Welcome to wat thamkrabok

Journey to Wat Thamkrabok

I had left Mai Sot at nine that morning and the trip to Wat Thamkrabok lasted about seven hours on my Honda Wave. A journey of that length would normally have taken me a lot more time, due to regular stops for beer, but that day was an exception.

The beer stops occurred due to two reasons; the first was that I enjoyed riding my motorbike in an alcohol induced semi-haze but the most important one was that I was a habitual drunk. That day I felt like I had a huge excuse to get drunk but physically felt unable, although a large part of me was screaming out for it. I had already tried back at my Mai Sot hotel as soon as I awoke but I just couldn’t keep the beer down. As soon as it hit my throat I retched. This was a huge disappointment for me as I had wanted a last bash at the sauce before swearing off it forever.

The plan was to get as drunk as needed before midday and then stop, I would have the rest of the trip to the temple to sober up a bit and give a good first impression. It never occurred to me that the fact that I was admitting myself for detox probably told them everything they needed to know about me. But I was also terrified of them not admitting me although I did consider spending the night on the beer in Lampang and checking in the next day but the patient’s of my girlfriend was wearing thin and I was genuinely afraid that another night on the beer would kill me.

If I was to say that I got sober for my girlfriend I would be lying. Her disapproval certainly didn’t make things easy and I hated letting her down but this wasn’t enough of an reason for me to stop. If I am brutally honest, the truth is that if it had been a choice of the joys of intoxication or her she would have ended up dropped like a shot. She wouldn’t have been the first either. I have been lucky enough to have had some amazing women in my life and there isn’t one I regret being with. What they saw in me I have no idea but I always managed to mess things up eventually. I was devoted to alcohol and everything else was secondary.

I suppose that was the main reason for me wanting to quit this time was that I physically felt unable to continue. It felt like my liver was screaming out to me. I had been told a few years previously, after a blood test, that my liver function was compromised but I continued to drink none the less, only now with the added guilt that I was slowly killing myself.

I was in Ireland at the time and needed a medical for a job in Saudi. The blood results came back showing elevated liver function results. The doctor wanted to send me straight away to a liver specialist but I convinced her to redo the test. I told her that I had just come back from Koh Samui and had been drinking particularly hard.

I felt devastated. I had previously cared for patients in liver failure and it is not something that I would wish on anybody. I felt like the thing that scared me the most was not just that my life could be in danger but that my drinking had been given a death sentence. I left the doctor’s surgery and hit a nearby bar. My immediate worry was that I wouldn’t be able to take the nursing job in Saudi and that I would be stuck unemployed in Ireland with a dodgy liver. Although there is a big demand in Ireland for nurses I wasn’t registered there and didn’t particularly want to be.

I saw my future in Saudi where I planned to get off the alcohol and make tons of money so that I could spend years traveling before settling somewhere exotic, most likely Thailand. This plan was now being jeopardized and I didn’t like it one bit. I already had an idea that the new blood test would also be disastrous as I had continued drinking heavily since my return to Dublin.

It turned out I was right. The next lot were even higher but I convinced the doctor to complete my medical form. She noted down the LFT results on the form and her recommendation that I see a liver specialist. I rang the agency and was delighted to be told that this would not be a problem and that I was on my way to the Magic Kingdom. The night before my departure I celebrated by getting drunk knowing that my drinking problems would be over once I hit Saudi.

A further four years of damage had accumulated before the trip to Wat Thamkrabok. The last few years in Thailand was spent mostly drunk so I was fairly sure my liver was a lost cause. I had avoided blood tests since and ignored the more or less constant abdominal pain. This however was not enough to stop me drinking, it was the fact that when I ingested alcohol I vomited it back up. A good day for me was when I could get a few beers down me. If I could get past two big bottles I would escape the vomit and I could happily get pissed but there was no way this was happening on that trip to the temple.

Nevertheless I spent the whole trip looking out for bars but somehow managed to make it past them all and arrived at Wat Thamkrabok.

Welcome to Wat Thamkrabok

I can’t remember exactly the type of reception I was expecting at the temple but it certainly didn’t turn out as I imagined. I suppose it is common among most drunks and druggies that our mind constantly fluctuates between us thinking we are the lowest of the low to believing that the universe revolves around us.

This was a big day for me and I was expecting a heroes welcome. I failed to realize that I was just another lost soul among many and my arrival was no big deal. I suppose the only thing different was that I had been crazy enough to go there by a glorified scooter from Phitsanulok via Mai Sot but I’m sure they were beyond being amazed by the antics of the likes of me.

The temple seemed to cover a huge area but it looked deserted as I rode around on my motorbike. There were many empty buildings and it actually felt a bit spooky. I eventually saw some monks who gave me directions to a reception area.

I had an interview with a Swiss monk who patiently listened to my story. He had a really healthy glow about him which is so often missing from the people I would normally associate with in bars. He also seemed very kind and serene and listened to my story without any signs of judgement.

I felt that I needed to convince the Swiss monk of my sincerity to quit the booze but this was hardly needed. The interview was more of an orientation and I’m pretty sure they would never turn anyone away. I listened as he told me about the temple routine but I wasn’t taking much in as I was suffering the affects of alcohol withdrawal.

This wasn’t my first time entering a treatment facility but instead part of a long treatment history which began when I was twenty. My first appearance in one was in Dublin in 1990 where I attended, as an out-patient, a day service which catered for alcoholics, druggies, schizophrenics  and manic depressives. We all received the same treatment except us alkies were given abstem, which makes you really sick if you touch alcohol, and we were expected to attend AA meetings.

I attended a few AA meetings but didn’t really take to them as I didn’t like associating with the drunks who were mostly much older than me. I actually felt less stigmatized spending my time chatting with the schizophrenics, manic depressives and druggies who I thought were much more glamorous. As you can imagine my attitude meant that the treatment center didn’t do much for me but I suppose I did stay off the alcohol for a few months.

One problem was that I attended the treatment center for the wrong reasons. My family had suggested it and my ex-girlfriend said she would consider getting back together if I sorted out my drinking. It was really her that was my motivation for attending as well as the desire to leave Ireland again. I was only back a few weeks and already had enough. At the time I genuinely thought I loved her but I also saw her as means of escape.

I had met Val two years previously in Oxford where I was working as a barman in a pub called the Westgate. I had loved it there and it is here that my drinking had first become a noticeable problem, but not really noticeable to me. I had started working there at eighteen and had spent the couple of years before meeting her constantly drunk and sleeping my way through as many of the available women as I could.

I would often make an arse of myself when drunk but  just put this down to high spirits. It was at this time that I had my first blackout and during it  split up with a girl I was seeing. I couldn’t remember a thing about it and was amazed when I heard but again I made a joke out of it. I really enjoyed it when people talked about my drunken escapades as it made me feel like a bit of a celebrity.

Val soon came to the conclusion that Oxford was no good for me and suggested we move with a vague plan of eventually going to Germany. We decided to hit Dublin first but any hopes she had of my problems with alcohol would resolve were shattered when I discovered the joys of the ‘early house’ where you could get drunk at seven in the morning. I thought it was the best idea ever and it added a whole new disturbing element to my problem.

My main memory of that time in Dublin was living in a bleak bed-sit and having very little money, we once ended up eating Alpen muesli with mayonnaise for dinner. My family lived on the out-skirts of the city but I wanted to show them that I could cope on my own. The lowest point came when I sold a load of Val’s cassette tapes to buy booze. We decided that Dublin was probably not the best place for me and moved to Scotland and her home in Dumfries.

We spent that Christmas in her mums and on New Years eve her mother, whose bed we were sleeping in, needed to act as nurse as both me and Val took turns vomiting into a basin. It was unusual for Val to be drunk and thought it was great fun at the time. We got a room in a house in Dumfreis town but to Val’s horror there was a drunk writer/poet living there with who I became bosom buddies with. I had gotten a job in a local club but after the first night I never went back because I was too busy drinking scotch with my new friend. We decided to move to Glasgow where things further deteriorated to a stage where she finally had enough and kicked me out.

I had no money and even as I hitched my way to the ferry terminal on the other side of Scotland I was convinced she would tell me to come back. She didn’t. I finally needed to get my dad to pay for my fare from Ireland so that I could make my way back there. I was expecting a lot of sympathy from my family but the best they could do was tell me to get help. This was why I ended up in my first treatment center.

After a couple of months sober I returned to Glasgow and Val. In my time away she had discovered the Jehovah Witnesses and after a few more months I gave up the idea of us having a future together. I worked briefly as a security guard for £1.50 an hour but left after I was caught asleep at my post. I returned to Oxford where I tried controlled drinking for a while before going back to Glasgow and resumption of my previous drunkenness and working in bars. This lasted about a year before moving back to London.

The next time I needed treatment was at the age of twenty-five in London. This time I spent a full year in a dry house and stayed sober for two years but now is not the time for that story.

So as I said previously this was not my first treatment center but what had occurred before was completely different from Wat Thamkrabok.

Two monks escorted me to a curtained area where they provided me with a laundry basket and told me to remove my clothes. They suggested that I consume any alcohol in my bag and I felt cheated because I didn’t have any. The only things that I was allowed to keep was my underwear, a few books and my toiletries. All money, clothes, passport, mobile phones, cameras and everything else were locked away. I was given two red prison like uniforms and some food vouchers and taken by the monks inside the locked area of the temple where my kind were kept.