That Elusive Broadway Debut

William Moyers
Fri, 03 Oct 2014 21:00:00 -0700
Lifestyle

My stops on the road close to home and far away the past few weeks have included:

Two days of presentations at a Catholic college in central Kentucky.

Two invitation-only "friend-raisers" for Hazelden Betty Ford, where I work, in the Twin Cities.
Updated: Sat Oct 04, 2014

My stops on the road close to home and far away the past few weeks have included:

Two days of presentations at a Catholic college in central Kentucky.

Two invitation-only "friend-raisers" for Hazelden Betty Ford, where I work, in the Twin Cities.

A celebration of recovery at a college campus in Crookston, Minnesota.

A fundraiser for a treatment program that's expanding its services in Menomonie, Wisconsin.

A luncheon for civic leaders, followed by a community screening of the movie "The Anonymous People" in Racine, Wisconsin. About 350 people attended.

A talk at a 12-step conference for the LGBT community in Minneapolis.

An intimate face-to-face dinner in Austin, Texas, with a couple who agreed to make a major donation to a building project for my organization.

A keynote speech at a conference of the Indiana chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness in Indianapolis.

At each stop, I met people committed to overcoming addiction and mental health issues, from policymakers to families to nonprofit organizations. I left each venue feeling good about my role, grateful for the opportunity to take part but scratching my head over why in the audience I rarely see people of other colors than mine. It's bedeviling because, as I always emphasize, addiction does not discriminate. Yet except for my stops at prisons or homeless shelters, rarely do I carry my message to people from communities that are diverse.

So this week, I recall with fondness one of the few times I did get to interact with people from different backgrounds from mine. We had the common denominator of addiction and the same reason to celebrate: We had overcome it. Here is a column I wrote in 2009, originally titled "Broadway Debut." It was one of the most satisfying evenings I've ever had:

It took 13 years, but I finally appeared on a stage in front of an audience on Broadway.

The Capri Theater on Broadway Avenue in a gritty stretch of North Minneapolis was filled with politicians and civic leaders, ministers and a couple of donors with deep pockets. My real affinity was for everyone else in the crowd — the crack addicts and alcoholics, who share my illness.

"When I ain't clean, I'm on the streets, and been on the streets more them last four years than I want to be, except when I been locked up in the joint," said Howard, 47, shifting nervously in his seat in the last row. "I'm getting too old for the streets, too old for the drugs. That's why I'm here. Got to get clean, stay clean."

Howard and I, along with everyone else, were there for the premiere of a new video, "The Turning Point: Breaking the Cycle of Addiction and Incarceration." I made some brief remarks ahead of time because it was co-produced by Hazelden, where I work, and Turning Point, two programs on opposite ends of the human spectrum of addiction treatment.

Howard is one of about 1,000 people who are treated at Turning Point each year. Few have jobs, much less health insurance or other resources to pay for treatment. Many of them are people of color other than white who have known homelessness, and nearly all have been on the wrong end of the law while under the influence of drugs, ending up behind bars.

The video features 25 African-American men in different stages of recovery and reintegration into the community. All of them have known the desperation of addiction and the hope of recovery through treatment at Turning Point. They are proof that sobriety is possible, even in the toughest urban neighborhoods.

"There is this attitude out there that poor black people just don't ever find recovery, can't or don't want to stop doing dope," said Peter Hayden, the founder and president of Turning Point. "It's not just a white attitude; it's a black attitude, as well. I mean, it's true that in the inner cities, without the economic resources, the social infrastructure, it makes it tougher. But treatment does work; recovery is possible, even here in this community."

Hayden's personal experience is his guiding beacon. Clean and sober for 36 years now, he once roamed the streets looking to get high or stay high, before he found help at a county-based treatment program not far from where he started Turning Point three years later, in 1976. Today he's a national expert in community-based treatment for people who cannot leave their neighborhoods to get help.

A key component of Turning Point's program is the "Circle of Sobriety" approach, which links drug treatment to other social service agencies to provide a continuum of support for clients. This includes housing, educational training, AIDS counseling and health and family wellness programs. "For our clients, treatment won't work if they don't also have job skills, an education and a place to live, too," Hayden said.

Howard is one of them. In and out of treatment a few times, he's had some success in sobriety, too. But he slips and starts using again because "when times are hard, it's easy to run away with the drugs." With the help of his mother, a minister in Louisiana, Howard says Turning Point has helped him to turn the corner this time.

"I got a daughter. She's 17. And when I am using drugs, she calls me 'Peanut,' my street name," he said. "Now she's calling me 'Dad' again. I'm going to make it this time."