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• Article on Mr. Moyers
• About Broken: My Story of Addiction and Redemption
• Q & A with Mr. Moyers
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Tavis: William Cope Moyers is the vice president for external affairs at the famed Hazelton Foundation in Minnesota. He's battled an addiction to drugs and alcohol for much of his life, though last week he marked 12 years of sobriety. His new book is called 'Broken: My Story of Addiction and Redemption.' William Cope Moyers, nice to have you on the program.

William Cope Moyers: Glad to be here, Tavis, thanks.

Tavis: Can I start by telling you how much I love your father?

Moyers: You can, I'll tell him that, too. I love him too.

Tavis: (Laugh) He's quite a guy.

Moyers: Yeah, he is.

Tavis: How difficult, all these years, living in his shadow, if I can put it that way?

Moyers: Well, my father does cast a long shadow, and he's a bright light. And I think a lot of children who have fathers who are either very good or not so good live in the shadow of their fathers and their mothers. And so it was a challenge growing up, to be the son of Bill and Judith Moyers.

Tavis: There are a lot of folk, I suspect, or certainly some folk watching right now who say that with all due respect to the battle that you have endured, the journey that you have been on, you had the best of everything.

Moyers: Sure did.

Tavis: You had the world at your fingertips. Why you? Why, how, did you get pulled into this, when you don't have the same set of circumstances or excuses that somebody else might have?

Moyers: Because addiction is an illness, Tavis, with origins in the brain. It's a brain disease. Science tells us that. It's also an illness that has a hole in the soul, and so growing up, I had everything. I lacked for nothing emotionally, I lacked for nothing morally, financially, spiritually. My father, before he was a journalist, before he was in the Johnson administration, was an ordained Southern Baptist minister.

And yet despite that upbringing, despite all the good things I had in my life, I still was susceptible to processing alcohol and other drugs differently than most of the other people out there.

Tavis: Speaking of experiences that are different, you tell the story in the book of how, when you were younger, your parents used to allow you and your siblings to drink beer in the house.

Moyers: Yes.

Tavis: As you look back on that now, you think, as wonderful as your parents are, Bill and Judith Moyers, that they are in any way culpable?

Moyers: Not at all. They only allowed me to drink when I was the legal age of 18, back in 1977. And there's nothing wrong with social drinking, as long as it's legal, and as long as the person can handle it. But for one in 10 of us in America, we have, like I said, an illness with an origin in the brain that causes us to process those substances differently. And so when I started drinking and smoking marijuana at an early age, I was off to the races. But it wasn't my parents' fault, no.

Tavis: Tell me about the choices that you made, and in retrospect, why and how you made those choices that sent you in this direction.

Moyers: This is an illness that causes good people to do irrational things, to do bad things. And I made choices voluntarily, both using those substances, and some of the things I did while under the influence, that aren't an excuse. Addiction is not an excuse, Tavis. It is an explanation. And so I chose to use alcohol and other drugs. I committed a crime once while under the influence of alcohol and other drugs.

I did a lot of things. But in the same way I made those choices when I was using those substances; I need to make those same kind of choices, responsible choices, as a person in long-term recovery now.

Tavis: You do this work every day. This righteous work, as I would call it.

Moyers: Thank you.

Tavis: Every day. And yet I'm wondering how you think it impacts, influences the conversation when you continually refer to this as an illness as opposed to choices, good or bad, that we make as human beings. I guess what I'm getting at is whether or not that becomes an excuse, when people say well, it's in my family, it's in my brain, it's an illness, it's not about choices that I make.

Moyers: It's a great question, and I know a lot of your viewers probably struggle with that, even watching the program now. Look, I don't use my addiction as an excuse. It is an explanation, as I said. I did make choices. I made some wrong choices. But nobody aspires to grow up to be an addict and an alcoholic. If anybody did, they wouldn't do it. That doesn't, again, excuse it.

But I think what I have to do by standing up and speaking out and sharing my own story is to say to people, this is what addiction looks like, and this is what recovery looks like. And in the same way I made choices around when I was using alcohol and other drugs, I have to make responsible choices as a person in recovery.

Tavis: You tell a lot of painful and yet poignant and powerful stories in this book. A couple of them come to mind immediately; when your mother at one point came to get you at a crack house; and at another point when your father came to get you at a crack house. Tell me these two stories.

Moyers: Well, in 1989, I was homeless, living in the streets of Harlem, New York, as an active alcoholic and an addict, hanging out in a crack house when I wasn't in the street. My mother came to try to rescue me in '89, 'cause I'd been missing for 10 days. A couple of years later, when I was relapsing and struggling with my addiction, Tavis, my father came to St. Paul and ultimately to Atlanta, Georgia, to rescue me.

I think the power in those stories is to show that addiction is an illness that ravages much more than just the person who has it. But in the same way, any family member who's struggling with somebody who has this problem like I did should never give up. Don't let go of that person. Because in the end, my parents, by hanging on to me and coming back to me over and over again, finally helped me to wake up to the reality that I'd better darn well take my treatment and my recovery seriously if I wanted to recover. So in the end, this book 'Broken' is really a story of love. Unconditional love. And I say to families all the time, you can hate the disease, but you've got to love the addict.

Tavis: Let me ask you how difficult it - I'm not sure there's an easy answer to this, and you've written a whole book about it. How difficult was it for you to navigate your way out? It's easy to understand, when you read the book, no excuses here, how you got into it. But you have your parents and your loved ones trying to pull you out of this, and I ask this 'cause I have a sister and a brother who've gone through the same thing.

Moyers: How they doing?

Tavis: They're doing better now.

Moyers: Good.

Tavis: I think better. But I know what this is like, having to try to help pull them out. And as frustrated, to your point a moment ago, you have to hate the disease, hate the symptom, but love the addict. So you're part of a family trying to pull them out, and you get frustrated. But I'm trying to get on the other side of this to figure out how difficult it is for you to pull yourself out. How difficult to come out of this?

Moyers: It's hard, man. I tell you, I went to treatment four times before I finally got clean and sober on October 12, 1994, twelve years ago right now, basically. And I had to - it's a disease of denial. And there was a long time when I didn't really realize how serious my problem was. And in the end, it's an illness that pushes us away from the very people, places, and things that love us, or that are important to us.

I'm really lucky that I had the number of opportunities that I had, 'cause a lot of people don't. I'm very fortunate my family did stick with me. And in the end, as I write about in the book, on October the twelfth of '94, I had to - this question popped into my brain. Now what? When that came into my brain, I was living in a crack house in Atlanta, Georgia, while working as a journalist for CNN, although I wasn't working at that point very well.

And when that question got posed to me, Tavis, now what? It was the first time in my life I couldn't answer. I didn't have an answer for now what. And that's the day I said okay, I'm done. Have me. I'll do whatever you tell me to do. And it worked.

Tavis: How difficult - let me follow up how difficult it is to come out with how difficult it is to stay out once you get out. You seem well-adjusted now; you're doing great work; you're sober and clean for 12 years now. You know the date that you became clean, that you got clean and sober. How difficult to stay this way?

Moyers: Well, it is a chronic illness. There is no cure for my disease of addiction, but there is a solution. Solution for me was treatment, and then recovery a day at a time. And I've been doing that pretty well for 12 years. But the book is called 'Broken,' not 'Fixed.' And the reason for that in part is the fact that I've still got a lot of moving parts. I've still got a lot of jagged edges and marred surfaces, and so I need to maintain my illness.

It is a chronic illness. It's like diabetes, hypertension, or cancer. The person who has it has to learn to manage it in recovery, otherwise it comes back. So I start my, every morning by thanking God for another opportunity to live this day. And every night, I go to bed, no matter what kind of day it's been, good or bad, Tavis, every night I go to bed I say to God, thanks a lot for giving me the gift of another day.

And when I keep my gratitude level high, I also keep high my level of humility. And I realize I'm here despite me. I'm here because of a family that loves me, because I got good treatment, because I had a community that supported me through this illness. And so, I never go to bed without remembering how bad it was at the end, and how good it is day to day.

Tavis: How bad a problem do you think this is in America, and do we realize how bad it is, whatever you're about to tell me it is?

Moyers: Nobody knows it. This is a problem that affects one in 10 Americans directly, like me. But everybody pays the price. Every race, color, creed, everybody's being ravaged by addiction, whether it's drunk driving, whether it's chronic visits to the emergency room, whether it's homelessness, whether it's unemployment. Most of the social problems in America have a direct link to alcohol and other drugs.

And so not only is it a disease of denial for the people who have it, like me, but this is a disease that this country's in denial about. And what we need to focus on is not the problem, but we need to focus on the solution.

Tavis: We've all heard of Hazelton, one of the preeminent institutions in the country that does what it, in fact, does. Tell me more about what you do there.

Moyers: Well, I'm really the guy who carries the message. I put a face on addiction, treatment, and recovery issues. Hazelton is a not-for-profit based in Minnesota that's been treating alcoholics and addicts since 1949. We're good at what we do. But part of what we do is not just treat people or publish materials. Part of what we do, our mission is to educate every generation around addiction, treatment, and recovery issues.

So be it in the media with you, be it in some of my speeches or my lobbying efforts around the country, I go all over the country sharing not just my story, but the messages of hope that come from the reality that this is an illness that does have a way out. It's called treatment, it's called recovery, it's called personal responsibility. And so that's what I basically do at Hazelton, I carry the message.

Tavis: I agree with your earlier assessment, Cope, that love is the most transformative power in the world today. It always has been, is now, and I suspect always will be. Beyond, though, a family loving a person who's challenged by these kinds of conditions and circumstances, and this disease. Beyond loving them, what do you suggest they do to help that person right now?

Moyers: Great question. A couple things. One, take care of yourselves. Because the addict and the alcoholic doesn't always recover, but everybody suffers from it. And so even if the addict and the alcoholic doesn't recover, the family members must recover. So take care of yourselves. Number two, have open dialogue in your families. My wife Alice and I are both recovering.

We have three small children, 14, 12 and 9. Our children are very susceptible to addiction one day because of the genetic predisposition. So we talk openly about the dangers of alcohol and other drugs; what could happen when they use. But most important, Tavis, I think, and this is a key message, we tell our children it's okay to ask for help. It's okay to ask for help.

So if you're a family member out there, hang on to the person that you love. Hate the illness. Take care of yourselves. And never forget that it's never too late. The only bottom with this illness is death. Anything short of that is a way out, whether it's your family members, my family members, or people who may be listening to the program. The reality is that it's never too late to extend and hold on to that person.

Tavis: Let me close this conversation where I began, with your father, Bill Moyers. You and I were talking before we came on the air here, you were sharing with me that you just got an email from your dad the other day. And in the email, your dad had what to say to you?

Moyers: Well, he sent me an email, he's been very supportive of what I've been doing, and his letters are throughout this book, and they're very powerful. My father sent me a short email saying, you know, son, you have saved more lives in your 47 years than I ever saved in my 72 years. I'm proud of you. And I think that's ultimately what the bottom line is.

Tavis: Feel good to have your dad proud of your work?

Moyers: Sure is.

Tavis: Yeah. The new book from the son of Bill Moyers, William Cope Moyers, is 'Broken.' I like his distinction. Not 'Fixed,' but 'Broken: My Story of Addiction and Redemption.' William, nice to have you here. Give my best to your parents.

Moyers: Thank you very much, Tavis.

Tavis: Good to see you. That's our show for tonight. You can catch me on the weekends on PRI, Public Radio International. Check your local listings. I'll see you back here next time on PBS. Until then, good night from Los Angeles, thanks for watching, and as always, keep the faith.