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Recovery in the News
In 'Broken' Moyers tells his story
Graydon Royce
Star Tribune
October 3, 2006
It has been nearly a decade since William Cope Moyers began offering himself as the poster boy for recovering alcoholics and addicts. Using his famous last name and a harrowing story of crack mania, he launched a media blitz both strategic and personal.
As vice president for external affairs for the Hazelden Foundation, he has lobbied Congress strenuously to remove insurance coverage caps on chemical-dependency treatment. As an affable and gregarious fellow who stumbled many times on his way to sobriety, he simply wanted to let other addicts know that there is life away from the grinding debilitation of drugs and alcohol.
In a way, Moyers' memoir, "Broken," is just another vessel to carry his epic tale of how a son of privilege and fame ended up in inner-city crack houses for days on end. But the fact remains that it's a pretty good story.
And in these days of James Frey, Moyers is quick to note that it's all true. His white-haired mother really did hike around Harlem sidewalks in search of her wayward son. He really did kiss his sons goodbye in October 1994, tell his wife he was going to the store and go on a four-day crack-smoking binge in an Atlanta slum.
The media have taken a big interest. Moyers' book was excerpted in People magazine and he spoke to a reporter last week from a Washington, D.C., airport after taping a segment for National Public Radio's "Fresh Air" program. He was scheduled to appear on "Good Morning America" on Monday and there is an event this week at the Smithsonian.
Moyers said he asked his father to join him at the Smith-sonian, but that Bill Moyers had said, " 'This is your story, not mine.' I think they [his parents] want to get out of the way."
In many ways, though, the book firmly links father and son. William details an idyllic chil! dhood as the son of a man who went to work at the White House every day as press secretary for President Lyndon Johnson. (How many of us can say that the president of the United States has had dinner at our house?) Bill Moyers' success, though, proved a difficult burden for the son to carry. As with anyone, the boundless dreams of youth began to narrow and as William grew into adulthood, his childhood goals of surpassing his father's accomplishments became a dagger rather than a comfort. It just wasn't going to happen.
Moyers used letters from his father and mother throughout his book. They are missives of comfort, support and understanding, although one senses some early denial about their son's problems. After a drunken William busted into a fish market during his college days, for example, Bill gently urged his son to seek professional psychological help.
It's curious, given their deep bond, that nowhere in his book does Moyers address his father's arrest in 2002 and subsequent guilty plea to negligent driving. In an interview, Moyers tersely said that it was his father's issue.
"We did have a conversation and I gave him some counsel, not that he needed it," he said. "I think my father would tell you he made a mistake and that was the extent of it."
In the book, Moyers speaks candidly about the financial and emotional havoc his addiction wreaked on his first marriage. His former wife is not happy about being included in the book, he said, although he contends she comes off as a "naive hero."
Heavy emotional sledding
Moyers, 47, calls the book one of the hardest tasks he's taken on since he got sober 12 years ago, taxing his professional and personal life. As the deadline approached last November, his current wife, Allison, was hospitalized for depression and an eating disorder.
"I'd taken a leave of absence from Hazelden, but I was trying to finish a book on deadline, raise three children -- and the bedrock of my existence, my wife, was gon! e," he s aid. "The only thing that kept me going was going to [Alcoholics Anonymous] meetings."
That admission will certainly raise the hackles of AA members who believe that Moyers has betrayed the 12-step program's principle of anonymity. He contends that recovering people are invisible and subsequently have no political or social clout.
"There are people who feel I'm up on a pious soapbox," he said.
The question for him, Moyers said, is less about how he is perceived than whether his public stance can make a difference.
"On optimistic days, I think we've made some headway about the public's understanding of addiction, recovery, treatment," he said. "But we haven't done a good job of advancing public policy. [Insurance coverage] parity is no closer. The war on drugs is still waged against people like me. There isn't enough funding for halfway houses or prevention programs. It hasn't translated into public policy."
It took Moyers several trips through treatment before finally finding sobriety. He uses that fact frequently in stumping for greater insurance coverage. His family could afford it, but how many others, he asks, end up on the streets not for lack of desire, but for lack of funds?
"I never met an addict or an alcoholic who didn't want to get sober," he said. "The instinct to live is in mortal combat with the disease that wants us to die."
Copyright 2006 Star Tribune. All rights reserved.