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May 26, 2012 10:03 am PDT

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Tribe

February 24, 2010

Freedom starts with personal salvation

by Leonard Lee Buschel

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I stayed that first day because of Jung, but I was still resistant enough to plan a second-day getaway because of one word engraved in a 2-by-6-foot marble plaque. The fact that the word was engraved did not bother me. After all, hadn’t I stood many times before the main post office in Manhattan, where high above the Corinthian columns is engraved, “Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.” My father died while working at the post office. I was always high as a kite when I was in Manhattan, but that didn’t keep me from feeling proud when I read those words. After all, he helped deliver me right before his heart attack.

My eyes zoomed in, sharp focus on the plaque. Step 3: “Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God ...” Step 5: “Admitted to God ...” And Step 6: “Were entirely ready to have God …” And look at Step 11, there it is again: “Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God.” Christ, where am I? Some Christian enclave where Elizabeth Taylor managed to fall in love again? I’m outta here. Thank God it was Friday, and I could use the phone on Saturday to call my brother in New York and complain about God being all over this place.

He lovingly reminded me I had prayed at the Western Wall, sat still in the temples of Kyoto, spent 40 days at a Sufi retreat on Maui, read “Be Here Now” by transcendental super-Jew Ram Dass a dozen times, chanted “Hare Krishna” with hundreds in Amsterdam’s Vondelpark before crying my eyes out at the Anne Frank House. He had a point. Except God had never been enlisted to help me stop drinking and doing drugs, which I had been doing every day for 26 years.

Like a sinner sensing salvation, a robber facing redemption, I decided to drop my defenses, postpone my paranoia, dispense with my disbelief, and settle into my seat and stay open to what was being said.

On my third day, I walked outside into the new morning’s light. Suddenly the desire and need for all drugs left me in an instant. Evaporated into history. I looked around to see who had done that. I was ostensibly, theoretically, alone. My addiction to all drugs was gone. The psychological sensation, while difficult to describe, was both liberating and slightly disquieting.

However, I still wanted to drink. I was still not convinced that living a 100 percent clean and sober life was a good idea for me. Three days after my release, on my way to a Labor Day wine-tasting party in Sonoma County, I stopped at an AA meeting. The speaker, an artist, drug abuser and heavy drinker, said something I’ll never forget. “The Dalai Lama called Alcoholics Anonymous the most important social and spiritual movement in America.” This is what I had been looking for my whole life! What an epiphany.

Getting through the desert is not easy. There’s no magic bullet train to ride. You make the journey one step at a time, and you do it on purpose. I attended the suggested 90 meetings in 90 days, made coffee, set up chairs, got a sponsor, worked the 12 steps, prayed and meditated. What a wonder it is to have a program of recovery that’s available all over the world. When asked to speak at an AA meeting in Brighton, England, I was able to connect and identify with the men and women there who, too, had opened their hearts and minds to the universality of love and a connection to a Higher Power.

While working as a certified substance abuse counselor at Beit T’Shuvah, I learned firsthand that you can’t force or guilt-trip true recovery down a drowning man’s throat. They’ll just choke more. As Alan Watts explains in his talk about enlightenment, “You can’t force satori in through the window, but you can make sure the window is open.”

Today I work for Writers in Treatment, a nonprofit organization I founded that helps individuals in the writing profession suffering from any self-destructive addiction get into a good treatment facility. We also produce educational and prevention programs for the recovering community, schools, businesses and civic groups. Our volunteers know that if they need a break to take a breath, call their sponsor or attend a meeting, it’s never a problem. I still participate in a 12-step meeting every morning before work. That’s a mitzvah. The days of the three-martini and matzah lunch are over. Today it’s leavened bread and brewed tea for me. 

Leonard Lee Buschel can be reached at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).

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hey nice story. I found it very interesting to read. While reading the article, i was kind of totally involved in it.

Comment by Ylod on 2/25/10 at 10:21 am

Excellent! What will be. Be here now.We are stronger for it all.Gramercy Park Hotel before it was,fashionable.The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics - Allen Ginsberg. Abbie Hoffman hiding in closet at the Boulderado. Having to find someone with $14 to buy me a glass of water at Studio 54! Ben! Rose. Rose was cool! Despite my role as a “Who are you in relation to my son shiksa?” Rose wanted to protect me. A road long traveled with the correct turns at the junctions. Onward and Upward!

Comment by muirbeach on 2/25/10 at 10:44 pm

Leonard has the remarkable ability to make light of seriously “seeing the light.”  Writers in Treatment, founded by Leonard Buschel, is worthy of strong support from anyone who enjoys books, films, plays or journals such as this one. Writers often lead lives of isolation despite communicating with thousands or millions via their words, and WIT helps them when they need it.

Comment by Burl Barer on 2/26/10 at 12:11 pm

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