In mid-November I called Roxanna and arranged for a visit. I had received money via Western Union, nearly four thousand dollars, and I wanted to hand it to her in person instead of merely having the money transferred to her PayPal account. I wanted to make a point, to show that I was ready to carry my weight. Selling pieces of my collection was traumatic—I almost backed out of the deal at the last minute, going into something of a panic at the post office. But with the money now in hand I felt it was all some strange sort of fate, as if my collection was predestined to bankroll my habit, allowing me to experience this rare lifestyle.
I arrived at Roxanna’s on a Saturday afternoon during the preliminary stirrings of Bangkok’s “winter,” a period of relatively cool and dry weather with pleasant daytime temperatures in the low seventies and nippy nighttime temperatures in the high fifties. This respite from the heat and humidity might last a couple of months or barely a week. Some years the temperatures never dropped at all, but the prediction for late 2007 and early 2008 was an extended and chilly cool season.
During weather like this, smoking in Roxanna’s upstairs room seemed cozy and inviting. There was no need to open the shutters and turn on the electric fan between pipes, and we punctuated our session with hot tea instead of the usual Gatorade. Time sailed by and we smoked until long after dark, the whistle and clatter of a passing night train reminding me to look at the clock. It was almost nine. The pedicab drivers would already have gone home, and soon even the knot of teenage boys who hung out on the corner and made extra cash by using their motorbikes to ferry the occasional pedestrian to the main road would take their earnings and head for the nearest all-night snooker hall. I needed to think about hitting the road soon or I would have to walk that lonely half mile, stray dogs barking abruptly from the shadows and scaring the bejeezus out of me. I brought out my wallet and counted out the flesh-toned thousand-baht banknotes onto the layout tray.
“That’s enough for now. I’ll cover the rest,” Roxanna said while folding the bills and snapping them into her coin purse.
“Great,” I replied, “I’m almost out again. Do you think it will take longer than a week?”
“A week?” Roxanna gave a half smile as though unsure of whether I was trying to be funny. “It will take two months at least. Luckily for us this is harvest season. Sometimes it can take half a year before anything is available.”
I forced a yawn—a tactic to disguise my rising panic. “And how about if I take an advance on my share?” My voice cracked slightly on the word “advance.”
“I’m sorry, I just don’t have it,” Roxanna said with a finality that silenced me. She began rolling a pill and I let her finish and smoke it—a long five minutes—before making one last plea.
“Could I at least get one more refill?” I was desperate. If she agreed, I might be able to stretch out the amount over two months. This would mean opium eating but I saw no way out. If only I could hang on until the new shipment came in, then I could relax for a while.
“Oh, all right.”
Her tone was mock annoyance but I knew Roxanna was okay with it. My having come up with the money to chip in surely mattered for something. She let me count the drops of opium into my bottle as she took a cigarette break. I pushed the tip of the dropper as deep into her bottle as I could, believing the chandu was thicker at the bottom. When Roxanna was preoccupied with stubbing out her cigarette, I pinched a couple of uncounted squirts into my own bottle.
A week went by. A third of the bottle vanished but I had yet to start taking the opium orally. I dreaded it. The taste was absolutely hideous—a grimace-inducing bitterness unlike anything I had ever experienced. Then there was the fact that eating opium affected my digestive system like liquid cement. Worst of all, eating this rare chandu was a ridiculous act of desperation. It was like eating Havana cigars just for the nicotine. I couldn’t bring myself to do it. It was low. It was base. The next thing I’d be doing was smoking dross like Armand Hoorde.
I thought about the pieces of my collection that I had sold, a layout tray and matching components that I would never in a million years find again. It was a huge waste, and all it got me was a couple ounces of the narcotic and perhaps more in the distant future. When in need of a pipe, I may have been too muddled with yearnings to see things clearly, but smoking a few pills made my mind lucid, and I was under no illusions. I could now admit to myself that opium was firmly in control, but I still believed there must be a way out.
Again, I went back to my books. Curatives for the opium habit have a long history. In China, the first asylums for treating opium addicts date to the late nineteenth century. Physicians of the day reasoned that if there was a cure for opium addiction, the abundant Chinese pharmacopoeia—thousands of years in the making—would contain it. Yet after trying myriad substitutes, including deadly belladonna, arsenic, and strychnine, Chinese doctors concluded that the only “effective” remedies were the ones that contained opiates. Dross was mixed with herbs and the resulting pellets were sold as an antidote for the opium craving. Opium smokers got hooked on the pellets but often went back to the pipe, taking their opium orally only when there was a need for secrecy. In times when opium use was actively suppressed, Chinese authorities opened treatment centers that were nothing more than prisons—and so rife with corruption that those who could afford to pay bribes were able to smoke their way through treatment.
Christian missionaries in China also got in on the act, establishing hospitals specifically to cure the opium habit. Compared to Chinese institutions, these were usually better staffed and equipped. The missionary doctors had read up on the latest Western methods of rehabilitation—yet these were fundamentally no different than the dross pellets of the Chinese. Morphine was for a time used as a substitute for opium, and daily injections by the missionaries created among the Chinese untold thousands of “morphine Christians” who crowded churches, clenching Bibles and howling out hymns as their withdrawal-wracked bodies shuddered in anticipation of the post-sermon fix.
Some missionary doctors forbade the use of opiates to cushion the agony of withdrawal, believing the addicts’ passage through detoxification should be as painful as possible so that the miracle of the Christian cure would be indelibly impressed upon their memories. When it came to cruelty, however, the Chinese authorities were not to be outdone. An opium addict with a history of relapse might be “rehabilitated” through mutilation: a notch of flesh was cut out of the upper lip, making it impossible to get an airtight seal on an opium pipe’s mouthpiece.
In America, there was no end to the quackery on offer for the desperate. Denouncing them all, H. H. Kane wrote:
There are quacks in the West who put up medicine which will, they claim, enable a smoker to abandon the pipe without suffering. It is a cunning bait, but a delusive one, it having led many to ruin; for containing some preparation of opium or morphine, they often fix the victim in the double habit of smoking and taking the drug by the mouth. These rascals deserve a punishment that no law now in existence can give them.
I have in my collection an advertisement for one such American cure, “Dr. S. B. Collins’ Painless Opium Antidote.” An illustration on the ad shows an opium pipe, lamp, needle, and container, as well as a “Chinese opium smoker” putting the paraphernalia to use. For anyone in the know, however, the drawings instantly put Dr. Collins’s cure to question—whoever drew the illustrations for the ad had certainly never witnessed opium being smoked, or its paraphernalia, firsthand.
A read through Dr. Kane’s description of his own opium cure might make one wonder if he had more in common with Dr. Collins’s ilk than he cared to admit. Kane listed some of the remedies used at the De Quincey Home, his opium addiction treatment center in New York. These included chili peppers, iced champagne, and a tincture made from cannabis. The patient was treated to “electro-massage, hot baths with cold spray” and “a course of reading … to elevate the mental and moral tone of the individual.”
&nb
sp; For me, seeking professional medical help in Thailand was absolutely out of the question, and not just because I was short on cash. Entering a hospital and being completely frank about my opium addiction was a great risk because I wouldn’t know until it was too late if the staff was obliged under the law to alert the authorities.
Thailand may still have a reputation for tolerating illicit narcotics, but that is the Thailand of the past. A devastating methamphetamine epidemic that began in the 1990s was answered by the government with firepower. The ensuing “war on drugs” killed thousands. Not that people no longer get addicted to illegal drugs in Thailand—they do. It is well known that wealthy Thais go mainly to the United States for drug rehabilitation, checking into the same posh institutions that look after American celebrities. They do this not only to avoid scandal in Thailand, but to keep the authorities from becoming involved. As for the average Thai, I had no idea where they turned when saddled with an addiction.
An advertisement for a nineteenth-century quack remedy for opium addiction. The woeful inaccuracy of the ad’s depiction of opium smoking and paraphernalia cast grave doubts on the remedy’s effectiveness. (From the author’s collection)
I continued to search the Internet for ideas. Then I remembered reading about something years before—a certain Buddhist monastery located in a province near Bangkok. Known as Wat Tham Krabok, the monastery had a long-established drug detox program that was unusual enough to have been the subject of the occasional news story. This place might be just what I needed: an effective, discreet, and inexpensive way to get unhooked. The monastery had a website and I read through it all, the photos and testimonials giving me real hope. The more I read the more I was certain I’d found the right solution. After emailing the wat (Thai for “Buddhist monastery”) to make sure there was a vacancy, I asked if they could send a car to pick me up near my apartment. It would have been just as easy—and probably cheaper—to take a taxi, but I didn’t want the agitation of having to evade a taxi driver’s nosy questions about why I was visiting a drug detox center.
On November 18, 2007, I set a date and time: the 21st at one in the afternoon. It had been roughly seven months since my trip to Europe had primed me for daily smoking; four months since I used my birthday as an excuse for a solo binge at my apartment; three weeks since my attempt to quit on Halloween. I spent the remaining three days physically and mentally preparing myself for detoxification. Some of the few things that I needed to bring were toiletries and a sarong. Most everything else would be provided.
On the morning of the 21st, I woke up at ten. For breakfast I ate a triple-decker peanut butter and jelly sandwich on raisin bread and washed it down with goat’s milk. After eating and showering, I reclined to seven bowls. My concentration was poor: Pills burned and collapsed, and pipe number five was wasted. I just wanted enough opium to keep my system tight—to be free from sneezing or yawning or any of the other initial symptoms of withdrawal. I had broken down most of my layout the previous night and begun washing chandu-stained accoutrements and putting them away. My layout that morning was down to the bare essentials: pipe, lamp, needle, and tray.
I rolled my last pill without any ceremony—it seemed counterproductive to make a big deal of it. Then I quickly began taking apart the pipe, flushing dross and gee-rags down the toilet, wiping down everything, and placing the pieces back onto dusty shelves. Upon rolling up the woven-cane mat, I saw that my constant reclining over months had worn the lacquer from the wooden parquet floor underneath. There was a ghostly mark on the hardwood: an outline of my body in repose. If I was successful at quitting—and I was determined to be—this scar on my living room floor would be the only remaining physical evidence of my opium habit.
Better [for the smoker] to die breaking off opium than to live with the sin upon him.… If he thus died God would be pleased with him.
—A. P. Quirmbach, From Opium Fiend to Preacher (1907)
When Thailand closed its government-licensed opium dens in 1959, the move created an exodus of opium addicts from Bangkok. Opium detoxification centers were so few and so inadequately staffed that for the vast majority of smokers the chance for rehabilitation was nonexistent. In the neighborhood of Talat Noi, known for its warren of licensed opium dens, regulars were turned away and went home to smoke the last of their supply, knowing full well that to buy more would be an expensive and dangerous proposition. Some turned to heroin. Others, knowing they were doomed but unwilling to be a burden on their families, plotted a final escape. One by one they toasted their last pills and then, before the pain of withdrawal could cause them to lose their courage, the addicts slipped away into the night, hitting the road for sparsely populated rural provinces where they could die alone and unknown.
One such hopeless addict happened upon a Buddhist monastery in Saraburi Province, some eighty miles north of Bangkok. All monasteries serve as very basic places of accommodation for traveling Buddhists, and the addict stopped there to ask for a place to sleep before journeying on. The abbot granted permission and at that point the addict confessed his predicament and begged the abbot to help him, explaining that if he didn’t get some kind of relief from the pain of withdrawal, he was sure to die during the night. The abbot demurred. He had no experience with opium addiction and knew of no way he might help. The man was desperate. He implored the abbot to aid him in any way he could. Finally, simply to appease him, the abbot plucked a petal from a lotus blossom that had been left as an offering on an altar. Giving the lotus petal a blessing, the abbot then handed it to the addict, who promptly ate it.
The next morning, the abbot expected to find the addict dead but was surprised to see that he was still very much alive and claiming that he had experienced only mild withdrawal symptoms the previous night. When the man once again asked for permission to stay the night and for the abbot to bless another lotus petal for him to consume, the abbot’s interest was piqued. He didn’t really think the lotus petal was doing any good; perhaps it was simply the addict’s willingness to believe in a cure.
The addict’s second night at the wat was easier than the first, and after several days, the abbot could see that the man was gaining strength and had a healthy appetite. Feeling that he was cured, the former addict profusely thanked the abbot, but before he could leave, the abbot made him promise not to tell anyone what had happened. The man promised to keep it a secret. Then, about a week later, crowds of opium addicts began arriving at the monastery. Not long after, the former addict returned to the monastery to explain himself. He told the abbot that he had tried not to break his promise, but when he arrived home alive and healthy, word got around and he was soon besieged by frantic opium addicts begging to know how he was cured.
The abbot, unable to turn away the suffering addicts, let them stay at the monastery and blessed lotus petals for everyone, while at the same time seeking the advice of a renowned herbalist—a Buddhist nun who happened to be the abbot’s aunt. The nun produced a formula for a curative potion that she said came to her in a dream. Gathering hundreds of different herbs that grew in the craggy limestone mountains towering over the monastery, the nun then described a method for brewing the tonic to the abbot, who kept it a secret between himself and a handful of monks within the wat. The ingredients of this miraculous potion have been quietly passed down to the present day.
That was the story as it was given to me by a Buddhist monk six days after my arrival at the monastery. I knew none of this beforehand, but had I known the legend, I cannot say it would have inspired much confidence. I had been in Southeast Asia too long to believe in miracle cures. Superstition and the occult are part of the local color—interesting, yes—but not something I trusted my life with. In Thailand there are herbal remedies for AIDS and cancer. There are talismanic tattoos that can stop bullets. There are Buddhist and Hindu amulets that allow one to survive the most horrific car wreck. And there is this monastery that claims it has a secret potion to cure drug addiction—made from a recipe that
was revealed to a Buddhist nun in a dream. I didn’t know the story when I first arrived at the monastery, but even if I had, I would certainly have gone along with it. At that juncture I had little choice.
Via email I had told a representative of Wat Tham Krabok where I would wait for the driver and what I’d be wearing. Having thought it over carefully during my last pipe, I had decided I would dress “smart casual,” which in Thailand works for all but the most formal occasions. Of course, when compared to the average Westerner in Thailand—whether expat or tourist—I would be overdressed, but that was the whole point of the exercise. If there were other farang addicts at the wat, I wanted to immediately stand out from them in the eyes of the Thai monks. I would be required to change into a uniform at the detox facility, but hopefully my first impression would be a good one. Like most people, the Thai judge books by their covers. Never mind that I was a junkie; if I dressed like a gentleman, I would be received as a gentleman junkie.
Despite all my planning, things started out badly. The driver who came to pick me up was an older man, and he brought his whole family—his wife and a grown-up son and daughter—along for the ride. I wanted the trip to the monastery to go as quickly and painlessly as possible. I had picked Bangkok’s main railway station as a rendezvous point because it was situated next to an on-ramp for the expressway. I had chosen the time of departure because I knew traffic would be light at that hour. Bangkok traffic is so awful that if one makes a single bad decision about routes or timing, it can end up causing hours and hours of delay. I didn’t want any unexpected surprises, but that’s exactly what I got.
Opium Fiend Page 29
