Critical Mick

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Critical Mick discusses karma and vomiting with Irish Ex-Pat Paul Garrigan, author of Last Escape: Recovering from Addiction at Wat Thamkrabok. An unruly email interview, October 2008.

Critical Mick: What's a nice Irish boy from a good family doing in a Thai detox temple?

Paul Garrigan: It is tempting to look back on my life and see it all as one big narrative leading to where I am today; sort of re-writing the past to explain where I am now. I suppose we all do that. When I admitted myself to Wat Thamkrabok I certainly felt like I belonged there.

Critical Mick's review of Paul Garrigan's Last Escape: Recovering from Addiction at Wat Thamkrabok

Paul Garrigan, con't: I suppose that the reason why I ended up in a Thai detox was that I was making a bit of a mess of my life and wasn't happy with the situation - my past karma led me there. CM: Seriously: Chapter One of your memoir, Last Escape: Recovering from Addiction at Wat Thamkrabok, brings you through the gates. How and when did you first hear about Wat Thamkrabok? PG: Well Mick, I came across the temple during an internet search, At the time I was living in a remote part of Thailand and would like to tell people that I was 'living the dream'. PG: The village certainly had all the ingredients of a paradise; tropical scenery, easy-going villagers for neighbours, sunshine every day, and living far away from the McWorld. This was my 'Lake Isle of Innisfree', but the 'peace that came dropping slow' needed to be helped along with alcohol. PG: The village was perfect in many ways, but unfortunately my addiction was spoiling things. My days revolved completely around alcohol and so the external decoration didn't really mean that much. I might as well have been living in a bus station in Birmingham for all the help that I was getting from the peaceful environment.

PG: Most days I would start drinking in the morning and by the evening would be drunkenly surfing the internet looking for any web-sites that offered information about addiction recovery. I would join these recovery internet forums, but would often only visit the once because I would never be able to remember my forum nickname or password. It was desperate really and sometimes it is easy to forget just how bad things were. The worst thing was that this behaviour was not new to me; I had been trying to get away from alcohol for fifteen years. Before I became a regular internet user I would spend a lot of time in pubs reading addiction recovery books. A bit sad really isn't it?

PG: Anyway, the night that I came across the website for Wat Thamkrabok was just another of these drunken web-crawls. The information leapt out at me and for the first time in years I really felt that there was a possibility that something could work for me. The temple seemed to be everything that I was looking for. The strange thing was that I had not heard about the temple prior to this despite my searches. In a way I'm glad about this because as the saying goes; 'when the pupil is ready, the teacher appears'.

CM: Tell us about Wat Thamkrabok. (Yes, I know you've written a whole book on the subject… just a summary will do.)

PG: I think though that the real secret to the temple's success is the satja; the vow to never drink or use again. You can only make this vow once and so you can only go through the detox once; no second chances. This is so different from the 'revolving-door' policies of treatment centres in the West. The Thais believe that if you keep your satja then great things will come into your life and this has been my experience.

CM: Is this that joint where Pete Doherty went? Man I hate that guy. I can only think of one song he's ever done. Dude doesn't deserve to be famous.

PG: I hadn't really heard about Pete Doherty until I went to the temple. I have been away from the music scene in Ireland and the UK for a few years and missed out on his rise to fame.

PG: I heard that he came to the temple, but discharged himself in a rush. According to the newspapers he claimed that the monks hit him with bamboo sticks and forced him to take the medicine. He also apparently made lots of other crazy allegations and gave the temple a lot of bad press. You still occasionally get people using his reports as evidence that Wat Thamkrabok is some type of crazy place and not to be recommended.

PG: It annoys me that people like Pete Doherty might turn people off getting help from the temple. Addicts tend to be a suspicious lot and any bad press can be enough to sway them against getting help.

PG: Despite this though I can't really be angry with him. I have done the same myself to other groups who have tried to help me. I stayed sober in AA for two years in my mid-twenties but later would rant about how crap they were. I am sure if Wat Thamkrabok hadn't worked I would have no problem voicing my negative opinions. Alcoholics and addicts can be ungrateful bastards.

PG: The thing I do feel bad about is the Thai monks. Thai people do not understand this type of behaviour. They are offering a service for free and it is thrown back in their faces. A while back you had 'adventure tourists' checking into the temple for a laugh. How do you explain this behaviour to Thai people; this lack of respect just does not exist in their culture.

CM: I hate puking.

PG: If you are an alcoholic like I was then puking becomes an occupational hazard. Puking accompanied my early days of drinking when I hadn't the tolerance and would vomit after a flagon of cider. Later puking became the sign of a good night out. At the end of my drinking I would vomit until I was able to get a couple of bottles inside me in the morning. It seems appropriate that puking should be part of the cure somehow.

PG: The medicine at the temple isn't pleasant, but it does work. It certainly makes you teachable anyway. It is hard to continue with the usual arrogant addict behaviour when you are kneeling in front of a bucket, vomit coming out your nose, and facing a crowd of people who are clapping hands and singing songs at you. You can't buy humility like that.

CM: The chapters blend descriptions of the temple treatments with remembrances (meditations, even?) of the life experiences that brought you there. Some of the stories were surprising. The fact that you took a job in Saudi Arabia, for instance, expecting it to be an alcohol-free country- then finding it overflowing with homebrew!

CM: I understand you are currently working on a novel.

PG: Yes, I have almost finished a novel. It is the story of a terminally ill man trying to escape his diagnosis by running away to Thailand. I hope that it will get published, but I have no idea when this might happen. I really enjoyed writing it.

CM: What other accounts of addiction and release do you recommend? There's a title called Heroin from Maverick House that looks interesting, but I have little experience with the subject matter.

PG: I haven't read Heroin yet, but it sounds interesting and I will need to look out for it. The problem with many books about addiction is that they don't sound very realistic. I remember reading A Million Little Pieces and thinking that although it was entertaining that it was complete bullshit. This was before the news came out that it contained a million little lies.

Editorial Note: The actually is a book called A Million Little Lies written by Pablo Fenjves in response to Frey's suspect memoir.

CM: Have we read any of the same shtuff? (Critical Mick Full alphabetic index) Was my review way off about them?

PG: I read Life of Pi and though that it was clever and thought provoking. I like books like that.

PG: I agree that McCarthy's Bar was a good read; although I can't remember much about it now.

CM: What's on your nightstand at the moment? (books, I mean, but other items if you wanna....)

CM: I just finished reading a non-fiction book called The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. It was interesting to be reminded just what an unpredictable world we live in.

PG: The next book on my reading list is Crime by Irvine Welsh.

PG: There isn't any English bookstores in the city where I now live - so books are precious.

CM: Do they even have nightstands in Thailand?

The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. It is highly improbably that this book has any relation to David Mitchell's magnificent novel Black Swan Green.

PG: Nightstands are thorny issue as my son tends to swipe everything off them. It is expected in Thailand that your children share your bed. In some families children share the parents' bed right up until they reach pu-berty. I suggested to my wife that we put him in a cot, but she reacted as if I was saying that we should abandon him in a train station. So I do have a nightstand, but it doesn't have much on it recently. CM: In Last Escape, you've settled well enough in to Thailand to act as translator of language and customs to the fellow Westerners (Farang) that you dormed with. What have you found most surprising about the country? What small changes surprised you? PG: The most surprising thing about Thailand is that the Thais really do think differently from people in the West. The whole society is based around community and saving face. PG: I recently attended a Thai culture course and they were explaining how this feeling of community leads to a feeling of safety and this explains why motorbikes speed around Thailand with up to six children hanging off them. The Thais just don't consider the danger and fully believe that it if you crash it is due to bad karma.

PG: Another odd thing is that a Thai will never criticize a superior. We see this a lot in school. My Thai colleagues will never cause the Thai administration to lose face by directly questioning their decisions. Instead they will gossip among themselves until the news gets back to those in charge.

PG: Many westerners criticize the Thais for their culture and way of doing thing, but at the end of the day it's there country. I am happy with things here and try and avoid rocking the boat.

CM: Is there any specific thing that you miss about Dublin?

PG: I think that Dublin is a great city. I am determined that my son grows to love his Irish heritage as well as his Thai. I miss many things about Dublin such as my family, the humour, and decent bookstores. I also miss the change in seasons.

CM: Final question- do you miss peeling bananas from the top? I've heard they're always peeled from the bottom in Thailand.

PG: I've been living here for the last few years and have never seen any such thing.

CM: Many thanks, Paul, and may great things continue to come into your life!

How is Paul doing? How is his novel coming along? What's the latest on the Wat? Paul Garrigan's blog can be found at http://paulgarrigan.blogspot.com

Yo! This interview transcript and all content on the DFA Guide site are copyright 2008 Mick Halpin. All links to other sites and documents are copyright to whatever source wrote something cool enough for Mick to give it a referral. Try to claim them as your own work and bad karma will catch up with you, baby. Believe it.

Irate, huh? Managed to piss off another one? Direct your hatemail to mick @ mickhalpin dot com.

This Page Was Last Updated On 9 October, 2008.