AN INTERVIEW WITH SETH LEAF PRUZANSKY

AUTHOR OF THE FIGHT TO ENLIGHT INITIATION THROUGH THE HEART IS THE ONLY WAY TO WIN

BY MR. ROOTS

PHOTOGRAPHY COURTESY OF IN THE TREES PODCAST

Of all of the stories I have heard about people getting busted for cannabis over the years, there was one that had me-and many others I knew--all shook up. It could be because it happened locally, or because he and I were close, but when Seth Leaf Pruzansky went down, it shook many of us to the core.

Seth had gotten in touch with me when he was on bail, soon after he had been busted. We had met in a parking lot near the Brunswick-Topsham bridge to talk. The look in his eyes was pure fear, worry, and anger--none of which I had ever seen him express before. And rightly so. What he told me demolished a construct of trust in an underground world whose foundation was built upon that tenant.

On that overcast, late-winter day, with the heavy sleet forming slush on every surface, he told me he had been set up. He said he was probably going away to prison for a while. I saw my friend sitting across the truck cab from me scared for his future. All I remember was feeling worry for him, and so much anger and fear myself. I couldn’t help but have bad intentions for whoever it was that had put my friend in this situation.

This is how it went down…

It had been weeks since Seth had heard from him, which wasn’t normal. In the fifteen years since they had known each other, they had always kept in contact several times a week. They were close friends and, apart from helping each other in various ways over the years, they worked together. ‘He had a bunch of my product, my weed, and he just disappeared on me.” Seth recounted when we met recently. “Which wasn’t like him.”

Weeks had passed, and he had kept steady, not questioning, always cool. There was a lot of product that this guy was sitting on. He hadn’t reached out himself to check in, but Seth remembers wondering “What happened?”. Seth started to become concerned.

Then out of the blue one day, the phone rang and it was his friend. “‘Oh Sorry bro, it was my Dad’, he said. He had some story, you know?” Seth recounts. “And he goes, look, I didn’t touch anything you gave me. It’s just sitting at my place. You can go get it.”

Seth remembered not thinking anything of his friend telling him that at the time. He remembers saying, “I was like ‘Okay’, and didn’t really think anything of it. It was my friend. I was like ‘do you need help with anything?’, and he goes ‘no, no, I just gotta deal with this’, and ‘it’s tough’ you know, writing it off, saying whatever. I was like ‘alright, well I’m going to go over’.” way to his friends house. Knowing he had to pick up what was owed him, he pushed the feelings away. It wasn’t until he drove up the driveway to his friends house that intense “feelings of panic and anxiety” started flooding over him. He had visions of agents rushing him with machine guns. They felt so real, but told himself “No, you are just being paranoid” and moved forward with his mission to pick up his product.

Reaching the top of the driveway, there was no one at the house, just like his friend had told him. He used the key that he had been given, and walked into the living room. There were two black duffle bags lying on the floor of the room. He opened them up and noticed that there were some pounds in there that were not his. They were packaged differently. Different bags that were clearly not his.

The same feelings from earlier, of something not feeling right, washed over him, and he second guessed himself in this scenario. “I wondered if I should stuff some newspapers into the duffel bag and walk outside with them” Seth told me, “But I didn’t.”

Picking up the duffel bags, he walked outside to his truck. Lifting the tonneau cover, he placed the bags in the truck bed, and, as he was reaching to close the tonneau cover, The DEA came at him with machine guns. They rushed him.

“Put your hands up! Put your fucking hands up now! Up against the truck! Hands behind your back!” they screamed and slammed him against his truck while they wrenched his arms behind his back to handcuff him.

Seth was caught by the DEA with 64 pounds of cannabis separated into two black duffel bags in the back of his motor vehicle. They had him on audio and video surveillance, as well as with marked money. It was his friend who had set him up. The one who he had been close with for years.

The events that took place surrounding the bust, and the case that the DEA had built against Seth were well executed. “They got me good.” Seth recounted to me recently. “They got me so good.”

When they took him in for interrogations, the detectives told him that he was facing 30 years in prison for the amount of cannabis he was caught with. The room went cold under its fluorescent lights. They told him if he gave them “names of local growers”, he would face a lesser sentence.

This was right before the legislative battles were won that began to transform the state of Maine medical marijuna program, which established grounds for increased medical use of cannabis beyond the traditional Cancer and AIDS patients. These were times when local growers were

clandestine, underground, and almost completely different from today’s social media exposed growers. Back when PGR ridden, rock hard British Colombian bud was what most people were happy to see regularly — If they weren’t smoking compressed, seeded Mexican.

For perspective’s sake, when Seth was busted, if you were lucky enough to know a grower to get local indoor flowers from, let alone be a grower, you were a well guarded secret of sorts to the few who could get buds from you. For high grade indoor flower, $350-400 an ounce was the going rate, and $5000+ a pound was just how it was. People didn’t bat an eye at that, as the lucky ones with access. They loved having another option besides BC and Mexican, especially a quality local option. Good weed was rare.

Though he had already been through a harrowing experience, and the DEA was trying to coerce him--Seth remembers telling them “Fuck you. You want me to turn my friends in. No way!”. He was unwilling to perpetuate the breach of loyalty that had put him in the situation he was in with these detectives.

They took him to his holding cell, where he stayed until, by the love of his family, he was able to post bail.

The months of bail before his trial were agonizing, as Seth dealt with his world collapsing around him. He saw a court appointed probation officer, while dealing with the constant stress and worry of knowing he would be going to prison. Without knowing for how long.

On top of everything, he discovered that all of his bank accounts had been frozen, and the state had confiscated a farm in western Maine, which he had bought to live, and hopefully retire in, as a “personal monastery”.) Seth described this as a “full personal financial collapse”. Everything that was viewed as something that might have been purchased with money made from Cannabis sales was stripped from him.

Finally the court date came and, with the advice of his attorney, Seth pled guilty. Through the workings of his lawyer, the character references from countless people, and his strong testimony he was sentenced to five years in prison.

Prison could have been enough to be the end of Seth’s story. It could be the end for anyone involved in its institution. Prison could have been the part of Seth’s story that took a dark twist or cost him his spirit. This was not the case.

One thing Seth writes about beautifully in part of his new critically acclaimed book, “The Fight to Enlight”, is that prison ended up being a transformative, deeply spiritual, and ultimately healing time.

Seth remembers going into prison “a walking, talking bundle of bad habits”, with many aspects of his past that “I hadn’t addressed and made peace with”. He described prison as a “crystallization of years of dysfunction having been built up” and “there was no way I was escaping that”, but through meditation and awareness, he discovered “the real prison was inside me”. Seth found the strength in himself, in one of the darkest times of his life, to remain aware of his need to “stay present and stay focused”. He confronted the steady barrage of feelings and emotions that would wash over him. “Feelings of a ruined life. Of anger and frustration over being set up” that always ended up resulting in depression. He writes in ‘The Fight to Enlight’ that, “The anger would pass, and then there was depression”, but through this resolution to heal his life, Seth was able to find peace and presence. What is very eloquently conveyed, is that he eventually found something that is most profound: forgiveness.

After the betrayals written about from his younger years, and the awful betrayal by a trusted friend, Seth found that “once I decided to become a person who was truly in love with life, aware, without the limitations of my past, forgiving him was not forgiving him for him. It was ‘for me’ as it was part of a greater state of healing.”

He didn’t want to hold only to anger and betrayal. It was a theme that had kept repeating itself throughout his life in many ways. A theme in many chapters of his book.

What Seth did find, and what is so well described by him, is a consciousness of life and of his place in it. A sense of purpose beyond the money, drugs, possessions, and ego that had fueled him for so long.“I’m more in love with the feeling of healing than I am staying stuck in unconscious conditioning or patterns of past belief.”

Seth Leaf Pruzansky is the author of the book, The Fight to Enlight. He is co-owner of Maine businesses Tourmaline Spring, Living Nutz, and Maine Intellihemp. To order a copy of Seth’s book, or to contact him, please visit his website imawakenowwhat.com

Mr. Roots is a freelance writer and regular contributor for the Maine Cannabis Chronicle. He is owner of Alight For Health, Alight Farms, and is the host of In The Trees Podcast, the Maine-based cannabis podcast highlighting methods, products, growers, and breeders. Subscribe and Listen at inthetreespodcast.com as well as itunes, Spotify and Youtube

Excerpts from this article were taken from Seth’s interview with In The Tree’s Podcast, as well as his book.

SETH LEAF PRUZANSKY