not the main course. Unfortunately, some will be quite satisfied with this stage. There is apparent change (no acting out), there has been consistent investment in recovery, and many of the worrying signs that there was something wrong seem to have faded. Some who enter this program have the goal of putting the pieces of life back together, of getting out of the doghouse and back into the bedroom, of repairing your relationship with your wife to the point that you can enjoy things in life again.
I do not blame those that feel like they agree with those sentiments. I have felt them myself and recognize the longing for normality, for less tiptoeing around subjects or topics that might set someone off. But I also recognize that I am focusing on the externals, of how my actions, thoughts, and feelings APPEAR to those around me. That is not all that different from the manipulative lies that I used to hide my addiction before. So, am I hiding my continuing brokenness in my new, acceptable set of actions and behaviors? Perhaps. Perhaps I am putting off dealing with the internals because my new externals have taken the pressure off. And that’s where the bomb lies ticking, ticking, ticking. If I am only trying to persuade others around me (my wife, my sponsor, the brothers in the fellowship) that I am doing well or being successful in order to get out of the doghouse, eventually the effort and energy I have been investing will diminish and complacency and drift will kick in. Why? We used the external motivations of our life crash, relationship crash, or marriage crash to get ourselves to finally face some unpleasant things in our lives. Once those motivations start to wane, we will back off on the gas and put in the minimal effort required. The bomb, if it goes off, is when in a careless or unguarded moment, I return to old habits, just for a short visit, and the entire cycle starts all over again, but it is worse this time. It causes all the previous efforts to be doubted. All the sincere apologies, promises, pledges are seen as suspect; fear and suspicion return, hope and trust seem to exit the relationship. It seems unfair. Can’t a person make a mistake? Not if what I am calling a mistake, a slip, is actually me returning to something I never really let go of. Maybe I was fooling myself, as well as others, and was only doing the self-preservation thing of getting my butt out of the fire.
So, what is required to not have this ticking time bomb? First is to realize that the external processes, though valuable and excellent tools, do NOT accomplish the actual work that is needed to be done IN me. I am not just what others see externally in my actions and the apparent portrayal of my feelings. I am what I truly am internally, my true feelings, my deepest beliefs, my most hidden actions. Second, is to realize what the 12-Steps have said all along. I am incapable of fixing or repairing my own life. Yes, I can learn to manage my behaviors, but I need God to root out what is wrong in my understandings and beliefs about how life operates, the lies I have believed, the feelings I have buried. I can’t even plan the curriculum for that. I don’t know where to start. What do I need to do to begin this process or stay on course? No clue. But as I seek to ask, and listen, and watch, I will see God begin to do for me what I could not do for myself.
How will I know when this ticking time bomb is defused? When I am no longer using the external processes to convince others that I am better, cured, recovered. When I am operating on new internal processes that deal with life on life’s terms, honestly, truthfully, completely. When I realize that when facing stress, or pain, or fear, the last thought on my mind was to run to my addiction or acting out. That’s when I will realize I don’t hear ticking any more.