After reading his book Broken Open, I felt an immediate kinship with William Cope Moyers. We both got sober around the same time; both have long-term recovery; both have been through a divorce, and both have navigated the gauntlet of parenting; both have battled shame and fear, and both have had experiences with opiates in recovery. I have never written about my experience with opiates in recovery.
William Moyers’s first anniversary of his sobriety was October 12th, 1994. His history with alcohol and, eventually, crack cocaine and his journey to recovery was laid out in his 2006 memoir Broken: My Story of Addiction and Redemption. He writes about the time of his book launch as a whirlwind of publicity, hope, happiness, and amazement. But real human struggles are present when the lights get dimmed and we return to our real lives. He writes in detail about the breakup of his first marriage over an affair, combined with his wife’s mental illness.
Many people I know in recovery have had this experience. Unfortunately, we can feel such humiliation around this perceived “failure” that it inhibits us from processing it. His candidness, integrity, humility, honesty, and vulnerability throughout the book made me feel like he was a friend, a fellow traveler, and a confidant.
William eventually faced himself on a new battlefield in recovery. The internal struggle, conflict, terror, trauma, and self-hatred of a relapse ultimately led to his coming clean about his abuse of pain meds. He describes the hell of returning to addiction described in highlights from his journal pages during this time. The insanity of rationalizing, denying, minimizing, doubt, preoccupation, and circular thinking of trying to control the meds, his pain, and the feelings of what it would mean if he acknowledged his relapse. What would it mean after having been a long-standing member of AA?
I identified with his love of Alcoholics Anonymous, the big book, the folks you meet at meetings that become your lifeline, the slogans, and the little things someone says one day at a meeting that change your life.
Concomitantly, there is this growing unease, questioning, “Do I still belong in this club?” Can I talk about my use of pain meds for these dental procedures? This is a slippery slope. On the one hand, it is well known that many people who are in recovery have had experiences where they have surgery or a procedure, they get on pain meds, it feels too good to be true, and they relapse. I have heard this story over and over again and lived it with a husband who relapsed and eventually died. I know this agony from the experience of a loved one and someone in recovery.
What is not discussed and what many people have opinions about is…how someone in recovery lives with chronic pain. This dicey area must be left to the individual and their medical professionals. Nobody knows what another person is experiencing. The entire world of suboxone treatment is riddled with conflict. Some folks say this med saved their lives, and other people kept relapsing because of it and needed to stop.
There is the use of suboxone for opiate withdrawal and the use of suboxone for pain management. What I now believe to be true is that nobody can judge another person’s recovery. William walked the powerless path of trying to get clean over and over again, the consequences of the pain meds on his life and his recovery, and ultimately discovered what worked for him. That should be an incredible win and an example to so many people out there who are struggling with chronic pain.
The question of where I belong now is a difficult one. We all need to decide for ourselves where we belong. I know people on suboxone are going to AA and feel connected. Others feel left out, misunderstood, not accepted as being sober, or perhaps experience too much internal conflict to be at meetings. When I think of the beautiful, brilliant, flawed man Bill Wilson and the writings of the Big Book, I think of his enormous heart and open mind. He was one of the most spacious humans to come out of 1935. His attitude toward higher power, letting others find their way, not being driven by fear and anger, and accepting people’s differences seem lost today. If he were around right now, I believe he would welcome people on suboxone and any other human, transgender or not (the most recent preamble debate), and he would remind us of the first tradition. The only requirement for membership is the desire to stop drinking. Let’s remember that. Our code also includes love and tolerance for others. Let’s accept and love other people struggling with addiction and be helpful, a beacon of light and hope, without judgment.
As William points out, becoming whole is a journey of a lifetime. We continue to rid ourselves of shame, fear, anger, regret, pain, sadness, grief, and all the behaviors that go along with those unresolved feelings. We accept things we cannot change, especially people in our lives. We look at our expectations of others and ourselves and work towards having compassion for ourselves and those still struggling. As another author, I reviewed recently says, “Please join me in a moment of silence for the person who is about to get loaded for the first time.”
Prayers all around. Thanks again, William, for your honesty, courage, and Message of hope.
The Sobees #QUITLIT Score: 4 out of 5
SOBER IN SEATTLE: Lunch with William Moyers, New York Times Bestselling Broken (2006) and new release Broken Open (2024)
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