Charlie P. at the For the Love of Our BB; Our Treasure Map – 2021

All right. Thank you, Teresa. It's so good to see you. That was a fun weekend in the Cayman Islands. That was the power packed condo. You know, I want to get going here. You know Marty did such a good job. He told at least one of the two biggest lies an AAH speaker will tell you. The first one is I'll be brief and the second one is i'll close with this you know but i got 35 minutes so like king henry said to his fifth wife i won't keep you long you know i want to thank you i'm charlie parker i'm very grateful we covered alcoholic my sobriety dates march 22nd of 1985 a home group's primary purpose group in Austin, Texas. My sponsor is Myers and we're going to get to hear from his twin brother. I want to thank Ali and thank Ali for thanking everybody because I just want to acknowledge everybody that had anything to do with putting this thing on. I've got 35 minutes to try to cover this topic but it's really not that critical because the lady after me She won't mind if I run over in a bit, you know. That's a joke. Katie's coming after me and we've been watching the clock on each other for a long time, you know, but, you Know, as I started kind of considering the direction of the talk, because at one point this was going to lean towards Mark Houston, and then we went to the big book, and I am leaning more towards talking about my experience around Mark Houston and what happened with all that. And I'm going, I don't think Mark would have approved that. You know, to tell you the truth, you know, if Mark was here and he said, hey, can we talk about you? He would have said, no, let's don't do that. And it's kind of like hugging my dad when I got home from treatment. It's like, he wasn't really down with it, but I was like, Dad, you're just going to have to stand there and take it like a man. I'm not going to hug you, you Know, I want to get into my story because, you know what happened for me was that around 17 years of sobriety, my experience was a lot like what Marty talked about a lot of things happen I'm giving a lot of talks about what happened during this period between 7 and 17 years but somewhere around 17 years I was at a real bottom you know and I'd been in a plane crash and I've seen a lot of things differently in my life and near-death experience and about that time an old buddy of mine Tom Pick had 12 stepped him into treatment down in Hunt Texas and Tom had a little bitty pill problem. I mean, he was taking 125 Vicodin a day, and apparently that's at least one too many, but you know, we, he went to treatment down there, and when he was done there, he met one of our speakers who's going to be coming up at the end of this wonderful afternoon. We got one here, and Chris told him a lot about the first step, and about AA, and by getting fired up, and then when he went back to Dallas, he went to the primary purpose group there and through all that i met myers and through myers i met chris and and about all that about that time um one of the guys in my group he called me one day he was trying over there i heard about a workshop in dallas and uh um a big book study well let me see what i can find out i live in austin texas but i come from dallas 200 miles north of us so i call some people up there and this guy sends me a flyer for this workshop and it says big book weekend with mark h and this other guy then i come to katie and i goes we were really catching fire with the program at this time tom and i were having conversations different from that i've been having for a long time and we're starting to listen to chris and We're listening to other people and Myers and Bob D and Bob B and some of my boys and Chris Schroeder, who I see was on here. You know, I just love Chris. And, you know, I went to Katie and I go, you Know, Katie, I don't think this is the flyer, the workshop he was looking for. But I think this Mark guy, I think he sponsors Chris and I really like Chris. I bet we'd like Mark. And with about that much thought, Charlie and Katie hop in a car and drive 230 miles to go to this workshop. Now, this is a guy that a couple of years before that with 15 years of sobriety probably wouldn't have gone across town for a big meeting, much less this was three days with Mark Houston, this guy, Mark H. And we walk up and I love the way Marty said he looked like the Marlboro Man. He was big, manly presence. And I should warn you, I'm a big guy. I shoot shotguns competitively. I ride Harleys, all that stuff. I'm liable to cry like a little girl in a pink dress up here at any minute. But when I look back on the power of God moving in my life, it makes me emotional. And, you know, we spent three days in this workshop. I mean, oh my God. At one point, Katie and I, now I'm a front pew sitter. I don't go in and get a seat in the back. I like to sit right up front. So Katie andI are right up on the front row. We're like six or eight feet from the speakers. And at one point Mark is talking and he's flipping pages and he was reading stuff. And I leaned over to Katie and go, my God, what book is he reading from? and I swear to God Katie goes I think it's the big book come on you know I mean because I've been around AA for a minute my home group was a big book study group like what Marty said where we'd read a chapter and talk about what our experience was with it and that sort of thing but I mean Mark was coming with stuff that I had never heard if you know Mark's story I mean it's funny I mean Mark hit the wall at nine years of sobriety and wound up taking things to a new level and i am most drawn you know to people if somebody's never had a fight with their wife or never had any problems in sobriety i don't know that i can relate to that real well i mean i'm most drawn to the guys that work a solid program because they have to you know i mean and i'm drawn to that energy and i can feel it you know marty my biggest compliment that i and give somebody a hangout is when I go, oh, I had a drink with that guy. You know, I mean, I can tell you from, I can feel Marty from across the room. You know what I mean? We come in there and most of us, it's funny, most of them listen to a bunch of Mark Houston, know the Mark Houston arrival package. He had brain damage, kidney damage, liver damage, everything at home fit into a duffel bag. You know? I heard him say that so many times. But I mean we sit in this weekend And I swear, y'all, I meditated more in that weekend than I had in the previous five or ten years of sobriety where we were doing formal and the stuff he was talking about. And, I mean, Mark said later, he said, I look like the dog from the – I don't know, the guy from the Bose commercial. Does anybody remember that? Sort of a guy sitting in front of his TV and his tie is back like this and it's just like, whoa! you know that's the way I felt after that weekend I come back to Austin and I was jelly-brained I mean I went to work and my manager who's worked for me for 30 years he goes ma'am you are out of it I was like I gotta go home man I mean my my head was scrambled with the new information you know and on page 100 it says when we look back we'll see that the things that came to us when we placed ourselves in God's hands for better than anything we could have planned. I'd read that a bunch of times before I saw the piece that said, when we look back, because I can't always see God working in my life when it's happening. But when I look back on these moments and I look at that Charlie and Katie were in trouble and we were trying to come out of it, Mark Houston had been silent for three years. I listen to those CDs later and he goes, I haven't done anything like this for three years it nearly knocked me down because i'm thinking good god look at god move he picks charlie and katie up plucks them up puts them over here brings mark out of a three-year silence puts us all together and the ripple effect from that weekend i can't even tell you about you know i mean and so i mean because mark i hear people talking about big book thumpers technicians uh i'm not offended by any of those terms but the one thing i would say it marked in a lot of it was a big book step worker and that and so are most of my heroes you know big book stepper you know not just theory you know but actually continuously working this untreated alcoholism package is only treated by continuously working the steps as they're laid out in this book and you know i'm glad you're recording this thing one of the biggest things shout outs i like to give is to the tapers because i grow i grew so much from the recorded message when i was fired up about this stuff as i still am but i've been driving around listening to it all the time and i can't even tell you how many times when i would talk about market conferences people would come up to me and go mark houston changed my life and i never even met him all i ever did was listen to him on cds you know and i hear it all the time you know it was because it was a different style of speaking the stuff he was talking about wasn't just get up and talk about the talks i grew up in aa with were you know 40 45 minutes on how i got to aa how i hit bottom a quick pass through the steps maybe and then a heartwarming amend story and then enjoy the rest of the conference and some of those not everybody's trying to do what I do or what some of us do, I love those talks and everything but there's some talks where I go wow I got a warm feeling out of that for a minute but I don't know what to do now I mean, I know I'm still kind of in trouble, you know? And so this was instructional stuff and wrapping, you know, our story around the work, you know, and using our story to illustrate step one and that sort of thing. And then, you know, the funny thing is, like Marty alluded to, not everybody's trying to hear it, you know? I mean sometimes, you know, I got to be careful because one time Katie and I were at a conference and everybody was frowning, you know and Katie was up there speaking I said you know okay turns out not everybody comes to the Saturday night banquet to have their face rubbed in untreated alcoholism and what they're not doing you know and uh and and I gotta be careful because I got a bad habit of judging people really harshly for not knowing something that I learned about 30 minutes ago anybody am I in the right room you know it was like you know 10 minutes on the other side of my way i'm like how can you not know this how can use in our meeting run that kind of bs you know i mean when i did it you know for 17 years you know and thank god for tolerance but but you know i mean um well this is rocking along and we're working the steps and we'RE sponsoring guys and stuff like that and about come 2006 Mark Houston ups and moves to Austin you know and he'd been in Dallas I've been working and he says and he tried like crazy to open a treatment center in Wimberley and that God wouldn't let it he wound up opening it in Maine and right outside of Austin and uh and oh my gosh I mean you talk about it was the Mark Houston Recovery Center and he wasn't down with that name he didn't want it to be but they wanted to you know brand his name and that sort of thing so what the hell but it was a recovery center it wasn't a treatment center in fact you said most places you have to sign a treatment agreement when you went there you had to sign an non-treatment agreement this is not a treatment centre this is a recovery centre and what we're going to be about is 12-step immersion and uh and oh my god i mean the thing about that recovery center opening what a big piece of it was the people we met and the people we've met since then i love these conferences i missed the only thing i'd like better about today would be if we all got to go to dinner afterwards i mean i miss you people and and uh and you are my people and but we met so many people he brought in chris schroeder for a workshop and and katie knight just fell in love with him we kidnapped him took him out for barbecue and we've been cracking jokes ever since then you know and uh and mark wanted that treatment center to be what he called a point of light in in the community he wanted to be bringing it bringing in speakers he brought in peter marinelli brought in chris schroeder he's bringing in all these people to come in and you know speak with us and and you could go out there on a saturday night have a free hamburger and listen to some powerful speaker and next thing you know you're getting to sponsor guys and hear footsteps out there and all this stuff. And, and we just had so much fun. I mean, I don't know why I'm telling this story, but one night we all get bold. And, uh, and it was the damnedest thing. I'm a damn good bowler. You know, I went bowling with Katie one night, bowling 257 and she's like oh of course he's good but i have my shoes man use them in a while well mark comes out there and he goes past the line and you know what happens when you go past the line on a bowling alley it's all oil and all of a sudden mr six foot four comes crashing to the floor whaps his head on the mat and then i get up and i go to bowl my shoe sticks and i slam down on my right side so the next time i'm not gonna do that again my shoe sticks again i slammed out on my left side and at one point i'm like my god thank god we didn't play tennis we could have killed ourselves you know but i mean we were we were having more fun just doing crazy stuff and going around and doing all that stuff and we tried to make mark a social butterfly he was he was funny you know we'd have parties and stuff and mark would be set up over there but he did with these phantom exits you know uh where i think they call it an irish goodbye you know where um you're all standing around then you look around you go where's mark and he's gone i mean when he when he'd get to the point where he was ready to go it was like he's gone you know and it just tripped me out but you know uh oh gosh um about that time about two 14 years ago how am i doing i'm doing good on time okay about 14 years ago i started a meeting at my house that we called the common solution i'm sponsoring all these guys and we're starting to do and we want we decided to have a meeting where we'd get our crew together and be about being one voice, one message, whether you're talking to me or Chad or Todd or Jay or whoever, you should be getting a consistent message based out of the big book steps and that sort of thing. You know, taking me to where did I set the ball rolling? How did I make decisions based on self? Those sorts of things. And looking at things from an entirely different angle. And, yeah. When we started, it was me on one end of the table, Mark Houston on the other end of the table and all my sponsees. And I got to tell you, there was never one time that Mark Houston walked into the front door of my house with a Starbucks in his hand that I didn't know this is a big deal. I'm not sure the guys that I sponsored but I was like, guys, it ain't always like this and it ain' always going to be like this. I mean, this is a big deal that Mark leaves his job drives an hour over here to be with us and and before I forget to say it right after he it was the best day I'd ever been involved in and then one day after he died I was listening to a talk by his and he goes the best thing I've ever been about this group of guys on Thursday night and you could have knocked me down with a feather because I was like I knew it was the best day i'd ever been involved in but i i don't know i couldn't believe he was saying that you know it was it was a powerful powerful thing and and you know uh i'll never forget the first time mark came to the meeting because you know i got a new sponsor now and and all my boys are there you know and they're like which way are we going you know charlie's got a Newsponsor you know whatever i'm going through i'm taking you down with me so you know whatever yeah and they were like okay well what's this gonna be all about and you know when you the first time you get a sponsor what do you figure is the first thing you're going to do when you start working with the new sponsor you know the first piece of work you figure we're going to is probably what well you're probably going to run inventory right well mark comes in the house he sits down at the table the guys are all looking to see what's up and out of nowhere mark goes where are you guys at with the amends process and i said what a drunk says when he's trying to think of a better answer i said what and he says where are you guys at with the amends process and uh i gave some bs answer you know and and and the truth was i was amazed before i was halfway through and a lot of my amends were still in the drawer you know and mark comes up and he goes i sense that there's a significant experience available for your men and men's process and we're just like how does we thought it was like Svengali or something. We're like, how does he know that? You know? And well, I know that because nearly all of us have a significant experience, especially people coming out of mainstream AI. Nearly everybody has a significant, significant experience available in the immense process. He started talking about, you know, working and, you know, as the meeting started going along, we started plugging in some of the tools that a lot of you guys are familiar with, but they were cutting edge stuff to us and it was stuff like we established spiritual consent with each other and spiritual consent is where if me and Ali establish spiritual consent with each other I'm giving you permission to call me on anything you see me doing whether it hurts my feelings or not but it's always done out of love and kindness but you know that way we're holding each other up instead of cosigning each other's BS. And we like to say, I'd rather step on your toes than stand on your grave. And sometimes it makes for a difficult conversation with the thing with spiritual consent. And now the really hard thing about spiritual consent is, and Teresa and I talked about this one time down the cableway, it follows what we call the path of consideration. And in the path to consideration, you start all in a sense off with stuff like I'd like to offer for your consideration that maybe, or is it possible that, you know, and what it does is it comes up and circumnavigates my ego to the point where I might be able to hear you when you give me a consideration. But the thing about it is when you get me a consideration, I don't get to respond. I hate this part, you Know, because, you KNOW, because my ego wants to tell you right away how you got it wrong. And, you know, you little nitwit, if you understood from your little pea brain perspective, I can see how you might think that. But if you knew how complicated and complex my situation is, but I don't get to say peep. If you offer me consideration, all I get to saying is thank you, I'll consider that. And I can't even tell you how many times I've had to go back to one of my boys, Chad, and take the risk of coming to his sponsor and offering me consideration. And he comes to me one day, and he says, Charlie, can I offer you a consideration? I said, yeah. And he goes, you seem like a guy that's starting to run the show again. And I had to just go, thank you, I'll consider that. And, I mean, by the next day, I was like, dude, you were spot on. I mean, everybody is bugging me. Everybody's pissing me off. I think that guy at Starbucks gave me a look. Traffic's bugging my head. You know, everybody. And when you say everybody, it ain't anybody. If I'm going to be free, I'm stealing one of Katie's lines. If I've got to be afraid, the problem's got to be me, you know? And thank God for having men that love me enough to come to me and go, dude, you're drifting a little bit. You know? You're making decisions that you're going to pay for later, you now. and uh and those sorts of things and so um well now we get with it and and now all of a sudden we're about i'm doing inventory continuously do an inventory and you know because it had been 16 years since i'd written inventory but that's not true they went with myers before that it had been 16 years and and uh yeah but we do four or five and six and seven became a real piece of business where i'm seeing where things are objectionable and i don't have the power to change them on my own and if i don' t have the power to change something's objectionable do i am i willing to let god change it in whatever way he sees fit and if that's in place i take it to god in the seventh step and it becomes a real piece of business when i'm getting down on my knees and asking you know one time i could not stop playing internet poker and i called up tom pick and i said uh thomas left us he passed away but i called him time and i can't stop playing poker and he goes are you ready to quit for good and for all i said yeah yeah he goes get down on your knees and ask god to remove the obsession i'm like really he goes dude if god can handle vodka and heroin internet poker is a walk in the park you know and i mean and i got down on my knees and asked god to remove the obsession and it became a real piece of business that wasn't just you know i'm going to get online and look at a few hands it was are you going to break this covenant promise that you've made with God to you know to look at a little bit of poker I haven't played a hand in poker since that's been many many years ago it works with so many things but it became a real piece of business and then we're about making all of our amends and making amends cards and and going to these people when when I started working with these guys I had 42 amends cars at 17 years sober and I'll never tell I've made amends to everybody I'm ever harmed, but I can tell you I've made amendes to everybody I'm aware of. And new stuff still pops up. I had to make one to a mini storage warehouse in Dallas just, I don't know, six weeks ago. And because stuff pops up, you go, whoa, I never straightened that out. You know? And what if we're about making all of those amends? And besides that, with this crew we have, we have... I've got guys on this screen that are my 10th step buddy, you know? So I might not be able to, Myers is my sponsor and thank God for him. You know, but so I can't always call Myers. And sometimes I can call Marty or I can called Danny Brown or I could call Chris Schroeder or Lorenz or one of my boys or something like that. But I can'T, if I call up to talk about a difficult person and they start talking about, here's how you deal with a difficult. Person I'm dead, man. i gotta have somebody that's taking me to an entirely different angle where did you set the ball rolling where didyou make decisions based on self how would they look at this what's another angle and i can't tell you how many times the way our process works is i come into it with a big resentment i see it from a different angle i see how selfish and self-centered i am and i go oh my god i come out the other end with an amends to go back it happens over and over and over and that's where the freedom takes place i think they owe me and i need to go look them up no man i'm really sorry my takers i was lost my mind there for a minute and katie can tell you it still happens you know and she doesn't care what my motives were you know look says even though our motives were good she's like sometimes i'll go i wasn't trying to hurt your feelings she goes look right in here look right here do you see anybody that gives a flip what you were trying to do you know it's like i'm telling you you hurt my feelings but but i didn't mean to you know and so he's alive and well in our house and thank god for it but you know now we're doing this and doing 10 steps with each other and actually doing them you know and and then when you get into eating the 11th step you know katie katie will go way more technical and i'm going i'm having a lot of fun but you know when we talk about the evening review and morning prayer a lot people when they talk about they talk a lot about prayer and meditation they don't talk about evening review much you know and this is big stuff and when you come at when we're doing prayer getting unblocked doing prayer meditation that sort of thing when this guy comes out the other end with a spiritual awakening you don't have to press that guy into carrying the message if somebody's had a spiritual awakening as a result of this process you don't have to force them to sponsor people you can't stop them from sponsoring people and what happens is you start going to a meeting and you share this message and all of a sudden you know people are coming up have a sponsor he called me when i picked him up when he had 31 years they called him on saturday he goes i got two more sponsors at the new meeting right now I said, really? It's cool. And I said can I ask you a question? He goes, yeah. I go, were you sharing a lot of meetings before we started working together? He goes oh, every meeting I went to I shared every meeting I went through and I said were people asking you for your phone number? And he goes oh no no nobody was fighting for what I had you know and I always say that's a pretty good test for untreated alcoholism if you're sharing it all the time and nobody ever wants to go to coffee it might be worth checking you know but i mean i of course god knows i judge my man but you know this this stuff is going on now life is different and katie and i have so much fun and you know i think back about some of the mark houston sayings you know uh marty mentioned being asleep dreaming i'm awake and he talked about demonstrating at a high level you know that we could talk for an hour about that and You know, they talk about you take a thimble to the ocean, you get a thibble full of water. You take a dump truck to the Ocean, you know, you get a bunch of, you talk like that all the time. I smell more. One of the things he said was real alcoholics are drawn to real solution. And when you come with real solution, real alcoholic are drawn to it, especially if they're in trouble. That doesn't always mean the newcomer. You know there's people in the rooms one of the things, here's a little tip I'll give you. When everybody, when somebody cracks a joke in your home group and everybody's cracking up laughing, that's when I go to work. Look around the room and there's somebody that ain't laughing. There's somebody there that doesn't think a damn thing is funny. And that's my boy. That's the guy I'm going up to after the meeting. How's it going? You know, sometimes you sit down and scratch out an inventory, you know, on the back porch of the meeting, you Know, and God moves and stuff like that. You know what I mean? And one of my favorites was turning statements into questions taking statements in the big book and turning them into questions and asking myself if it says first requirement is that i be convinced as was am i convinced is this my current belief that sort of thing you know and uh one of the things about mark talked about guiding people through the work one time he used to like to say that giving me this book and thank you giving methis book and expecting me to get it this was actually mark houston's book i got it back after he passed away but i gave it to him and then i got back but uh he used to say giving me this book expecting me to get it it's like giving me the flight manual to an f-16 fighter jet and expecting me again you know and said hey when you get done we got one out in the parking lot try not to hurt yourself or anybody else when you're flying it's Like I'm gonna need a little instruction you know that sort of thing you know So, I mean, he liked to say, I'll never lie to a drunk. Mark, a lot of people thought he was really direct, but he wouldn't lie to it. We were in front of the meeting one time. He asked this guy, how long are you sober? And the guy goes, well, I had two and a half years and I had to go out and do some more research. And Mark goes, you didn't do more research, you took your will back and you drank again. The guy's like, dang, you guys play hard, you know? I mean, that's what I mean when he said, I'll never lie to a drug, you know, a personal accountability. He did a talk at the table one night about the hour at the end of the fifth step that is unbelievable. It revolutionized that whole hour at the beginning of the deal. Well, I'm going to finish with this. How about that, Mark? On February 18th, 2010, it was a Thursday night and we have the Common Solution meeting. And we're sitting there, and we're all talking, and Mark is talking. One time Mark called me and goes, Charlie, I feel like I'm running that meeting. And I said, Mark, I got news for you. You're running that meet-up. You know? It's like, if it comes down between hearing you talk or what one of these knuckleheads thinks about it, come on with it. And Mark was sitting there one night, and he goes, you know, when I die, I want to die like my heroes. I want to be current in the work. I want it be current at inventory, current in my amends. I want be sponsoring guys. I want being sponsored and stuff like that. And we're talking like that and like, well, you know, odd thing to come out of it. I don't think he meant tomorrow afternoon but Mark Houston died suddenly on February 19th, 2010 the day after he said that in our meeting. And Katie and I were up, Katie was doing a workshop with Bob Darrell and we get to call that Mark passed and nobody checked with me on that. I was not prepared for that. I needed Mark for about another 15 or 20 years, you know? And I'm still... i'm still a little tore up about it and it's been 11 years you know but i mean so floyd calls me one day i'm sitting at my desk and and floyd calls me and he says hey gerald are you going to be here this saturday and i said yeah i'm going to be here we're burying my sponsor and uh he says uh mark wants you to say a few words you know it was like an out-of-body experience i go what do you what do do you mean and he goes he made a list of people he wants to speak at his funeral and your name's on that list and i'm like when did he make this list he goes back in december when we when we uh when we started when we did as well and you know i got to speak in his funeral there was about half doesn't chris and and a few others got to speak it's not coming but you know it came it occurred to me that mark houston was put in our lives but katie and i were also put into mark's life and you know god doesn't bring two people together to just help one up and and he's way more efficient from that and and we the community we built with mark and the people that he knew in it is something i've i'll always be grateful but you know so many of our greats are passing and i was talking to somebody about it with chris about yesterday it's like we got people that are getting old we got People that are dying way too often and like marty was saying it's up to us to pick up the torch christ it might be up to y'all you know i just turned 65 years old i don't know i ain't got no promises but you know what pick up The Torch get out there and demonstrate this process at a high level help other people carry this message it's a great life it's designed for living that really works my name is Charlie Parker I'm an alcoholic thanks for watching