From the moment Leonard Lee Buschel first tried marijuana as a teenager, he was hopelessly hooked.
‘Suddenly my life went from black and white to color,’ he tells The Daily Mail.
‘I knew that I had found a friend for life, a tool for living, the key to the magic kingdom.
‘From my high school senior year on, no matter where I was, I always had pot in my pocket or shoulder bag. Right next to my asthma inhaler.’
Before long, his life became an endless quest for “love, sex, or the Benjamins,” as he puts it. Being a Hollywood drug dealer could remarkably provide him with all three in abundance.
His vibrant life connected him with prominent stars and cultural icons of the 1970s and 1980s, such as John Belushi, Richard Pryor, and Robert Downey Sr. He had the luxury of engaging with as many beautiful women as he desired.
However, the constant drug use that accompanied Buschel’s alluring lifestyle also brought him to the brink of a horrible death.
In his newly released memoir, High, he reflects that even awakening from a coma with his eyelids taped shut wasn’t enough to free him from the stronghold of addiction.
A young Leonard Lee Buschel (left), before his career path was set and (right) when he still had ambitions to be an actor
Leonard Lee Buschel has now been sober for 30 years
After that first hit at 17, he says, his career path was set.
‘I was always repulsed by normal life, the nine to five,’ he says. So scoring drugs for his classmates in North Philadelphia not only enabled him to make fast cash, but also to be his own boss.
‘I cut class a lot in the 12th grade, as the mood struck me. Some days the only reason I went to school was to sell pot and football pools.’
He dropped out of college to smuggle slabs of Lebanese hashish from Israel in his pants, and plied his trade in Philadelphia, New York, Florida, LA, and San Francisco, selling to dealers, who then sold the drugs on to some of the most iconic figures, and legendary drug users, of the day.
Those figures included people like John Belushi (who died of an overdose from cocaine and heroin at the Chateau Marmont in 1982 aged just 33), and comedian Richard Pryor, who allegedly once set himself on fire while ‘freebasing’ cocaine. Freebasing is when a user inhales vaporized coke for an intense, short-lived high.
Sources say Buschel may also have even given (but not sold) drugs to cultural legends such as Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, Tim Hardin, Clarence Clemons, Hugh Masekela, and Freddie Hubbard.
He had a lifelong friendship with Robert Downey Sr, until his death in 2021. Downey Sr struggled with his own addictions and is said to have got his celebrity son hooked on marijuana when he gave him his first joint at age six.
Robert Downey Jr eventually got sober in 2003, after serving jail time for drug possession, possessing a weapon and driving under the influence.
Robert Downey Jr when he was dating Sarah Jessica Parker in the 1980s
Richard Pryor allegedly once set himself on fire while ‘freebasing’ cocaine
John Belushi died of an overdose from cocaine and heroin in 1982 aged just 33
Leonard dropped out of college to smuggle slabs of Lebanese hashish from Israel in his pants
He also famously wandered, almost naked, into a neighbor’s house and passed out in their 11-year-old son’s bed, though the neighbor decided not to press charges.
‘I wasn’t a big dealer,’ says Buschel now, adding: ‘I was in one of the most successful dealers in the history of the trade because I never got caught.
‘I only made like $100,000 a year [the equivalent of closer to $300,000 today], but at that time, that was enough to live on and raise a child and send them to a good school.’
He adds that his ill-gotten gains were also tax free. ‘It was plenty.’
But Buschel, like so many Hollywood addicts before and since, had more than one close call that should have sent him running to the Betty Ford Clinic.
‘I recall making love to some woman after doing a few lines of not very well-chopped coke,’ he recalls.
‘I sneezed, broke a blood vessel, and exploded with projectile bleeding all over her pure white canvas-like back… like a Jackson Pollock painting.’
On another occasion, after an all-night coke and beer bender, he had a massive, catastrophic asthma attack.
‘I fell against my roommate’s door,’ he tells The Daily Mail. ‘Luckily, he wasn’t asleep yet, because he hadn’t taken enough valiums. He said I was blue.
‘He called 911, and I basically died. It was the experience of death.
‘I was being catapulted through deep space, a million miles of the darkest hell imaginable. I was almost dead. Seconds from the end. No white light, no tunnel shimmering a beckoning plea.
‘I was silently screaming louder than the foghorn on the Titanic. I was hurtling into unimaginable darkness. Blackness, but much blacker than that. Screaming… into the abyss, an abyss so dark and frightening.’
As he regained consciousness, he thought he was blind, but it turned out that his eyelids had been taped shut – after being given so much adrenaline and morphine, his lids wouldn’t close naturally and he risked his eyeballs drying up and cracking.
‘My throat was in excruciating pain,’ he writes. ‘The nurse had just taken the ventilator out of my throat after two days of having it breathe for me to keep me alive.
Robert Downey Jr eventually got sober in 2003, after serving jail time
Leonard had a lifelong friendship with Robert Downey Sr, until his death in 2021
‘I basically died. It was the experience of death,’ says Leonard of his catastrophic asthma attack on the back of a coke and beer bender
One of his biggest regrets is that he has been unable to help his troubled son Joshua (pictured with his mother)
‘That was the lowest of the low,’ he says.
Astonishingly, however, even that was not enough to get him clean.
‘When I was released four days later, the thought of not drinking or doing blow never crossed my mind – not even for a split second. My only health-improving lifestyle decision was to switch from vodka to Bombay Sapphire gin, which has herbs in it, so I thought it would be healthy like a tonic.’
When he finally went to rehab, it was after a night of vodka shots, ecstasy, and unsafe sex with a prostitute – and he was paranoid he was about to be arrested by the DEA.
Within a month of treatment – after using pot every single day for 26 years, and snorting cocaine for 13 – he got clean, and hasn’t touched a drink or drug in the 30 years since.
One of his biggest regrets, however, is that he has been unable to help his troubled son Joshua.
‘I never really knew Josh,’ he says. ‘Growing up, he lived in Los Angeles with his mother. He’s what they called at the time a love child. I never really knew him until he was 17.
‘It’s sad. It’s the dark cloud over my life, all the time.’
He recalls Josh meeting Robert Downey Jr when they were both much younger.
‘And whenever I talk to Jr he always wishes Joshua well.
‘Robert Downey Jr recovered his life and career; perhaps Joshua never had one to recover.’
And his message to those who are still smoking marijuana after years? ‘Grow up.’
‘People in middle age, people who’ve been smoking marijuana for 20 years – they’re not really smoking to get high anymore. They’re just smoking because it’s a habit. It’s an addiction.
‘My message is: it’s time to grow up.’
Adapted from High: From Cannabis to Clarity by Leonard Lee Buschel . If you need help with Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration helpline: 1-800-662-HELP (4357)
