The Think Piece Interview: William Cope Moyers

There’s the normal pressure that sons put on themselves to be like their fathers, and there’s being William Cope Moyers. My god, we all love Bill Moyers. How do you be the next Bill Moyers? William Cope Moyers explains how complicated it’s been in his remarkable 2007 book Broken: My Story of Addiction and Redemption, where he explains that trying to be perfect and live up to his name likely contributed to his alcoholism, struggles with mental health and chemical dependency. He found this insight at Hazelden, where he sutured his life back together and where he now pays it forward as vice president of public affairs. We sat down with Moyers in his St. Paul office to talk about the lure of the hit, the salvation of the steps, and his life as the son of a saint.

TP: How long did you work on the book?
WCM: I’d been working on the book my whole life [laughs]. You know, gathering information.

TP: You’re such an acclaimed journalist, I was surprised you used a co-author.
WCM: I wrote the book. She helped me organize it. She was the impetus to go ahead and start writing it. Kathy Ketcham is a well-known author in her own right. She’s in Walla Walla, Washington. She wrote a book that sold over a million copies, called The Spirituality of Imperfection. She wrote it with Ernie Kurtz, who’s a longtime AA guy, a recovering guy. I guess I could say I spent my whole life writing the book. We all are gathering the information that can go into our story, whether it’s a verbal story or it’s a written story. Kathy wrote me a letter in 2004 and it said, “Dear Mr. Moyers: I want to write a book with you—a book about adolescence.” And it was a coincidental experience that that letter ended up on a stack of letters that I always get—this was back in ’04, before email was really kicking in; I don’t get that many letters anymore—but that letter happened to be on top of a long stack of letters, and I happened to be at my assistant’s desk and was talking to my assistant, and there was the letter, and it was like a bing. Because people have been saying I should write a book for years, but I’m too busy in my day job. And so I had an agent approach me back in 1999, 2000, and 2001—a very well-known literary agent named Amy Williams, who I acknowledge in Broken—and she said, “You’ve got to write a book.” And I’m busy with kids and all the other things that we get busy with, and then there was this letter from Kathy Ketcham. And I said, Well, there you go. I’ll have her help me write my book, not the writing part, although she did some writing, but the organization of it. And the part about getting out of me the stuff that was deep down inside of me. Open a vein, she said. Open a vein. So I contacted her and we wrote an eighty-seven-page proposal in late 2004. And the proposal was very thorough. I couldn’t have done it without Kathy, because she is organized. We gave the proposal to my agent, and I know exactly where I was sitting—I know the two places that I was sitting: one was when the book was first out there being offered up—I remember the first offer … I was sitting on Grand Avenue in front of Jamba Juice, and my agent called me and said we had two offers. And I was really impressed. And then the next day I got on an airplane and flew to New York, and I had my cell phone off, but when I landed at the airport and turned on my cell phone, there was a message from my agent saying that Viking/Penguin had made this remarkable offer, and I couldn’t believe it. I was sitting on the tarmac. So, Kathy helped me organize. She was the catalyst for me to get the ideas out of my head and down on paper in an organized way. But I spent about ten months writing the book, with her help. And she came to Minnesota once or twice, and I went to Washington, to her place, several times.

TP: I’m always curious to ask writers of memoir where such retention comes from, and you in particular because you were so impaired during much of the years you describe. Did you keep journals?
WCM: Yes, I do keep journals. I wish I’d kept better journals, like I do today, but yes. My journals are kind of mundane at times—they can be about something or nothing. I didn’t write this morning, because I was in a little bit of a rush, but I usually write at about 5:30 or 6:00 in the morning, and I only write one page a day in longhand. I’ve been doing it on and off my whole life, but I’ve really been doing it since the late ’90s. But I had these journals from back when I started going to treatment in the psych ward in New York City. My mother had given me that notebook. So I’ve written stuff down. Because when things happen to us in the moment, we remember them. But the longer those moments are in the past, we remember them differently. And, frankly, we forget about some of the things that we believe in the moment are profound. So what I’ve always told memoir classes and other aspiring authors is just write it down. And then just leave it. And you may come back to it one day and use it to bolster or enhance or remind yourself of your memories. Or you might think it’s not worth at all. But the other thing that was important in my book—which I think still resonates with people; in fact, I get letters about it every day—are the letters from my father. So I tell high school students, “You gotta keep something, even if it’s emails. You gotta print them out and keep them.” Because we’re a society now that doesn’t keep anything. And thank God that I kept my father’s letters, because my father’s perspective on things not only informs my perspective but also sort of puts thumb tacks in the wall of moments of my life, you know … anchors. So when I pulled out that camp trunk, which is in the top of my attic in St. Paul, which I’ve been lugging around for forty years—that trunk was one of my best-kept possessions—there were all those letters. And they’re profound in their honesty. They’re profound in the sentiments shared in real time. And they’re profound in terms of helping me inform my own memory.

TP: One of the things I learned in reading David Carr’s The Night of the Gun is that one’s memory isn’t always accurate. How much do you trust your memory?
WCM:  I mean, memory is memory. It’s intimately ours, but it’s intimately flawed. I mean, how could it not be? In fact, I look at my journal entries sometimes, from a year or two or five years ago, and I recall things in reading that I don’t recall now. I mean, when I read them, it’s like, Oh, yeah. Or I’ll read something and I’ll think, So that’s what my mindset was. I mean, I remember five years ago, I remember what I was doing five years ago, but I don’t know what I was thinking five years ago. None of us does.  Those are seared in your memory. But, you know, they’re like tattoos. A tattoo is most vivid the day it’s put on. It’s still around five, ten, twenty years later, but it’s fuzzy. But it’s still there. And I wouldn’t say for a moment that everything in my memoir or in anybody else’s memoir is 100 percent factually correct. It can’t be, because it’s memoir. If it was a history book—if it was Doris Kearns Goodwin writing about Team of Rivals or Abraham Lincoln and his cabinet, based on documentation—it would probably be more accurate than a memoir I’ve written about my life over the last fifty years. Because my life is not based on any historical documents.

TP: That scene in the beginning of the book where your father, who certainly seems to live up to his image as a lovely, compassionate man, says in a moment of exasperation that he hates you, is so powerful. You indicate in the book that he doesn’t recall saying it. Are you clear that he said it?
WCM: Well, I read from that prologue a lot when I’m out speaking. My father did say that. There’s no doubt. There’s no doubt he said it, but because the book is a memoir, because that story is part of the memoir, I gave my father the benefit of the doubt by saying, “Whether he imagined it or not …” I wrote it that way, “whether he imagined it or not,” but he said it. I know he said it. He doesn’t remember saying it. I remember him saying it. And so, I guess, because it’s my memoir, I could write it that he said it, but I gave him the benefit of the doubt, in part because he’s my father and because he doesn’t remember saying it. However, sometime in the last twelve months or so, when I was out promoting my new book, Now What?, he and I were doing an event with my mother somewhere in New York or Washington, I can’t remember, and he, on second reference, made note of the fact that he said that. It wasn’t him coming clean about it; he was just saying it in passing—something like “When I told my son that I hated him, I didn’t really mean that.” And so the point of it is, did my father say it? Sure, he did. That’s how I remember it. But he’s my father. He doesn’t remember it that way, so I gave him the benefit of the doubt. The power of memory. Here’s the other thing. If a plane crashed outside in the parking lot here, and we were all out the windows looking at it, we would all agree that the plane crashed. But you would see and interpret that crash differently than I would. You’re an eyewitness. Eyewitnesses can agree that something happened, but they see it or experience it differently. And that’s what memoir is: it’s my experience of things that happened, my perception of things that happened. The people who are in my memoir, including my father and my mother and others, we all agree that things happened, but we see, hear, and experience specific things differently. That’s what memoir is. It’s an interpretation, a personal history, and any interpretation of history is just that: interpretation.

TP: How long have you been sober?
WCM: Nineteen years sober. People say congratulations and that’s nice but I don’t give myself credit for it. You know, you just walk the walk and try to pass it on.

TP: You were doing well as a news writer at CNN and had a lot of support in Atlanta, but then one day you just knew that you should come back to St. Paul, where you lived after treatment. What was that moment like?
WCM: It was a moment of clarity. You call on the moments of clarity. The important dynamic in the moment of clarity is not having it; it’s in recognizing it. And then what you do about it. I think all of us are destined to have moments of clarity. Don’t get me wrong; my moment of clarity was supported by the fact that I had some money in my pocket, so I could get up and walk away from my $200,000-a-year job in 1994—I was working at CNN—to come back to Minnesota with two baby boys and a wife who didn’t work outside the home. Not a wise move if you don’t have any money in your pocket, but, you know, I had some money in my pocket, so I could take that moment of clarity, I could recognize it, and I could support it. And I knew in that awareness that if I was going to stay sober and improve my chances to live a long life—sober—that I needed to do what I was being told. I’ve still got the classified ad where Hazelden posted for a public affairs officer. I actually have the physical ad in a piece of acetate-protected paper folder at home. Yeah, so that was a second moment of clarity. I mean, looking through the Star Tribune, and I know the exact date. It was November 19, 1995.

TP: Can you tell us what Hazelden gave you in terms of skills for your recovery?
WCM: You have to work the program. I didn’t stay sober out of Hazelden. You know, as they always say in AA, it works if you work it. It doesn’t work magically. It takes a lot of effort. I’m not sober for nineteen years just by the grace of God. I’m sober for nineteen years by working the program. Hard.

TP: There seems to still be some confusion among the public about whether addiction is a physical disease or not.
WCM: No doubt. And there’s not a debate about whether it’s a disease. It’s a disease. It’s an illness. The American Medical Association defined it as a disease in 1954. There’s no question in my mind my children are ten, to twenty, to fifty times more likely to become addicts and alcoholics than their peers at school because they’re the product of two alcoholics. It’s a scientific fact. Addiction is a disease that has no cure. There’s no cure for it. I’m not cured from it. I still have it. I’ve been in remission from it for nineteen years, but it’s a chronic disease like diabetes, hypertension, and asthma. Does it have a behavioral component? Absolutely. Does it have a genetic component? Absolutely. It does get passed on, not automatically, but it’s there. Every family’s got it. Some families are in denial about it, but there’s not a family that I know that doesn’t have alcoholism or addiction somewhere in … pretty close to the roots of the tree. But, unlike a lot of other diseases, it is a disease of the body, the mind, and the spirit. So science is telling us a lot about the fact that my brain processes substances differently from your brain.  That shows up on PET scans, or imaging.

TP: I admire that you describe the rush of feeling when you would, for example, take a hit of cocaine. It dares to give a rounded view of the addicted life, that there is an upside, at least in the short term, in that it feels blissful. A lot of people don’t go there.
WCM: Well, that’s true for alcoholics and addicts just like it’s true for normal drinkers. If it wasn’t true, alcohol wouldn’t be a substance that most people use responsibly. Everybody likes the effect; nobody drinks alcohol because they dislike the effect. So if you go to a Twins game, people are drinking there because they like the effect. Addicts and alcoholics like the effect, but they like the effect to the detriment of everything else that matters to them—a)—and b) unlike normal or responsible drinkers, addicts and alcoholics don’t drink responsibly. And they don’t know how or when to turn it off. And they continue to make the same mistakes over and over again. They encounter the same consequences, but of their own free will, it’s difficult for us to change our behavior. If I drank a beer, it would have the same effect as if you drank a beer, in the sense that it would feel good in that moment. How could it not? Unlike you, though, I would continue to drink or take drugs because I would be chasing that feel-good effect and want to use more and more and more, and I would do that to the detriment of everything else that mattered to me. Everything. Family. Values. Food. Air. Sleep.

TP: The Twin Cities, St. Paul in particular, seems unique in its embrace of people in recovery. Why do you suppose that is?
WCM: Yeah, I’ve always said that St. Paul and Minneapolis, the Twin Cities, is the crossroads of recovery in America. There are probably more recovering people here per capita than there are anywhere else in the world. Now, that’s probably a bit of an exaggeration, but maybe not. I mean, I was in Caribou yesterday on Snelling and Grand meeting with somebody who is not an alcoholic, and the coffee shop was populated with people who … some of them had been sober for ten days, some of them had been sober for fifty years, not all of whom were in there for the fellowship, but they were in there because they live, work, play, go to school. Yeah, it’s a great place to recover. You can recover anywhere in America. You can get high anywhere in America. My story is the perfect example of that. I used to hang out in the crack house at the corner of Lexington and Selby. I drove by there today on my way up here, because I live a few blocks south of there. But I’ve been here, for nineteen years sober, so, yeah, the Twin Cities is a supportive place. But, as I say, anybody who’s contemplating where to set up shop after treatment or after sobriety starts, you know, you can do that in New York City—there are more AA meetings in New York City than anywhere in the world, I think. But you can get drunk in New York City too. So part of that is what your commitment is to your recovery.

TP: Something clicked in with you with the 12 steps, even though it took four trips to rehab for you. The steps really work, don’t they?
WCM: The federal government estimates that there are 20 to 25 million in recovery in this country, but depending on how you count it, there are probably 2 to 4 million people who are in recovery through the twelve steps. And there are lots of ways to recover; AA just happens to be one way. And when I’m out doing my advocacy work, I never say that there’s only one way to recover. I happen to believe in one way, the twelve steps—that’s what we do at Hazelden, which works for me personally. But there are lots of ways. Some people are in recovery who don’t consider themselves in recovery; they just stopped drinking. The word recovery is in some ways an inside baseball kind of word because people use that word to describe their own journeys, but a lot of people don’t consider that their journey is one of recovery because they just stopped drinking or taking drugs a year ago or twenty-five years ago—that’s just their past. But the twelve steps is a good way, and thank goodness that it came along when it did because I probably would be dead if I were born in another century where there wasn’t that kind of recovery program.

TP: What do people not know about recovery?
WCM: That  drinking is but a symptom of our disease. The big AA book says that. I mean, it’s easy to stop drinking. I did it a thousand times. It’s hard to stay stopped. And the way we stay stopped is we come to grips with our imperfections, our humanness. I mean, it’s not a question of you don’t have to be perfect; it’s more a question of you can’t be perfect. Who is perfect? Nobody, if you’re human. Every human is flawed.

TP: It seems like learning to give up control was key to you in your recovery.
WCM: I accept my humanness, but I have to surrender every day as it relates to stuff. My issue is not drinking and taking drugs anymore—I mean, I have to be vigilant of that—but my issue is not that. My issue is living life on life’s terms. Shit happens. And shit happens whether you’re drunk or whether you’re sober. 9/11 happens. The financial meltdown of ’08 happens. Divorce happens. Death of a parent happens. I mean, stuff happens. So my ongoing journey is one about not just embracing my humanness but also embracing the fact that there’s a lot I can’t control. Life. I show up for it, and do my part, but you know what, I could leave this interview and twenty minutes from now jump on the interstate and I could get killed by a truck that’s lost its brakes. I’ve got no control over that. All I have is control over my reaction to things that are all about living life on life’s terms.

TP: How do you spend your time as a public affairs officer for Hazelden?
WCM: We’re lobbying for  getting insurance companies to stop discriminating against people who are addicted to alcohol and drugs. But there are not enough resources, be those private resources, or federal resources, or other resources. There’s not enough funding for what we think is the number one public-health problem in this country, which is alcoholism or drug dependence—in part because of the stigma, in part because our own field has done a terrible job of standing up and speaking out. There are public misperceptions about what addiction is. There’s invisibility on the part of those of us in recovery. So how do you expect policy makers at the state capitol to believe that treatment works if people who have been through treatment and are doing well don’t show up and lobby or march, like people with breast cancer or HIV/AIDS? Some of the lack of resources is due to the fact that people see this illness for something that it isn’t. The lack of resources is due to the fact that people like me become invisible, as I said in the book, unless we stand up and  speak out. And, you know, there’s a level of denial within this disease, too. I mean, it manifests in so many ways. You could be an alcoholic and never get treated for your alcoholism even while you’re treated for all the consequences as a result of it—you know, cirrhosis of the liver, broken leg in the ER, homelessness. But we believe—and I’m biased, of course—but I believe, and we believe at Hazelden, that there are not enough resources, and that’s due to stigma, private shame, public intolerance, and the fact that so many of us are recovered alcoholics anonymous, and there’s a misunderstanding of what that means in terms of being public. The mental health community has done a lot better job of talking about PTSD and depression and bipolar disorder than we have. And one of the reasons they’ve been more successful at it is because of the monies that they get from the pharmaceutical companies to lobby. The pharmaceutical companies have it in their best interest to not be critical of this at all. Big Pharma has it in its best interest to have people lobby, because you can take a pill—if you can take Zoloft or Prozac for your depression and get better, take it. So the pharmaceutical companies have that in their interest to fund advocacy efforts. There is really no pharmaceutical company that finds alcoholism worth funding. Now, there are some medical applications, or some pharmaceutical applications, for the treatment of alcoholism, we use them at Hazelden, but it’s just a small fraction of the big pie.

TP: But there are some physical treatments that can help?
WCM: Sure, there are pills, or shots, or medications to cut craving, but because addiction is an illness of the mind, the body, and the spirit, it is not simply about taking a pill. It’s about dealing with your imperfections. I don’t think that people who have depression—I don’t know this—but I don’t think that people who have depression grapple with the same issues of imperfection. I think their depression for the most part is primarily induced by some sort of biomedical stuff going on in their brain. Addiction is as much a brain disease as it is a soul sickness, and you’ve got to deal with both.

TP: Do you miss journalism?
WCM: I’m doing it. I do journalism every day. I write columns, I write books, I make speeches.

TP: But what about the adrenaline of the newsroom? You seemed to like that, although perhaps it wasn’t good for you as it seemed to activate that excitement part of your brain?
WCM: Yeah, I don’t miss that. It’s changed. Journalism is not what it used to be. I mean, newspapers are dying. CNN is a shell of itself. I don’t miss it.
— This interview has been condensed and edited for publication.

Adam Wahlberg


Founder of Think Piece Publishing

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