Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Mahoning County Treatment Alternatives to Street Crimes received Neil Kennedy’s Hope Has a Home Award.
YOUNGSTOWN — “There is always hope. It is never too late,” said William Cope Moyers, who rose from the floor of an Atlanta crack house in 1994 to become sober for 15 years.
“I have done it one day at a time,” said Moyers, best-selling author and award-winning journalist, who shared his personal story of addiction and recovery at Neil Kennedy Recovery Clinic’s Hope Has a Home Celebration on Tuesday. September marks the 20th anniversary of National Alcohol and Drug Addiction Recovery Month.
During Tuesday’s event, Jerry Carter, executive director of Neil Kennedy, presented the 2009 Hope Has a Home Award to the Mahoning County Treatment Alternatives to Street Crimes organization.
During an interview before the celebration, Moyers, son of well-known television journalist Bill Moyers and executive director of Hazelden’s Center for Public Advocacy in Minneapolis, talked about his addiction and recovery.
The year 1994 was not the first time Moyers had found himself down and out in a crack house with an addiction that started when he was a 16-year-old using marijuana in New York City. He graduated to binge drinking at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Va., he said, and then began using illegal drugs in the 1980s.
“I hit bottom in a crack house in Harlem,” he said.
He was in treatment four times in five years between 1989 and 1994, all the while working as a journalist for CNN, Newsday and various other news organizations around the country.
But it was after Atlanta that Moyers began his climb to sobriety.
He said he knew at the time he had a problem but didn’t realize the scope and depth of the problem and that addiction is a disease.
“I’m here in Youngstown to put a face on addiction and the promise and possibility of recovery,” he said.
“You can recover if you are given a chance. I had more than one chance,” he said.
Moyers said there is no cure for addiction. “There is, however, a solution, and that is treatment such as that provided at Neil Kennedy,” he said.
He said he had wonderful support from his parents, whom he said “never gave up on me, even when I had given up on myself.”
Moyers said his job with Hazelden is to carry the message of help and hope to addicts into the public arena, including policy-makers and civic groups across the country.
Moyers said he embraces the 12-step recovery program and said it is important to continue the program of recovery on a day-to-day basis.
His latest book, “A New Day, A New Life,” is a guided journal for individuals in recovery.
It is very important for addicts to write down events day by day to reinforce and affirm what they are doing, he said.
Though Moyers does not consider himself cured, just sober for 15 years, he said he is “filled with gratitude.”
“I’ve gotten to watch my children grow up to be healthy teens, ages 17, 15 and 12,” he said.
alcorn@vindy.com