When Leonard Buschel founded Writers in Treatment (WIT) in 2008, he envisioned the nonprofit as a life raft for writers struggling with addictions. So it only made sense for the Hollywood-adjacent group to meet local writers where they live—at the cinema.
Enter the Writers in Treatment produced REEL Recovery Film Festival, a high-profile effort to raise awareness about addiction and recovery issues. The international festival, currently gearing up for its third annual installment on October 14-16, will feature three days of screenings and panel discussions to showcase realistic depictions of substance abuse and personal transformation.
The festival aims not only to change the way people view addiction and recovery, but also to identify and celebrate some of the creative minds that are currently redefining how the public can benefit and grow by learning about these pervasive issues.
The festival aims to celebrate recovery in a public forum and reduce the stigma of addiction and the anonymity of recovery.
“The film festival is intended to give people in recovery and treatment professionals an opportunity to go to the theater and watch films that accurately portray addiction and alcoholism,” said Buschel, a former publisher-turned-certified substance abuse counselor who’s in recovery from his own 26-year addiction. “But this series isn’t just for addicts or alcoholics—it’s for anyone who has ever been impacted or just wants to learn more about the disease and its treatment in a less traditional and more entertaining environment.”
Slated for screening at the Beverly Garland Hotel Theatre in North Hollywood, California is an eclectic lineup of contemporary and classic films, documentaries and shorts from first-time filmmakers and industry veterans. Highlights include Death of an Addict: The Tio Hardiman Story (2010), which chronicles director Tio Hardiman’s struggle to understand and break the cycle of intergenerational drug addiction in his family and neighborhood; Tweeked (2001), the story of two female companions whose friendship disintegrates as they careen into a methamphetamine frenzy; OxyMorons (2010), a harrowing thriller centering on the effects of Oxy-Contin addiction in a close-knit Boston community; and Down to the Bone (2004), starring Vera Farmiga as a wife and mother struggling to raise her children and manage her secret cocaine habit.
The closing night’s special screening is On the Bowery, the 1956 classic independent film featuring a slice-of-life depiction of alcoholism on New York’s infamous skid row that Martin Scorcese called “a milestone in American cinema…a rare achievement.” Filmmaker Robert Downey, Sr. will conduct an in-person Q&A session after the screening.
“These films might not get a wide release in theaters, but the content registers with the hearts and minds of people in this field,” said Buschel. “The realistic portrayal of these issues in cinema can be a catalyst for honest conversation. This gives people a chance to go to a cultural event—outside the realm of an AA meeting or convention—and talk about creative recovery.”
As part of the program, several writers and directors whose films will be screened will appear to discuss their work. Director Tio Hardiman, from Chicago, will talk about his struggle with drugs and alcohol before turning his life around with help from Narcotics Anonymous in 1986. Johnny Hickey, the writer and director of OxyMorons, will discuss his film’s depiction of drug dealing and addiction as a defense against emotional devastation in an economically depressed neighborhood. Tweeked director Beth Dewey will appear in conversation with Fix contributor Nic Sheff, author of the New York Times bestselling Tweak: Growing Up on Methamphetamines and We All Fall Down: Living with Addiction.
Traditionally the film festival audience includes psychologists, social workers, marriage and family therapists, chemical dependency counselors, men and women in recovery, members of the entertainment industry, media representatives and the general public.
According to Patrick Haggerson at the Betty Ford Institute, “The REEL Recovery Film Festival has shown itself to be of great value. The idea of capitalizing on this potent media to tell the story of addiction and its devastation is critical.”
As a whole, the festival aims to celebrate recovery in a public forum and reduce the stigma of addiction and the anonymity of recovery—goals that Buschel hopes will encourage anyone struggling with substance abuse to seek treatment and take a shot at a new life.
Being a writer with a drug or alcohol problem is especially risky compared with many other professions, said Buschel, who for years published health and nutrition books and wrote on the side. Writers work in relative isolation, and the solitary nature of the job allows addictions to develop unnoticed by co-workers or peers. “A musician, for example, has to appear on stage, where people will notice if you’re drunk or too high,” he said. “With writers, it’s not a collaborative type of work. You can file from bed, or you can file from the bar—no one sees it. And in the meantime, you’re slipping deeper and deeper into your addiction.”
WIT caters to individuals in the writing industry of all stripes—from novelists and screenwriters to editors, bookstore owners, proof-readers, journalists and aspirants. The organization places clients in residential or outpatient treatment programs according to their needs. They also produce regular free events, both educational and for entertainment. Psychologists and certified counselors on WIT’s advisory board offer therapy sessions via telephone, video conferencing or in person, and free referrals for clients who have their own financial resources.
But seeking help is not easy for some. Many writers choose not to treat their dependencies because they believe drugs and alcohol stoke their creativity, Buschel said. With images of alcoholic writers like Dorothy Parker, Hunter S. Thompson, Jack Kerouac and Charles Bukowski romanticized in literature and on-screen, the lifestyle still holds a lurid allure.
Once addiction sets in, says clinical psychologist Dr. Howard Gluss, the line becomes blurry between natural talent and the bottle or joint. “There’s a fear that if [writers] heal their addiction, they’ll lose their creativity,” said Gluss, a radio show host, author and film consultant. “They think, ‘If I lose that angst, I won’t be who I am anymore.’”
But after detox, most find that their chemical dependencies had actually stunted their abilities. In recovery, Gluss said, “they start creating from a place that’s much more powerful, a more positive place that offers them many more creative options.”
Rediscovering the “muse,” however, can be a long and tortuous process. WIT recognizes that, and keeps clients in the loop with relapse-prevention seminars and referrals to post-treatment programs that bolster their sobriety and creativity.
It’s the kind of non-judgmental aid that could have helped Buschel during his two-and-a-half decades of addiction, and saved him from an episode that nearly cost him his life.
It was around 6 a.m. and Buschel, then 37, had been up all night drinking and doing cocaine. He suffered a massive asthma attack brought on by dehydration and slumped against his roommate’s door, unable to breathe and almost dead. When he woke up in the hospital, he learned he’d been unconscious for two days. The doctor had told his mother in Philadelphia that she might have to fly him home in a body bag.
But even this wasn’t enough to make him realize he needed to quit; it would be another seven years before his “moment of clarity” struck.
“Unfortunately, addiction is a disease that people enjoy having for a while,” said Buschel, who worked as a substance abuse counselor at Beit T’Shuvah, a residential treatment center in Los Angeles, The Canyon in Malibu and volunteered at Cri Help in North Hollywood. “People can suffer catastrophic events, yet the idea of quitting does not occur to them. My story is hardly unique, and there are thousands of people living through the same thing.”
WIT hopes to reach out to more of them through the REEL Recovery Film Festival, which will hit the road for a tour this fall to raise awareness about addiction and recovery on a larger scale. After its initial run in North Hollywood, the festival will travel to Vancouver, British Columbia, where Orchard Recovery Center is the co-producer, from October 21-23, and then return to the Los Angeles area for a run at the “Evolution of Addiction Treatment” conference for addiction professionals, December 8-11. In September, 2012, New York City, with the help of local sponsors, will host the REEL Recovery Film Festival in collaboration with the National Council of Alcoholism and Drug Dependence (NCADD).
If nothing else, Buschel said he hopes attendees come away with the message that you don’t have to hang up your intellect to hang on to your recovery, and that treatment works.
Rachel Heller is a Los Angeles based freelance writer and editor who has written about health and wellness, education and entertainment for the Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles and Tribe, Whole Life Times and Ventura Blvd. magazines. This is her first piece for The Fix.