His father has collected around 40 Emmys for TV journalism and, by the time he was 30, had been featured on the covers of Time and Newsweek magazines as deputy director of the Peace Corps and then as special assistant to President Johnson. "I vowed that by the time I was 30, I would have achieved similar success,'' said William Moyers, whose father, Bill, presents a new series on the subject of addiction on PBS television next week. "As it turned out, when I was 30, I was at Hazelden, receiving treatment for alcohol and drug addiction.'' Today, he is back at Hazelden, but -- happily, this time -- employed as the director of public policy for one of the leading treatment centres in the US.

During a visit to his Bermudian wife's (Allison Conyers) home last week, Mr.

Moyers told Living : "My father's series is called `Moyers on Addiction: Close to Home' -- and I am the reason for that title! In 1989, I hit bottom.

My parents, like a lot of other parents, had no idea that I was addicted -- and I was addicted to everything! The show was my mother's idea and she's the executive producer, so it is very `close to home' -- that's the personal connection.'' The professional connection is that, as director of public policy at Hazelden, one of his aims is "to put an accurate face on addiction and an accurate face on recovery. Why am I doing this? Society tends to see the people who don't recover -- they don't see people like me who get well and go on to lead normal and useful lives! So it's time to change people's perceptions and smash the stigma that still surrounds alcoholism and addiction to other drugs. My father's `special' ties in very well with what we are trying to achieve. I didn't realise,'' he added somewhat ruefully, "that it was going to be such a big deal -- I'm only in the last show, called `The Politics of Addiction', and I'm in that because I am one of the leaders in the US on this aspect. I spend a lot of time travelling around the country talking about my experiences and the stigma, and will be testifying before Congress on March 24.'' Next week, father and son will also be appearing on major TV shows. "The New York Times is also doing a big piece on my father and me, and on March 23, there's a piece in The New Yorker -- that's mainly about my work with Hazelden. My wife, Allison, will be appearing on `Oprah' with me and that is being taped on March 23.'' Mrs. Moyers said she agreed to do the show was because she was asked why she had stuck by her husband when he suffered a relapse. "I told Oprah that I loved him and I knew that addiction was a disease. If he had contracted cancer or diabetes, I wouldn't leave him, so why should I leave him if he is an addict?'' So far as America's treatment centres are concerned, Bill Moyers' TV spotlight on addiction could have hardly come at a better time. Alarmingly, increasing financial restraints have resulted in patients receiving only four days' treatment as opposed to the tried and well tested 28-day programme.

"Insurance companies are refusing to pay and this means, more and more, that long-term treatment and in-patient care is only available to those who can pay. I know,'' he added, "that many people from Bermuda have got well at Hazelden and other centres in the US, so this affects them as well.

Out-patient and night-time care doesn't work in helping people to recover from this deadly disease.'' Mr. Moyers, a former journalist at Newsday, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, the Dallas Times Herald and at CNN where he worked as a writer and on-air reporter, is particularly concerned that ignorance and stigma about the disease of addiction is still so prevalent. Citing AIDS and cancer as two previously `taboo' diseases that have since overcome that stigma, Mr. Moyers believes addiction is now the "last frontier'' in terms of misunderstanding an illness. "This is the only disease that's had virtually no visible and vocal constituency.'' This may, he feels, be partly due to the Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) `tradition' which, in his view, has been misinterpreted and therefore discouraged people from speaking out publicly on addiction issues.

Hazelden has treated over 200,000 people since 1949, giving $4 million in aid in 1997 so that people who could not pay could still receive treatment. "My job is to talk about the disease of alcoholism and addiction -- to give the facts -- not to sell Hazelden.'' The push for legal parity has become an increasingly urgent aspect of his job.

With insurance companies reluctant to cover treatment, more than 50 percent of treatment centres have now closed in the US. As US Representative Jim Ramstad, himself a recovering alcoholic, pointed out recently, the current system either blocks or greatly limits access to care. Legislation for parity, he said, was not only the right thing to do, but was the cost-effective thing to do.

"In 1996,'', Mr. Moyers revealed, "two senators with family members suffering from mental illness, got together and decided it was unfair that the law failed to give them insurance coverage. There was little hope they could change the law until thousands of people stood up and spoke out in favour of fair coverage for the mentally ill. The Bill passed and was signed into law by President Clinton. However,'' Mr. Moyers explained, "in order to get it passed they were forced to insert one line, reading `This Bill specifically excludes substance abuse'. Can you believe that?'' So now, the mentally ill are covered -- and only we are left! There were 3,000 letters written for the mentally ill and only three from addicts! So I'm firing people up to change this and, so far, I have 7,250 people in my file who are standing up, speaking out and writing letters.'' When his own father was diagnosed with heart disease in 1993, he was placed on a strict food and lifestyle regimen. "Being my father, however, he got distracted and stopped doing his programme, so in 1994 he had to have open-heart surgery. The insurance company didn't bat an eyelid over that -- but if you come down with a relapse, as I did, it's a different story.'' That relapse also happened in 1994. After treatment at Hazelden in 1989, where he met Allison, he was pursuing a successful career at CNN. "I had been sober a number of years and then had a massive relapse that almost killed me. In just six days, it almost took my life, and I'm lucky to be alive today. It was really through that experience that Allison and I changed the whole focus of our lives. She stuck by me. I left CNN, so now I had no job -- except that I knew I now wanted to help people. It is said that coincidence is God's way of remaining anonymous -- anyway, I was suddenly invited to work at Hazelden and I was able to do that through my experience and using some of my skills as a journalist.'' As the parents of three young children, the Moyers are all too aware of scientific findings which indicate that the offspring of two alcoholic parents are four times more likely to become alcoholic than the rest of the population. "The point is,'' Mr. Moyers stressed, "is that I want my children -- and all children -- to have the same opportunity to get help as we had. This isn't going to happen unless we push to remove the stigma and pursue laws that help us get well. So we have to stand up and scream when insurance companies are allowed to get away with this discrimination, when they are able to deny our children treatment.'' Mr. Moyers admitted his parents found it "very difficult'' to accept their son's addiction. "When he started doing this show he told me, `this is the most difficult project I've ever tackled -- I'm not sure I can do it.' Then, about three months ago, he said, `I've got it!'. During this past year he has told me, `I am really proud of you'. Well, I'm really proud of that because it's an acknowledgement of how far I have come -- and there's still a long way to go!'' Agreeing that is is "difficult'' to be the son of a famous father, Mr. Moyers said, "It almost killed me, in my active addiction, because I was trying to copy him, to reach a standard that wasn't possible to reach. Little did I dream,'' he added with a slow smile, "that when I smoked marijuana at 15, I never dreamt that I would be smoking crack cocaine at 30. But then, I also never dreamt that I would become the national spokesman on treatment for addiction!''