Charlie P. Discusses the Set-Aside Prayer and Staying Willing for a Higher Power

...the conference where I got a desire chip. And Charlie and I, we go back to day one, sort of ground zero for me, the program, the Alcoholics in Arms. And it was really funny because it was the last day of this particular conference. It's the Prest Riverside Conference. It takes place right outside Lake Lake Lake, northwest of Waco. And Charlie Howard is having a conversation about motorcycles And he said, so how long have you been on the program? Well, I was the guy that got the desired job. He said, oh, OK. And I'm kind of deal. Charlie and I, we're friends. And he's like a brother. I was just telling him this earlier. When we gather together as recovered people, it's a pretty big deal. So Charlie and I are kind of like brothers in that way, and also we've taken some pretty exciting trips on our motorcycles together. We went up to Sturgis, South Dakota three times, and it was always a big wild adventure, but it was really cool too because we weren't drinking. And going to an AA meeting in downtown Sturgs South Dakota was really pretty awesome. In fact the first year that we went there I said, I said, you know, I don't know where the AA place is, but we're going to go find that downtown. I said come on let's go. So we went and checked out this Friday American Sturgis. Charlie's a good member of the Law Enrollers Anonymous. He started a group down in South Austin that studies the Big Book. He helps other people. I've been up to the ranch with Charlie. Charlie sponsors people. Charlie stays in the book. Charlie has been responsible for lots of other people staying interested in checking that book out I always try to stay in the book, but when my friend and brother dives in there deep, I sort of dive in there with him. And I've been carrying that book around all the time, and I'm really believing in that. What that book says, all my answers are in that book. Charlie's going to delight you guys with his story, so I'd like to welcome to the podium Charlie Peet. This is a good looking bunch, I don't know what kind of folks y'all drank with, but it didn't look like this. Thank you for that warm introduction there Jim. And before I forget, I want to thank Terrence for putting this thing together. And I know he didn't do it by himself. And, you know, it's a lot of work that goes into putting all these things together. And one of the things I've learned from hanging around for a while is there's a lot of us that don't do anything to put it together. We have a lot better ideas on how it could be done better. I really appreciate your work and I want to thank you for having me up here tonight. We've got, there was a lady that says she's at her first AA meeting and we have a big book here that Katie, we want to pass around and the women put your name and phone number if you'd like in this book and we'll be sure she gets it before she gets out of here. Everybody in this room that's alcoholic has been to their first AA meeting. I will warn you in advance that I'm a big guy, and I'm able to cry like a little girl in a pink skirt before this is over. It doesn't mean that I am mentally unstable, I don't think. They usually insist that I'm so grateful for what this program has done for me. And that's what I come up here to talk about. I'm real glad to be here tonight. I wore this coat and tie out of respect for the fellowship and our founding people, and when I was coming up in AA they always wore a coat and a tie to the podium. Now it feels different to me. When I put on a tie I feel like I should say, contest, Your Honor. But, I mean, that's just my experience, you know. This is a good-looking bunch. You know, I look around here and I see my sponsor over there. I see my girlfriend Katie here. I'd see a lot of people and you would think that And I would be grateful for that kind of support and having the people. All I could think about over there when I was sitting there is that there's at least three people in the room that give a better talk than I do. I'm really grateful to be out here tonight. And, you know, this thing, I don't know if many of you know the history, but we used to have a thing. It's funny. You know, I thought of this get-together. I didn't have anything to do with putting it together, but I thought about it. I used to say that I could just release an idea into the universe, and that my higher power was so strong that he would just produce it. All I had to do was release the idea into universe. Well, pretty good stuff. I was down in South Austin one day, and I said, live in faith. And when you go to live in Faith, you'd see the Live in Faith crowd. When you go the Western Trails, you see the Western Trail crowd. when you go to Westlake and so on, Cedar Park Hope Group, Northland. And I said, you know we should have a group where everybody gets together so you can see everybody from all the groups except for those people you've never seen. That's just one of those little trains of thought that kind of rolled up through my little Grand Central Station brain. About three days later I was at a club and somebody goes, are you going to the intergroup meeting this weekend? And I was like, wow! That was fast! It doesn't always happen that fast. Of course a lot of people put a lot work into it in the meantime but I heard about it three days after. It's kind of like the way Al Gore invented the internet. I didn't have a lot activity and I'm not going to get into any outside issues up here. But I do think it's a great idea and we used to do it back in the 90s together. I was lucky enough to get to speak at one of those one time too, but they just kind of fell off the table. It just goes to show you that if you can be in AA and one or two people that take action and take initiative can really have a big effect on the fellowship backlogs and all this. I've seen it repeatedly in the time I've been around is that if You get an organizer in your group. A lot of stuff comes together, you know, where you just like, I remember at Bolden when there was Richard Green, he used to come down there and he was like, we're all going tubing this weekend or we're also going to Wet n' Wild and I'll get to that story. Wet n's Wild was a part of my story with my original sponsor. I call him my sponsor of merit. Jim Fletcher moved to Arkansas about six years ago and my sponsor, Mark Houston, is here tonight. Shit, that didn't take long. So I get emotional and use profanity. You're really doing good now. I love the people on this program. I love drunks. I like being around drunks I love drunks when I was drinking. I like them being sober. I love the Teleship alcoholics and armaments. Let me get into my story. I'm Charlie Parker. I'm an alcoholic, and if I can stay sober until this Thursday, I'll have 22 years of sobriety. My sobriete date has been March 22nd more than once. I'll get to that a little later. You know, and I've got to warn you about one other thing. A lot of times my brain, we've got a little ADD issue going on up there. There's a lot of little bunny trails that run out of the brain. And I will say many times that I'll give you some advice and I'll talk to that a little bit later. I'm not going to get to it. I can just warn you in advance. What it means is this is the wrong time for it to be in the story, but I'm probably not going to get to it later either. I had some ideas about tonight's talk and I saw on the schedule that it said that the speaker talks from 7 to 815 and then from 815 to 9 o'clock is cleanup. And I've always said that I give three talks whenever I talk. the talk. I get a dandy of a talk sitting in that chair over there. And then there's the talk that I give when I'm at the podium, and then there is the talk I'll give on the re-ride on the drive home tonight. There's something about closing that car door that makes you remember all the stuff that you meant to say. So what I was thinking we'd do is I'll help for the first 30 minutes of the clean up, and I'd like to get up for the last five minutes and say all the stuff that I forgot to say. Actually, though, I truly believe in my heart that God is present for one of those talks at least. My sponsor likes to say that he gets a 15-second warning on what's going to come out of his mouth. I'm praying for that. Mine's two or three seconds, I think. Good stuff here. There's a couple of things in the book that mention our talk. And there's one where it says, our story is disclosed in a general way, what we used to be like, what happened, and what we are like now. There's another one on page 50 in this big book. All this is, is this is my most prized possession. This is a large print copy of the big book that a friend of mine up in It says on page 50 in our personal stories, you will find a wide variation in the way each teller approaches and concedes of the power which is greater than itself. Whether we agree with a particular approach or conception seems to make little difference. difference. Experience has taught us that these matters, these are matters about which for our purpose we need not be worried. There are questions for each individual to settle for himself. Now listen to this. On one proposition, however, these men and women are strikingly agreed. Every one of them has gained access to and believes in a power greater than himself. This power has in each case accomplished the miraculous, the humanly impossible. As a celebrated American Statesman for you. Let's look at the record. I grew up in Dallas, Texas and was born in 1956. I'm 50 years old today. I mean, not today, but back in November I was 50. And I come from a fairly normal family. You know, I mean I love Jim. You pick up, you steal lines from everybody. I heard Jim the other day say that normal is the setting on a washing machine. And I thought, that is beautiful. So I don't know how normal the family was, but it was... I've heard enough fifth steps over the years to know that there are a lot of people who had it a hell of a lot worse than I had it. And I grew up in the baby boom. The street that I grew up on had 61 kids on it, on one block. You know, the Messicks have 16 of them, but But it was an active block, you know, and I don't know, you remember that when the next block was just a world away, and you didn't jack with the people on the next Block. And we had our little block, and they had their block, and every once in a while we'd throw rocks across the alley at each other. But anyway, that's how I grew up. And fairly normal family. I did have a sister. I do have a sister that's five and a half years older than I am. She was a high achiever, tough act to follow, you know, National Law Society first chair flattest, drum majorette drill team oh god, you name it, she joined it, you know, and then her little brother the thug, you you know, but the thing about it was my mother was a first grade school teacher and my mother taught for 42 years and I was well prepared for the first grade, you know. I mean, I showed up looking good, you knows, flash cards at the house and all that stuff And I don't know, I grew up, they talked a lot about potential, you know. I mean, did anybody else suffer under the burden of potential? You know, why can't you be like Charles Moliere across the street and all this stuff? And it was a lot of potential. And the one thing I can report to you is that 12 years of drinking and heavy usage of outside issues will significantly lower people's expectations of you. By the time I got through this program, they were like, just get a job. You know, for God's sakes, you know, don't worry about a career or a profession or an education or, you know, just get your ass off the couch. You know? Because, I mean, I'm sitting there and the high point of my day was when the Three Stooges had come on in. And it was always when my parents were getting ready to go to work and, you know, here's their pride and joy, the fat butt boy sitting on the couch watching the Three to just, bye! Hey mom, pick up some milk, would you? So that was a little later in the story. I performed pretty well in elementary school. I was holding it together for a long time. I was doing my best, you know, but I just had this feeling of separation, you know, that we all have. You know, I mean, when we come into this program, one of the reasons I think we need a sponsor that's based in the book is because I got no shot of understanding what's in the books by myself. It's terms I'm not familiar with, it's words that I don't use. It's phrases that just whiz right past me, and I completely forgot why I was saying that, but one of the things that they talk about was a spiritual malady. That's what got me on it, and you know, that term never really touched me. You know, I mean, when I hear people say it when I came in here, and if you're new, and it sounds like we're speak in another language, and I know exactly what that's like, you know, when they're talking about Mr. Bill and Dr. Bob and this stuff and that tradition, and, you know, if you're having trouble with your four, you need to go back to year one, and it's probably, you know, and you're like, this tradition, what the hell are they talking about? And, you know, we sit through the meeting, and we say, are there any newcomers here? And then, if maybe we try to scare the crap out of them with our war stories, and then pat him on the back and say, you know, you're in the right place, keep coming back. You know? And he's standing there going, when do we get to the not drinking? How do I not drink? You know, I understand you're getting a divorce and you're losing your, oh sorry, there I go again. But, you know, I really, that term spiritual malady, there's a lot of terms that just give testimony. But when I say spiritual malty, I never really felt it. But when you stand at the program by Alcoholics Anonymous and talk about that hole in my middle, everybody in the room knows what you're talking about. And to me, that's the spiritual malody. That's the problem that I was suffering from beginning in elementary school. Even though I was still batting number four and pitching and playing right guard and, you know, high academics and all that stuff, I had that hole working. And the first thing I ever got my hands on to try to fill that hole with was cream gravy. You know? You know, there just wasn't any booze in the house, you now. And if you're in a pinch, you know, you can knock yourself out with white bread and cream gravy. But that's another outside issue, you understand? Cliff up in Dallas told me one time that there's a lot of things that you can use to treat the spiritual malady. The problem is they all start another 12-step fellowship. I mean, you have gamblers anonymous, overeaters anonymous, you name it. I mean, it's all stuff that I've used to try to treat that hole. But, you know, I just, I guess I did okay. But then starting around junior high school, it really kind of started slipping off a little bit. And I don't know about anybody. I can only talk about my story. I started drinking when I was 16. I thought that was really young, you now. I mean now people are sobering up at like eight, you You know, you're like, oh, who's your daddy? I'm here for a 90-day trip, sir. You know... And God bless him, you know. I mean, you don't have no guard at the door. You know. One of my best friends, PJ, is... Well, I guess he's 39 and he's 25 years sober. And if you listen to his story, he didn't get here any too early. He was running it pretty hard before he got here. I didn't need this program until I was 17. But I started using it at 16. This is an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. I believe in our single-ness of purpose. I try real hard not to talk about outside issues. And let me just say it's a struggle. But what I can tell you is that everything that I abused, I abused alcoholically. Alcoholics shouldn't take drugs. So, we do it alcoholically, you know, but, you know, he would make a really macho story, you know, to get up here and say, I drank, you know, half a gallon of whiskey from that day when I was 16 until the day that I had quit, but that wouldn't be true. But what I can swear to you with absolute To be honest, from that day until the day I got that chip, I never turned down the opportunity to get loaded for any reason under any circumstances. I was an absolute devotee. I wasn't a disco drunk. I'm not into two beers and no beer. I was tearing it to the ground at every opportunity. And there was a long time when I didn't really understand. I remember having three years sober and leaving my mother's back door one day. And for some reason, the smell of the yard and everything just brought back the memory of what it used to be like when I would be leaving their house. I should also say that I was so mistreated as a child in my household that I ran away from home when I was 28 years old. I know. That's it. I'm not putting up with it anymore. But I remembered what it was like coming out of the back door of their house to go get loaded. And I remember thinking, I was three years sober, and I remember thinking why did I have to get so loaded? And I didn't have a clear answer. I still remember though wondering. You know, I know a lot more now than I knew then. But I needed to really change the way I felt desperately. And it got worse and it got worst, and I only knew one way to deal with it. And, you know, when you've only got a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail after a while. And so whatever it was, I drank at it. And then, you know, we get into that spiral of the waking with terror and the bewilderment and you can't face it anymore. And then what do you do in a situation like that? You drink. I mean, that's the only thing I knew to do. So I just drank and drank and drunk and drank. But, you now, our book says the doctor's opinion. You know, the doctor was not an alcoholic. And he was a pretty stately, mild-mannered New York doctor. And you can kind of tell he wasn't an alcoholic in some of the little things he says. There's one paragraph in there where he says, Men and women drink essentially because they like the effect produced by alcohol. That's a little understatement. I like banana pudding. I love the effect produced by alcohol. I still remember the first time I drank it, and you just go, hey, if you're here and you're an alcoholic, I don't have to describe to you what that first drink was like. If you're in your Al-Anon, we welcome you and I'm glad you're here. I loved the Al-Ans. Back in the 80s it used to be real popular to make jokes about Al- Anons, and I never appreciated that. You know, it's the only group of people that loves us, you know. If it wasn't for them, we'd be in deep trouble. I've got an Al-Anon story that I hope to get to later. But, you Know, I guess the fact of it is that everybody just kind of thought that I was getting too loaded. You know, I had a, at one point, how can I say this? I had two roommates. Well, I say I had three roommates. I would stay in an apartment where two guys were paying the rent. Because I just, I needed that money. Thank you. I needed to have that money for some other stuff. And those outside issues sort of applied to me. But I remember one of the guys made his living peddling outside issues. And the other guy was my bartender. And both of them thought I was going to shame for both guys, you know? And that's not good, you Know? The guy that you're spending every $10 you can get your hands on with is going, he wants me to take a little glass of orange juice and a half gallon of vodka and take a sip in the big, pull out a little sip in a big pint. He's like, damn. And I was like, oh, from you? You know, I'm like, I can take shame from my mother or my sister, but from my dealer? You know. That's not right. But if you're like me, you know, you wind up starting over a lot. You know? And getting it together. And this time I'm going to get it together this time. And one time, three students had just did it, and the mail was there on the floor in my mother's house. And there was a thing that said, Credit Union reinstates student loans. I thought, hmm. So I filled out the application and they sent me a $2,500 student loan. And I moved to Austin and I moved into these apartments and the maintenance man at these apartments, his wife had gone to treatment. And he kept coming into the apartments talking about treatment, treatment, treatment, you know, treatment. And I don't know why he thought we were interested in treatment or hearing about any of this, but he was on what I've come to find out was called the Marijuana Maintenance Program. He was drunk when I got here, but he carried enough message to me to get me here. And he keep talking about this treatment thing. He never mentioned detox, he never mentioned AA. He just mentioned treatment. And he gave me one piece of really bad advice. He said, you know, you might want to go pull a really good drunk before you go to treatment because they're going to make you not want to drink anymore. And I was like, I'm on it. And, you now, I mean, it's a sound theory. And so I went out, and I was pulling that really good drum because I was about to go to treatment. And I was able to do it. I was going to go for treatment, well, for nine months. And the thing about it is, and, I mean, I know I can't be the only one that's experienced this. You know, next week is a good time to go through treatment. You know? I mean think about it. And sometimes when it gets really bad, by God, I'll go tomorrow, you know. Well, I mean probably tomorrow afternoon. But I'm going to go tomorrow. But today was never the day, never the Day. And tomorrow would come and it would be today, and it's like, mm-mm, mm‑mm, maybe tomorrow. And so finally I went to this treatment center, and I didn't know what treatment was. I mean, did anybody you drank with talk about it? Maybe they do now, but I mean... I just heard about treatment, and there was a treatment center. And I had a picture of being somewhere between the hospital and a jail. You know, and I figured that you would lay up in the bed and that they would come in and treat you a little bit. Come back in the afternoon, treat you a little more. And I really didn't know why it was going to take 30 days, you know. But this is a 30 day treatment center. But I had room for you in my schedule. So I carved out a 30 And I went to this place, and I loved stolen credit cards. Before I... there's a couple of... I'm going to tell the pajama story, but then I've got to go back a little bit. You know, before I went through this treatment center, I took one of those stolen credit card, the last ones. Funny how I decided to quit drinking when I was on the last stolen credit car. And I... And I went down to Teich's, it was called there. I think it became Foley's later, and that's Macy's. But anyway, it's a department store. And I ran in because, you know, in the hospital, you're going to spend a lot of time in the bed. So I went and bought a purple pair of Christian Dior pajamas and matching slippers and a matching robe. And I don't think it's something tacky. I mean, it was more burgundy. In fact, Mark Benner, a buddy of mine said, no, that was Mogan David Redd. But I figured if I'm going to be up in the bed all this time, you know, let's look good about it. And, you know, I went into my mother's house over there. I went in her laundry room and I closed the door and that rope was hanging on the back of the door. I was really disappointed with how much time I got to spend in those pajamas. You know, every morning, you're up off the bed at 7 a.m. I couldn't get back on the bed until, you know, 10 o'clock that night. And I used to get cluster migraine headaches, and I had 28 migraine headache during the 30 days I was in treatment. And I'll never forget, I've got to tell a story. We've been talking about the big book a lot, and hopefully I'll talk a lot more about the Big Book because that's where the answer lives. That's where The Solution is for what was killing me when I got here. But when I was saying that we hear a lot of terms that you're not familiar with when we come in here, and there was a guy right off the street, I mean, just crazy as hell. And he was sitting there. I had a migraine headache, and I'm walking around with an ice pack on my head. It's about 2 o'clock in the morning. And in the day room, this is before the Internet. Now, some of you may remember encyclopedias. Let's all say it together. But before Google, Well, it was a big deal to have a set of encyclopedias. And they had them, you know, Britannica or something. And there was a little bookcase that had all of them in it. And in the back was this big slot. And it had a World Atlas that fit down in it, and it was real neat, just up against the wall. So I'm walking around, I've got a headache, and here's the crazy bastard sitting at the table. And I walk through, and he goes, he's got the World Atlas out. And he's flipping through the pages, and I said, man, this is far out. And I was like, well, good, dude. I'm glad you're digging it, you know? And I found out later that what had happened was he had gone into the office and he said, I can't sleep. Do you have anything I can read? And John Bernie had said, if you want to read, why don't you read the big book? So he was reading the biggest book we had, you Know? I always have visions of this guy being in a barstool one day and going, Oh, that went very well. And I read the goddamn big book. It didn't do anything for me. I can tell you where Yugoslavia is now. So that book we're passing around is what we're talking about when we mention the big books. But before I got into that treatment center, you know, during that time that I was about to go to treatment, it really started getting sloppy. You know, I mean, when it says that we drink because we like the effect produced by alcohol, I don't think that we just tear it to the ground originally because we're self-destructive or anything like that. I mean, there was a time when alcohol kicked ass. I mean I remember just drinking it going, we are going to do this a lot. You know, I like this. And the funny thing about it is that it has such a welcome effect on me. The amount of comfort that I get from drinking a whole bunch of alcohol, regular people don't understand, you know. So without somebody explaining the disease of alcoholism to me, You know, I come in here, or I'm out there especially, and people are saying, you need to not drink, right? And I'm thinking, you needs to shut up, you know, because you don't understand what it does for me. You know? If you knew what it did for me, yeah, okay, I mean, it'll fill that hole. And I'll pay anything for that. But, and I can see why, occasionally I overshoot the mark a little bit, you now. And I wreck the car or I go to jail or I lose a job or I loose a girlfriend or they take my house or something like that. But I'll take that deal for what it does for me and if you understood what that drink does for me, you wouldn't say stupid shit like that to me like you need to not drink. You know, and so that's what I show up here with is the belief that alcohol is not my problem, right? Alcohol is my solution. It's the only thing that I had ever found in my life that would fill that hole that I have inside of me. And this was the first place I'd ever been where I'd been around people that understood that, you know, what it was like to be willing to cash it all in for that ease and comfort that comes from taking a few drinks. When it started getting bad, I like to talk about the pawn shops. I loved pawn shops. It was such a pure equation. You know, you just take the shotgun in there, and you hand it to them, and they hand you the money, right? And they give you a little ticket that goes in your pocket. They don't ever go, what do you need this money for? Or, weren't you just in here this morning? You've been pouring a lot of stuff. It was straight up. You need money, you got stuff, you take it in, you've got the money, bang, here we go. Well, one weak part of that equation was that I didn't own very much stuff. So I had to pawn stuff that didn't belong to me. And that creates hard feelings amongst the family. And this leads into my Illinois story because what I would do is I would pawn everything and you would have, and a lot of us, you know, we have a of good plans you know like the guy with the whiskey and the milk uh you know uh uh that gem or fred that was jim it's a damn good plan you know i mean you know and it seemed like it had well my plan was always that i would i had 90 days to get everything out of the pawn shop you know so you would pawn stuff and then you got a lot of time and you know you only got to come up with one scam in 90 days, and I'm a pretty creative guy, that would get everything out. And that worked pretty well. We rolled with that deal for a while, and it worked just like all my other plans. It worked great until it quit working. And what happened was one time in particular I came out of a blackout. I was a blackouts drinker. I was blackouts a black out drinker several times a week. I drank blackout on average three to five nights a week. And I thought that was a pretty damn good driver because I only wrecked the car every so often. That's another thing. It's rough looking sloppy for them. To me, the judge is going, weren't you just in here six months ago? And I'm sitting there going, I haven't been arrested for six months. I mean, you know, that's holding it together pretty good. You hit a tree here, you ran into somebody there, but for the most part, I was driving pretty damn good for a guy that's in a blackout most of the time. But I came out of this blackout, and I'm sitting on the edge of the bed. I had $8 in my pocket. I had pulled a scam that netted enough money to get everything out of the pawn shop. And I came Out of This Blackout, and I still had this gangster wad of pawn tickets. And I hadn't gotten a damn thing out of the pawn shop. And I didn't remember a thing from the previous five days. And, you know, one of the guys that I was running with went back over to some place we had visited and he got cut as soon as they opened the door. So I guess we didn't make a good impression on those people. But I don't know what happened during that five days, but it wasn't going getting everything out of pawn shops. the pawn shops. And so here we are in that terrible, horrible place of just, oh no, you know, I mean, we've all experienced those mornings and I didn't have anything else to do. My dad was a good man. He was a hardworking man, you know, that none of his stuff was given to him. He worked for it and paid for it. And, you Know, he didn't do anything to deserve the kind of treatment he got from his son. Well, I'd have to go to my dad and say, Dad, if we act now, I can get you a really good deal on all your stuff. Were you out on scenario? I don't mean to make light of that story. I used to make a joke out of that to keep from getting too emotional. Because the reason I tell this story is because of the shame, you know, the shame that we feel before we get here And what I would have to do was, you know, it would be bad enough if it was, Dad, let's get in the car and go to the palm shop and get your stuff. But we lived in Dallas, and Dallas is a big town. And what we would haveと do is get inthe car, and I'd have to say, Okay, now we left. We have to go over on Garland Road. You know, and then I got some stuff over there. And then we need to goover to Harry Hines, and then we needed to go to Oak Cliff because I left a deer rifle in Oak Cliff. And then he mailed the pictures out of Buckner Boulevard. And so it was all day in the car with me and my dad and all that shame. This is where we start talking about alcoholism a little bit. This is why I start talking About Powerlessness, because when we were riding in that car, I would swear to him that I will never do this again. And if I was lying to him, I damn sure didn't know it at the time because I'm in it with every fiber of my being that I would never do this to him again because I knew it was messed up. You know, I was plenty psychotic sometimes but I knew well enough to know that that was some bad BS there. But, we would go get everything out and you know like most of us if you think about, take a second and think about the worst day of your drinking. Right? For most folks. The worst day you ever experienced drinking. What are we doing the next day? Drinking. That's the way it would go for me. I would make it for maybe a day or two, and then I would hit his back door like a cat burglar. Because I needed money, and I would grab that. And I'd grab it, and the short version of the story is my father and I made those rounds with the pawn shops three times during that nine months when I was getting ready to go to treatment. A lot of stuff happened during that nine-month treatment that had never happened before. That kind of shame with my family, getting locked out of their house, getting to a point where I didn't know anybody that would loan me $5. And believe me, $5 didn't help me much. But I was out of resources. So that's how slick I was. That's how cool I was, that's the way I showed up at Alcoholics Anonymous was without any answers, not knowing how to get through one day without getting loaded, and just as willing as I knew how to be. Well, I showed up for that treatment center, and you know that willingness? The big word talks about we like to try to get with a guy when he's depressed. be more receptive if he's depressed. Well, you know what it is? Because you take me, a guy like me that on that day is out of answers, I'm completely willing, I might appoint a complete surrender, and you put me in a treatment center, and 30 days later I've put on 15 pounds, I'm taking up a 30-day shift, and we can't tell me a goddamn thing. You know, I mean, I've got better ideas now. In fact, I could tell you how to run a treatment center better than this one still. How are we doing for time? Jesus, I'm still drunk. Let me speed it up a little bit. Good grief! What happened was I sold it up in that treatment center, and I worked the steps. And I got real involved. I did the first five steps because he had to do the first Five Steps as a condition of getting out of his treatment center. And I did The First Five Step, and then I got really heavily involved in the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous. I love the fellowship about AlcoholicsAnonymous. I love what we're doing here tonight. I go to a lot of conferences. Katie and I, we grew up going to stuff. And you learn a lot of stuff when we mix with people and stuff like that. You know, I mean, I talked about when we all went to Wet n' Wild. And one of my favorite stories is you get chances to teach newcomer stuff. My first sponsor, we all wet to Wet N' Wild one day. And we're up on this tower, and there's this ride where you slide straight down into a pool of water. And it's like 110 feet up in the air, this high-speed animal. Right down. And, you know, the thing goes up like that in a circle. And we go around and we're about to be next. You know what I mean? And the wind's blowing. And the tower's kind of moving a little bit. And this guy goes, and you kind of give him the pull where he kind of likes going, anybody want to go in front of me? You know, and it's a little scary. And Jim looks at me, and he goes, you feel that? And I went, yeah. He goes, that's fear. Identify that feeling. It's going to come up again for you. And I was like, thanks, sponsor. So you never know when we're going to get to carry the message a little bit there. I had AA roommates, I went to AA dances, I had AAA co-workers, I dated AA girls, everything was AA fellowship. And I'm not knocking the Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous at all. I love the Fellowships of Alcoholic Anonymous, but I wasn't doing the work. And the thing I can tell you is that the Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous will keep you sober right up to the point that you get loaded. You know, because I was not involved in the work. I stopped doing the work when I got out of that treatment center. And if you'd have asked me, I would have said I was going six and seven. Looking back on it now, that makes no sense. No sense. But what had happened to me, I'll just keep talking while you clean it up. I'm up here talking about my two favorite things, Alcoholics Anonymous and me. You know, Katie was around. Katie and I were best friends for 20 years. And a few years ago her husband passed away and I got into a divorce. I was hoping to have more time to talk about that but we've been dating a while now and it's really, I'm happier than I've ever been. But we used to run around a lot together. You know, she was 26 when she showed up. I was 28. And we had a big group of people and we did a lot of stuff, you know, and that was all fun. I got loaded with 10 months of sobriety because at 10 months there was a night when I was afraid to sleep in the house with my guns. I've never been suicidal in my life. I've boarded on homicidal many times, but I've never thought about harming myself other than just with what we do. But that night, it wasn't too long after that that I wound up picking up. And what had happened was when I look back on it now, I had spent that first period of sobriety thinking that my problem was alcohol And that this was a program to separate me from alcohol. And as long as I was separate from alcohol, I was winning. I was getting an A and I was doing the deal. And so my understanding of the steps at that time was that I'm powerless over alcohol and my life's unmanageable. Clearly it was, you know, I could look at it and see, you know, that I had pending charges. So then I'm going to come to believe in this higher power that y'all talked about. I'm gonna make a decision to turn my will and my life over to this higher power. Got no idea what that means but I'm gonna you know take my best shot at it. And then in this fourth step, this is my first understanding of the work. In my fourth step I'm gonna get out all the stuff that makes me feel bad so I'll feel better about me and then I won't have to drink. And then in the fifth step, that's what I'm going to do. I'm gonna share this stuff with this person so now they'll help me with my guilt and shame and then I won't have to drink because I feel better about me. And then we're gonna do six and seven... You know, I don't know what that means. But, you know, eight is where I'm wanna make a list of all the people that I don' want to run into because I'll feel better, you kno, if I straighten all that stuff out. And then in the ninth step, we go out and we clean it up. So I'll feel better about me. And now that I feel so good about me, I'm going to do 10 and 11. So keep feeling good about you. Keep feeling good at me. And then at 12, I get to go out and tell you about me." Now, this is a little oversimplified, but that was kind of my take on the steps then. And I knew that in 10, I really didn't complete the last step. And I new that in ten, I kind of had to keep my stuff sort of straight. If I did something to offend you, I had to clean it up. And so I wouldn't feel guilty because you know what guilt does. It makes you feel bad about me. So the only thing I'll tell is I was in the work. Hey, Tommy. This is my best friend, Tommy, the thing about it was my understanding of the whole work, I'd done some work and I'd worked with some new guys and I've gone to some big book studies and I was drawn to people in the big book but I didn't really I don't think I really studied the book it talks about this being the basic text of our society to show other alcoholics That's precisely how we were covered is the main purpose of this book. But I think what I would do was I would just read that book, and I would look for stuff that I agree with. Has anybody ever read like that? You know, where you just, you read through there, and you see a study, oh yeah, there it is. I got, you know, that's what I said. And then the stuff that I don't agree with, I just kind of shied over it. And I did a lot of that. And when I would talk in meetings, I'd talk about the stuff I agreed with or I'd talking about the steps that I disagreed with. But my sponsor now has taught me a thing called the set-aside prayer that has been very, very helpful. And I'll share it with you if you haven't heard it. But before I read the book, now before I do the work, before I go to lunch, there's a little prayer while I'm saying, God, please help me set aside everything that I think that I know about this process, about this book, and about your way of life and help me see what you would have me learn out of what we're covering today. And then we go to work. And it's amazing how, well, well into sobriety, I was having a really flat period. I was in a commuting marriage where I went to and from New York all the time, and on the outside it looked real good. We had a penthouse apartment in Manhattan and a beach house in the Hamptons and traveling all over the place. And I was not working with any new people. I was really going to that many meetings. I wasn't reading a book. I knew I had a big book, and I was pretty sure where it was, but I wasn'T reading it. But if you asked me, I'd say, but I'm not thinking about drinking. You know, I mean, I might be a little flat. I might not be the happiest I've ever been. But I'm going to think about drinking, right? And one day I was sitting in a meeting with Katie. And, you know, usually when Katie raises her hand, I figure out everything she's going to say, you see? It's generous with her input with me. And I want to thank you purposefully for helping me draw. But there's a lot of truth in that. You know, when we talk about selfishness and self-centeredness, that's one of the things that I have noticed is that I've become keen on being able to pick up selfishness self-centeredness in others. You know, I just, I can't see it in me. And thank you for your help with that, Kevin. But the other day, I told a story about there was a fire and I had to rush into a burning house and run out and get a fire extinguisher out of the house and went in, this was just two weeks ago, and I ran into this burning kitchen and the fire goes out and it's really intense and the fire department comes and I mean it had been like 30 minutes since it happened where I sat at the dinner table on her son night. You want to see selfishness and self-centeredness. Any of you that have teenage children know what I'm talking about. I finished a story about the burning house and the risk of life of the limb and all that stuff. And as soon as I say the last word, Sam goes, this is getting really big. And I go, what? And he goes, I got a bump on my back. I was just like, oh my God! Well, see, I enjoyed that story. But I enjoyed it enough that I shared with Katie when I got home, right? But what does she say? She says, oh, you didn't find it necessary to share the story about your pickup truck? No. She reminded me of a time that her husband was going in for brain surgery and I had gotten a new pickup truck that day and I went down to the hospital and I demanded that Katie come down and look at my new pickup Now, I'm no less self-centered than Sam is, but I don't see it in me. That's why we have sponsors. That's what we have people like Jim and Danny Brown and Tommy and people that we can share our stuff with because they can go, might be a little self-centred. But the reason I say all that is because I drank and I came back in I had that long flat period, and then when Katie talked to that meeting that day, because I'm going around, I know I'm not living the promises or anything like that, but I'm thinking about drinking. I've been sober 15, 17 years. I got some merit badges in this society. We've been doing the golf timer for 20 years, and back off, just back off. And Katie says that when I'm walking around in that flat spot, that what happens for me is God consciousness goes out the window. This God that I've come to know in the third step isn't completely out the windows. What replaces God's consciousness is self-will. And I don't even see it happening, and I am operating 100% in self-well. And when the heat's on, it's like, don't give me that AA shit right now. I've got a serious problem, you know, that I'm dealing with. And during that time, the thing that struck me when she was talking about that, she said, you take that guy, he's on his self-will. I don't even know it. And next thing you know that spiritual malady starts blowing up inside of me again where I'm restless, irritable, and discontent. Page 52 starts to describe me in sobriety. Have you all seen The Bedevillments? On page 52, see if this has ever described anybody sober. We were having trouble with our personal relationships. We couldn't control our emotional nature. We were afraid of misery and depression. We couldnít make a living. We had a feeling of uselessness. We were full of fear. We were unhappy. We couldní seem to be of real help to other people. Whatís not a basic solution to these bedevilments is more important than whether we could see newsreels of Lynn or Flash. I'm walking around in that period, and I'm saying, I'm not thinking about drinking, but what she said that day at my meeting was you take that guy, and you let him blow out his knee in a motorcycle wreck, or you let them get back surgery, and they hand him a bottle of Vicodin. And two weeks later, he's sitting there going, What the hell happened? You know? There's people I love in this room today that can tell you how that goes. And that's how we wind up. We lose a lot of people in this fellowship with a lot of time. I like to talk to the newcomer when I talk, but I also like to talked to the people that have gone between three years and 16 years and maybe you're not feeling like experiencing what this program describes or what you hear people from the program talking about experiencing in this program because I'm telling you it's still available. During that time, if you had come to me and said, You know what you need, Charlie, is Alcoholics Anonymous. I would have said, No, no, that's not what I needed because I've done Alcoholics Anonymous, I know what Alcoholics Anonymous offers me, and I know what I get out of it, and that's not going to fix what's wrong with me today, but thanks for sharing, you simple son of a bitch. What happened was we chartered I heard a plane coming in back from Long Island one day. And, you know, I mean, I'm telling you, it was looking good. Private plane, you now, from East Hampton Airport into LaGuardia and then dinner at Cipriani's and, you can't tell me squat. Except that we get out by Shelter Island and the engine quits. Talk about a whole new meaning of powerlessness. We crashed into the water at night out on Eastern Long Island in a plane with five of us on it. And as luck would have it, all the humans survived. My dog drowned. But we were in a plain underwater and the doors wouldn't open. And just everybody got out but just barely. It was the beginning of a spiritual awakening for me that was a dramatic change in the direction of my life. I got out of that marriage because it wasn't right on a lot of levels, and I had been thinking I would eventually be out of it. I got out of the marriage, and I came back. And one of the things that I started noticing was at the time I was 17 years sober, I think. I was so self-centered that I couldn't even have a conversation with you. You know, I couldn'T be in the room. I spent about 10 seconds out of a year in the present moment. You know? My mind is whirling around 100 miles an hour, and, you know, and I can't even really be in a conversation. You know, I have to force myself in a conversation to say, how are the kids? Like, you know, and hang on, how's it going? And then, you don't want an answer. I'm going, you Know, and my mind is up here. And I went to John Henry, and I said, I told him, I described that amount of self-centeredness to him. And he took me, he said, why don't we go out to the ranch tomorrow and talk to the winos? And you know what? It didn't sound like a good idea, you know. I mean, because I've talked to winos. You know how they do. They want to talk about them. And I want to tell them. They want me to talk. They want you to talk to them about me. And so, but I said, okay, I'll meet you. And we went out there and we started talking to these guys. And I don't know how people could tell, but it had been a long time since I'd talked in a meeting where anybody would come up and say, would you sponsor me? Or if they did, I didn't know what the hell to tell them. You know? And I know I'm not the only person in the room that's experiencing that with considerable sobriety. If a new man... I could tell you how to do a relationship. I could give you advice anyway. But work stuff, that kind of stuff. But when you take a brand-new drunk, I don't know want to say anymore. It had been so long since I'd worked with a new drunk. And it scared the crap out of me, to tell you the truth. And there was times when I... because out there at the ranch there was guys saying, you know, can I get your phone number and can I talk to you? And man, I went home and I found that big book. I was pretty sure where it was. But there was a damn good chance that it hadn't made the move to that house. And so I got that book out and I started working with these guys And there was times when I felt like I was one step ahead of these guys, you know. And I would read the book. I'd say, read the doctor's opinion, you Know. And then I'd go home and read the Doctor's opinion. And I'm getting out here and I started working. But about that time, a friend of mine had sobered up in the primary purpose group up in Dallas. Can I run a few minutes over? Where's Harris? Can I have about five minutes? Okay. If you've got to go on, I'm sorry, but I can't just drop it off the table right now. A friend of mine had started going to the Family Purpose Group up in Dallas. This was a friend of my that at 17 years had gone to the dentist's office and they'd given him nitrous oxide. And he had such a spiritual malady going on at the time that he scheduled more dental work that day. And he called me and he was scared and I didn't know what to tell him. I didn' t know what tell him, you know what I knew to tell them? Go to a meeting. But, that's some bullshit. We almost lost Tom. Tom was taking 125 Vicodin a day by the time he showed back up and he got involved with these people at the Primary Purpose Group in Dallas and these boys were in the solution. They were in the big book, and they were talking about the spiritual malady and the mental obsession and the physical allergy and why we use like we do. And that it's not just that what happens for me is when I go a period of time without drinking, that that mental obsession kicks up to the point where I've got no power over that first drink and that the mental possession gets strong enough that I'm going to take that first drank and that's going to kick in that phenomenon of craving that the book talks about. And from that point on, I empower us over the second drink and the third drink, and I'm going to drink until I have to stop and I must face off until I haste to drink. And given that hopeless condition of mind and body, it says in there that I place myself beyond human aid. And what I've started seeing is that the most important step for me to pound into these guys as I lift a ranch is step one because if I don't understand that hopeless condition of mind and body, I used to raise my hand in an alcoholic's anonymous meeting and say my name is Charlie Parker and I'm an alcoholic. I had no clue what it meant, you know? I didn't understand the physical allergy and the mental obsession. I just knew that I got in a lot of trouble when I drank. But now, if I take a new guy and I walk him through and I say, you know, what this hopeless condition, you know there's no good news in step one, you Know? I mean, if you get to the end of step one, it says the first requirement is that we have to admit to our innermost selves that we're an alcoholic. I've got to explain to this new guy what that means. The book does it. He ain't going to get it from a hand in the book. So I've Got to Explain to This Guy What It Means To Be An Alcoholic. If at the end I'm explaining step one to a guy, he's not scared and depressed, either he's non-alcoholic or he's psychotic. You know, because what step one means is a death sentence, you know. That's what I try to do with the new guy at the first meeting. If I spend about an hour and a half trying to get him a fatal dose of alcoholism, you know, because at the end of that, step two looks really interesting. Right? You know? I mean, if you think about it, the steps roll real smart like that. If I am completely paralyzed, I place myself beyond human aid, Then this God business that they talk about in the A.A. starts looking really interesting. And then we get into step three. I didn't understand, you know, that the deal I'm making with step three is that I'm going to quit playing God. You know? It's not just that I've turned my will over. I'm out of the God business. You know, I've got to quit paying God. I've gotta let Him run things. I'm gonna take some action. But I'm trying to get in touch with this higher power that they've talked about. If it's the only thing that'll save me, that's what I gotta do. Right? So I get back into this work. Well, now it says that this decision, the only thing that will have no permanent effect unless I follow it with an attempt to clean up the stuff that's blocking me from this higher power. I used to think they were talking about step four. Now I think they're talking about four through ten. You know, that's the effort to remove all the crap that's in me. It's like there's this pipe and I'm on one end and God's on the other and my pipe's got its full resentment and fear and guilt and shame and harms to others and that sort of thing. And that's what we're going to do in that inventory is remove enough of that stuff where there's some channel of contact between me and God, right? Now, what happens, though, if I've got a sponsor that's really versed in the book, where the magic takes place in that Inventory is in the fourth column, you know, because I can tell you who I'm pissed off at and what they did to me. In the third column, I can show you how it affected me, but when we get into that fourth column that's where I'm seeing my part in it, The selfishness, the inconsiderate, the self-pity, the dishonesty, the self seeking and that sort of thing. And then in resentment after resentment, after resentment after resentment, I'm seeing selfishness and dishonesty and inconsiderative fear, you know, and then the next one and the next. Well, now when we get to six and seven, remember how vague I was saying it was before? Well, no, I got real stuff that I'm going to God with. You know, I don't want God to help me be less dishonest. Make me more considerate. Help me, you know, be less frightened and that sort of thing. So I've got real stuff I'm going to God with in 6 and 7 instead of just this vague prayer of like, God help me be a better dude. And then 8 and 9 is another attempt to clean out the stuff that's blocking me from this higher power. But the thing about it was, and I'm almost done, i missed selfishness in that first pass through the book i missed it you know and i'm just stupid enough but i don't even apologize for it i'll stand up here and tell you the first time i read through the whole selfishness piece you know the book takes a weird left turn at page 60 that i missed i mean i just and because we're going along we're talking about our alcoholism We're talking about the way it affects me physically and the way it affects the mental obsession and the physical allergy. And then all of a sudden, on page 60, it says we have to be convinced that any life went on self can hardly be a success. Well, that's only about a couple of pages there. And I just kind of, that was one of those where I just kind of let it go. Well, this time, I'm reading through the book, you know, and I'm studying the book. And I'm on the phone with Tom, and I'M on the phone with Danny Brown. a lot of people. And I go, Katie, self is all over this thing, you know? And one day she goes, did you really miss that? She goes, you really never saw it before? And I went, hmm. She goes. That's some pretty basic shit, Charlie. And uh, and I was like, I missed So now, I'm saying that my real problem is self. My problem never was alcohol. And so I'm in this battle against selfishness and self-will now that keeps going on and on and I keep having new realizations. I'll be working with a sponsee and we'll be in the book And I'm going through the stuff where I went and I go, holy mackerel, that's a prayer. You know, come on, you know, and you know this guy's going, what the hell has he been doing for 20 years? You know what I mean? Because as you can tell, I just saw it for the first time. With that set-aside affair, I was seeing new stuff in that book all the time. And so I guess my message to you would be if you've got some time in this program and you're not feeling like you're feeling it, there are people around here that will show you how to do it. The magic takes place in working with others. That's the real magic of this program, and it's not going to sound like a good idea. I'm telling you, when I'm telling you out here tonight, you're thinking no. I'm busy. Now, working with others is the magic that takes place in this program and you cannot see it coming. I didn't want to do it and it's just been the joy of my life. You know, I mean watching, there's a thing in the 12 at 12 where it talks about working with others where it says Life will take on new meaning. To watch people recover, to see them help others. To watch loneliness vanish. To see a fellowship grow up about you. To have a host of friends. This is an experience you must not miss. We know you will not want to miss it. Frequent contact with newcomers and with each other is the best part of our lives. I said about 12% of what I wanted to say tonight, but I'm out of time. I'd like to close with this little part on page 100. The thing I can tell you, though, is seriously, come to Primary Purpose Group on Tuesday nights. We meet in South Austin. We study that book line by line. But the real magic that happens in there is between the meetings. You find people that are serious about the work, that are into the solution. They're in other meetings, too. But, you know, we've got people that are coming out there and they're studying the work. And the real magic takes place between the meetings, before the meeting, after the meeting and on the phone and on e-mails and stuff between the meeting. We're getting around people that have fired up about this work because you give clarity on the message. And I've always said, you Know, if a guy has had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps, you can't keep him out of service for it. You don't have to force somebody that's had a spiritual awakening to go out and work with others. You know, you can't stop them. So it's out there. There's people that will help you. It's okay not to know, you know, I mean, you can get with people and you've got something to share with these people and you can learn together with them, you know? And we can only transmit what's been transmitted to us, but there is some real magic that's still taking place in this program. both you and the new man must walk day by day in 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 appreciate you letting me run all around