Mountain biking is different from road riding, and I have the scars to prove it. Disclaimer: I am a baby beginner at MTB. I’m also a baby beginner at detachment, and I have the scars from that too.

The Al-Anon pamphlet on detachment was the first piece of CAL that made sense to me. All those “Not to’s” were things I’d done, especially with Kid Qualifiers 1 and 2. Seeing it in print took away the shame of thinking I was the only one who’d ever done such crazy things to cushion the bottom for my alcoholics. That pamphlet became my lifeline.

But my black-and-white thinking took over. All by myself, I got the wrong idea that detachment was a state I could achieve. Turns out, it’s not a level of recovery to unlock or a merit badge to earn. There’s nothing one-and-done about it. It’s a tool. And developing skill in using any tool takes practice, practice, practice.

Theory ≠ Practice

Bike riding isn’t a mystery. Even those who have never done it can give a pretty good description of what it involves. Pedal, balance, steer, repeat. Not hard, right?

But there’s a big difference between knowing about riding a bike and knowing how to ride a bike. This difference gives rise to the Cooking Channel illusion. Ever watch a baking show and think, Yeah, I could do that? Eggs, flour, butter, sugar, mix. Easy as pie–whoops, cake! You can list the ingredients and describe the steps, maybe even remember the oven temperature. It’s easy to think you know how to make the cake.

Bake the cake, ride the bike

When do you know how to make the cake? When you can talk about it, describe it, or list the ingredients? Nope. You know how to make the cake when you have, in fact, produced actual cake.

In the same way, knowing a lot of bike-related vocabulary or being able to describe the process doesn’t mean I can ride the bike. Riding the bike means I can ride the bike. How articulately I can talk about riding proves nothing.

Detachment: not a spectator sport

Learning to practice detachment doesn’t come from reading about it, talking about it, or listening to others share about it. Those things help immensely. But it was easy to fool myself into believing that just because I agreed with everything I heard, I could do it. (It’s easy to fool myself into believing anything that I think will save me from discomfort, but that’s another post.)

I could say all the right things about detachment. But actually practicing it took–well, practice. Kind of like riding a bike. And like mountain biking, that practice has its share of bumpy moments.

I took up both mountain biking and detachment at around the same time, and made all the mistakes along the way. (Pro tip: Start younger than your fifth decade.) Some of the parallels:

Being familiar with the trail helps

Whenever possible, I walk a new trail before I ride it. Knowing at least the major twists and turns, and identifying potential trouble spots ahead of time, really helps, because once I’m riding, everything happens just a little too fast for my reflexes sometimes. But I have to walk it with the upcoming ride in mind. Otherwise I’ll focus on the butterflies and the clouds and not the bumps in the trail.

In the same way, how I listen at meetings matters. When I listen to others with my own situation in mind, sometimes I can ‘walk the trail’ ahead of time. Hearing how someone else handled a tough moment or held an important boundary in difficult circumstances can give me some idea how to meet similar challenges when they come my way. The details may differ, but this disease manifests in a lot of the same crappy ways. I can learn the trail as I think about how I could apply their experiences to my own life.

Once I’ve ridden a trail a few times, it’s exponentially easier. Handling the twists and turns of alcoholism gets easier too, with experience, if I make the effort to learn from that experience. It’s not automatic! The hard part for me is avoiding the “oh, no, here we go again” panic. I have to be deliberate about reminding myself how I want to respond differently.

For example: A trail I often travel is the drunk call from Kid Qualifier #1. It took me about a zillion drunk calls to see that…drum roll please…there is more than one way to handle a drunk call. I can answer and listen for as long as he wants to talk, which is the equivalent of hitting myself on the head with a hammer. I can answer, listen briefly, and disengage with kindness. I can answer and tell him to call me back when he’s sober (which, unfortunately, is pretty much never). I can let it go to voicemail and call him back when I feel ready. I can turn off my phone.

I have options. But seeing those options, and choosing the one that works for me in the moment, is hard. Bad memories rush in and my heart rate triples when the phone rings. I have to walk that trail ahead of time by thinking out my choices in a calm moment, reasoning them out with someone else, and maybe even practicing that conversation with a program friend.

But don’t assume it won’t change

A little rain can turn yesterday’s easy trail into today’s crash site. Conditions change. However many times I’ve ridden this particular trail, I have to be aware that there might be surprises today.

The path of this insidious disease changes too. However many times I’ve been through ___________ (fill in the blank with today’s stomachache: verbal abuse, ER visits, drunk calls, requests for money, shenanigans on the roof), I can’t assume that my experience will carry me through. There is no substitute for paying attention. And where my attention needs to be is on me: my feelings, my responses, my needs. Because when I trip up, when I can’t cope, is when I’m not in touch with myself. Then I get blindsided by my reactions. Then I act in ways that contribute to the problem.

It’s all about the approach

My most recent MTB crash happened–true story–on the smooth, wide, easy, level dirt road from the trailhead to the parking lot. There was ONE bump in that whole half-mile, and I hit it. Cue unscheduled departure from the planet surface. I flew, and ate dirt. An MTB friend laughed and told me: “You thought it was going to be easy and you stopped paying attention too soon.” No joke! Expectations are always the problem.

(Incidentally, one of the many reasons I adore my sponsor is that when I told her about this crash, she asked the right first question: “Is your bike okay?” That woman gets it.)

Detachment is the same. I can only detach when I’m fully present. If I’m ignoring my feelings, if I’m making assumptions, if I’m not paying attention, I’m going to eat it, and hard. I can only detach from things I’m aware of.

And guess what? That crash was totally avoidable. Even though I didn’t see the bump until too late, I could’ve bounced over it instead of crashing if I’d been in the right position on the bike to take it.

In the same way, I can handle a crisis much better if I’m in position to take a bump: working a strong program, support network in place, not letting my physical or emotional batteries get too low. Somehow bad things always happen on days when I skipped lunch, the gas gauge is on the big red E, and my phone is at 4%. I can’t control when crises happen, but I can keep my battery charged.

Everybody crashes

If you’ve never crashed, you must be new. Everybody crashes. My inaugural crash happened a whole five minutes into my first ride. Apparently it’s important to, you know, keep eyes on the trail.

Crashes are all about momentum. Not enough, and you’ll know the shame of the low-speed tipover. Too much, and you’ll experience the thrill of flying, right over the handlebars. Detachment is kind of like that too.

Crashing isn’t failure. No matter how much it hurts, it’s not defeat. It’s learning.

If I look back on how I handled the latest alcoholic B.S. and see things I wish I hadn’t done, I have choices. I can wallow in self-blame and guilt, ‘should’ on myself, play the “if only” tapes on repeat. If I do this–and I have, many times–I change nothing about the situation. I’m only making it much harder for myself to recover. And anytime I choose not to recover, I’m choosing to contribute to the disease. Self-punishment only makes me sicker. Labeling myself a failure doesn’t stop the bleeding either.

On the other hand, I can choose to get up, and if I’m really hurt, I can let program friends help me to my feet. I can seek some first aid. Meetings are great first aid. So are program calls. So is journaling. So is prayer. So is self-care. The best first aid of all is gratitude. I can, by my Higher Power’s grace, with the help of the fellowship, do the things that will help me heal.

Then I can look at the instant replay in the light of the program–not to hit myself over the head with my mistakes, but to see how I could do better next time. And if the honest answer is, “I did the best I could,” well, it’s acceptance time. Some crashes on some trails are unavoidable. What matters is how I pick myself up. There will be cussing and crying involved–that’s okay. Then it’s back on the trail.

I’m grateful for all the hands that have helped me up and all the brave souls that have ridden these trails ahead of me. Together, we can make it.

Keep coming back!