William’s book Broken was the window into a family, where the disease of addiction was a central character.
William shares today that in the years since writing Broken, he has faced many growth opportunities. Surrendering to the reality of the challenges of codependency, especially with the people he loves most.
Living in his active recovery from a substance use disorder has paled in William’s world to the struggles to accept his powerlessness over others and their journey.
See full transcript below.
00:02
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, today we continue with William, he will share more about the pain of his powerlessness over other people, especially those he loves. Let’s get back to William.
00:39
The Embrace Family Recovery Podcast.
00:53
It’s so hard to let go other people, particularly those that you love, and you know, and so I got a real lesson sort of through the back door, you don’t have to have a substance use issue to have a codependency issue, my codependency issue proved to be much harder for me to come to terms with and live with than, then substances quite frankly. And I would like I said, I learned that with Alison, I learned that with our children,
Margaret 01:19
I think that’s so empowering for my audience to hear. You know, I think they cannot imagine their loved one who has a substance use disorder, ever having to do anything more difficult than maintain abstinence and find recovery. And to hear you as a person who has had that path and journey and is on that continuously, but to have you say that is so validating of their experience.
01:45
Candidly, it’s a little easier for me to talk about it with you here today on the podcast than it has been for me to write about it. And I have struggled mightily, I have a contract with Penguin Random House in New York for a follow up memoir, The working title is called Beyond Broken, The Rest of The Story, my the evolution and revolution of my journey from addiction to recovery and beyond. And the point of it, and I can’t get it done its three years, it’s sitting over there behind me, I know we’re not on video, but the two binders are on the shelf over there. I’ve got two different versions of the of the manuscript and it’s still sitting there. I used to think that what if I found recovery, I would find the end of the rainbow. That was where the pot of gold was, right? Well, I mean, listen recovery is great. It sure beats the alternative. But it’s hard. It’s hard, because we have to go through the thing called life. And life is really hard, even though it has a lot of good things about it. You know, what is life about life is about beautiful sunrises, but it’s also about bitter cold temperatures. It’s about the birth of a baby and the death of a parent. It’s about, um, the joy of fatherhood, and the angst of old age. And all those things happen to all people. And it happens to people in recovery, too, right. And so, this whole thing about life on life’s terms is it’s easy to say it, it’s easy to think it life on life’s terms, but it’s much harder to live it. And that has been the experience I’ve had since I came out of that crack house in October of ‘94. Some of the things that have happened to me are happening to me beyond my control. Some of those things that have happened to me are because of my own human frailties. And it’s how I respond to all of those things, as a man in recovery, that I’m sort of defined my recovery and thus defined my life.
So, I’m still I’m still learning, you know, I’m still learning. I think that’s the key to recovery is it’s easy to let go of substances, it’s hard to stay let going of it. We go to treatment, treatments isn’t as hard as treatment can be for a lot of us. It’s it’s easy, because it’s the beginning. It’s the rest. It’s kind of hard (laughter)
Margaret 03:52
Well and I think that William, what you speak to is, my sponsor says it to me this way, when you’re ripe, you’re rotting when you’re green, you’re growing. Right? And so, my thing is, I want to stay green. And one of the beautiful things about this podcast is I get the chance to hear from other people walking this path, wherever their path is, and little glimmers of nuggets to work my own program better, healthier, stronger. I think the powerlessness over a loved one, slowly declining in there, as you mentioned aging parents for addiction or mental illness or another chronic health illness.
There is nothing more powerless than watching and not being able to make the trajectory change.
And yet, having just recently lost my mom to dementia and a stroke and so forth. And that journey was a long one until she passed. I didn’t find myself resisting or fighting that I couldn’t make it different for her.
But yet, what brought me to my knees and Al-Anon and needing that program was the love of my life at that time was not well, and I couldn’t make him well, but I came to the rooms to make him well.
05:16
William: Yeah, I did the same thing. You know, so what a noble cause right to go to go to Al-Anon to fix my marriage and fix my wife, and what a humbling experience to fail at those, but to come to that realization that all I can fix is me. And, and so I think that realization of that, that I that I can still be fixed, it is all about some humility, even though I can sort of lead with my ego a lot, lead with my head.
I am still teachable. There is that story in Broken, I did not know how it would apply later on in my life. But that story unbroken when I was talking to my mentor in recovery, Bob C. in Atlanta, he was an anchor for CNN, where I was working at the time. And he was a recovering man who took me under his wing. And I went to his house one day, and I was just sort of frustrated with things. And I said, Bob, is there any room for ego in recovery? And he said, Yes, William, but only if you remain teachable?
Oh, well, I had no idea that remaining teachable would apply way more to the rest of my life than it did to my struggles with substances. And my sort of convincing myself, I used to always think that I knew what was best for me in treatment. Who was I? You know, and I think that’s sort of a weird part about, we always talk about addiction being a chronic, treatable illness with no cure yet. But it’s so unlike other illnesses, because we try to convince ourselves that we know what’s best for us. And so, we can be sitting in the world renowned, Hazelden Foundation as I was in 1989, and then again in ‘91, listening to these wise counselors and Family Therapist talking about this and that, and I’m thinking, well, yeah, makes sort of sense. But I know how to do that better. I remember being in the audience as a patient, listening to the lectures in Bigelow, and Bigelow is the auditorium at Hazelden in Center City where speakers are, and I used to sit down there all the time as a patient thinking to myself, Man, if I could get up there, I could really tell these people how to do it. I mean, what was I thinking?
And so, I think the key for us whether we’re recovering people, codependence whatever is to recognize that while we have good brains on our shoulders, we have got to remain teachable not just through the treatment experience, or the early days of codependency recovery, but for this lifetime, because we’re gonna have lots of teachable moments.
Margaret 07:46
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08:14
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Margaret 08:28
It’s actually funny when you’re sharing that story. That was the biggest awakening for me in my recovery with food addiction. I was sitting in a meeting, taking inventory of other people speaking and how I could do it better when I’m going home and binging.
William; Yeah.
Margaret: And also the pain of that truth of how terribly painful that was. To live in that experience, day in and day out of this fraudulent perception of who I presented to the world. While this soul-destroying weak-willed attitude of I just can’t get it together. As a mother now to children and yet to know whether their lives will have the disease in it. I’m not naive enough to think that that’s not possible. I wonder how challenging it will be. If God forbid that happens to put my clinical wisdom, my personal experience, my own recovery aside to be a humble Bozo on the bus of Al-Anon recovery. And not their sponsor, not their higher power. Because it’s tough enough on a good day when there isn’t addiction in the picture because that old characteristic of mine creeps in. So, I’m curious your perception of that because you have both those experiences. You have your own recovery and know how to do it and do it well with a lot of help. And then people you love who are finding your way?
10:03
Well, it’s another critical component of the rest of my journey. And I have to be respectful of how I answer this. In fact, it’s part of the reason why I’ve struggled with it in the book and this manuscript of how to deal with it. I think I finally figured it out. But at the end of Broken, I mean, I wrote that book in ‘05, it came out in hardcover, in ‘06, it came out in paperback in ‘07, it’s still it’s still in print. But it stops, it stops in ‘05/’06. And, and so when it ends, you know, Alison and I are together. I am working at Hazelden and having a good life, and our children are not even teenagers. Well, guess what those little children at the end of Broken grew up. Today, my oldest is 29. My middle is 28. And, and our youngest is 24. And you know, they’re the product of two alcoholics. And we know what science tells us about the genetic predisposition. So let me just say that I’ve had that experience. And I’ve had it not once, not twice, but three times, three times, three children. And today, if not for my ability to let go and still love, if not for my ability to recognize that each of us is unique, and that there is no one way forward. Recognizing that my children are adults, even though they’re my children, they’re adults.
Well, it allows me to accept the reality of the day and still love them and still be around them. But it’s a challenge for many of us who think we know better, or we think we know that what works for us should work for others.
Margaret 12:05
Huge I hear that from parents, and spouses of people who don’t have their own 12 step recovery of a chemical dependency, when they meet their loved one’s disease. Think they know how to tell them what to do.
12:17
William: Let me just add this to and I made a reference to this earlier, I know you experienced too in your own clinical work. But the opioid epidemic, which really sort of began in ‘12 and ‘13 in terms of our public awareness around it, and has been exacerbated by the pandemic of Coronavirus. I mean people are sicker now than they’ve ever been. And, and it’s because they’ve been hunkering down or not going to get the help and so on. But the point of bringing up the opioid epidemic is that on average, 80 to 90,000 people in this country die every year of accidental overdose, most of them through accidental overdoses of opiates. And so, I’ve worked with a lot of people as I know you have too. I’m not a clinician, but I help a lot of people and I remind parents and spouses all the time that they need to take care of themselves no matter what happens to their loved one. And they look at me kind of quizzically. And that’s even true for those parents and those family members who lost their loved one. In other words, their loved one’s dead, they don’t have to worry anymore about that father, or that wife, or that grandparent or that child going to treatment because they’re dead. And I say to them, so your loved one is dead but, you’ve got to take care of yourself. And at first, they look at me like well, why they’re dead. And I said, because you need to recover. And that’s kind of the point here whether your loved one is still using, whether your loved one is in recovery, whether your loved one is dead. Your own recovery is what really matters.
Margaret 13:44
Absolutely. Pre, during, post. No matter the journeys outcome for the person you love, it is incredibly important. And the issue of losing someone to this illness, which is a very real possibility, as we all know. It is so hard to hear family members say to me, I can’t set a boundary to have my loved one, not live with me. Because I couldn’t live with it, if they passed on the street.
And one of the things as delicately as I can, I will challenge them to consider is, that is unbearable to imagine. Would it be any more bearable to imagine if they passed in your basement while you financed the disease?
William: Right? Right.
Margaret: And it strikes me as some of the magical thinking of we can use without consequence when we’re in the disease, that this manipulates a family member in a similar way. Like we don’t have the ability when we’re in the throes of it to see the truth that lays before US.
William: Mm hmm.
Margaret: And so, the importance of finding a community where you can share and hear other stories and how they’ve worked through this, what boundaries, they’ve set how hard it was to set them. But the reality of allowing the person, we love to have the consequences that will help them find a solution for them.
15:20
William: It’s really, really hard. As I said earlier, it’s I used to think it was impossible for me to let go of other substances, I kept coming back to them, well I did let go of them ultimately. But letting go of other people, particularly those that we love, or that we think we know what’s best for them is hard.
Now, letting go doesn’t mean closing the door or turning your back. And in fact, I think that in this day and age, while we’re always sort of lamenting the invasiveness of technology, one of the important aspects of technology that allows us to stay connected is cell phones. And so, I say to parents all the time, who say, well, should I, how do I draw a boundary? Or that, you know, do I give my son bus money to take the bus? I say no. But continue to pay his cell phone bill. Because what you want to be able to do, it’s hard to do it, but it’s necessary is to stay connected to that loved one who’s still suffering because that day may well come when they reach out and say, hey Margaret, hey William, hey mom, hey dad, I need help. And oftentimes, it’s that cell phone that is that conduit to that help connection.
Margaret 16:27
And I think the other piece in my language is set boundaries, around the disease, and love the person.
William: That’s beautiful.
Margaret: That’s the key if they can maintain that connection, you know, taught me that the best. You’ll remember this name, Mrs. Carolyn White. One of the things she did so beautifully with everyone she loved family, friends, anyone touched by this disease was still love them, still joke with them, still have a relationship with them. But there were boundaries. You can’t be in my house if you’re using. Don’t call me from jail, you know, and that’s what she did. And she did beautifully didn’t mean that it didn’t hurt her and struggle. But like that’s the beauty of recovery, even though it’s painful. She wasn’t alone, she could talk to other recovering community. She could hear things from them that gave her ideas on how to do it. And she did service too. I mean, we know Carolyn shared with many, many people the beauty of recovery as a family member.
Outro: As a family recovery specialist, I can’t count how many times family members have sadly expressed how difficult it must be to find and stay in recovery. When one has an addiction. I so value William Cope Moyers the author of Broken sharing, as a man in recovery from his substance use disorder, the truth of the pain of accepting his powerlessness over his loved ones journey being more difficult than staying in recovery from substances.
I want to thank my guest for their courage and vulnerability and 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!
