Leonard Buschel’s Journey of Recovery.
Leonard is the Co-founder of Writers in Treatment and the Founder and Co-director of the REEL Recovery Film Festival.
What do you do on a daily basis to stay sober and what is the most challenging part about it?
I go to at least two AA meetings a week for the past 24 years.
The most challenging part is, every once and a while, I imagine a tumbler of Vodka with a little ice sitting next to me. And I think if I drank it, every cell in my body would sing like members of a celestial choir the words “you’re home, where have you been so long?
How have you reconnected with your body since being in recovery and what are some things you would do to increase your health and vitality?
Well, I don’t eat meat because I feel like eating meat symbolizes death, and I want my body to be alive. So, I don’t eat meat because I don’t want to absorb the fear that the animal had right before it was killed. Before the animal is slaughtered, fear enzymes that has been stored in it’s body, pumps the chemicals, into its blood stream and muscle mass. Then I end up eating their fear.
I go to the gym twice a week with a very a spectacular trainer. Since I am too lazy to do it myself, so I need someone sort of like a workout sponsor that tells me what to do. You say that I have like I have a gym sponsor that I work with. Her name is April
I also walk at least a mile and a half a day and on good days I walk 3 to 4 miles.
I drink a spirulina drink every morning. Live spirulina that goes in a bottle of chilled water. It’s my favorite beverage to drink in my morning AA meeting. Or on alternative mornings, I have homemade miso soup, which is made up of live digestive enzymes. The ingredients and ambiance of miso soup are very similar to the seawater from which we all emigrated, many years ago before passports or murderous border guards. So, I start the day up with something alive.
How have your relationships change since being from an addiction and now in recovery? And who would you say the top three, five people you hangout with and why?
Not as many one night stands.
(laughs)
Loving less drama. And trying to be less critical and non-judgmental. I don’t exclude anyone from my inner circle, whether they are using or not.
I surround myself with my dog and my family. I love hanging out with my friends, and the co-director the REEL Recovery Film Festival, I think I spend more time them than anybody. It’s your coworkers you need to co-exist with. You spend more time with those people than you do your family. I also try and make friends with the occasional unpleasant characters who visit me in dreams.
By nature, I’m pretty much as an isolator. Oh, and I have a really good friend who is a chemistry professor and seems to be able to answer all my science questions that seem to pop up on a regular basis. For years I would have him travel with me before the internet. I hate not knowing sometimes. Although I think it was Voltaire who said, “Doubt is an uncomfortable condition, but certainty is a ridiculous one.”
I was always asking him questions about the galaxies, time, molecules or quantum physics . And I love the people in my home group even though I only meet with them twice a week. It’s important to love your home group.
What do you do spirituality? Why do you think it is important for growth or sustainability or recovery?
Every morning for the last 20 something years, I sit in front of my altar and light Japanese incense and sit there for 5 to 15 minutes every morning. No matter what, whether I’m in a hotel or staying at a friend’s house.
And every night I sit in front of my altar, light Japanese incense and I just smile at a photograph of Jesus that I have at my altar. I bought it in Jerusalem when I was there as a smuggler, and before it was an apartheid state. After that I bow down to a mantelpiece that has pictures of my mother, my father, my brother, and my sons, just acknowledge my ancestors and my family for their contribution to my life. Also on the mantelpiece is a small wooden box with the ashes of s woman I loved who died because she accidentally injected a deadly amount of coke and speed into her vein. Every night before retiring, I write in a journal about anyone I was with that day, where I went and what I did that day. I don’t necessarily write down my emotions but I write down every meeting, woman, movie, every play, every person I saw that day. And I’ve done that for 24 years. I could literally tell you about any day I’ve lived through in the last 24 years.
Ask me about any New Year’s Eve, any birthday, any hospital stay. I could tell you where I was. By looking it up, not by remembering anything.
And I do that because I think if I don’t acknowledge in a tangible way that I existed for even a day, I might have forgotten that I did.
Maybe it’s my version of those caves paintings that they did back when they were doing cave paintings. Just to remind myself that I actually lived for a day, it’s very important to me. And in the morning I hold two gallon bottles of water in front of me, and I bend over let them pull me down, so they stretch me.
And I sing, “row row row your boat, gently down the stream, merrily merrily merrily merrily, life is but a dream,” ten times. It stretches my body and it reminds me of the mortality of life.
I say that alcoholism and drug addiction is people seeking or looking for spirit. They take spirits because they are looking for spirits and I would hate to get to the end of my life and still believe that I am my body. Because then I would really be pissed off about dying. The Buddhists say every time they meditate it’s a rehearsal for death. That’s one of life’s challenges you only get one shot at.
What was the one situation you found yourself in that confirmed in you mind you must seek treatment and recovery?
Not being able to sit through a massage and having to get up and go outside to throw up.
I said to myself, “what’s wrong with this picture? This is not why I moved to California.” And literally, within a half hour, I was one was on the phone with the Betty Ford Center. That same morning I woke up in my bed and I felt like I was in a hole. Literally, I felt like I woke up, not in a grave but in a cave. And I thought, “Oh my god, how did get here?” And there was no way out. This hole I came to in was unfathomably moist and cold. The sides of my crypt were dripping limestone and ancient rain water and an hour later that I kept throwing up during the massage. It was 3 months later I realized that the 12 steps was my way out. That I could slowly find my way out of this deep hole.
And I realized this is not what I had in mind for myself and one miraculous coincidence after another had me driving to a rehab a couple of weeks later. But the moment really was throwing up during the massage. I thought, “hmmm, what’s wrong with this picture?”. My bottom was palpable. I wouldn’t call it a moment of clarity. It’s a moment of, not just fear but abject terror. And I had to admit that I needed to stop doing drugs for a month.
The first year was an exploration of sobriety. I wanted to see what it was like. I had been using everyday for the previous 26 years, and I thought, “Okay, I’ll do this for a year and then I’ll decided which way I want to live.” And when I had my first year, I thought this no drugging and no boozing was a better more sustainable way to live. And I made a vow to god, that my life would be that of a non-drinker and a non-drug user.
