BROKEN: My Story of Addiction and Redemption
William Cope Moyers and Katherine Ketcham
The sizzle of crack. The euphoric rush. A filthy room littered with empty beer cans and used syringes.
These are images from the opening pages of William Cope Moyers? candid, unflinching memoir BROKEN: My Story of Addiction and Redemption (Viking; On-Sale Date: 9/25/06; ISBN: 0-670-03789-3; $25.95). In 1994, William Cope, son of famed journalist Bill Moyers, spiraled into a crack cocaine binge that threatened to destroy everything that mattered to him. He hit rock bottom. On that horrific day, his father and his family found him on the floor of a crack house in Atlanta?s gritty inner-city. What happened next transformed William?s life. As William illustrates in his memoir, his decision to make sobriety the center of his life caused him to walk away from a journalism career at CNN and follow an inner-voice that ultimately led to a vocation to help people just like himself ? alcoholics and other addicted people. Today he is a vice president of the Hazelden Foundation, a renowned drug treatment center, where he uses his own personal experiences to ?carry the message? to others and work to change public attitudes around addiction in America.
In BROKEN, your not-so-typical coming-of-age memoir, William Cope Moyers paints the portrait of his youth clearly and with great affection. Like so many children of privilege, however, the radiant outside image veiled dark, private demons, dominated by the shadow of his father?s public stature. Despite the intense pressure of growing up with a famous father, young Cope, as he was called, found his own strength in writing and reporting. When he stepped out into the world as a budding journalist, he harbored the deep desire familiar to many young professionals: to emulate a hero -- in this case, his father.
As William discusses in BROKEN, his successes in high school and college could not fill what he calls ?the hole in his soul? ? a relentless fear of failure, a painful recognition of his own imperfections, and a sense that no matter how hard he tried, he wasn?t good enough. Only alcohol and other drugs seemed to offer some relief, but it wasn?t long before they caused even more problems. During Christmas break his senior year in college, a drunken celebration with friends led him to break into a local fish market, where he stole less than $20. Brought up on burglary charges that made the national news, William Cope writes, ?no one close to me ever mentioned the need for an intervention or assessment, because no one could imagine that a clean-cut, well-mannered, church-going young man like me could have a serious alcohol problem.? By his early-twenties he was helpless to stop an increasingly self-destructive pattern of daily drinking and drug use. As he points out, the paradox of his longtime nickname was that ?long before most kids ever have to face what it means to ?cope? with life, I was painfully aware that I couldn?t cope with much of anything.?
In BROKEN, we learn that it would be a long time before he could cope with much of anything. William paints an intimate portrait of his decade-long addiction to alcohol, cocaine and, finally, crack cocaine, detailing how he would speed along the Long Island Expressway with steering wheel in one hand and crack pipe in the other and describing in harrowing detail his experiences in crack houses in Harlem, St. Paul, and Atlanta. In the end, William?s addiction became even more important to him than his own children. Just days before he entered treatment for the last time, he writes about neglecting his crying baby son. ?I watched the smoke drift over him, horrified, but the moment passed and I left him once again to load up the pipe.?
William Cope Moyers made many attempts to change his life but even with multiple stints in hospitals and treatment programs, it took six years before he realized that ?everything I had and everything I wanted to hold on to depended on one critical thing ? my ability to stay sober.? Through a spiritual awakening and with support from his parents, Bill and Judith Moyers, and his wife Allison, also in recovery from addiction, William Cope understood and accepted the truth that ?we are all broken, and the only ?cure? for our brokenness is to be broken together.?
FROM PUBLISHERS WEEKLY...
The prodigal son of Bill Moyers, the exemplary broadcast journalist, wrecked a bright career at CNN and deserted his family in 1994, hitting bottom as a "thirty-five-year-old crack addict." The lurid appeal of his story hinges largely on Moyers's munificent, even saintly father, and the train-wreck spectacle of his son's fall from grace. Moyers conveys with black humor the rapturous allure of substance abuse: "cocaine owned me,body and soul," he writes. It lures him back even after stints in rehab, brushes with death and lucky breaks. As his habit skids out of control, Moyers dodges punishment with smug hauteur. He enjoys plum reporting assignments as a fortunate son and plays the role of "solid, sincere recovering alcoholic," while persisting in his unrepentant behavior. Moyers hits his stride in evocations of his muddled, though quasi-methodical, mindset: the vertiginous pull of addiction, the powerful delusions of denial and the double-edged sword of legacy, which proves a potent enabler. His father, who addresses him in heartfelt letters excerpted at length,looms throughout as both reproving shadow and divine light. Photos. (Sept.) Copyright ? Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
William Cope Moyers and Katherine Ketcham
The sizzle of crack. The euphoric rush. A filthy room littered with empty beer cans and used syringes.
These are images from the opening pages of William Cope Moyers? candid, unflinching memoir BROKEN: My Story of Addiction and Redemption (Viking; On-Sale Date: 9/25/06; ISBN: 0-670-03789-3; $25.95). In 1994, William Cope, son of famed journalist Bill Moyers, spiraled into a crack cocaine binge that threatened to destroy everything that mattered to him. He hit rock bottom. On that horrific day, his father and his family found him on the floor of a crack house in Atlanta?s gritty inner-city. What happened next transformed William?s life. As William illustrates in his memoir, his decision to make sobriety the center of his life caused him to walk away from a journalism career at CNN and follow an inner-voice that ultimately led to a vocation to help people just like himself ? alcoholics and other addicted people. Today he is a vice president of the Hazelden Foundation, a renowned drug treatment center, where he uses his own personal experiences to ?carry the message? to others and work to change public attitudes around addiction in America.
In BROKEN, your not-so-typical coming-of-age memoir, William Cope Moyers paints the portrait of his youth clearly and with great affection. Like so many children of privilege, however, the radiant outside image veiled dark, private demons, dominated by the shadow of his father?s public stature. Despite the intense pressure of growing up with a famous father, young Cope, as he was called, found his own strength in writing and reporting. When he stepped out into the world as a budding journalist, he harbored the deep desire familiar to many young professionals: to emulate a hero -- in this case, his father.
As William discusses in BROKEN, his successes in high school and college could not fill what he calls ?the hole in his soul? ? a relentless fear of failure, a painful recognition of his own imperfections, and a sense that no matter how hard he tried, he wasn?t good enough. Only alcohol and other drugs seemed to offer some relief, but it wasn?t long before they caused even more problems. During Christmas break his senior year in college, a drunken celebration with friends led him to break into a local fish market, where he stole less than $20. Brought up on burglary charges that made the national news, William Cope writes, ?no one close to me ever mentioned the need for an intervention or assessment, because no one could imagine that a clean-cut, well-mannered, church-going young man like me could have a serious alcohol problem.? By his early-twenties he was helpless to stop an increasingly self-destructive pattern of daily drinking and drug use. As he points out, the paradox of his longtime nickname was that ?long before most kids ever have to face what it means to ?cope? with life, I was painfully aware that I couldn?t cope with much of anything.?
In BROKEN, we learn that it would be a long time before he could cope with much of anything. William paints an intimate portrait of his decade-long addiction to alcohol, cocaine and, finally, crack cocaine, detailing how he would speed along the Long Island Expressway with steering wheel in one hand and crack pipe in the other and describing in harrowing detail his experiences in crack houses in Harlem, St. Paul, and Atlanta. In the end, William?s addiction became even more important to him than his own children. Just days before he entered treatment for the last time, he writes about neglecting his crying baby son. ?I watched the smoke drift over him, horrified, but the moment passed and I left him once again to load up the pipe.?
William Cope Moyers made many attempts to change his life but even with multiple stints in hospitals and treatment programs, it took six years before he realized that ?everything I had and everything I wanted to hold on to depended on one critical thing ? my ability to stay sober.? Through a spiritual awakening and with support from his parents, Bill and Judith Moyers, and his wife Allison, also in recovery from addiction, William Cope understood and accepted the truth that ?we are all broken, and the only ?cure? for our brokenness is to be broken together.?
FROM PUBLISHERS WEEKLY...
The prodigal son of Bill Moyers, the exemplary broadcast journalist, wrecked a bright career at CNN and deserted his family in 1994, hitting bottom as a "thirty-five-year-old crack addict." The lurid appeal of his story hinges largely on Moyers's munificent, even saintly father, and the train-wreck spectacle of his son's fall from grace. Moyers conveys with black humor the rapturous allure of substance abuse: "cocaine owned me,body and soul," he writes. It lures him back even after stints in rehab, brushes with death and lucky breaks. As his habit skids out of control, Moyers dodges punishment with smug hauteur. He enjoys plum reporting assignments as a fortunate son and plays the role of "solid, sincere recovering alcoholic," while persisting in his unrepentant behavior. Moyers hits his stride in evocations of his muddled, though quasi-methodical, mindset: the vertiginous pull of addiction, the powerful delusions of denial and the double-edged sword of legacy, which proves a potent enabler. His father, who addresses him in heartfelt letters excerpted at length,looms throughout as both reproving shadow and divine light. Photos. (Sept.) Copyright ? Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.