'Addiction does not discriminate'

New Write About Now episode with William Cope Moyers

William Cope Moyers had it all— a loving and supportive family (his father is legendary journalist Bill Moyers), financial stability, a promising career — and yet, he spent his 20s in and out of rehab for drug and alcohol addiction. At his lowest point, he found himself sprawled on the floor of a crack house in Harlem.

Says Moyers,

I always itched with a sense I wasn't good enough. I used substances because they took care of the hole in the soul. They turned on that light switch in my brain, which I could not turn off of my own free will, despite all those things I had. I'm proof that addiction doesn't discriminate

Mercifully, he was able to turn his life around by fully committing to the recovery program at the Hazelden Betty Ford Clinic in Minnesota (or Minnesober, as he calls it, due to all the clinics in that state). He wrote a bestselling memoir in 2006 and appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show and Larry King Live. Suddenly, he was the poster child for the power of recovery.

But a decade later, a trip to the dentist and a prescription for painkillers threatened everything William stood for. He was addicted again—but this time, all the tools he used to recover the first time failed him.

What happened next and the controversy it caused is the subject of his new book Broken Open and our candid conversation on the latest episode of Write About Now with Jonathan Small.

You can listen and watch the full episode by clicking the links below.