The Primary Purpose Group That Studies the Book Line by Line – Charlie P.

I want to assure you that everything he said about me is true. I was in the parking lot this afternoon. Is it okay if I raise this up? Hi, everybody. I'm Charlie Parker. I am a grateful, recovered alcoholic. Wow! What an honor to be here. Kirk, nice job on how it works. I feel you. I've been coming to this conference for a long time and took a few years off there for a while when I was hanging out in New York but it's a real honor to get to talk somewhere that you have been coming so long. I mean, the whole time – I've always been big on conferences and I always say that people don't go to conferences to get their court cards signed. You know, it's nothing against court cards but, you know, I've always found it to be where people are drawn to the solution and drawn to of the program and are here because they want to be. To be up here is a real honor. I said my name's Charlie. I'm a grateful alcoholic. My sobriety date is March 22nd of 1985. I have a home group. It's the primary purpose group of Alcoholics Anonymous in Austin, Texas. We invite you if you're ever in Austin on a Tuesday night to come see us. We've been running about 150, 175 people on Tuesday nights studying the big book line by line. And it's a great group. And my sponsor is Mark H. And then I think I've got most everything out of the way. I'll get to Katie here a little bit later, hopefully. I want to thank everybody on the board and anybody. You know, now I'm in a great position here. First of all, it's Friday night, so I get to be the first one to go. Second of all I wasn't even supposed to be telling my story. You know so if it's okay that's wonderful and if it stinks it's Joe's fault for having open heart surgery. But I was slated to do steps 1, 2, and 3 and I've been really anxious about that for about nine months. You know, about how I was going to get one, two, and three all into one hour. Because, I mean, I can easily talk for an hour about the nature of the disease. And then, you know, step one, and then step three. And then they called about a week ago and said, do you want to do the talk on Friday night? And I said, well, I'd be happy. I said I'll do the steps. I'll go through the steps and I'll talk. I'll say, I'll just do the top. I'll give you both if you want or whatever. And he goes, well it would be too much to ask for you to do both of them. I'm like, oh, no, it wouldn't. That would actually be quite a comfort. If you run over, you can just carry it on into the talk. I really am grateful to anybody that had anything to do with this conference coming together. I've been around AA enough to know that there's a lot of work that goes into putting one of these things on. I know there's lots of people that worked really hard getting this thing to come together. Also, if it's like the groups that I go to, I also know there's a lot of people that didn't do a darn thing but have a lot of ideas about how it could have been done just a little bit better. That's the fellowship I crave. You know, they say tell your experience strength and hope and in the doctor's opinion he says for a message to interest and hold an alcoholic it has to have depth and weight meaning that i can't just tell you a bunch of theory or stuff that i've studied out of the book we're supposed to be coming out of our experience it reminds me of the guy that's driving down the road and he sees a sign for a talking dog for sale and he goes up to the door and knocks on the door and he says uh you still have the talking dog and the guy says well yeah he's around back and he walks around back and there's a dog laying there and he goes so you you can speak English the dogs as well I certainly can and he says how did you pick that up he said well when I was a pup I started picking up on the English language and I started developing some of the nuances later and I got to tell you I really had a fabulous life fabulous life he said you know I've been involved with the Drug Enforcement Administration for about 15 years and I've never taken place in the world and I've probably been around the world 15 times and and what's even more interesting is to some of my pups are multilingual and have gotten into a diplomacy and and you know I've been ambassadors post and so because it's just it's been a tremendous life and the guy he says well it's a real cool visiting with him he goes back around front where the guys still up on the porch and he says how much do you want for a dog like that? And the guy goes, I don't know, what, 20 bucks? He goes, why would you sell a dog likes that for 20 bucks and the guy says, none of that crap If he told you it's true. So up here, it doesn't matter how good the story is if it's not from my experience. I hope to talk to you a little bit about that, you know. But, you know, the book says our stories disclose what it used to be like, what I used to me like, what happened and what I'm like now. For me, and the way my story goes, I kind of have to talk about what I use to be like, what happened, and then what happened. And then what happen, and then what I am like now because I've had some different levels of involvement in this fellowship. But I guess let's just roll on into it. I come from a pretty normal family. I grew up in Dallas, Texas during the baby boom. I was born in the mid-50s, and there were 61 children on the block that I grew up on, so it really was the baby bloom. But, I mean, my friend Jim says that normal is a setting on a washing machine, But, I mean, it was a fairly normal family. And, you know, there was no drinking in my house, and I was the only alcoholic in the family. I'm still the only alcoholic in the little nuclear family. But my mother was a first-grade schoolteacher for 42 years, so I was very well prepared for the first grade. You know, I made flashcards and all that stuff. I look back at my parenting skills, and I go, I didn't even stick a toe in the water compared to what my folks were doing. But I held it together pretty good through, gosh, you know, probably up until about the fifth grade. Anyway, you Know, I mean, I was rocking along pretty good. But I don't know about anybody else. Did anybody else grow up under the burden of potential? Oh, my God. You know, the whole time it was like, why can't you live up to your potential? Why can't she be more like Charles Moliere across the street and just live up to your potention? I remember thinking, you know, I'm flattered by the statement, but I'm really not holding back that much. I hate to disappoint you, but this is pretty much my best shot. You know, I was going along pretty good, you know, and I was involved in all the sports and high academics and all that stuff. But to get to the drinking part, I didn't start drinking until I was 16 years old. And there was a time, you Know, it's funny because back then that was kind of young to start drinking 16 a ninth grade now it's not even young to stop you know I mean you know you got you got people picking up desire chips at like 8 I mean much love for the young people and hey I'm not I'm knocking anybody but you know you just look around for me it started at 16 years old and I probably didn't I didn't need this fellowship until I was 17 years old, so I had a good year of controlled drinking. But you know, I don't have enough time to really talk a lot about my drinking but I have to tell enough to qualify so I like to try and weave it in to what the book says about what's wrong with it because I spent years in the program of Alcoholics Anonymous, saying my name's Charlie and I'm an alcoholic. And I didn't even know what it meant. You know, I just said, I knew everybody else said they were alcoholic and I knew I drank a lot and had a lot of trouble as a result. Hope to get later to the part about physical allergy and mental obsession but there's a lot pressure off of them because I love the way they do the speakers here at this conference and then they have step-speakers because I usually take up a good bit of my talk talking about steps one and step two and step three and the nature of the disease and that sort of thing. And I'm happy to say that right from my home group tonight, we've got Blind Dave doing steps one, two, and three tonight. And if you've never experienced Dave doing the steps, it's just tremendous. In fact, I'd go so far as to say it's the best you've ever heard ever in the history of this conference, probably in the History of Alcoholics Anonymous. So I don't think anyone has ever done the steps as well as Dave. I mean, in fact, if it's not the best you've ever heard, I'd think of it as a disappointment to our host and an embarrassment to our home group. But, you know, so that really gives you something to look forward to later. I love Dave. I really do. You're going to enjoy that a lot. But, you know, the way my drinking went, it would be really macho to stand up here and say that from the time I was 16 until I stopped drinking at the age of 28 that I drank a fifth of whiskey every day. But that wouldn't be true. But the thing is that it's absolutely true for my story. And this isn't true for – a lot of people held it together a little better than I did. But from the time I was 16 until the time I stopped I can promise you with every fiber of my being that I never turned down the opportunity to get loaded one time under any circumstances for any reason. There was never one time where somebody said hey how about this and I'd say oh no I'm going to have to pass you know it's my mother's birthday today or I have to be somewhere in February or you know I mean you know never one time never ever one time it just never happened there was a lot of people that that wasn't their experience but for me I was I was all about from the first time I ever got felt the buzz of alcohol I remember thinking we are gonna do this a lot you know and because it did something for me that I didn't even know it needed to happened but I'd been walking around with a black hole inside of me since elementary school and something that made me feel different from everybody that made feel apart from everybody made me feel like I had to outperform you in order to feel equal to you and and I was completely self-centered and self-obsessed and living like that you need to drink as soon as you can get your hands on one you know but for me it was at 16 and boy it did something you know but there were periods where it was kind of going all right you know, but then it started getting sloppy and most of you have probably experienced that. You know I want to welcome while I'm thinking about it how many Al-Anons are here tonight? Fantastic! When I sobered up, it was really cute to tell jokes about Al-Anon's. And I never thought that was funny. It never made sense to me, and it's not funny to me now. I mean, it's the only group of people that loves us. You know? I mean... And that ain't easy. You know, I mean. I've got an Al-Anon story but I'll try to get to it later okay before we go any further I've gotta tell you one other thing I've GOT a little ADD working up here so my brain goes off on little bunny trails sometimes and when I tell you that we're gonna get back to something a little later all that means is this is an inappropriate time in the talk to introduce that piece, but when I say we're going to get back to that later, we're probably not coming back. There's about a 10% chance that I'll pull it back around. I'm always so excited when I do. I'll be like, God dang, I actually brought it back around, but I should probably go ahead and tell the Al-Anon story anyway before I get any further. I'm trying to make this as fast as possible. When I first sobered up, my sister was getting married and my father went to Al-Anon and my mother never did. She didn't need it. Just ask her. So my dad was going to Al Anon and anyway my sister was getting married and I could work my mother like a rented mule. I remember calling her up one day and i said okay mom i've been thinking you know there it is i said you know for the wedding i was going to rent a tuxedo and you know in texas it's okay to wear boots with a tauxedo so i was thinking instead of wasting the money listen how i shake this up instead of wasted the money renting those rubber shoes i thought we could buy me a pair of boots i'm still living in a halfway house at this point i said i was drinking we could by me some boots and then i'd have them after the wedding. And my mother said, okay, you know, it's a good plan. And so I went out boot shopping and I called back to the house to report in. And I said, um, I told my dad, my dad answered the phone this time. And i told my Dad, I said I've been out boot-shopping and I found some boots I like. I said now they got some Dan Post lizards that are $175 and they're pretty nice. I said, but the ones I really like are these Lucchese elephant boots and they're $400. And this is in 1984. And my dad says, Charlie, I want you to have the best boots that money can buy. He says, I don't care if they're 200 or 400 or even a thousand dollars, just as long as you can afford them. I have you guys to thank for that. Yeah, so there's some fine pictures at my sister's house of me wearing rubber shoes. But that was my first experience with Alan on, and I love you guys. I'm glad you're here. As we went along, I said it started getting sloppy. This is a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous. I believe heavily in the spirit of singleness of purpose, and when I'm at an AA podium, I try not to talk about outside substances but I had a lot of experience with things other than alcohol and the guess the best way to shape it up was the guys that I drank with thought that I was doing way too many drugs and the guys that I did drugs with were shocked by how much I drank you know so everybody thought Charlie was getting too loaded, you know. And it always reminds me, there's a band called Aerosmith, and I don't think this is breaking their ending, but several of them were in recovery, and they said they knew they had a problem when Motley Crue told them they were getting too loading. You know? You know, you guys need to back it down just a little bit, you know. That's kind of the way it was for me, and that's all I'm going to say about that. But it started getting sloppy, and I crossed an invisible line somewhere where I lost the power of choice and control. I don't know when it happened. I think that's why they call it an invisible lion. But, you know, somewhere along the line, I lost a power of choices and control in my drinking. And the book talks about that a lot. I love this book. And all this is here is a large print copy of the big book that a friend of mine had leather-bound for me. It's probably my most prized possession, and there's a lot of good stuff in here, and I hope to talk about some of that later. We'll see about that. But somewhere along the line, it became different. It wasn't just about partying and stuff. I'm going to have to come out of this. If anybody talks to Mark Houston, would you tell him that I wore a coat and tie? I've got to tell you, most of my experience before I got to the program in a coat and tie was my job was to stand there with my hands at my side. And when I got nudged, I'd say, no contest, Your Honor. That's just my experience. But, you know, it started getting kind of sloppy. And the things, you know, it started getting where people weren't as excited about seeing me coming. And I started – here, honey. Everybody say hi to Katie. That's my hero right there. I'm definitely going to talk about her a little bit later. Oh, that's a new world. Get a little oxygen in the brain. We'll be all right here. Sloppy. And I start, you know, it's, I like to talk about the pawn shops when I talk about the things getting, I don't know about anybody else, but I love pawn shops. I loved pawn shops, I loved the whole equation of pawn shops because it was so pure, you know? I mean, you walk in, I've never once had a pawn broker look at me and go, good God, Charlie, what are you going to do with this money? You know, or weren't you just in here this morning? You know. You know any of that stuff it was always just walk in with the deer rifle and walk out with the money. And really a great deal. Only one thing though. I didn't own a lot of stuff. So I was forced to pawn stuff that didn't belong to me. And that creates hard feelings in your family and friends and stuff. But I would start pawing and stuff, and just I had so many good plans. You know, God knows drunks can put a plan together, you know. And most of our plans work really well until they stop working, you Know. And the plan with this one was, you pawn the stuff. You had 90 days to pick it up. So sometime during a 90-day period, you had to pull a scam big enough to go get everything out of the pawn shop. And then you could roll for another 90 days. And it was a pretty good plan. Except for I had lost the power of choice and control in my drinking. One night I claimed hail damage on this little 240Z I was driving back then. I mean, wherever it hailed, I was there. You know, I mean... I'd be watching the news and they'd say there was hail in Brownwood last night. And the next morning I'd been on the phone going, Man, I wasn't driving through Brownwood yesterday! You wouldn't believe what happened. But I get this check for the hail damage on this car. And I never tell that story at detox centers. I don't want to give anybody any ideas. But I got this check to get everything out of the pawn shop, and I came out of a blackout. I'm a blackouts drinker. I thought that's the way everybody drank, but I used to blackout several times a week on a regular basis. I would drink to blackouts because oblivion was always my goal there towards the end. But this time, though, I came out of a five-day blackout. Five days don't remember a thing. And I was sitting on the edge of the bed at my parents' house. I should tell you that I was so poorly treated as a child that I finally ran away from home for good at the age of 27. I mean it. Never went back. But I was in and out of their house until I was 27 years old. And, you know, this time I came out of that blackout and I had $8 in my pocket and this big old gangster wad of pawn tickets. I hadn't gotten a darn thing out of the pawn shop. And I should warn you, I'm a big guy. I ride Harleys. I do all that stuff. But I am liable to cry like a little girl in a pink dress sometimes over here. So if I don't get through this one, I never know when it's coming. Katie always says that I do the same thing whenever I start crying. I always go, wow, didn't see that one coming. You know, but here we go. I would have to go to my father and say, Dad, if we act now, I can get you a really good deal on all of your stuff. I say that like it's a joke with Al-Anon's in the room I gotta tell you that's the only way I can get through that without crying my dad was a good man and nobody gave him his stuff and here's his son out pawning it you know and what we would have to do and the reason I like to tell this story when we deal with the loss of choice and control is because this was in Dallas, Texas. It's a big town. You don't just get in the car and go to the pawn shop. It was, okay dad, we've got to go over here on East Grand and pick up your shotgun over on Buckner Boulevard and the metal detectors are out on Beltline and then we need to go over to Oak Cliff to pick up the sterling silver. So it was all day in the car with me and my dad and all that shame. and as we're riding along I would say Dad, I swear to God I will never do this again and if I was lying to that guy, I didn't know it because I meant it with every fiber of my being and that's what I'm talking about when I talk about the loss of the power of choice and control i could not choose whether or not i was going to drink and i couldn't control how much i was gonna drink once i started drinking and that's the nature of the disease of alcoholism they will talk a lot more about the physical allergy coupled with the mental obsession but it's those two working together that make me alcoholic and that is the thing that baffles our family members and the people that love us is that when i promise you that i'm never going to drink again i might as well be promising you that i'm going to fly out across the parking lot because i don't have the power to make good on that promise i cannot manage the decision not to drink anymore and i've proven that time and time again in my life but all i can tell you is that people were tired of hearing about it i knew i was alcoholic for a year and a half before i got here you know and saying that i was out people get really tired of hearin' that you're alcoholic You know, I mean, I was like, well, you know, I'm alcoholic, you Know, and I was fixing to go to treatment. Anybody else spend any time fixing to Go to treatment? Man, I Mean, you Now, next week Is a good time to go To treatment, and When it would get Really bad, sometimes, by God, I'm going tomorrow, you Know, I Mean, Well, probably Tomorrow afternoon, but Tomorrow, for Sure, and Then, You Know, when today Would come, it Was never the day. It was never the day today was never the day to stop and that went on for a good while and during that time I you know it started getting sloppy I got a hundred mile an hour in DWI and I got up one night I was leaving a bar I'd had five Long Island teas and I was leave in the bar I like those things and when I sobered I used to leave that bar and take that drink and just stick it down in my belt and pull My mother had two cases of those glasses at her house when I sobered up. In the laundry room there were two cases of those drinks from the Abbey Inn there in Dallas. I guess I should try to find the Abby Inn. Put that one on the list, honey. God almighty, it just keeps getting longer. When you get your consciousness around the eighth step they start bubbling up out of nowhere. And I'm sure I'll talk about that later. You know, but, you know, I left this bar in a blackout and I came out of the blackout and there'd been an impact. And I could see the fender of the car sticking up in the air and it was real hazy and a really hazy night, you now. But I was still rolling and I kept my foot on the gas and made it down the block and around the corner and for some reason my shoes were on the passenger side but I grabbed my shoes and I ran back to the bar to report the car stolen. Just a day in the life of Charlie Parker. As I'm running back to this bar, I remember running under these trees and I'm right along with my sneakers in my hand and I was running back to this club and as I passed the scene of the accident And I looked across the street, and I was pretty drunk, but I could make out that there were two police officers standing there with a flashlight. And you could see the twinkle of broken glass in the street. And I just remember as I ran by thinking, my God, they got here fast. And I ran back to the bar, andI reported the car stolen. And Katie says it's important for me to mention to you that this was my mother's car. I wrecked every car she ever owned but the next morning the police called and they said Mr. Parker you're going to have to take a polygraph test to get your car back and I said well why is that they said it was involved in an accident before it was reported stolen I said you're kidding he said no they rammed into a parked police car and I remember thinking that explains how they got there so fast you know i mean good one you know but it all made sense then but uh i guess you know what i'm talking about is it just really had started getting um sloppy and uh so i'd heard about a i'd heard about treatment i really didn't hear anything about aa i just heard about treatment this maintenance man in my apartment kept talking about treatment treatment treatment treatment you know treatment you go to treatment you want to go to treatment and he never mentioned detox he never mentioned Alcoholics Anonymous he never mention anything but treatment and so I went to treatment finally but I was fixing to go treatment for about nine months and and but when I finally went I don't know was anybody else disappointed with our 12-step program I mean I figured we'd stop drinking about step 10 or 11 you know and you get here and they're talking about just BAM just stop drinking right off the bat. But I had this vision of treatment where somewhere between the jail and hospital, and I'd gone on with my last hot credit card and charged these purple pajamas and a matching Christian Dior robe and some little slippers because I knew that in the hospital you spend a lot of time in the bed. And I had this idea that they were just, you were going to lay up in the bed, and they were going to come in and treat you a little bit. Just treat you little in the morning, and then treat you little any afternoon. I didn't really understand why it was going to take 30 days, but I had time in my schedule for it, so away we went. I discovered Alcoholics Anonymous in that treatment center. I did not go to that treatment center to stop drinking i went to that treatment center because i was in trouble and i had felony charges stacking up and i was starting to incur charges while i had uh pending charges and you know it started getting sloppy and at one point they were even talking about sending mr and mrs parker's boy to the penitentiary and and i said wait don't you know you know i mean uh but But it started getting really ugly and I got into AA and this is where I talk about, you know, that I like to talk about what happened, then what I was like, then I mean then what happened and then what happened because I kind of came into AA. I came into a lot of people in this room have come into AA during a period when there was an abundance of discussion meetings. I went almost strictly to discussion meetings. And we would kind of talk about AA. And you'd hear a lot of things that after a while, if you hear them a couple of times in AA, you think, well, they must be AA. I mean, I heard it in an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting a couple OF times. So I was just kind of piecing together AA from what I was hearing in the meetings. And then I had some big book experience. But I missed a big piece of the program. I missed it. I missed the biggest a lot of it, and the biggest piece I missed of it was the selfishness piece. Not a small piece, but I missed him for a long time, and I don't think I'm the only one that it ever happened to, so that's why I like to talk about it sometimes, because what happened for me was I came in and they said, are you powerless over alcohol? And I said yes. And they said, do you believe that a power greater than yourself could restore you to sanity? And we got past that one. And then they said let's get down on our knees and do the third step prayer. We completely missed that piece of work in pages 60, 61, 62, and 63. Not really important pages unless you're interested in the root of our problem. You know, the nature of our disease. and what's going to kill me and what made me need a drink so bad by the time I was 16 years old. It sounds crazy, but then I kind of just went along and now this is an oversimplification. There was more stuff going on than just this, but to say that I was still living a life based on self is a little bit of an understatement. Katie can testify. I should say Katie and I were litter mates in this program. Katie, you know, and I'm going to mention it while I'm thinking about it, honey, This coming Tuesday, Katie will celebrate 24 years of sobriety. Four and a half stinking months she's got on me. You know, I've kept her sober a few times by telling her if she drank again, I'd sponsor her when she comes back. But we sobered up together. We were litter mates, and I'll try to get basically. She was married the whole 20 years that we were best friends. And to say that we are best friends, I mean like brother and sister. There was never any kind of innuendo or flirtation. She wouldn't stand for it. She was buried the entire time, and then her husband passed away about five years ago, and then I had been through a series of marriages and not one that she ever approved of. And then we've been a couple for, I don't know, almost five years. And then мы got engaged to be married in June. So it's been a big year for us. I'm going to get back to some of that. I'm gonna try really hard, honey. But I went through this period of AA and I don't know how to describe it really. I was going to a lot of meetings. I was hanging out with AA guys. I had AA roommates. I worked with AA coworkers. I dated AA women. I went to AA barbecues. I went TOA dances. It was a whole lot of the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous, and don't get me wrong. I love the fellowship of Alcoholic Anonymous. I really do. I love them. I love their meetings, But it's been my experience that it doesn't treat alcoholism. Am I saying don't go to AA meetings? Absolutely not. But if you've got it the way I've got it, for a chronic alcoholic, just going to AA meetings will not get the job done. For me, it'll keep me sober right up until I go absolutely nuts. And I've had some experience with that in sobriety. But what happened for me was I've had two or three bottoms in sobriety. One was at four and a half years, one was at seven years, and then I had my biggest spiritual awakening when I'd been sober for 17 years. But there was so much self-will going on during some of those earlier periods, and I didn't even know it. And what happens for a guy, I like to talk about this because I really feel like in the rooms there's plenty of message of the hope of recovery for the new man in AA. I think we hear plenty of that. But I like to talk sometimes to the people that have been in the room for 3 years, 5 years, 12 years, 15 years, and you're not feeling like you're experiencing what you hear some people talk about. And I'm here to tell you that it's still available, and it's available as a result of the work out of the big book Alcoholics Anonymous with somebody who's done the work out of The Big Book of Alcoholics Anecdotes. I got to that the hard way, though, because what happened with me was I had a flat period in my sobriety where I kind of, well, I can tell you exactly what happened. I was running on self-will, and to say that I was a little self-centered, you know, when you start working with self-centredness, the first place it becomes obvious is in other people, but I mean, I'm blind to it in myself. That's why I have a sponsor. But, oh my God, I told a story about Katie's son one time about this extreme example of self-centeredness. And she said, that didn't in any way remind you of the red pickup truck story? I said, no, no it didn't. I prefer not to tell the red pick-up truck story. You know, it was where Katie's husband was going in to have surgery for a brain tumor the next morning and I had gotten a new pickup truck that day and I insisted that Katie come down from the hospital room to look at my new pickup truck. When her husband is preparing to go into surgery, that's the level of self-centeredness that I was carrying around in sobriety. That is not something I'm proud of, but that was the amount of self centeredness that us can't. You know, my default setting, my Default Reaction is based in self every time, and it's better than it's ever been. but my god did I create some wreckage in recovery doing that well at about seven years I hit the wall again I was busted up another marriage and I felt like I'd been going to your stupid meetings I'm making the coffee I'm doing this stuff you know and I'm and I've getting knocked to the mat every time I step into the ring and you know because I'm back-to-back failed marriages and looking back on it and this is very much a looking back program it's is that any clarity that I talked to you about tonight has come from looking back I had no awareness on any of this when it was happening but what happened was when I think when I look back on was I hit the wall with self will but I didn't recognize it as the failure of self-will I looked at it as It's the failure of AA. You know what? I've tried it your way, and I'm sick of it. I'm getting knocked to the mat every time I step into the ring. I'm going to get some stuff going my way. And what happened was I hit the wall with self-will, and instead of turning to the power and turning to God and seeing it as a failure of self- will, I turned more into self-willed. Does that make sense? So now I'm operating completely on self-well, and what happens is we start leaking in little bits of dishonesty. We start having some little justified resentments. Anybody ever had any of those? You know, I mean the ones where, you know, and what starts happening is when I get in crisis, I didn't know it but what was happening was God's will had started dropping down like this and self-will climbs up like that. All of a sudden God consciousness is completely off the table, not factoring into my decisions or the way I live my life in any way. I'm running completely on self-will, and I don't even know it. And what happened then was I rode that progress not perfection train for a long time. And if I'm not careful, I can be the guy that's saying, you know, I left the house, I screamed at my wife this morning, I slapped one of the kids on the way out the door, I kicked the dog, I goofed off at work, left work two hours early, looked at two hours of Internet porn, gambled for an hour and a half on the way home, but that's okay because I didn't drink today, and that makes me a winner. You know? And you're like, no, that kind of makes you a jerk. You know, but that is the way, because I was living a program based on abstinence from alcohol. I didn't understand the root of the problem as selfishness and self-centeredness. I didn t know that self-will was what killed me, so I thought as long as I didn d drink I got an A. How are we doing for time? I was in a plane crash in 2003. I was at a marriage where I commuted between Austin and New York City for about a 12 year relationship and it looked real good from the outside. We had a penthouse apartment in Manhattan, we had a beach house in the Hamptons. A lot of stuff going on and one time we chartered a plane to fly us from the Hampton's back into the city to go to dinner that night and I mean, I'd known people that had been flying back and forth to the Hamtons for 20 years and this was the first time I ever chartered an airplane and we get out over the Peconic Bay and I'm in the co-pilot seat, it's a little six-seater and they came on and they said well it felt like somebody turned the key off we're going along and all of a sudden we're in a glider this is my only airplane story guys I'm the only non-fighter pilot that's speaking this weekend so this is my best shot but And I've got to tell you, when I told my sponsor that I was speaking with Scott and Linda Lee and Sandy Beach, he goes, that's kind of like playing with the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. You know? I was like, yeah. I'm glad I get to go first. They said, I put on the headphones, and I hear them say, you're cleared to Gabreski. There's an airport at 10 o'clock, but we're clearly not going to make it. He says, you don't understand. I've lost engine power. I can't make land. I'm going to have to ditch. And I remember thinking, what? You know, the first time, you know, I mean, I'm a gambler. Those are astronomical odds, you Know? I mean – and so we set it down in the drink. It was nighttime. We hit the water. Good landing. right about the time you go, my god I think, you know, we just crashed an airplane and we're okay and then all of a sudden I mean it wasn't much of an airplane but it was a terrible boat and all of the sudden it's me, I go up to get some air and there's nothing but water in the roof of the plane and the doors wouldn't open and I remember thinking I had a very spiritual thought, I remember thinking, so that's it I'd die in this blanking airplane. You know, I mean, that was the extent of my spirituality at that point. But the doors came open. All five of us got out. My dog drowned, but all the people got out, and I'll take that deal. You know? I mean I know where to get another dog. You know all the all the People got out but not by much it was really close And if we hadn't have been in shallow water just me and the pilot would have gotten out because i can go back down to get the other people anyway long story short i didn't understand it at the time but it was the beginning of a spiritual awakening for me because i started looking at things differently after that and i remember coming back to austin i had developed some dishonesty in my life you know i was in that place where I was like God you can have everything you know well except for that those that deal it with the insurance at work and and then there's a little bit of dishonesty over here but you can ever everything else you know and after a while I don't want to be a phony in this program after a while I just stopped praying you know I just kept going to meetings but yeah that's not but here I was and I knew this wasn't right well when this happened I remember going to my sponsor at the time and saying I am so self-centered that I can't even be involved in a relate in a conversation I have to force myself to say how are the kids you know and then act like I give a flip about the answer you know I mean because it's just me me me and he took me back out to the he says come meet me tomorrow we're gonna go out to The Ranch that's an Austin recovery it's It's a little men's treatment center there in Austin. And he said, well, we'll go out and talk to the winos. And I remember thinking, that does not sound like a good idea. You know? I mean, they're going to want to talk about themselves. You know how the new guys are. You know what I mean? They never ask how I'm doing. You know, but it was the beginning of a spiritual awakening for me that I didn't even know was coming. You know, I started going out there and I was 17 years sober and there were times where I felt like I was a step ahead of these guys sometimes. There were times when I would say tell you what, why don't you go home and read the doctor's opinion and I'd go home and read the doctor'S opinion. I didn' t know how to put a guy through the work. It had been a while since I'd gone through the work with somebody. I knew how to be your life coach. I knew what to tell you, which is a bunch of crap. If a new guy came to me and said, well, can you put me through the steps, I would have been awkward about it. I was awkward about It. And I had to start studying the work myself. And that's when I ended up going to some guys in Dallas. I started getting hooked up with some of these guys in Dallas that are big book thumpers. I remember going to him and saying, look, I want to go through the work for me. I'm not going through the work to become a better sponsor. I didn't know that that's the part of the deal is that, you know, when we're sponsoring guys, we're just trying to build more sponsors out there. But I went through the Work for Me, and I'll never forget some of the stuff I started seeing in there. The piece is Katie is very generous with her opinion, I should say. And I've had the benefit of a lot of input from her. And I started seeing stuff in the book, like in Step 3, where it says the first requirement is that we be convinced that any life run on self can hardly be a success. I'm like, what? Not only was I not convinced to that statement, it never touched me. I mean, just right over my head. And then as I started studying the book and going through it with a big book sponsor and some of these big book guys that I was hanging out with, I remember telling Katie one time, I said, my God, Katie's self is all over this book. And she goes, you really never saw that? And I said no. And she says, that's some pretty basic stuff, Charlie. And I was like, I missed it. You know, when you're living a life that is based on abstinence, a program that's based on absinence from alcohol, there are some shocking lines in the book. There's one on page 19 that blew my mind. Listen to this. We feel that elimination of our drinking is but a beginning. A much more important demonstration of our principles lies before us in our respective homes, occupations, and affairs. I remember reading that one time and going, how can it be a much more important demonstration of our principles than not drinking? I started working this program at a whole other level. It's funny because I'm going to try to draw this to a close but there was a level of AA that I didn't even know was there. I had been sitting in those meetings, and it reminded me. I went to the Cowboy game the other day. I got invited to sit up in a skybox. And I didn't know whether to be excited about sitting in the skybox or be pissed off about sitting on the cheap seats for 20 years. But there's a level of game watching going on that I didn'T even know was happening. You know, I mean, these guys are up there with waiters, and, you know, it was pretty cool. But the thing about it was, the reason I say that is because if you had come to me when I had 17 years of sobriety and said, Charlie, what's going to change your life and what is going to set you on fire is the program of Alcoholics Anonymous right out of this big book, I would have thought you were full of bull because I would Have said, you know, I've been in AA for 17 years. I know what this program offers me. But I didn't have a clue. I mean, I'm oversimplifying it, But I'm telling you that to say that my life has never been better is kind of like saying it's better sober than it was drunk. I mean, I'm experienced in a level of AA that I never knew was out there. And if I had died in that plane crash on July 20th of 2003, I would have missed it all. I was sitting there living in untreated alcoholism. And, you know, my experience has been that anything that I use to try to treat the spiritual malady in sobriety causes the need for another 12-step program, you know? I mean, it's like that's why they got Gabblers Anonymous and Overeaters Anonymous. I'm obviously kicking ass at that one, but I'm down to one, you have no idea how much growth that is. But I guess I started doing this deal, I started studying the work. I started sponsoring guys. We started getting into service work. Katie and I went up to a meeting in Dallas, and it was the first time I'd ever been to a meet-up where I thought, my God, we need a meeting like this in Austin. And we started this primary purpose group in Austin, and we started off with 30 people, and then we had 60 people, and then мы had 100 people. Now we've got 150, 175 people ganging up on Tuesday night to study the big book line by line. It took us 17 months to go through the first 164 pages of the big books and Dr. Bob's Nightmare. I see new stuff in there all the time, and I see the ripple effect of people getting in there, getting clarity on the message the way it's laid out in the book and getting out and carrying that message to the new guy out there. That's what our primary purpose was. But, you know, I wasn't doing it. I was a selfish, self-centered prick, and I had come in there and gotten enough out of it to get me going, and then it's back to living this good life. And I let the good things of alcoholics not. I mean, the things that Alcoholics Anonymous gave me pulled me away from the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. Katie and I are up to our ears in service work, and I have never been happier. I mean the conversations that we have around the house about the principles of this program and the way this book, it's a real joy of my life. I mean you know, and it's so funny because there was a time when if you know before that spiritual awakening, there was a time when if i had a problem and you came at me with that stuff i would have been like don't give me that aa crap right now i've got a real problem to deal with here you know and and now it's all about god and it's also about you know god consciousness and actually working all 12 steps it's awesome you gotta try it um you know because i i got this sponsor that the first time i got with him he goes uh he's rude he's just rude he said you know he says stuff like if you're not praying and meditating on a regular basis, you're now working the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. Is that rude? I mean, you know, just like that, you Know, and we're actually doing morning meditation, evening review, you know, 10th step spot check inventories, going through the stuff, doing all 12 steps, getting out there, working these principles in all our lives, and it's not perfect. I mean it's, it's no perfect at all. I got to tell you one little story. I'm in the Sprint store about four years ago you know, has Sprint been on anybody else's inventory? You know, I mean, you know. I find myself, I had spoken at this treatment center the day before and I'm in the Sprint store and I've rolled up on the counter up on my knuckles like a gorilla and I am hollering at this guy about, you now, him not meeting my needs and I think I said, I used the word Nimrod at one point And he goes off, you know, because King Charles is not getting his way in the Sprint store. And he, he goes of to the back and I look over and this guy is kind of grinning at me. And I go, man, they're getting me a little worked up in here. And he goes, did you see me get my 90 day chip last night? I was just like, brother, what you just saw were not the principles of this program. God's got a great sense of humor. I mean, there's a million stories like that. But I've got to tell you, sponsoring these people, the stuff that's been going on in my life, it has been absolute magic. The thing I can tell you if you're a self-centered chronic alcoholic like me, service work never sounds like a good idea but it is the magic of this program I the guys I'm sponsoring about 14 guys right now and Katie sponsors about 30 about 20 but God Almighty the world's women talk I mean nothing against but do women just have to process a little more than guys I mean she's on the phone all the time and I'm like just say you're sorry you selfish prick and call me tomorrow you know and um you know but but she's got to talk them all the way through everything but but i mean our house we have you know she has a meeting there on thursday night she had 35 women there because she had been pressing women into sponsoring people a lot of them said they felt uncomfortable sponsoring people she started doing a step workshop she had 25 women in our house monday night putting them through the steps that she has at regular meeting on monday nights we have a meeting called the common solution on Thursday night so it's me and my sponsor and all my sponsees and we get together to make sure that we're all carrying the same message right out of the book and I'm telling you the stuff that happens I got a sponsee in North Carolina today that flew back to have some charges dropped that I haven't it cannot happen what happened this guy today. It can't happen unless God's involved. I mean, you watch this stuff happen over and over again. When God gets involved, stuff starts happening. And, you know, I tell these guys over and over, it is unbelievable. I had one spot see that I met, I got to tell the story about Jamie and then I'll get down. I'm out at the ranch one day, this treatment Center. And I see this guy coming towards me, and I remember thinking, oh, please, God, don't ask me to sponsor you. You know, I mean, he's got dreadlocks out to here. He's got ink all over him. He's Got a ring in his nose. It's good, you know, and sure as heck, you Know, he comes up. Hey, what's up? You know? And I love this guy. I mean this guy is beautiful. He has turned into one of my best soldiers. And, you know, I mean, you talk about a guy that is carrying the message of this program. And here, a couple of months ago, he flew up to, he was in the amends part of his program and working 10 and 11 real hard. And he flew out to New Jersey to turn himself in on some criminal charges that have been pending since 1991. And to watch this guy go from the hopeless, drug-addicted, chronic alcoholic that he was when I met him to be standing before a judge and telling me on his way up there that the only way I'll go to jail is if there's somebody in that jail that I'm the only one they can hear the message from. That's not the power of Jamie. That's no the power of Charlie Parker. That's the power of God working in a man's life. I almost missed it. I almost missed it If you're sitting in these rooms and you're not feeling it like you hear people talking about it, get back into the work Get with somebody I'm so sick of losing people with time Everywhere I go it always starts off with I had 8 years, I had 12 years I had 16 years and then You know, I went to the dentist. I went through the doctor. You take that guy that's living on self-will like I was and that spiritual malady is turning in there and I don't even know it and you give that guy a couple of Vicodin and it triggers that physical allergy and all of a sudden he's going, what happened? You know two weeks ago I had 15 years of sobriety. I'm so sick of seeing people driven away from this program by untreated alcoholism. That's who I like to talk to. If you get with somebody and tell them you need to get back into the work. It's still available out there, and it's just as hot as it's ever been. There's that little girl in the pink dress. I'm going to read something from page 100 of our big book. A new man must walk day by day on the path of spiritual progress. If you persist, remarkable things will happen. When we look back, we realize that the things that came to us when we put ourselves in God's hands were better than anything we could have planned. Follow the dictates of a higher power and you will presently live in a new and wonderful world no matter what your present circumstances. I thank God for showing me to you guys and I thank you guys for showing me to God. Thanks for having me. Thank you.