Welcome back to The Embrace Family Recovery Podcast! Today William Cope Moyers, author of ‘Broken’ and ‘Broken Open‘, who has been in recovery from the disease of addiction since 1989 returns.
In this episode, William shares his candid experience with addiction, return to use, and the challenges of maintaining sobriety. He discusses how addiction impacted his family, and the critical lessons he’s learned about letting go.
William highlights the unique needs of older adults in recovery and the importance of specialized care. His story is a powerful reminder of hope, resilience, and the importance of staying teachable. Tune in for an inspiring and honest conversation on recovery, growth, and healing.
Click here to grab your copy of Healthy Strategies for Family Members to Cope and Even Thrive Through Addiction and receive my weekly newsletter.
1Intro 00:01
You’re listening to the Embrace Family Recovery Podcast, a place for real conversations with people who love someone with the disease of addiction. Now here is your host, Margaret Swift Thompson.
Margaret 00:26
Welcome back to the Embrace Family Recovery Podcast! Today I continue my conversation with my friend and previous guest, William Cope Moyers. He’s the author of Broken and has joined us today to talk about life and recovery since publishing broken in 2006. William’s ongoing journey of recovery is captured in his new book, Broken Open, and today he talks about his passion to carry on his message. I’m grateful for this second book and all it will do to offer people insight to the journey of recovery.
Bumper 01:05
The Embrace Family Recovery Podcast
Margaret 01:21
Speaking to the core of you, the one that was being eaten alive by the shame of the disease when you were rising to success in your book, Broken and struggling with your secret addiction to opiates. How could you leave it there?
William Cope Moyers 01:37
Right, right. I couldn’t,
Margaret 01:43
I don’t think I could, because it would eat me alive to know that that’s where people thought it ended, and I’m still seen in that light, and this next light is going to be more beautiful, I’m guessing, and more hopeful for people, because you are willing to be honest and open and share that it hasn’t been this trajectory uphill. It’s the nature of this disease.
02:10
William Cope Moyers: And the nature of this journey from the disease to the rest of life. Remember, for people like me, my problem is less alcohol and other drugs. My problem is more about living my life without alcohol and other drugs. I’ve always said the only thing more difficult than living life sober is living life drunk or stoned. So, if you take away the drunk and the stone part, life is really hard. I mean, it’s good, but it’s hard.
And I owe it to people like us from families like ours, I owe it to be able to explain that dynamic of what it’s like to go through life after you’ve left the substances behind, or when you run into them again, or after you have healed from a previous failed relationship, to the challenges of a new failed relationship, that’s life and the recovery journey is really all about living this life and striving to be a better human being. I have come to understand, you know, listen, sobriety is really important for a lot of us and I used to define my sobriety from the date of October the 12th of 1994 when, as I wrote him broken I came out of the crack house in Atlanta, Georgia. I came out of there that day. My father said, I hate you. And I said, I hate me too. And that was my bottom, and I wrote about that, and I started to count my sobriety date from October 12 of 94.
When I had this running with the pain meds. I realized that my sobriety date had been interrupted, but my commitment to recovery actually remained the same. If it hadn’t, I would have given up. And so now Margaret, I see my recovery journey from when I took those first steps out of the crack house, not in October of 1994 but five years earlier, in August of 1989 when I came out of the crack house in Harlem, was locked up in a psychiatric ward in New York City for three weeks, and then was put on an airplane on a one way ticket to Hazelden in 1989. I have seen that my recovery journey, that with the frankly, for me, there is more to recovery than sobriety,
Margaret: Right.
William Cope Moyers: And for me, it’s that commitment to be a better person, that commitment to be free from substances, yes, but even when I’m tangled in them, to continue to strive to be a better human being. And so now I see my recovery date is August, the fifth of 89
Margaret 04:30
you shared earlier, the kind of the collateral fallout from telling your story on that stage, on a work level, what I would really like to focus a little time on is the collateral damage that we all know to be true, of the trust being hurt in our families when there is a return to use. So, families go back to almost square one, emotionally like really, even though they have known you. So, if you’re willing to talk about. That when the family, the people you love the most, found out about this part of your story, talk us through a little bit about what happened and how that has also repaired, restored, healed. What’s that look like?
05:16
William Cope Moyers: Well, and that’s a tough question in a lot of ways, because it speaks to the very intimacy of these relationships that I’ve had. But it’s a fair question. So, the most important relationship that was affected by that was to the woman that I’m married to now, Nell Hurley, who’s a woman in long term recovery, 25 some odd years, she’s 10 years younger than me. We met in 2009 when she came up to my front door in Saint Paul asking for help for a friend of hers, and was told by her sponsor to come find me because I had written this book called Broken so and I was divorced at that time. So, she came up to me, we started a relationship.
And when she found out about all the things that had occurred or hadn’t occurred. Had not occurred during that time that I write about. She said she stopped me on the street one day we were in New York City, and she said, William, you owe me an apology. And I was like, yeah, I do. And I didn’t try to mitigate it. I didn’t try to explain it away, even though I felt like I could have probably explained it away, in some way, I had to honor her sentiment in that moment and not say yes, but, or, or maybe No, but I know I just said yeah, and so I know right where I was standing on the Upper West Side, and when, when I said yeah, no, you’re right. I apologize for those times I was honest by omission, or I was dishonest without explanation, and so she accepted that.
My kids, I just got an amazing email from my oldest son, Henry yesterday, who wrote me after he read this book, I sent it to him last week, and it’s just so beautiful. I can’t do it justice, but he didn’t. He was away during that time, so he didn’t. Didn’t have any implications per se, nor did my middle son, Thomas, my daughter Nancy, who is therapist now in New York City, she graduated from Columbia a year ago and is also very open about being in recovery differently than I do for the last five years. She was at home during that period, and so it’s helped her to fill in some of the blanks. She hasn’t asked me anything that I haven’t been willing to share with her. She sort of knew it during that time, and candidly, she was also struggling that was in like, yeah, that was about the time she was struggling herself.
So, you know, Margaret, I was very fortunate that I had a lot of recovery capital. I had a lot of support around me, so that when I struggled like I did, while there were issues of honesty or dishonesty, which are, of course, are always paramount to a relationship or the lack of a relationship. While I had some of those issues, the collateral damage, if you will, was not as grave as it could have been under different dynamics.
That said, I have said to all three of my children and some of the other people that are mentioned in the book, if you have any questions about anything that I write about, come to me and let’s talk. And I have found, and I think you would agree on this, that the best way we can handle our relationships is just to be honest. It’s hard sometimes, particularly for people like me, but what better way to remedy a broken relationship or hurt relationship, a bruise relationship, than just to be honest,
Margaret 08:43
To also be open to conversation.
08:45
William Cope Moyers: Yeah, you gotta be, you know.
Margaret 08:49
I appreciate very much your candor with your story about Nell saying I need an apology that that you felt that truth, that yes, that’s true, and then the disease implication of, well, I could probably figure a way around this and say this and say that, like that honesty is so important for family members to hear that even with collateral from recovery, even with capital, as you call it, from recovery, even with the knowledge and experience you Have that that voice still does show up, but as we are in our work of recovery, the saner, healthier, more well, voice can prevail. That’s that balance that I think each of us do as we journey through life.
09:35
William Cope Moyers: Yes, and again, it goes back to knowing that how we used to do things never really worked out, and so why continue to repeat them? And you know, there were a lot of times when I would apologize for relapsing again and again, and after a while, like roam hollow with my family, to the point where I realized that the only apology, or the only way I can make it amends to them, is just to try stay sober or stay in recovery, and that tends to work better. So, actions always speak louder than words. I believe that. And yet, there are times when, especially the family member, just needs to be able to express what they need to express and then know that you have heard them.
Margaret: Yeah,
William Cope Moyers: You know, I could have pushed back against Nel saying I needed an apology. I could have said, well, you should have known, or didn’t you remember this? I was just like, No, you’re right. I need to make an apology. And I think when it comes to the healing process, particularly with families that have been affected by addiction, even if we think we’ve got a good excuse or a good reason for something, sometimes it’s just best to keep our mouth shut and just listen and just honor that person’s need.
Margaret 10:45
Absolutely. It’s also getting out of our own way and our own codependency in a different way of me expecting that I know what someone else needs to be okay. That’s not my job, that’s their job.
10:59
William Cope Moyers: So, I want to say something about that, because it goes back to these kids I’ve got. These are remarkably resilient, three children who sold Allison, made some decisions and went back to Bermuda for a while. And so, I became a single dad of these three kids in Saint Paul, where I lived for a long time and living still, and we went on our way and we were a pretty tight group during those years, but my kids are still my kids. I mean, they’re still teenagers, right? So, one day, one of them came to me and asked for help and got help and went their way, which was different. Then another one came and asked for help and got help and went their way, and then the other one came and asked for help and went their way.
What I had learned that whole experience is that I have to get out of the way. Sometimes I have to be present when my family members ask for help. I have to help them get to where that help can be. But then I have to, I hate to say, let go, but maybe that’s the term, but I have to then step to the side and let them go the way they’re going to go. Because, as I said earlier in my case, all three of my children are on their paths of well-being. They do it differently than I do, but they are doing it, and I have to honor that, you know, and it’s worked out. It also frees me, if you will, or lessens the burden that I have of having to carry around somebody else’s stuff.
Margaret 12:28
I think it’s, it is letting go. So, my language would be, and I know letting go has a lot of challenges for many people, because it feels like abandonment, which it is not, it’s, it’s the letting go of being their higher power to discern what is right for them.
William Cope Moyers: Yeah, yeah.
Margaret: Letting go so that I can breathe while they learn the lessons they have to learn to stand on their feet and be the person they get to be. And it’s tough, but I think that it’s so important to reiterate that.
Something you said earlier that I think, is also good to go back to, is when you took that opiate from the dentist appropriately, that first time. That sense of I ohh any one of us knows that whether we’re addict or not, we probably profoundly know it, when we’re someone who’s in recovery from some addiction, what have you found that gives you that because life still happens?
13:32
William Cope Moyers: Yeah, well, I guess what I found is just a little bit more wisdom to know that I’m going to continue to feel that way from time to time that sort of being stressed out or pressed for time, or having too much on my plate, and that’s okay, and that if I continue to do my meditations and exercise and get enough sleep, which I’ve been doing a lot of lately as I get ready for this very arduous book tour, and also the 75th anniversary celebration weekend for Hazelden Betty Ford. Is a lot going on. What I have found is I just need to do those things to sort of restore my recovery capital. You know, I have what I call an IRA, an Individual Recovery Account. A lot of people think of an IRA as being, you know, like an individual retirement account or but, but I have an IRA which is, which is all about all the resources that I put into my recovery, and I just make sure I put a lot in there.
On the other hand, I will say I’m not as hard on myself anymore I used to be. I do say no. In fact, just before you and I got on to this conversation, I had to say no to something later on this afternoon. And guess what? The world didn’t end. And here we you and I are, and everything’s going to be fine. Some of that comes with age, some of that comes with wisdom, some of that comes from lived experience. And certainly, on this journey. Any recovery. All of us have the lived experience, whether we’re the active, the alcoholic, the family member, whatever. So I’ve got enough in my Individual Recovery Account to know that I can deal with the things I have to deal with going forward, and some of that means saying no, and that is a hard thing to do for some of us, particularly those of us who are people pleasers, or just want everybody to be happy with us and so on, to say no, I think is one of the great gifts, we can give ourselves
Margaret 15:30
And the people that we say no, too often, it’s a gift we give them.
15:34
William Cope Moyers: You know what? I’m so glad you said that, because after I said what, I said, I could say I should. And you nailed it. Sometimes they just want us to say no, because they need to do things their way, or they need to do things on their timeline, and giving them permission by saying no, I’m not going to do this or do that, I think is a gift in its own right.
Bumper 16:00
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16:04
Hi everyone. I am Margaret Swift Thompson of the Embrace Family Recovery Podcast. I wanted to jump on in this bumper and just share how grateful I am that each and every one of you has chosen to listen, review, share this podcast.
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Margaret 17:08
A couple things that I want to just touch on before we conclude this, and one of them is you brought up nobody should live in pain, even a person with a substance use disorder, your pain was very much part of this chapter, change in the storyline of the book. How are you with pain? How do you manage pain? How is life in that respect?
17:32
William Cope Moyers: Yeah, I’ve developed a phobia around dentists. It’s a terrible thing because they’re really important. Because you get older, I’ve been lucky that I haven’t had any chronic pain. I’ve had some acute pain. I had a surgery. I have spine surgery. I had an ablation a couple of years ago when I know I’m going to need opiate pain relief. I go through my addiction doc in Minneapolis, who writes the script and then monitors the dispersing of it.
The lesson that I’ve learned is that even though I knew and heard stories how you should always give your pain medications over to your spouse or somebody in your household, or a trusted friend, a mentor, whatever I had, didn’t do that that time, and now I know you gotta do that.
Margaret: Right?
William Cope Moyers: But I have been very lucky that I haven’t had that kind of pain. And when I have had it, I’m good about knowing what to do with it. I also know this, and this is sort of a sub theme of the book, even though it’s not in the book, per se. I’m a baby boomer. I was born in 1959, and the baby boom generation was 46 to 6419 64 and so there’s 1000s of us coming of age, of older age as baby boomers. Now some of us came of age as baby boomers and found recovery during that process, which is a wonderful thing. But we’re getting older. And whether it’s chronic pain, acute pain from, you know, getting a knee replaced or arthritis, whether it’s the loss of a spouse or retirement. There are a lot of challenges that come with getting older, and I think we’re in a frontier in in this world of treatment and recovery, where we’ve got to really recognize that older adults are going to have a lot of special needs and their families, because families are going to be sort of having to deal with mom or dad or grandma or grandpa as we get older.
Margaret 19:31
I agree. I agree. And there are special requirements in caring for people who are older adults with this disease and other illnesses that are debilitating as well. I’m glad to hear that your pain has been manageable. I hear that you dip into your individual recovery account when you face it. I love that.
How has it been? Because I remember when Broken came out, and I remember some of the pushback within Yes, the recovery community for you being out there talking openly about this, well now you’re going to this next level of being open about a return to use and a secrecy around the use and all of that. How are you preparing for that which will come. How have you been dealing with it? Where do you sit with that? William.
20:27
William Cope Moyers: Great question. Thank you. Because what I hear in that question is sort of one of your deep talents for self-care or making sure that this person, you’re talking to is going to get the self-care that I need to continue on. So, thank you for that. I strayed the boundaries of anonymity and Broken I figured, when I wrote that book, I figured, if I was going to write about the graphic nature of my illness and all the things that I did under the influence, I owed it to the reader to explain how it was that I was recovering from it. And I’ve always believed in personal anonymity. I believe in the confidentiality that occurs in treatment programs, absolutely, but I chose to be public as it relates to the role that 12-step recovery played my life, because I was public about my addiction, and I didn’t get better with magic.
Margaret 21:14
Right. So, you were open about the problem, and you felt imperative to open about the solution.
21:21
William Cope Moyers: The solution that it’s not just a miracle, that we get better. That I got better because I got access to treatment four times that I was access to professional counselors who are licensed, and then I have this 12-step program to help me keep walking my walk. I had to write about that.
In the new book, you know, I continue along the pathway and explaining that 12 step recovery was very vital to me, but that I could not find in those meetings what I needed to quiet this brain. And I would hope that, through my experience, people who are in 12 step groups can realize that there are times when appropriately prescribed anti craving medications are part of the recovery process, and that’s okay, too.
I’ve talked about all the other things that I do beyond 12 step recovery, and candidly, I have had a few people say, like I said earlier, well, why would you want to besmirch yourself or why would you want to knock yourself down? And I was like, well, you know, because I am who I am. I talk about in the book that somebody came up to me and said, oh, wait, man, that’s a great story. I want to be like you one day. And I said, be careful what you ask for.
Look Margaret, I’m a human being, and addiction is an illness that ravages human beings. I’ve been ravaged. My family’s been ravaged, but I’ve been blessed by recovery, access to continued treatments, the very best that medicine can offer, a connection with a higher power that continues to evolve, and then friendships and relationships with people like you and many, many others. So, you know, my story is an open book to the extent that anything I can do to share my journey with people to then help them find hope and healing. That’s fine by me.
Margaret 23:06
And I’m so glad you have I know that the pushback is there. I know that there’s resistance. I’m also an open book, and I think that when we look at our children and we look at our families and we look at the people around us, to leave it where you left it, yeah, gives hope, gives the truth of the story to that point. I feel like this is even more hopeful, because I think that this next chapter, book is much more commonplace to the experience of people with this disease and their families than leaving it at the precipice of that V
23:46
William Cope Moyers: Agree Margaret. And you know, it was so frustrating to me to not find much in the genre of addiction memoir about decades later. And then, of course, it’s so frustrating to me and sad to read about Matthew Perry, who’s been in the news of late, and the fact that you know he died, obviously from using again and being sort of enabled, if you will. Because for every story of a Matthew Perry, there are stories of other people who’ve had a recurrence of use but get better again, and we cannot forget that addiction is not a curable illness, at least not yet. And that’s true for the addict and the alcoholic, and that’s true for the family. But that recovery is possible even when the illness comes back, recovery for the sick person and recovery for the family of the sick person, that you can continue down that road of recovery if you don’t give up.
Margaret 24:41
Agreed, agreed. And it’s ironic that you brought up Matthew Perry, because one of the people that I was thinking of during this conversation was him and his family, who my heart goes out to, who are left with all of this unknown and trauma and perspectives and opinions and judgments and all of that. So, when I see someone like you who has the fortune to continue to tell their story, even through a return to use, I want that for so many more people.
25:17
William Cope Moyers: Yes, Margaret, do you know that since I did, I wish I had the list in front of me, but since Broken came out in ‘06 and hardcover and then paperback and ‘07. In other words, in all those years that I write about, since Broken, we’ve had people like Prince and Michael Jackson and Tom Petty and Philip Seymour Hoffman and Matthew Perry and
Margaret: Amy Winehouse,
William Cope Moyers: Amy Winehouse and so many others who had the same illness that I have, some of whom had recovery under their belts, but had a recurrence of use and it killed them. That’s a true story, and we need to always honor those stories, but we have to also remember that they had families, and that their families can find hope and find reason to continue on their own pathways to recovery, even when we have those sad stories. And then finally, to really recognize that while there is no cure for addiction, there is a solution, and that solution oftentimes means that it’s going to be a recurrence abuse. But it doesn’t mean that has to be the end. It can be just another one of those mile posts that can allows people like me to keep walking that walk.
Margaret 26:33
Yeah. How are your parents?
26:36
William Cope Moyers: Well, thanks for asking. My father turned 90 in June. My mother turned 89 in May. On my mother’s birthday, she fell and was seriously injured. I was there in New York City when it happened. It’s been a heck of a three or four months, but they’re stable now. My mother is in assisted living. My fathers at home a couple blocks away in Manhattan and in December, if we can get that far, they will mark their 70th wedding anniversary.
My mother was 19 and my father was 20 when they got married in 1954, I was born five years later. And so, what a gift. Because, you know, my parents were deeply affected
Margaret: Yes.
William Cope Moyers: not just by my substance use issues early on, but we had it in our family. And my parents have always known that by coming to the family program at Hazel and in the fall of 1989 they began their recovery journeys, and because of that journey, they started 35 years ago, here they are today, battling with lots of stuff, but better for the experiences they had in the family program and in their own programs of recovery since.
Margaret 27:44
And how were they with your new book?
27:49
William Cope Moyers: Well ,they’re just reading it right now.
Margaret: Okay.
William Cope Moyers: Actually, I mailed it to them last week. They had known I was working on it. You know, I originally sold the book to Penguin Random House back in 2018 and then for a lot of reasons, including the pandemic, it just kept getting pushed off. Once my mother was in the hospital for a long time. So, I said, I can’t get the book done. Um, then Mark Mischick, our CEO retired, and we got Joe Lee. And when Doctor Lee started talking in ways that were like, I thought, wow, this book is his. What he’s talking about is very similar to my own lived experience. And so, I decided to take the book back and have Hazel and publish it. The point being that it’s taken six years to get to it. Bill and Judith, my parents have known it’s coming, but, but they’ve had their own issues, so they’re just reading it for the first time now. I didn’t ask for their counsel.
Margaret 28:37
Wow.
William Cope Moyers: Yeah
Margaret: My guess is at the end of the day there will be all sorts of feelings and emotions, but at the end of the day, they’ll be grateful that you have been true to yourself and found your way through this last return to use and are again giving of yourself to the rest of the world to see that even Though it is not a perfect journey, nor should it be, because we are not perfect. It is a journey that can have hope. And I’m so glad you’ve done that
29:10
William Cope Moyers: Well. Thank you. Margaret, you know, my dad said to me a couple years ago, he said, you know, son, I’m real proud of you. You saved more lives in 60 years than I meaning him. Have saved in 85 years, and that meant a lot to me, because he’s been a larger-than-life figure in a lot of ways over the decades. But I am blessed that I still have both of my parents, and I do believe, in my heart of hearts, that part of the reason why we are still walking this walk together as the family that we are is because my parents took care of themselves while I took care of myself.
Margaret 29:45
And your children are doing the same. They’re taking care of themselves while you take care of you.
29:49
William Cope Moyers: Yeah. My oldest son Henry is getting married on September the first in Seattle. My middle son Thomas has been married for a year and a half to a nurse, and he works. In the area of fundraising for the Blind in Austin. And then my daughter, Nancy, as I mentioned earlier, is graduated from Columbia with our LMSW a year and a half ago and is working as a therapist in Manhattan.
All of my children in helping professions, and I think that’s been the greatest gift of my own recovery and my family’s recovery, which is that we can give back, we can give back and help other people. That’s the greatest gift of all of this journey for me, to be able to help other people. There’s nothing better.
Margaret 30:32
And I don’t know your children, other than I had the privilege of meeting your daughter about a year and a half ago now,
William Cope Moyers: Yeah, I remember
Margaret: and was absolutely enthralled with who she is as a woman,
William Cope Moyers: yeah,
Margaret: what an amazing journey. Since I’ve met her, what I’ve seen socially, of her achievements and stuff and living her truth. And you know, we get to feel really good about the fact that our children are blossoming, yes, despite us and because of us.
31:02
William Cope Moyers: Despite of us and because of us, that is so true. I love the way you say that, and I want to just say something about you too. I remember when I met you, and you were at Hazelden Betty Ford, and I always had such a profound respect for your work. And so, your innate passion, that was really interesting to me. It just sort of came out of you. And even though you moved on, I’m so glad that you’re doing what you’re doing, and particularly with that emphasis on the family that too often gets neglected or doesn’t get the same sort of attention or the resources that the problem person has, but that you’re doing this work and making a difference. It’s a great gift, and I’m honored that you and I have been together today, so I appreciate you having me on.
Margaret 31:45
Thank you, William. I look forward to this coming out. I look forward to reading it myself. I would be willing to have you on anytime to talk about anything, but I do want to say that humanity is its finest when people are authentic. And I’m so glad the disease did not take you from us, and that you found your solution, and that you are willing to share it with everybody, because I think we need more stories of hope that aren’t pretty packages with a bow on top. But are the truth of most of our experiences, which is, life is bumpy, and we get a chance to lean into it and work hard at our recovery, or we will be taken, whether family or the person with the disease, this disease will take us if we let it. And you have chosen not to. You have learned in.
32:38
Willam Cope Moyers: and you have given me the opportunity, and I know that from this podcast, from this conversation, that there will be people out there who will find what they need to ask for help, or to hang on or to help the other person that they love. So, thank you for helping me to carry the message.
Margaret 33:05
Thank you, William. I know many people hear the story of a person entering recovery and wonder how it unfolds. I appreciate, as always, William’s courage to share the truth of his journey. Recovery is a day-by-day journey, and there are ups, downs, twists and turns, and these are important to also share. The main thing about recovery is being willing to continue the journey one day at a time.
33:36
Outro: Come back next week, where I have a special friend and guest visit us and share his story. You will get an opportunity to hear from Jay, who is a father, and his story will deeply touch you.
I want to thank my guests for their courage and vulnerability in sharing parts of their story. Please find resources on my website, embracefamilyrecovery.com.
This is Margaret Swift Thompson, until next time, please take care of you!
