Healing On Horseback

Brad Langenberg draws strength from his past to inspire extraordinary change, transformation and recovery

The view from Inspiration Point is vast. To the East, a sprawling metropolitan city sits among low-hanging clouds revealing the familiar grey skyline of downtown Los Angeles. To the West, the Santa Monica Mountains rise from the coastline where the ocean curls around the bay. Seated on horseback, Brad Langenberg takes in the 360-degree view. His piercing blue eyes shaded by a wide rimmed cowboy hat, he is visibly at peace.

“I have a tough time in the city, but when I’m here looking out over it, it’s not so scary. I can breathe,” he said, his tanned and calloused hands loosely gripping the reins of his horse. “We don’t realize how fast we’re going down there until we’re up here, looking down at it all.”

Unmistakable in a plaid button-up shirt tucked into a well-worn pair of jeans, pointed boots covered in dust and mud, Langenberg rides the dirt trail from Will Rogers State Historic Park to Inspiration Point and beyond every day. The Park is more home to him now than his native Nebraska.

“This is the most spectacular place in the world,” he said. “It saved my life.”

CALIFORNIA COWBOY

Langenberg found the park nearly three decades ago when he packed his car and drove the 1,500 miles from the Nebraska plains to the Pacific Ocean in a hail-Mary, headlong push for sobriety. Addicted to alcohol and cocaine at the time, Langenberg overdosed on March 7 and found himself in California on March 11, what will be 28 years ago next month.

“That date means something. There’s a reason why I remember when I got here,” he said.

The terrifying overdose brought Langenberg to Southern California, where a friend with six months of sobriety was living. In an era before the coast was dotted with treatment facilities and rehab centers, Langenberg took a grittier approach.

“I was living in my car, going to AA meetings. That was my program,” he said. “Recovery isn’t about adding anything to your self, it’s about learning to let go. I didn’t have to add being a man or a horseman to who I was; that’s who I was designed to be. I just had to let go of things keeping me from it.”

The letting-go process often brought Langenberg to the Park to lie on the lawn and take in the greenery, the stillness and the tranquility. It was somewhere safe, somewhere he could breathe, he said.

“Do you know why people feel so good in nature? Because it’s natural; it’s where we belong,” Langenberg said. “The tough part of recovery is letting go of the past, being present in the now and moving forward – nature is always moving forward. When we’re in nature, things change.”

In the Park’s natural setting, Langenberg did find change and he found something that felt even more natural – a horse. Having grown up surrounded by ranchers and farmers, being close to the animal grounded him as he worked towards sobriety.

“There’s always a change when you start handling horses. Your own personal issues come out,” he said. “The horses mirror you – and sometimes you like what you see, sometimes you don’t. But you learn.”

Taking what he learned from the horses and while facilitating a number of addiction support and recovery groups in and around Pacific Palisades, Langenberg was able to introduce The Equine Experience, an equine-assisted therapy program, to the Park last year – and the results have been powerful.

PAY IT FORWARD

Langenberg will tell you addiction is an equal opportunity disease. Addiction does not discriminate among rich or poor, famous or unknown, men, women or even children – and neither do horses, he said.

“The beauty of horses is that they don’t know if you’re a billionaire or you’re homeless on the streets. They don’t know the difference. People are all the same to horses,” he said. “I think people were meant to think the same way. It’s too bad we don’t.”

Georgia Berkovich, who works with the homeless at The Midnight Mission, calls the interactions between her clients and the horses “moments of sweetness.”

“Driving up the coast, away from Skid Row – that alone could have been the trip. But then we arrived at Will Rogers Park and walked into this unbelievable beauty – the complete opposite of what they have experienced on Skid Row,” she said. “Brad was so compassionate and understanding… he did this pro-bono… I saw change right in front of me. I’ve never seen anything like it. It was such a sweet day.”

Langenberg also uses the equine -assisted therapy program to help clients address the many facets of addiction.

“One of the biggest challenges of addiction is getting out of your head and being present for your life,” Langenberg said. “Horses are present 24/7. For them, there is no tomorrow. There is only today, only this moment. Horses can pick up your energy. They force you to be present because they can read your body language. They’re always watching, listening, taking it all in,” he said.

Most recently, Langenberg has been working with clients at the CLARE Foundation, A New Journey, The Venice Teen Project, Friendly House, the Promises Foundation, Miriam’s House and Homeboy Industries – relying solely on donations and his own wallet to fund the program and care for three horses.

“It’s a struggle. It’s tight and I’ve felt the hurt, but I love this. I’ve got to do it,” Langenberg said, estimating he’s invested thousands of dollars since launching the program last year. “This is my chance to give back and share the thing that saved me.”

Seeing Langenberg, who stands more than six feet tall on his own, with his boots locked into the stirrups, hands running through the horse’s mane, it’s as if the horse is an extension of his person rather than a separate animal. There is no fear – and that’s the beauty of it, he said.

“People are fear-based. All of us,” he said. “A lot of what we are doing in this life is trying to cover that up; hide that we are scared. But when you’re with the horses, walls drop. You don’t have to hide.”

Many of the clients Langenberg works with in his program have built great walls to hide behind, he said. For some, this program is their first encounter with horses altogether, which innately provokes fear and uncertainty that Langenberg encourages them to overcome.

“The Venice street kids are a tough bunch. They’ve been stabbed, shot at, experienced any kind of trauma you can imagine,” he said of a group he works with. “But they get around the horses and the walls come down. The toughness fades. They go mellow.”

Langenberg’s program, which focuses more on working with the horses than riding them, works to build trust and understanding through an exchange that requires sensitivity and vulnerability – initiate a risk, get a reward.

“The horse has to trust you and you have to trust the horse,” he said. “It makes you better in areas you didn’t think related to horses.”

Emma Bogdanoff, a counselor at A New Journey, has seen it happen. She works with adult clients in treatment for eating disorders.

“What Brad does is really beautiful,” she said. “The interaction with the horses is incredible. To be so close to an animal so powerful, yet be able to lead it right or left with just your presence teaches something that being around people just doesn’t do. It builds so much strength. It starts with a lot of fear, and always ends with progress.”

Bogdanoff said the program uses equine therapy to help their clients during recovery because horses have a unique way of drawing out strength differently than people can.

“The way Brad reiterates that this is a non-judgmental place means so much,” she said. “Even if they aren’t ready to get close to the horses, Brad reminds them that just being there means they want recovery – and that means the world.”

ON THE HORIZON

Langenberg has a vision for his program – and for Will Rogers Park as a whole. He wants to see it flourish, to be filled with people taking in the goodness of nature.

In addition to expanding the equine- therapy program, he hopes to revive the former LAUSD program that had the Park full of students on annual field trips.

“These kids know computers inside and out, but they’ve never taken a hike outside. We’ve got to get them here,” he said. “The Park has been so good to me. There’s no place like it and I want to see everyone up here experiencing this place – every treatment program, every school in the city, every senior citizen in this community. They need it. We all need it.

“In the city, you’re looking down at the ground. Here, you’re looking up and around and you can see everything. Your attitude is different. You can see green – and that will change you.”

Brad Langenberg can be reached at 310-450-6627.