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T A B L E__T A L K

Information overload: Is your media intake burning you out? Take a load off in Table Talk

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R E C E N T L Y

Stalemate
By Gary Kamiya
Clinton spinners vs. White House media: A damning portrait
(03/27/98)

Foul ball
By Jurek Martin
The sale of the Dodgers could mean the death of baseball, Murdoch-style
(03/26/98)

Say cheese!
By Catherine Seipp
Retro, smarmy, egomaniacal, incestuous -- the '98 oscars was one of the best ever
(03/25/98)

The Oscar for realism goes to...
By Mark Gauvreau Judge
Want to talk about race? See a 30-year-old movie
(03/24/98)

Why do movie subtitles stink?
By Cynthia Joyce
A master of the craft reveals the sad truth about those words at the bottom of the screen
(03/23/98)

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BROWSE THE
MEDIA CIRCUS
ARCHIVES

BY JOSHUA WOLF SHENK | The title of Bill Moyers' forthcoming PBS series, "Close to Home," refers to addiction's grip on American families and society. It also refers to Moyers himself. William Cope, the son of Bill and Judith Moyers, sank into alcoholism and crack cocaine addiction nine years ago and suffered repeated relapses. (He is now in recovery and works at the Hazelden treatment facility in Minnesota.) The series, which begins with addicts' stories, considers the science of addiction, treatment and prevention and concludes with an indictment of drug policy, begins March 29. Recently, both Bill and Judith, who is the co-executive producer of the series, sat down and talked frankly about their own painful journey toward understanding addiction, the difference between drug use and abuse and the misguided politics of the drug war.

One gets an impression from the series that you are humbled before this subject. Is that how you felt coming out of it?

Bill Moyers: It is. I think journalism generally has to be humble before most subjects. But in this case the experience of addiction is something that was so foreign to my world that looking at it from within -- as we finally had to do for personal reasons and as we attempted earnestly to do for journalism's sake -- was eye-opening. Experience has a way of subverting your prejudices. I encouraged people in the series to tell their story in the way Americans talk, not just from the inner world of addiction. And so, in that process, all of my preconceived notions about addiction fell away.

Judith Moyers: We'd never given addiction very much thought until it came into our personal orbit, and that was nine years ago. We had to start from almost zero, maybe worse than zero because we had a lot of misconceptions. And trying to get information nine years ago was difficult. It was challenging to find treatment for a beloved family member. Do you take your health care coverage, your employee insurance? Or do you try to keep it a secret? Is your job going to be imperiled if you call on your coverage? Our son took himself in for treatment, and we quickly tried to help him find the best place and so on. But it was hard.

Bill: It isn't as if I've had no exposure to addiction, to alcoholism in particular. But I would dispose of the problem in conventional ways -- OK, you go to rehabilitation -- without ever understanding what happened at rehabilitation, how difficult it was, and essentially that it is a chronic, recurring disease. And I guess the most revealing discovery for me has been that we need a new definition of success, that a relapse is not -- it's a setback but it's not a failure -- and that we have to look upon addiction the way we look upon cancer or diabetes or some other recurrent illness that can be treated, and that we must never give up in the same way that we don't give up on somebody who has cancer or AIDS.

Could you elaborate upon the conclusions of the fifth segment when you discuss drug policy?

Bill: The present policy is inadequate. It's not addressing addiction sufficiently as a disease. It's not putting enough resources into research and other things. Policy ought to be based upon the realization that addiction is an illness. If it is an illness, then you will look at use and abuse differently. I don't suppose we'll ever end use. The human quest for some transformation of consciousness, some alteration, some mood altering substances is there -- it's endemic in us. Prohibition, even though it did reduce the use of alcohol, didn't stem the problem. And so I think we have to have a more enlightened and consistent personal and public policy toward use and abuse, and that would be to treat it as a possible gateway to sickness.

To me, the most important thing we can do, and it's actually [Drug Czar Barry] McCaffrey's suggestion, is change the metaphor. To wage a "war on drugs" really means you have to wage a war on your fellow human beings. And that's in fact what we have been doing in our present drug policy, so that you get that cover of Time magazine. [Moyers shows the May 5, 1997, issue, which had the cover line "ADDICTED" and the image of a beastly, demoniac human-fish about to swallow a giant hook.]

Judith: That's the addict.

Bill: The addict is a demon, the addict is subhuman, the addict is a monster. So we wage war on monsters, addicts, subhumans, etc.

Judith: And we're able to say, "That's not me. That's somebody else over there in that other part of town somewhere."

Bill: That metaphor grows out of the war on drugs, and the ominous, militant attitude that we express.

I think McCaffrey is correct in arguing that we should replace the metaphor, and yet he's presiding over the exact same policies that define the drug war.

Bill: That's right. The only thing I can hope for is that he's beginning to get the message. His rhetoric is changing. But I don't see yet the evidence for a change in action. Budgets are still essentially the same -- two-thirds for enforcement, interdictions, etc., one third for treatment. My son and I spoke to the U.S. Conference of Mayors last week. It is heart-rending to have one mayor after another, and small-town mayors -- Gary and Fort Wayne and West Palm Beach -- come up to you and say, "Every public treatment facility in our community has closed in the last five years." And somebody in the series says adolescent centers have been closing down rapidly. That's infuriating to me. Yes, treatment doesn't always work, treatment has a lot of problems. But you can't give up on treatment. And yet that's what we've done.

In a sense, the people are ahead of the politicians. A good example is that physicians have been trying for years to study the medical benefits of marijuana, and it's been blocked. Now, with the vote in California, that has pushed the federal government into looking into its legitimacy.

Bill: Right. The most hopeful thing to me is that, as a reporter, as a journalist out and around and doing this series as well as just reading widely, there is the beginning of an emerging consensus. It's like watching the first evidence of an antiwar movement back in the '60s. There is something happening there that we don't have the resources or capacity to report on.

I think, for example, you go out in the field among workers and counselors and others. They think needle exchange makes so much sense in terms of saving lives, in terms of reducing health hazards to other people. It just makes sense that if you can get the addict onto a more healthy means of ingesting, you can then win their confidence and lead them on to other, more positive possibilities at that working level. I didn't find anybody who didn't think -- who was opposed to needle exchange. And yet no politician would touch that.

N E X T+P A G E | There isn't one solution for everybody