Broken Open Book Reviews

Broken Open by William Cope Moyers Book Summary

On a damp and dreary Saturday night in October 2015, William Cope Moyers stood in front of 40,000 people on the National Mall in Washington, DC. The crowd had gathered for an unprecedented rally to prove with their faces and voices that addiction to substances does not discriminate and people by the hundreds of thousands do overcome it. But William had a secret: As he spoke inspirational words of healing and hope to people in recovery, he was addicted to opioids. And nobody knew it but him. 

William didn’t know something was missing until it happened. He’d been in recovery for alcohol and drugs for years. He was a recovery activist and a spokesperson for the gold standard of treatment and recovery organizations. He was a model leader and follower of Twelve Step programs. But, still, he slipped. And his slip lasted a few years. Privately, he was addicted to painkillers while publicly saying he was in recovery from alcohol and drug use. So, was he still in recovery? How could this happen to someone who did everything “right”? How did it go so wrong?  

With brutal honesty and introspection, William shares what happened after sobriety—after he’d published his candid and shocking memoir, Broken, in 2007. While he no longer frequented or passed out on the floor of crack houses, his life of sobriety wasn’t perfect. But his recovery was strong, or so he thought. Unfortunately, the opioid epidemic was stronger. It broke him. He was Broken Open. 

Broken Open could be one long story of self-justification. Instead, William takes a courageous look at his recovery and concludes that people in recovery need to take a broader view than he once did. Recovery isn’t black and white—it's not you’re either sober or you drink, you’re clean or you take drugs. It’s not success or failure. It’s not the Twelve Steps or nothing. Those all-or-nothing approaches don’t work for all of us as we continue our life journeys, something which William now understands very well, because he made it through to what he considers a fuller, more evolved recovery.  

Against the odds, this story has a happy ending. William had the tools and perspective to see where he was and eventually find his way out...not because his recovery community noticed he needed help and offered a way through it, though. Instead of help, he encountered condemnation, secrecy, and closed doors.  When he found a solution for his new addiction, the support system he once relied on wasn’t open to it. The people in his support system were closed off to the possibilities that enable people to find more success in recovery than ever before. He hopes his story will help others who find themselves in the same place. Not in black-or-white thinking, but in the gray. Because that’s where life happens. 

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