If you’ve been sober a while and still feel restless, irritable, and discontent, this is for you. If you’re stacking years and your marriage is falling apart anyway. If you want to crawl out of your skin at eight years sober and can’t figure out why.
There’s a phrase you’ve probably heard a hundred times in meetings. Self-will run riot. Most of us say it without ever sitting still long enough to ask what it means.
Charlie P sat with it for a long time. He spent 17 years in AA before he understood what the phrase was actually pointing at. Once he did, he spent the rest of his life trying to hand that understanding to anyone who would listen.
Charlie passed away a couple of years back. His sobriety date was March 22, 1985. He sponsored about 26 guys, spoke at workshops in rooms with six thousand people, and led a line-by-line Big Book study at the primary purpose group in Austin every Tuesday night for 15 years. He is missed in a way that’s hard to put into words.
What he left us with, more than anything, is a clearer way of seeing the real problem.
“I Thought I Changed My Mind”
Charlie used to say that for years he raised his hand in meetings, said his name was Charlie, and he was an alcoholic, and had no real idea what that meant.
He figured if there was such a thing as an alcoholic, he must be one. He didn’t know anybody who drank more than he did. But the physical allergy and the mental obsession laid out in the doctor’s opinion, the first 24 pages of the Big Book, that part had never quite landed.
The way Charlie put it: every time he started drinking, he wasn’t conscious of triggering some phenomenon of craving. He just thought he had changed his mind. He’d said he was going to have a couple. Then he changed his mind. And two became seven.
That’s the trap. The mental obsession doesn’t announce itself. It just shows up as a slightly different decision than the one you made the day before.
The Pawn Shop Story
Charlie grew up in Dallas. He loved pawn shops. He loved what he called the purity of the equation. You walk in, you hand over the shotgun, and they hand you the money. No questions. Nobody is asking, weren’t you here two hours ago?
He had a plan. He always had a plan. Alcoholics make good plans, he said. You could take one over to the university, and they’d nod approvingly. His plan was to return in 90 days to clear his tickets. He wasn’t selling anything. He was just borrowing against it.
The complicating factor was that he didn’t own much. So a lot of what he was pawning belonged to his father.
One day, he pulled an insurance scam that he later made amends for, and had enough cash to get everything back. He stopped at the spillway pub on White Rock Lake first, because he wanted to settle his tab before he started drinking again. Five days later, he came out of a blackout in his parents’ upstairs bedroom. Eight dollars in his right pocket. All the pawn tickets are still on his left.
So he had to get in the truck with his father and drive all over Dallas getting his dad’s things back. The shotgun on East Grand. The deer rifle on Buckner. The metal detectors out in Oak Cliff. The sterling silver out on Belt Line Road. All day in the car with his dad and all that shame.
He told his father he would never do it again. He said it with every fiber of his being. He wasn’t lying.
He just didn’t have the power to make good on it.
By the time he got to the rooms of AA, he and his father had made the rounds of those same pawn shops three times.
“That’s how cool I was,” Charlie said. “That’s how slick I was. I was a burden to anyone unfortunate enough to love me. That’s the guy I brought to Alcoholics Anonymous.
“Dogs Never Were My Problem”
For 17 years sober, Charlie worked his program like the problem was alcohol. The not-drinking. The meetings. The third step prayer he did on his knees once and counted as the whole step. He still blew up his life in ways that didn’t make sense. He couldn’t figure out why he wanted to die at eight years sober.
Then Marty Houston walked into his life. Charlie always pointed people back to Marty. If you don’t hear anything else, he’d say, go find Marty Houston’s recordings and study them.
The shift was this. Page 62 of the Big Book says it plainly. Selfishness, self-centeredness. That, we think, is the root of our trouble.
Charlie liked to tell a story Chuck Chamberlain once shared about a guy named Tex. Tex had been afraid of dogs his whole life. One day, doing inventory, he realized he’d been chasing a little neighborhood girl across her yard when her dog came out and bit him. All my life, I’d been running from dogs and chasing women, Tex said. And dogs never were my problem.
That hit Charlie. He put it this way:
Alcohol never was my problem. Alcohol was the only thing I’d ever found that would ease the discomfort of a life based on selfishness and self-centeredness. I’d worked my whole program like the problem was alcohol. And it really wasn’t.
That’s what self-will run riot is actually pointing at. The Big Book describes a person trying to run the whole show like an actor who thinks he’s the director. If only the other actors would stand on their marks. If only people would do what he wanted. The show would be great. He’s even kind, considerate, and self-sacrificing when it suits him. He’s mean and dishonest when that doesn’t work. Either way, he’s trying to seize satisfaction from a life he is convinced he can manage on his own power.
It blows up. Every time. And the alcoholic, Charlie said, is the extreme example. Not because we’re worse people, but because we don’t have the tolerance for the discomfort it produces. So we drink.
“So Our Troubles Are Basically of Our Own Making”
The line Charlie built this whole talk around comes from page 62. So our troubles, we think, are basically of our own making.
He called it one of the biggest promises in the Big Book. Most people don’t hear it that way. Most people hear it and feel accused.
But Charlie’s point was the opposite. If my troubles are everybody else’s fault, the only way I’m ever going to be okay is to get everybody else to act right. And he had very little experience getting everybody to act right.
If they’re of my own making, though, I, a power greater than myself, and a new attitude, actually have a shot.
That’s the door the steps open. Not a moral correction. A way out of a life run on self.
Listen to Charlie
Charlie’s full conversation is on Sober Speak. His voice was already gone by then because of his throat. He spent most of the hour walking through the first three steps the way only Charlie could. The pawn shop story. The actor on the stage. The gift of desperation. The moment Marty Houston changed his life at 17 years sober. If any of this hit you, the full thing is worth your time.
If this is your first time hearing Charlie P., visit the Podcast page and type “Charlie P” into the search box. He is in there several times. Every episode is worth your time.
There’s more from Charlie in the Sober Speak archive. He was on six or seven times before he went. Gobble them up, as he might have said about a Marty Houston tape.
The thing about Charlie is that he never positioned himself as someone who had it figured out. He was a man who had been wrong about the real problem for 17 years and was just trying to spare other people the same wait.
If you’re sober and you’re miserable, the answer might not be more meetings or more white-knuckling or another commitment. It might be that you’re still working the program like the problem is alcohol. And it really isn’t.
Charlie’s gone. What he taught isn’t. Keep coming back.
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