SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
William Cope Moyers wrote of his addiction to alcohol and crack cocaine in a memoir called "Broken." When it was published in 2006, he'd been living sober for over a decade and had become vice president of public affairs at Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation. But staying sober has its own challenges. That struggle is the subject of William Cope Moyers' new memoir, "Broken Open: What Painkillers Taught Me About Life And Recovery." He joins us from the studios of Minnesota Public Radio in St. Paul. Thanks so much for being with us, William.
WILLIAM COPE MOYERS: Thank you, Scott, for having me on with you today.
SIMON: The story of how you got clean, in your first memoir, inspired many people. But did your story become a kind of burden to you?
MOYERS: Yes, in the sense that I had to live up to what I had written in my first memoir, and that's a good news story. That's a story that has inspired the hope in thousands of people who need what I have and what I have lived, which is recovery. But since addiction is a chronic illness, it's one that while there is no cure, there's a solution, and sometimes, that solution can be interrupted by the rest of life and the rest of the journey. And that's exactly the burden that I encountered, you know, years after I had found recovery. And then all of a sudden, there I am again at the precipice.
SIMON: Help us understand what happened. Your marriage came apart. I'll just leave it at that. You discovered you needed dental surgery. What happened when you got that hit of nitrous oxide?
MOYERS: Well, the nitrous oxide caused me to weep. And I've always been fascinated by the experience 'cause I don't know what it was that shook me so, except I think it was a realization that there I was vulnerable again. It almost seemed to separate me from my recovery in the way that I had always taken for granted. And of course, after that, I was prescribed narcotic pain pills to manage the pain of the dental procedure that I was in the chair for.
SIMON: With the advantage of hindsight, should you and your doctors have had reservations about painkillers, given your personal history of addiction?
MOYERS: Of course. And even though, Scott, narcotics or opiates were not my thing, I am an addict and an alcoholic. Yes, I had decades of recovery. Yes, I loved recovery. But I'm a vulnerable person. I have a brain that processes these substances differently than the vast majority of the public. And so, yes, I should have been more vigilant, and my doctors probably could have been.
But we all were under the same assumption, Scott. Look, Moyers is a recovery advocate for Hazelden Betty Ford. He shares his story. He has decades of recovery. He'll be able to handle it. And, of course, I wasn't able to handle it.
SIMON: What happened?
MOYERS: Well, I took the narcotic pain pills as I was prescribed, over the first four days. And then on the fourth or fifth day, as I write in my book, I took a, quote, "plus one," which is not a good thing for anybody but particularly for somebody of my ilk, somebody of my vulnerability, with - somebody with my history of addiction is a red flag. I took an extra pill because I figured, you know, if two make me feel good and take away the pain, three will be better. And there began my multiyear struggle with my inability to get off of those things, especially using, Scott, the tools that I had always used to stay sober off those other substances that I had written about earlier on, and there you go.
SIMON: And William Cope Moyers can't just walk into a doctor's office, a clinic - for that matter, where you worked at Hazelden Betty Ford - and say, help me.
MOYERS: Well, ironically, though, that's, in the end, what I had to do, Scott. I went to my internist, who had been my internist for 20-some-odd years and also was a man in recovery himself. And I said, I've got to stop this. I need help. And he said, William, I can't help you here in this setting. You need to go and see - and he referred me to an addiction doctor in Minneapolis, Dr. David Frenz. And so I went to Dr. Frenz's office in January of 2016. And there, I found the solution. I found the answer to my inability to tamp down that craving brain and that inability to get myself righted again. I found the answer.
SIMON: What did you learn about recovery - I was about to say the second time around, but it's not as if you just turn a corner, is it? I mean, there are many corners to turn.
MOYERS: That's right. And I've learned in my own journey, and I think it's so important in the message in my book - you know, I had to take an anti-craving medication called suboxone, or buprenorphine, to quiet that brain. I was very fortunate that I had all the other tools that I had used for so long, whether it was my recovery group, whether it was my faith, whether it was my community. I had all those tools already.
And what I discovered when I took the anti-craving medication and got back sort of in the middle of the bed, if you will, and got on with the rest of my life is that, for me, I learned that recovery is possible even when sobriety is jeopardized. And I think that's a very important message, that we realize, in this day and age, that there are many pathways to recovery. And as long as that pathway treats the person with dignity and respect, whatever that pathway is, is important, and it is attainable.
SIMON: Do you have concerns about people that don't have the kind of access to help and care that, for example, you have?
MOYERS: You mean the vast majority of people in the United States? Yes, Scott. That's the sad tragedy of this situation. Listen, I had access to treatment four times over five years between 1989 and 1994. I have private health insurance that helps to cover some of the cost of my medication. And when I needed to get to Dr. Frenz in Minneapolis, I had access to him.
You know, at Hazelden Betty Ford, we treat about 25,000 people a year. And while that sounds like a big number, it's a fraction of the problem in this country. And, you know, September is recovery month, as it's been proclaimed by the federal government for a long time now. There are millions of people like me who celebrate our recovery. But sadly, there are millions of others that don't, and it is because they cannot get the access to the care that they need.
SIMON: I wrote down this line from your book - it's OK to be a work in progress.
MOYERS: (Laughter) Yeah. And I've learned that along my long journey. You know, I came out of a crack house in Harlem, N.Y., in 1989 with the support of my family and friends, and I've been walking that journey of recovery ever since August of 1989 - 35 years. I am a work in progress. And it's so important for people like me to learn from the things that we do right and to learn from the mistakes that we made, to learn from the good things we do for other people and the things that we need to do better for ourselves. I have learned in my own journey, for 35 years now, that if I remain teachable, I'm going to be OK, and I think that's what the essence of this book really reflects in the end.
SIMON: William Cope Moyers - his new book, "Broken Open." Thanks so much for being with us, William.
MOYERS: Thank you, Scott.
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