Critical Mick

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Last Escape: Recovering from Addiction at Wat Thamkrabok
by Paul Garrigan
Bangkok Book House, 2008

Desperation and Hope

The extent of my knowledge about Thailand, before reading Paul Garrigan's Last Escape: Recovering from Addiction at Wat Thamkrabok, was an uncle's assurances that bananas there were customarily peeled from the bottom rather than the top. I had certainly never heard of Wat Thamkrabok monastery before reading Garrigan's memoir of his time there.

Garrigan, an Irish ex-pat who has lived in England, Scotland, Saudi Arabia and the Far East for much of his adult life, kick-starts his motorbike at the start of his account for a U-Turn journey over the Burmese border to get a fresh tourist visa on his passport. Rather than stopping in Lampang for a night of drunken excess, he crosses a large part of Thailand on his Honda to reach the Buddhist detox temple of Wat Thamkrabok, dwelling heavily on the awareness that this is his last chance to get sober. The descriptions of passing scenery blend with recollections of a medical test which warned of serious liver damage. That had been four years of serious drinking earlier, before the constant abdominal ache began.

Each short chapter follows this format: taking Paul Garrigan into the routine of Wat Thamkrabok and into meditation of the life-long journey that had brought him there. Garrigan shares with raw honesty his Irish childhood, his parents' divorce, the trouble with the Gardai in Cork, his teaching, nursing and bar jobs, girlfriends, relapses, relocations and increasingly desperate struggles to break free from alcohol.

Addiction, it turns out, is another subject that I had little understanding of.

Wat Thamkrabok is a Buddhist temple, but opens its door freely to addicts the world over. Its detoxification methods involve diet, steam, exercise, and a week-long program of induced vomiting. Garrigan holds no detail back. Last Escape, however, isn't written for voyeuristic thrills. Garrigan relates that the real key is the temple's request that visitors commit to a Satja vow to break their addiction. This promise and the meditation techniques taught at Thamkrabok have proven successful to many addicts for whom AA and other Western methods of recovery have failed.

Last Escape introduces the stories of the others who shared Garrigan's dorm. A fellow Dub named Matt and his girlfriend Sharon have travelled to Thailand in hopes of freedom from heroin. Bill, a Canadian and possible Hell's Angel, came because of cocaine problems. George from Glasgow is a fellow alcoholic. Each has their own story and way of reacting to the treatment. Not everyone will succeed.

Garrigan's characterization and dialogue are relatively unpolished: one character who doe nothing but complain and insult is suddenly a good friend. As well, the descriptions of Thailand and Burma lack the magic of Pete McCarthy's excellent travelogue, The Road to McCarthy- though this is to judge against standards that Paul Garrigan was not attempting to match. Garrigan is writing Last Escape to tell his own story without artistic embellishment, and he does so movingly and effectively.

Actually I do know people with Thai brides

Critical Mick says: Last Escape is an honest and inspiring memoir. It shares the power to help those whom other methods have failed. It is a story of hope that deserves to be heard.

and these are marriages that have lasted years.

Read Critical Mick's October 2008 interview with Paul Garrigan!

And I have heard that One Night in Bangkok song

John Mooney's article Thai monks give Irish addicts €2-a-day detox appeared in The Sunday Times on 28 September 2008.

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This Page Was Last Updated On 6 October, 2008.