EX-DRUG ADDICT RECALLS SOBRIETY FIGHT

Ten years ago, William Cope Moyers' Atlanta life fit together something
like this: on-the-rise CNN producer, Morningside neighborhood family man
and Ponce de Leon Avenue crack addict.

On Tuesday, the son of renowned journalist Bill Moyers returned to Atlanta
with a message of sobriety, success and social activism.

He works for Hazelden, one of the country's premier drug rehab centers, and
travels the country talking about many addiction and recovery issues.
Moyers addressed a group of Grady Memorial Hospital and community social
and medical workers Tuesday afternoon at a forum called "An Urban Dilemma:
The Blight of Addiction."

Moyers, who now lives in Minnesota, said he was once part of that urban
blight, and it almost killed him.

"I had a near fatal relapse of this chronic disease not far from here, in a
crack house off Ponce de Leon," he said. "I was the only one who got out
alive, literally."

Attending the forum were hospital workers --- people who know all too well
the reality of excessive drinking and drug use in metro Atlanta: gunshots,
car wrecks, failing livers and high blood pressure. These are just a few of
the consequences of drug and alcohol abuse that roll into Grady's emergency
care center day and night, participants told Moyers.

"We call them our 'frequent fliers,' " said James Hammons, Grady social
work supervisor. "They'll lie about what they've been doing or they are
passed out, or their other medical problem is so severe that you don't deal
with the addiction right away."

As many as 50 percent of Grady's emergency room patients are alcohol or
illegal drug abusers, one survey estimates.

"And that's only in the emergency room," said Mohammad Momtahan, a Grady
social worker who conducted the research. "Of people coming into our
clinic, 31 percent have drugs or alcohol in their system."

Grady no longer has an in-house drug addiction program so it refers
patients to community programs. However, one-third of those programs have
shut down in the past three years because of decreased government and grant
funding.

Moyers told the group he often thinks of the five other crack addicts he
partied with during four lost days in 1994. "They've all since died," he
said, either from violence or drug-related illnesses.

But he lived to see his 44th birthday and start life over with his wife and
three children, he said, because he had the luxury of money, health
insurance and small cadre of committed friends, family and co-workers who
ultimately found him and hauled him to Ridgeview Institute, a private
medical facility in Smyrna.

"And that's just wrong. That's not fair," he emphasized. "Everyone should
have the opportunity to get better."