‘I was invited to give a presentation at the Rotary club in downtown St Paul, where I got up there and started my talk and was telling them all about the statistics of alcoholism. I saw people like just dropping off, you know, checking their watches and people sneaking out the back door and I was losing them.
So I just decided if I was going to hold this audience and take advantage of this unique opportunity to speak at a Rotary club, I better grab them. So I literally threw the speech to the side of the podium there and said, “I am an alcoholic and an addict and I’m talking today about people like me.”
And I told them my Story, not my 12-step Story but my Story of addiction, my Story of recovery and the multiple treatments I’d had. And I had them! That was the day that I realised that the real power is in the Personal Story.’
Another excellent video from the ManyFaces1Voice website.
William Cope Moyers is an author, advocate and vice president at Hazelden (hazelden.org). He began his journey away from addiction in 1989 and has been in long-term recovery since 1994. As the President of The Johnson Institute, he was instrumental in the founding of Faces & Voices of Recovery in 2001.
