In public, addiction is always ugly — as in drunken driving, violence, homelessness, crime and bizarre behavior in the City Council chambers in Toronto.

Recovery is hard to spot in public because good news rarely makes news, and besides, far too many of us aren't inclined to openly share what happened to us under the influence. Even after the substances go away, shame reigns.

I spend a lot of my days helping people figure out how to come to grips with what's destroying them or a family member. Steering them from the problem to the solution rarely happens on the first phone call or email. There are times when the back-and-forth seems endlessly relentless like our most recent Minnesota winter, when snow fell in May. Or people disappear because either it's not their time yet to recover or they do get help and don't need anything else from me. It is nice to hear from them later on, though that happens infrequently. People move on, relieved to leave their problem in the past.

Fortunately for me, I regularly get the opportunity to interact with other people and their organizations who share my mission. They may be out of the spotlight of the problem, but they are on target in living the solution and helping others to do the same. For 24 hours this past week, I shared time with them in Amarillo, Texas.

On Sunday night, I ate homemade chili shoveled out of a big stainless steel pot into plastic foam bowls served to a lineup of hungry veterans who would be homeless in their addiction without Another Chance House. Not one among them (including me) was present and accounted for because we got a second chance. It took us another chance and another chance and, for some, even more chances, which always seems the case with our chronic illness. Rare is it that someone gets it the first or second time around.

These guys did have something I didn't. They've served tours of duty in Vietnam, Iraq or Afghanistan. But they came home to their toughest battle, against trauma, stress, alcohol and other drugs. "Man, in '04 I was in the battle for Fallujah (Iraq), one tough Marine," one of them told me as we waited for our turn at the chili pot. "Only thing was, the booze was even tougher."

He didn't have time to tell me how he ended up at Another Chance House. No matter. His bottom line was the same as everyone else's: home from war and out of the service, homeless and in need of treatment. He's been quietly clean and sober for a year.

Some of them were there the next day, too, when I spoke at a fundraiser benefiting the Interfaith Campaign for the Homeless, Amarillo's remarkable long-term commitment to help those who cannot help themselves. In the spirit that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, more than 40 nonprofit groups and businesses joined forces to raise $100,000 for the cause. Not chili but cornbread and beans were on the menu for the 1,400 people who showed up.

"What you see here is not only a community that cares about all of its citizens but a community that makes a difference for all of our citizens," said Janet Byars, president of the Amarillo Coalition for the Homeless. And with a wave of her hand across the sea of people in the audience, I knew exactly what she meant.

Heading home that afternoon, my plane rose above the city, and I realized just how small Amarillo is in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by scrub plains turned brown by a persistent multiyear drought. From the air, it is a startlingly bleak sight.

But at a time when so much public attention is paid to people who can't seem to stay out of the limelight of addiction-related trouble, in places such as Amarillo recovery thrives. Thank goodness people there are paying attention to what really matters.

William Moyers is the vice president of public affairs and community relations for the Hazelden Foundation and the author of "Broken," his best-selling memoirs. His book "Now What? An Insider's Guide to Addiction and Recovery" was published last year. Please send your questions to William Moyers at [email protected]. To find out more about William Moyers and read his past columns, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.