BILL MOYERS DISSECTS ADDICTION

Bill Moyers is back trying to nudge, cajole and even shame his compatriots
into doing the humane thing. This time, his subject is chemical addiction.

And there's a family connection. At the start of ``Moyers on Addiction:
Close to Home'' (9 p.m. Sunday, Monday and Tuesday on Channel 9), Moyers
says his own son -- his oldest, William Cope Moyers -- is in recovery from
drug and alcohol addiction.

More than that. The younger Moyers turns up toward the end of the 5
1/2-hour series because he now works for the Hazeldon Foundation, based in
Minnesota. In the final hour on Tuesday, father actually interviews son.

``This is a question I've never asked you . . . why did you decide to go
public?'' asks the elder Moyers.

``No comment,'' jokes his son, as if he's waited more than 30 years to say
that to his old man. But yes, after a chuckle he goes on to answer the
question.

All those hours of Moyers ruminating on addiction might sound -- certainly
did to me -- like the primo Dante-esque TV experience of anyone's week. Tie
me down, rewind hell and play it again in slow motion.

Sure enough, ``Moyers on Addiction'' is longer than it needs to be, maybe
by more than an hour. But Moyers has a knack for alchemy, for fashioning
interesting television out of the basest metals. Usually that means talking
heads. And in this series, he's done it again.

The first hour on Sunday is as mesmerizing as any successful drama, and
it's nothing other than patchwork interviews with a succession of
recovering addicts. Moyers talked with them one at a time. Each is taped
almost close enough for you to excavate nostrils.

Their addictions varied -- white -- wine, beer, rotgut, cocaine, heroin,
morphine. One addict was an undercover narcotics cop. A few were thieves.
One was an actor, another a housewife.

But after a while, it dawns on you: The lives, social status and addictions
might be different, but the compulsions, patterns and ultimate descents are
eerily identical.

The second segment, also on Sunday night, reinforces the links as Moyers
surveys the science of addiction. It shows how addictive substances seduce
the brain and impose themselves in place of the natural neurotransmitter
dopamine, which triggers our sensation of pleasure. The drug eventually
will deny the addict any pleasure, but the addict keeps coming back.

Moyers is steaming toward a point, toward the conclusion that substance
addiction is a brain disease. Identifying addiction as an illness and not
the result of moral depravity sets up Moyers' final segment on Tuesday,
called ``The Politics of Addiction.''

He argues then that the national ``war'' on drugs isn't helping anyone
recover from anything, that it hasn't reduced drug usage or drug-related
crime and violence and that the nation is squandering billions of dollars
by trying to police drugs rather than treat addicts.

``Our policymakers are like addicts in denial,'' Moyers says, ``unable to
admit their strategy has failed and needs to be changed.''

Maybe that's more accurately a push than a nudge. But it comes at the close
of TV's most comprehensive look ever at addiction and recovery. Watch those
hours ahead of it, and it's hard to disagree.

)1998 San Francisco Chronicle