WEDU Interview; William Cope Moyers

This. Special Presentation was produced in high definition by W. edu Tampa St. Petersburg Sarasota. This program funded by Sam says Bay Area young offender reentry program administered by Operation Parr and acts William COTAN lawyers comes from one of the most respected families in the country. However that didn't prevent him from becoming addicted to drugs and alcohol leaving his wife and small children and disappearing for three days. He was found by his father at a downtown courthouse barely able to speak. Today he is a leading spokesman for the Hazelden Foundation an organization that helps addicts recover and get on with their lives. I'm Kathy unraised in the huff Family Foundation studios in Tampa. Join me for a w edu interview with William Cohen joins us coming up next. Hello I'm Cathy unroot thank you for joining us. William cope Moyers had just about

everything necessary for a successful life. He came from a loving home his father being Bill Moyers the respected reporter. His mother Judith devoted to her family he had a successful career as a journalist at The Dallas Times Herald The New York Newsday and CNN. He was married to a loving wife and had two small children but none of these prevented him from descending into a drug addiction nightmare that eventually wound up at a crack house in downtown Atlanta. That incident led him to the Hazelden Foundation in St. Paul Minnesota a place that helps addicts recover and move on with their lives. Joining us is William cope Moyers who is now the vice president of external affairs at the Hazelden Foundation Welcome William. Thanks. Great to have you here. Thanks for having me. Let's start with first things first. What was it like growing up in your household. Well you know I come from a family that that has a lot of privilege if you will my father before he was a journalist was Lyndon Johnson's chief of staff and press secretary he helped set up the Peace Corps under John Kennedy. My mother was an engaged stay at home

mom I lacked for nothing emotionally morally financially spiritually growing up my father is also an ordained Southern Baptist minister. And so from all appearances I had it all. I remember trips on Air Force One Easter egg hunts on the lawn of the White House. Weekends at Camp David I lacked for nothing as I said. So it was a pretty exciting life particularly in the 60s and 70s and when I was at home with my parents had dinner with President Johnson on a couple of occasions I was little but I remember it so my dad was a really good childhood. By all appearances of course your father is well known to most people but it's Court certainly to PBS audiences. And as we move through your story your dad is sort of the overarching theme of your life at least her early life. In fact you've said. I couldn't figure out where he ended and I began. I was Bill Moyers son and that's all they ever could be. I had to do more than my father had to be more than my father. Yes. And the irony of that was that my parents weren't saying that to me but that's what I felt I mean I did come from a

family where my mother and my father were very successful in their own rights. And so I both grew up in the shadow of my parents and it was a shadow that I both scorned and in braced all at once. That's not why I would go down the road that I would go down in terms of being an addict and an alcoholic. But it's certainly sort of fueled what I call this hole in my soul this sense that I wasn't good enough or that I needed to be better than. But on the other hand being the son of had a lot of advantages as well. So as I said in the book it's my my upbringing is not the reason why I became addicted and recovery addicted any more than it's the reason why I recovered. You mentioned your book. The book is broken and you wrote it with a Katherine Ketcham. It tells the story of course of your family and your addiction. Your introduction to drugs and alcohol came when you were a teenager as a teenager growing up in the quiet suburbs of Long Island New York neighborhood that probably looks like the neighborhood of many of your viewers. Yes that's exactly right. And I experimented with marijuana at age 16.

Like a lot of adolescents or teenagers do with alcohol and other drugs I did it because it was there. There was a little bit of peer pressure. It was something to experiment with. I didn't use it. Expecting that it would take me down that road that would lead me to a crack house in 1994. But I did it because a lot of teenagers in my generation and in today's generation are also sort of seeking to experiment with such things. And so I experimented with marijuana and it did for me what I could not do for myself it helped to soothe this hole in my soul. But it also turned on a light switch in my brain which I could not turn off on my own. I developed this baffling inability to just say no. And then alcohol you said you had beer here and there even with your parents. Yes you were a teenager. But when it was when you got to college and you were introduced to I think the mixture was grain alcohol played. Yes it was great. It was a mixture of grain alcohol and Kool-Aid you couldn't taste the grain alcohol could only taste the Kool-Aid and it just sort of lit a fire inside of me and I binge drank a lot in college. Had a lot of people do it just because somebody binge drinks in college or experiments with

marijuana as a teenager does not mean you're going to go down that road that I went down as an addicted person. But it certainly set me on a course that led me down that slippery slope into addiction and we're going to talk about all that who's predisposed to addiction and who's not. And finally we accept societal reactions that let's start with you we're still in college and you were in the bar and got very drunk. You broke into a fishmarket. Yes St. loose change and after that how were you treated by the system and how do you think maybe it would have been more helpful to be treated by this test. Well my incident in which I was arrested while under the influence of alcohol in December of 1980 was treated as a youthful prank or an aberration. It made no sense. Here I was the son of. Here I was an upstanding person in my own right. And here I was somebody who had $40 in his pocket when he broke into a fish market at 2:00 o'clock in the morning to steal $20 off the off the counter. That made no sense. And I was essentially treated as if it was an aberration. I was treated with kid gloves. That's nobody's fault but

nobody could really see that what was going on underneath me what fueled this seemingly irrational act of burglary which is what it was was was was an addiction to alcohol and other drugs. And so not the prosecutor not the judge not the arresting police officers not my own attorneys not my parents not once in that process in 1980 did anyone say you know we think he might have a problem. Or do you want help. And so he was dismissed in a way that was nobody's fault but was dismissed in a way that didn't stop him from progressing down that further road. And there may have been a couple of factors that played into that society tends to say college is a time for experimentation and binge drinking although we're getting more cognizant of that. I think at this time and then you being the child of privilege you may have been dismissed more easily. But what would you like to see happen what would you have liked to see happen then or now. Well what would I like to see happened back in 1980 is what is starting to happen in places such as Florida which is that defendants in criminal cases be they drunk

driving incidents or more serious crimes that they are assessed for perhaps chemical dependency that they meet with a counselor that the judge sentenced them to a drug court or to an alcohol education class or something that educates people like me around. The reality is that for some of us alcohol or other drugs become addictive to the point that we cannot control our own behaviors. That's not an excuse. And if you break break the law under the influence of alcohol or other drugs you should be held accountable as anybody else would be. But the point is is that the criminal justice system has an opportunity to arrest. No pun intended that the destructive process of addiction at a point where perhaps it can lead to a better outcome. You struggled for years and years and years. Pot LSD cocaine crack was the big thing for you that was all there. It was at the end in the late 80s when when I began to slide much deeper into my addiction crack cocaine was the only drug that seemed to work for me.

It was the only drug that got me high and kept me high because my illness of addiction had progressed to the point where really nothing else was working and so I ended up in a crack house first in Harlem New York in 1989 and then in a relapse in St. Paul Minnesota in 1991. And finally as you referenced my bottom in October of 1994 in a crack house in Atlanta when I finally got sober. You were married once for about eight years. That marriage ended because of your addiction. Absolutely. Then you married recovering addict. Had actually met in treatment and you had at the time two small children yes. When you left and went to the crack house once again. Help us understand how how a drug can lead you to do that. Addiction is is an illness of the mind the body and the spirit it's cunning it's baffling and powerful it makes seemingly good people do seemingly bad things. It makes rational people do irrational things. Again that's not an excuse for what I did. I have to take responsibility for managing my chronic illness of addiction. But addiction is an illness

that really causes people like me to do the kinds of things that we don't really want to do. But we do them anyway. And so yes I was married for eight years to a woman named Mary in New York and in Dallas and she had no idea that I was in fact an alcoholic it's a disease of denial it's a disease of dishonesty. And she had no idea. And then the woman I married to now Allison whom I've been with for 18 years who are self is in recovery. She she. She knew I was addicted but I was in recovery I relapsed and I walked out on her and our two small boys at that time and went to the crack house in Atlanta because I wanted to do was to satisfy that insatiable appetite that hunger if you will to get high you are very clear that you see addiction to alcohol which is a drug but other drugs as a disease. There's no there's no doubt about it. My parents didn't raise me to become an actor or an alcoholic. It's something I aspired to become. There's no doubt that my brain processes alcohol and other drugs differently than 90 percent of the rest of the population of

Florida or Minnesota where I live now. Addiction does tends to strike one in 10 of us directly. There's no doubt about it that that a lot of factors went into it but that the the fundamental factors that I had a genetic predisposition I had a brain and a body that processes these substances differently. Again that's not an excuse but it is an explanation and it's very difficult for someone who is not an addictive personality or doesn't have the disease or have it it's very difficult to understand. You know I can't get inside your head and say Wow how you know how does that happen. It's very difficult to explain to people in part because it causes such havoc in the lives of not just the people who struggle with it but the havoc in the lives of spouses parents children. Addiction is a disease that does not discriminate. It affects much more than just the added to the alcohol. And so there tend to be behaviors and pain pain around around it to the point where it's a stigmatized or misunderstood illness. Absolutely. And you talk a lot in your book about denial. The denial of the people around you

be your immediate family or society or the police who arrest you. And me too and me too I remember only in 1988 I'd been actively using for over a decade at that point in the late 80s I remember waking up one morning after a very bad night of bingeing on alcohol or other drugs and saying to myself if I have a problem I may need to get help. So there was even some denial going on at that point and later on when I had been sober for a number of years in the early 90s when I relapsed there was denial going on as well denial that that over the reality that there's no cure for addiction there is a solution it's called Recovery. And if I don't continue to recover I tend to lapse back into that active addiction. Let's talk about the recovery rate. You say that recovery is very possible. Yes. If you went four times to treatment before it happened to you. Right. And saying that it's very doable flies in the face of a lot of statistics which say that the rate is dismally low for recovery dismally low compared to what in reality and there's many studies that support this.

The compliance of the recovery rates for addictions to treatment are equal to or greater than the compliance rates for asthma diabetes and hypertension combined chronic illnesses require people who have them to be part of the recovery process. So if you're diabetic you've got to stop eating chocolate cake and take your insulin and if you don't do that you tend to relapse if you are have heart disease if you don't stop smoking and don't exercise and reduce stress you tend to have a relapse. If you're an addict or an alcoholic and don't go to 12 step meetings and connect with a higher power and go to aftercare groups you tend to relapse. So yes the rates for that there's no chronic illness has a 100 percent success rate. Cancer doesn't either. And there's a behavioral component to cancer which requires the patient to continue to do the things to improve their chances at the hazel Foundation where I work. Excuse me Minnesota. About 53 percent of our patients report that they're continuously abstinent in the year after they go to treatment. That's more than half. That's a good number considering what the alternative is.

Now there are so many products that I want to talk about so let's start with treatment from the personal perspective of the addicts. How does he or she come to understand and at what stage that I need to go to treatment that doesn't happen for doesn't happen for some people ever. And that's why this is a chronic illness which a terminal illness if you don't recover it kills us all the time. But typically the reality is that somebody needs treatment is as a result of legal financial marital consequences it's result of health consequences it's a result of somebody doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result and not getting that result. And as I said earlier it's often times when others who see the addict the alcoholic recognize that that person's behavior is destructive to the point that it doesn't make any sense that oftentimes an intervention or a face to face conversation is such that leads the person to treatment. But in the in treatment only works if the person who goes to treatment takes responsibility. And there's a huge obstacle to treatment for lots of people of course which is the cost cost.

But there's also beyond that there's denial there's stigma. People don't oftentimes go to treatment because they're shameful of going. They're shameful of admitting they're addicts alcoholics which is why my book has been so potent or so powerful in the lives of the readers it allows other people to see that their stories are exactly like mine whether they come from families like the Moyer's whether they come from no family at all the fact of the matter is that people tend to understand when they read my story that they're not alone. I want to read a couple of quotes from your book about your story. You write that the fundamental truth about addiction is that wants becomes the truth honor integrity and decency cease to matter. All that matters is the drug. It's unbelievable. It's right in front of you it's everything that that is your life your life is literally consumed by those drugs and at your final relapse and I can't find the quote right now but see where you actually went to a crack house not to get high. This time you went because you wanted to die. I think is what I was trying wanting needing to

die. That's exactly right. And thank you for catching that in the book because it's a very powerful moment. I mean it in the mean the drugs and the alcohol when even working for me anymore and on the morning of October the 12th of 1994 which is my sobriety date. I just wanted to die. Drugs had flattened me. They hijacked my brain and stole my soul. And there was nothing left for me. No motivation whatsoever despite as a wife and two small boys at home. Despite a good career at CNN despite I guess that innate desire we all have to live underneath it all. I have given up and I just wanted to die. I didn't know how to do it so I hung out on the crack house hoping that I would die there. I was delivered because because my parents didn't give up on me my job my employer did not give up on me. My wife hated my disease but she loved me through it all and because I had divine intervention if you will and I want to talk about that use you came from a deeply religious family. Yes and you say that it was only when you found God that then you were able to

recover in fact when after trying to commit suicide as you were coming around you say that you heard God whisper to you Saint Paul which meant go to St. Paul which is where the Hazelton go. That's right. I've been to treatment in Heysel in the late 80s and I had gotten to know the community of Minneapolis St. Paul's a great place for recovering people and when I had that whisper in my ear in detox in Atlanta in 1994 it was to me I knew who it was it was God telling me to do what he told me to do. I didn't have to know why I didn't have to have it all figured out I just had to take the next right thing and that's what recovery is all about it's trusting. I've always believed in God when I was growing up and then as I recount in the book I had an incident occurred to me in which I witnessed the death of a family who was struck and killed by lightning and my belief in God died when I recovered it was because I no longer believed in God. I trusted in God that God could do for me what I could not do for myself. Which in part meant recover in fact you never once mentioned even

craving a substance again after you found God. Is that true. It's really true. It's not just about finding God but about embracing my sobriety. I have not had I not had a desire to take a drink or a drug since the morning of October the 12th of 1994 it's been almost 13 years now and that doesn't mean I'm cured. I'm not that's why I continue to go to 12 step meetings and why do all the other things we have to do in recovery. But I know that my disease is cunning baffling powerful and patient but I haven't had the desire to do that even though since I got clean. My life has been anything but perfect. It's been very challenging. That's what life is all about. But I don't seek to use drugs and alcohol because I know what would happen if I did that again. When you heard that whisper in your ear your job was still waiting for you at CNN. Yes you went back and you said you know I've heard a voice and I'm going to say. People really thought you were loopy then huh. The chairman of CNN Tom Johnson who my son Thomas is named for he thought I was crazy and maybe I was. But the point is I needed to recover

without recovery. I have nothing else. Nothing is more important than my recovery. And so I needed to do what that what that meant I needed to go follow my bliss if you will. I needed to follow directions because my way wasn't working anymore. And so I told Tom I was leaving scene and going back to Minnesota to do one. I didn't know. Ultimately I got a job at Hazelton and does working at Hazelton. Does that help you with your own recovery. It does. It does. I don't it's it's a little bit of a fine line I have to continue to recover in my own right regardless of where I work. But working at Hatlen and helping other people as I have for the book and as I have through my role at Hazelden as a sort of a public advocate for the organization when people come to me and ask for help and giving them that help that helps me too. And what about leaving the journalism career that did that. Was that a cathartic rake that got you away from your day and falling in your dance. It helped. In fact yes because I had sort of as I said earlier scorned and embraced

that shadow all at once. And my father's persona and my father's reputation has been forged in part by his good journalism at PBS and elsewhere over the decades. Stepping away from that shadow it meant I'm finding myself becoming me flaws and all I think I could have continued to work in journalism and recovered but I needed to do what I was told to do and that led me back to St. Paul. That said I have brought my journalism skills into my job today. In interviews with the media and in writing op eds for newspapers and just in my public speaking which I do for HAYZLETT all the time. Your relationship with your parents and siblings is good very good. It's in the book. So you use your father's letters. You talk very openly about your sense of competition with him and the things that sort of work good for you. How was he how was your mom about you writing that book and putting it out there.

Well my parents were very supportive. Remarkably so they allowed me to use their letters and their conversations intimate in some cases. In the book as as sort of a thread that helps bring the reader through it not just from my perspective but from the perspective of two parents who loved me unconditionally. And so they took a little bit of a risk if you will in that in allowing my father's letters I've been saving every father every letter my father ever wrote me for decades and they were up in a camp trunk upstairs in my attic in Minnesota and I brought them out when I started to write this book and I realized why the way that there was a lot there was a lot to offer people in the perspectives of a learned respected man and a father like Bill Moyers and my mother Judith Miller's who is an entity in her own right a very powerful influence and in her own right in my life and using those letters was a little bit of a risk. But I think it really helped not only to support my story to validate my story but to help readers understand what parents and families go through. And you say one of the huge obstacles to everybody's recovery treatment etc. is there's still a stigma attached to talking about it.

Here we are. I mean is this what we're doing right here in this interview was the exception rather than the rule. Most of the media doesn't focus on the solution. Doesn't talk about addiction and recovery in a way we are and people like me don't typically stand up and speak out in public. There's a terrible stigma. It's just it's a stigma that fosters private shame and it's a stigma that fosters public intolerance and public policies that discriminate against addicts and alcoholics and families like mine. Book's been out for about a year almost a year. You said the response has been overwhelming the number of people that you hear from who are struggling. Yes it's alarming in a way. It really is it really underscores the reality that addiction does not discriminate. But my point is that neither should recovery. Recovery is a reality for a lot of people me included millions of people recover millions of families recover. But the problem is in this country that there are too many people who are suffering from a disease that has no cure but has that solution. So let's speak up and speak to to folks out there and not everybody can be able to afford to go to Hazleton. But let's speak first to the loved ones of an addict or someone who they suspect has a problem.

What should they do. It's not your fault. It's the first thing I would tell them. Number one number two it's never too late and never too early to try to interrupt the addictive process in a life of the person that you love. The only bottom with this disease is death in any way any one anything short of that is a way out. So if you're a family member who's struggling with what to do with a loved one take action. It's never too early. It's never too late. And remember you can hate the disease but continue to love the actor or the alcohol. In fact that's one of you. You say you say that to everyone good person bad. Right. It's not about the person. It's really not. You wouldn't get angry at cancer. Don't get angry. Exactly Kathy. Now the addicts. Someone out there who's listening right now watching and saying maybe I have a problem. I know I have a problem. And they do. It's OK to ask for help. You know this is a disease that fosters shame and stigma and people it pushes people away from getting the very help that they need and deserve. So if you're out there watching this program or you've learned about it from some other source and you're struggling with what to do it's OK to ask for help because if you don't ask for help you

won't get it and it isn't easy going to treatment and recovering from this disease is not easy but it's necessary and it's a heck of a lot better than continuing to struggle alone in the shadows of shame and stigma with this illness. It's that title broken you say the cure the cure is to realize that being human hurts. That we are all broken and to become part of a bigger whole all broken together is a very good question. It is the solution. And it's you know what there's nothing wrong with being an addict and an alcoholic as long as you recovering. There's you know it's a disease that doesn't absolve you of responsibility for taking action but it is an illness. You didn't ask for it if you're the person struggling with it and you should have a chance to recover from it. That's right. And there is strength in numbers. You're not alone if you're struggling with this illness. I used to I used to hang out in crack houses because I always thought I was the only bad person I went with a couple other people who were out there doing it. No this is a disease that does not discriminate and you as an addict and an alcoholic have a right. And it's and have a chance to recover

quickly all about you because we're almost out of time. Way back when you realized that you wanted fame and recognition. This is all part of your day and growing up the way you grew up. The book is Bringing you fame and recognition now is that satisfying. I don't know if it's fame it's not famous surely it's recognition. Is it satisfying. Yes. Because when I give it away when I give away my story when I give away my effort I get it back a thousand times in the race in the responses of your viewers of the people who read the book into patients who come to Hazelton for treatment. Yes. So it's been satisfying in the sense that by giving it away I've gained so much more. What's the most meaningful thing in your life that I made it a day at a time and that I can be here with you today and then I can be with my family in Minnesota. I can work for the Hazelden Foundation and that I have actually become a contributing member of society in a way that I hope will last long after I'm gone. And as I said to you in the makeup room you're lucky you look so good after all that. Thanks a lot. I loved the book. I highly recommend it to anybody. Thanks a lot. Thanks to you for being here.

That concludes our interview with William Cohen Moyers from the huff family foundation studios at Debian Edu I'm Cathy Unruh. We'll see you next time. On. This program funded by Sam says Bay Area young offender reentry program administered by Operation Parr and x