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Recovery in the News
At Wyomissing banquet, broadcaster’s son tells of addiction
Erin Negley
Reading Eagle
April 17, 2008
William Cope Moyers does not blame his famous father, Bill Moyers, for his 10-year addiction to alcohol and crack cocaine.
With famed broadcast journalist Bill Moyers as his father, William Cope Moyers struggled to measure up.
The elder Moyers casts a long shadow. He is a broadcast journalist who has won more than 30 Emmy awards. He also served as publisher of the Melville, N.Y., newspaper News day, deputy director of the Peace Corps during the Ken nedy administration and was special assistant to President Lyndon Johnson.
In high school, William Moyers turned to drugs and alcohol to feel better about himself and it worked instantly, miraculously.
His escape turned into a 10-year struggle with an addiction to alcohol and crack cocaine.
Now he’s been sober for 13 years and realizes his name recognition and his experiences can help others.
On Wednesday, Moyers spoke about the importance of treatment during the Caron Treatment Centers’ 17th Annual Award of Excellence Dinner.
He urged the crowd of more than 800 people at the Sheraton Hotel Reading in Wyomissing to talk to others about their struggles with addiction and recovery success stories to help end the disease’s stigma.
Before his talk, Moyers said he doesn’t blame his alcoholism or his drug addiction on having a famous father.
“While I take full responsibility for ingesting legal substances like alcohol and illegal substances like marijuana and cocaine, I’m not responsible for the fact that my brain is wired differently and I developed a baffling inability to just say ‘no,’” Moyers said.
But he was looking for an escape. His binges provided relief from the weight of his well-known name.
“Nobody knows your last name in a crack house,” Moyers said.
He was lucky. Each time Moyers retreated to a crack house his parents or his girlfriend found him and helped him find treatment.
He also had the means to cover four stints in rehab.
Adding more treatment facilities and creating insurance parity to cover treatment programs would allow more addicts to get the help they need, Moyers said.
“It shouldn’t just be people like me who get treatment,” he said.
He also commented on the outcry over plans by Firetree Ltd., a nonprofit organization from Williamsport, to open a drug and alcohol treatment facility in Hamburg.
“What would the community rather have?” he said. “Practicing addicts and alcoholics in their community or sober addicts and alcoholics in their community?”
Moyers works for The Hazelden Foundation, a drug and alcohol treatment center in Minnesota, and advocates changes in public policy. By talking about his struggle, he puts a face on a private issue.
Recently, his father called him and said he was proud of him for saving lives with his story of addiction and redemption.