Messy Means of Deliverance

“You need to read a book called Broken by William Moyers,” a woman said to me during a conversation about alcoholism. Her enthusiasm for the book was so impressive that, first chance I got, I downloaded it into my Amazon Kindle (an electronic reader) and began reading.

Of the writings on addiction and the lives of addicts, there is no end. But Broken will stand out among them. Even though I have several twelve-stepping friends, this book taught me more about the brutal power of addiction and the tough but workable way of recovery than I have learned from all of them.

Author William Cope Moyers is the son of the well-known journalist, Bill Moyers, once a top assistant to President Lyndon Johnson. Life as Bill Moyers’ son meant access to the White House and exposure to the elite of the world. As Moyers describes his upbringing, hardly a door was ever closed to him.

Such privilege can be beneficial but also destructive. How do you find the self God created you to be while living in the shadow of such a famous and talented father? How do you know when people accept you for who you are and not because of your family name? How do you find your own way when others want to find your way for you? Drugs and alcohol are one way to deal with such questions if you find yourself unable to face them.

One day in his teen years, William Moyers was induced to try marijuana. “You should try this, man,” a co-worker on a summer job said, handing him a joint. He did. And after a few tentative drags, Moyers writes, he was in “heaven.”

“I was floating, and at the same time I felt firmly anchored in the most beautiful place on earth.”

Moyers was never the same after that experience. Something in his mind simply exploded, and he was hooked. He went from an addict-in-waiting (genetic disposition perhaps?) to an addict-in-practice. From marijuana, it was a short journey to cocaine and finally to crack. This conversion all lubricated with ample quantities of alcohol.

In the next ten or twelve years, Moyers launched and threw away a marriage. He trashed a promising career. He forfeited the respect of friends and the trust of his family. Everything disintegrated! Want a description of the prodigal son in a pig sty? Moyers’ provides it in terms of crack houses, prison cells, and closed psych wards.

Then there was the so-called “bottom,” an addict’s version of the biblical phrase, “when he came to himself.” Soon Moyers found himself entering Hazelden—a foremost treatment center in Minnesota—where he began detox and the process of recovery. There were 12-steps classes, AA meetings, long experiences of journaling in order to discover secrets and hidden feelings. Quite a remarkable place: Hazelden.

Then, just about the time I thought that Moyers’ might have overcome his interior demons, there was the so-called “slip” back into “using,” and another bottom which was worst than the first. Oh, there were several more bottoms over the next years—each harder to explain, each more injurious to him and those who loved him. Go figure.

As I read, I was moved by descriptions of the patience and the lingering love of Moyers’ father and mother, a few friends, and, most of all, the people who worked with him in recovery: sponsors, the therapists, various groups of which he was a part.

I was shocked at the bizarre twists and turns of the addictive mind as it ducked and dodged in denial, secret-keeping, and self-service rationalization. Then there are the desperate letters of a father (Bill Moyers) seeking to reach out and love his son. The crushing (and angry) feelings of a wife who is betrayed. The good-faith attempts of employers to give second and third chances. There was plenty to weep for as I read this book.

I have long believed that Bible-oriented people ought to be well acquainted with the powers of addiction and how one is delivered from it. For indeed recovery is deliverance in the fullest sense. One simply cannot find recovery by themselves. One needs faith; one needs a community; one needs spiritual power.

William Moyers’ book impressed these thoughts on me.

How much addiction parallels the Bible’s description of sin. Many of us were taught that sin equals bad behaviors. Stop doing this or that, we preach to one another. But what if sin has deeper roots that need to be wrenched out in a way not unlike what the addict has to go through?
How much the process of recovery sounds like the Bible’s description of salvation, which begins with a deep-down conviction that one is lost and powerless, unable to gain personal liberty or victory on his own? Total surrender to a higher power. The Christian affirms this power to be resident in none other than Jesus the Savior himself.
How much the community that surrounds the addict-in-recovery (the sponsor, the group meetings, the counselors) sounds like what the church was really meant to be: a community of confessed losers whose only ticket to the table is an acknowledgement not unlike “Hello, my name is Gordon, and I’m a sinner.” It occurs to me to ask, when did we become a movement of self-proclaimed “winners,” when in actuality we are by nature and general performance pretty much the opposite.

A friend of mine, presently in recovery, says to me, “we are a program of attraction, not a program of promotion.” It’s a stunner of an insight to me. I hear him saying, “We don’t advertise; we don’t own property or hire staff. We don’t go on TV and have big weekend conferences (or cruises). We don’t try to lure anyone to our community with entertainment. Our message is simple, and we offer it in smoke-filled church basements, rented school rooms, and YMCAs: who we were, what we’re becoming, and that we’re here for each other.”

In the recovery movement, there is a strange, paradoxical anticipation that an addict will probably slip … not just once, but maybe a number of times. So no one is shocked (sorrowed maybe) when Bob A or Mary G blows up their lives again. But always, when Bob or Mary is ready, the door is open for a comeback. I think you call that grace.

Today William Moyers is on the staff at Hazelden doing good things for other prodigals. You need to read his story.

“What if there was a church that fashioned its life about a scriptural understanding of the twelve-steps approach to Scripture and what William Moyers experienced?” I asked my wife earlier today. Together we wondered.

Gordon MacDonald is editor at large of Leadership, and lives in New Hampshire.