Getting sober in Phuket
Claire Connell


Phuket's Alcoholics Anonymous is a group aimed at helping alcoholics get sober. Photo: Carbon NYC

PHUKET: -- For two foreigners who came to live in Phuket, the island’s cheap booze and sunshine wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. Instead, it fuelled their alcoholism. They share their stories about how they got sober thanks to the local branch of Alcoholics Anonymous.

Frank went to his first Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) meeting in Phuket as the result of an ultimatum from his wife, who put an advertisement for AA under his nose as a final message – sober up or I’ll leave you.

He was pretty much at rock bottom. He’d arrived in Phuket from the United Kingdom with his wife full of optimism, but work had now dried up, he had financial trouble, low self esteem, and wasn’t coping. Simultaneously, drinking had gone from being fun, to, in recent months, a desperate means of escape.

“It really got to the point where she was going to leave me if I didn’t do something,” Frank says.

“My wife said, ‘You’re going to ring this number,’ and for some reason, against my better judgement, I did. I just thought sometimes I drank too much and it got out of hand.

“I had noticed [though] that my own behaviour had gotten progressively worse when I was drinking. I was getting resentful, very nasty, swearing and I’d be really unpleasant to people, including my wife and friends.”

On Thursday, April 1, 2011, Frank went to AA for the very first time, and he’s been sober ever since.

“When I went to AA the desire to drink just went away, and that’s what a lot of people find. But I think you have to be at rock bottom. I think if you’re still on the way down you might think you’ll be alright.

“But I reached the bottom, where I was completely defeated. The first thing you do in AA is admit you’re powerless over alcohol, and you can’t do that until you’ve had the stuffing kicked out of you.”

Frank says that since he started drinking at around age 18, he had been drinking every day, and for a long time he was pretty functional while drunk.

“I would get up, and around 10am I’d have [my first] drink. By the middle of the afternoon I’d be wasted. When I started work in the 1980s, the drinking culture was big. Drinking at lunchtime, at work, and straight after work was normal.”

But when he moved to Phuket, his behaviour deteriorated. Frank’s grateful the intervention from his wife came at the right time.

“I remember sitting in the first AA meeting, and it was like a comfort blanket where I didn’t have to be in control, and I didn’t have to do anything. It was a really nice feeling.

“All my life I had felt all that pressure, from being a father, working as the breadwinner... so this was a relief. Then I thought, ‘There’s something here; this can do something for me’.

Fast forward two and a half years and Frank hasn’t touched a drop since.

“I don’t need it [alcohol] and I don’t want it anymore, and I don’t miss it. And my life is not just fine without it, it’s brilliant. But you can’t know this until you have been through the mill of going down and down.

“The amount of money you save is huge too. I used to like online shopping on iTunes when I was drunk. And now all of that has gone and there are so many practical benefits.

“But the revelation is that it’s actually really nice to feel sober. And I think people are frightened of that – that they’ll be a party pooper. But actually no one cares what you’re drinking.”

EVERY NIGHT WAS NEW YEAR’S EVE

“I remember being in Patong in 1982, in a bar, saying to the other drunks, “This is either the best decision or the worst decision that I’ve made – to come to Phuket,” says recovered alcoholic Peter.

“I decided it was the best because eventually I got to AA. I look at alcohol today like it’s battery acid.”

Peter, who has now been sober for around 30 years, is an active member of Phuket’s AA community, which has 12 meetings a week in English (plus some in Scandinavian), in six locations around the island.

He credits AA for getting him sober at the age of 26, after he began drinking at around age 12 in his home country of Canada. When he arrived in Phuket 31 years ago, the island was like a wonderland.

“Coming to Thailand was like a free for all. There was drink, girls, no police, and no one cared what you did. It was like Christmas and every night was New Year’s Eve,” Peter explains.

“I was never a daily drinker. I would stay sober for some time then I would go out and have a big blast. That would last some days.

“But one of the important things about being an alcoholic is the effect that alcohol has on you. It’s not how often you drink or how much you drink. It’s the effect it has on your life.”

“I was here working, drinking, and partying, as you do in your mid 20s. I was on Koh Samui living on a sailboat. At that time I was drinking a lot, but I was holding it together. The captain, Bob, was a sober guy who had been to AA, and he was a friend I had known from Chiang Mai.

“I had no intentions of joining [AA], but after I listened to his story I could see parts of me in it. It confirmed my own suspicious that I had been pushing it out [of my brain] because I didn’t want to come to terms with being an alcoholic.

“My idea of an alcoholic was the [guy in the] long coat, shoes and no socks, who lived on a park bench. I wasn’t an alcoholic.

“Turns out only five per cent of alcoholics end up on a park bench. Around 95 per cent of us continue on, like a bull in a china shop, through life. Many never have an opportunity to get to AA.

“We [bob and I] got talking – this was in February, 1984 – and I said okay I’ll give it a go, but I was sceptical. I thought, is this some sort of cult? But the more I went, the longer I got away from alcohol and the more I started to get well and treat my disease.

“I haven’t had a drink since the first time I spoke to Bob, which is about 29 years ago.”
For Peter, his alcoholism did not start with a particularly problematic childhood, money issues, or any of the other “typical” triggers one might think. He came from a happy family and life was good.

“But alcohol had a certain effect on me that it didn’t have on others. It was a magic elixir. It made everything look good, no matter what was going on, a couple of drinks and reality was upgraded, the colours got clearer and the picture got sharper.”

But eventually, Peter’s quality of life began to decrease because he was always putting alcohol first, before his job, family and everything else. No matter what, alcohol was always more important.

As for whether Phuket’s combination of sun, sand, surf and suds is ready-made for alcoholics, Peter disagrees, saying that he believes alcoholism is a disease, and can happen wherever you live.

“I don’t think people are more likely to drink in Phuket and I don’t think it’s any worse here than anywhere in the world.

“Drinking a lot doesn’t make you an alcoholic – a regular drinker can drink, stop, and decide to not drink again, but an alcoholic cannot do that.

“Thailand doesn’t recognise alcoholism as a disease the way many countries do. Sixty years ago in our [home] countries, alcoholism was recognised as a moral problem – it wasn’t a disease. If you drank too much it was because you were weak-willed, or had a bad upbringing, or other factors.

“Now it’s clearly recognised as a disease, so the medical profession don’t have problems with recognising it as such. In Thailand, they haven’t quite got there yet,” says Peter.

Since Peter joined AA, and every day since then really, his life has improved.

“You name an area, and it will have gotten so much better: my job, my finances, my relationships and my friends. The biggest thing is how I feel. If something comes up, I’ve got a place where I can go to talk to people.”

Peter says AA equipped him with what he refers to as a “tool kit” for tackling problems in life, rather than turning to drink as an answer.

“You meet people who have had similar experiences. You think, ‘I’m just like that’, and it’s about identification. I’m comfortable in my own skin now which is something I’ve never been before.”

There is a real fellowship and unity that comes from AA, agrees Frank.

Usually, he says, there’s some element to the meeting which provokes a discussion, for example someone will read something from AA literature, and then generally people share. If people are new, then the others try to give the person a little bit more insight.
“But no one ever gives any advice,” Frank says.

“A lot of people – myself included – would be resentful of that. If someone told me what to do, you’d never see me again. It’s always very welcoming and very opening. It’s a spiritual programme, but it’s not religious.

“The spiritual element is very powerful, and that’s the reason it works. And it does work really well, and you can’t question that because there’s a million people in recovery.

“And then you walk through Phuket when you’re not drinking, and you see how beautiful it is and how great it is to be here.”

Source: http://www.thephuketnews.com/getting-sober-in-phuket-42074.php


-- Phuket News 2013-09-25

Thanks for this article. It's good to know there is a place to go.

My experience with the alcoholics i have met is they are desperate for a drink by lunch time

And the rest of us remain Alcoholics Unanimous!

Good read thanks !

Good on these people for their courageous public service

Why do we never see articles praising people who've been teetotalers all their lives? (Outside of The Watchtower, I mean.)

Well done guys....great achievement...never had that issue myself so it is hard to understand

Why do we never see articles praising people who've been teetotalers all their lives? (Outside of The Watchtower, I mean.)

No offense, but what's to praise? Normalcy?

One of the good things within AA is the basics. I'm 45 years sober, yet Frank and I share much common ground. I stay sober one day at a time. I have the knowledge that one drink would be a disaster - we share that understanding. The accumulated wisdom and experience of people in AA is certainly a greater power than just my own; that's why we stick together.I'm up in Chiang Mai, never been to Phuket - yet have this affinity with the AA folk there.

More success stories like this, please.

Why do we never see articles praising people who've been teetotalers all their lives? (Outside of The Watchtower, I mean.)

No offense, but what's to praise? Normalcy?

From what I've seen, the norm is to drink. Not drinking makes one exceptional.

Please remember don't ride bike to hotel when drunk as many accident happen. Please take tuk-tuk and leave the bike !

Why do we never see articles praising people who've been teetotalers all their lives? (Outside of The Watchtower, I mean.)

No offense, but what's to praise? Normalcy?

From what I've seen, the norm is to drink. Not drinking makes one exceptional.

Granted Dararasmi, more people on this planet drink alcohol than don't, but you may want to do a little research on the figures. The Betty Ford Center (for one) claims one third of the population of the US drink NO alocohol at all. I repeat, "What's to praise". Drinking or not drinking is totally up to the individual. And, just because people drink doesn't make them alcoholics now does it? And just because you don't drink really doesn't (IMO of course) mean you deserve some sort of medal or even recognition unless ... you were an alcoholic yourself at one time and through perseverence and will power have joined those who (one day at a time) have ceased to drink but have not ceased to be an alcoholic. If that is the case, then I will tip my hat to you and offer the praise you deserve for being strong enough to quit.

Please remember don't ride bike to hotel when drunk as many accident happen. Please take tuk-tuk and leave the bike !

Sometimes "negotiating" with a tuk-tuk driver is more dangerous than driving drunk.

One thing I notice in Thailand is, because a farang bar owner can't work in his own bar, he has to sit on the other side of the bar, bored. He can't serve customers, clean up, stock fridges etc.

If he could work in his own bar, sure, he may enjoy a drink with customers, but it might cut down his alcohol intake, for the 7 nights a week, as he would have other duties to do, other than chat and drink with customers.

As it is, he sits at the bar from around 7pm to 2am, bored, and then has to talk with customers who want to have a drink with the owner, which would usually involve "rounds" so, the alcohol intake is high. After these customers pay their bill and leave, others may come in, and it all starts again.

I know some bar owners that do like the bar girls and the "vodka coke" is just "coke" - not for the rip off, but to regulate alcohol intake.

The bar owner can't stay home some nights, because "he" is the business, and also because of the likelihood of staff stealing. If he's not in his bar, meeting, greeting and drinking with customers - he goes broke. He has to be in his bar, socialising with customers, and this usually involves drinking.

Some bar owners I know are actually happy when there is a Buddha Day - so they can dry out.

End result, many small beer bar owners end up with an alcohol problem.

There's great AA in Bangkok too. I came here, from San Francisco, 6 months sober 27 years ago, went to a meeting on Soi Ruam Rudee, and never felt the need to drink again.

Alcoholics who get sober understand they don't deserve praise, the have received a gift and want to help others (only those who want it) find their own gift.

One thing I notice in Thailand is, because a farang bar owner can't work in his own bar, he has to sit on the other side of the bar, bored. He can't serve customers, clean up, stock fridges etc.

If he could work in his own bar, sure, he may enjoy a drink with customers, but it might cut down his alcohol intake, for the 7 nights a week, as he would have other duties to do, other than chat and drink with customers.

As it is, he sits at the bar from around 7pm to 2am, bored, and then has to talk with customers who want to have a drink with the owner, which would usually involve "rounds" so, the alcohol intake is high. After these customers pay their bill and leave, others may come in, and it all starts again.

I know some bar owners that do like the bar girls and the "vodka coke" is just "coke" - not for the rip off, but to regulate alcohol intake.

The bar owner can't stay home some nights, because "he" is the business, and also because of the likelihood of staff stealing. If he's not in his bar, meeting, greeting and drinking with customers - he goes broke. He has to be in his bar, socialising with customers, and this usually involves drinking.

Some bar owners I know are actually happy when there is a Buddha Day - so they can dry out.

End result, many small beer bar owners end up with an alcohol problem.

I knew a bar owner in Phuket who whilst a really nice guy when sober was a real “Jekyll and Hyde” when drunk. He once confided to me that the only reasons to have a bar in Thailand were because “you can drink at cost price and your mates come to see you all the time”

Because of the above scenario, he was drunk most nights – his lovely wife used to lead him home at closing time with him usually cursing and swearing. Eventually his wife made him an ultimatum – the bar or me! So, he sold the bar and they now build and sell houses – they’re happy, healthy and wealthy. He drinks when he WANTS to and the amount he WANTS to and gets happily merry rather than swearing drunk.

Drinking or not is a lifestyle choice – those of us (myself included) who can take or leave alcohol are lucky. Unfortunately if you work in the bar trade, sometimes the choice element is taken away from you.

If your partner is driving you insane because they're always out on the piss, there is help for you as well, now! Al Anon is a fellowship for the families and friends of alcoholics (whether still drinking or now sober), who gather to share their experience, strength and hope to help others deal with the disease of alcoholism using detachment with love. We cannot always change the behaviour of our loved ones, but we can change ourselves! If you're interested in meetings, join us at The Green Man in Chalong, on Saturdays at 1pm. We look forward to seeing you there!

The bar owner can't stay home some nights, because "he" is the business, and also because of the likelihood of staff stealing. If he's not in his bar, meeting, greeting and drinking with customers - he goes broke. He has to be in his bar, socialising with customers, and this usually involves drinking.

Can confirm this. I was a bar owner for 5 years, in Hua Hin during the nineties. Sitting there talking with customers you automatically drink a lot every night. Being sober, it would be difficult to listen to their <deleted> anyway. It was a cheerful period, drenched in copious amounts of alcohol. Fond memories, but I wouldn't do it again.

Probably if you are a bar owner in the West it is different, you are busy serving drinks and tallying up all the time. Also in a neighborhood bar, the customers know each other, and keep themselves entertained, whilst in a tourist bar somebody needs to chat up people who come in, otherwise they won't stay long.

Might very well be a nice experience to run a bar in Thailand for a while, but I don't think it can be recommended to do it for a very long time.

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The bar owner can't stay home some nights, because "he" is the business, and also because of the likelihood of staff stealing. If he's not in his bar, meeting, greeting and drinking with customers - he goes broke. He has to be in his bar, socialising with customers, and this usually involves drinking.

Can confirm this. I was a bar owner for 5 years, in Hua Hin during the nineties. Sitting there talking with customers you automatically drink a lot every night. Being sober, it would be difficult to listen to their <deleted> anyway. It was a cheerful period, drenched in copious amounts of alcohol. Fond memories, but I wouldn't do it again.

Probably if you are a bar owner in the West it is different, you are busy serving drinks and tallying up all the time. Also in a neighborhood bar, the customers know each other, and keep themselves entertained, whilst in a tourist bar somebody needs to chat up people who come in, otherwise they won't stay long.

Might very well be a nice experience to run a bar in Thailand for a while, but I don't think it can be recommended to do it for a very long time.

IMHO, it depends on the individual. I had my last alcoholic drink on the 1st May 1999. On the 9th September the same year (9-9-99) we opened a bar, and ran that bar for almost 13 years. Not once was I even tempted to have a drink.

Before May 99, I led a life of drinking, involved in working environments where drinking was not only normal but expected. 15 pint + nights out were the normal. Living full time in Thailand at that stage averaging about a dozen bottles of beer a night, every night.

There is nothing big and clever about what I have just written above. I was lucky enough to have been able to get a handle on it. A lot of people can't do that by themselves, and this is where my admiration from organizations which provide support for those in need comes from. Once a person recognizes what they have become, that is the first step of a long walk.

I have always said that I was never an alcoholic, because I never went to the meetings............... For clarity, this is said as a joke, I will always support people who not only recognize something is wrong but also have the determination to do something about it.

And probably more importantly, the admiration of the close friends/spouses and organizations committed to supporting these individuals.

I wish this group sincerley all the best. But a tad ironic the meetings in a pub ???

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