AN ADDICT'S LAST RESORT

Wat Thamkrabok is a faraway place for the very far gone. The Buddhist
monastery is set against a Thai landscape that resembles an idyllic
Oriental watercolour: all stony outcrops and forested peaks.

Gargantuan statues rise out of the foliage like fevered
hallucinations. Packs of stray dogs snarl at strangers who are not
clad in the brown monks' robes or the faded red pyjamas worn by the
dozen drug abusers who are staying here. The word "Winner" is spelled
out hopefully in ancient Buddhist script on the shirtbacks of these
addicts who are undergoing the world's most extreme - yet possibly
most effective - drug rehabilitation regime.

Hundreds of long-term speed freaks, pill poppers, crack addicts,
junkies, glue-sniffers and alcoholics arrive at this stark Buddhist
waystation in central Thailand every year to endure a programme of
purging and tough living. While in the West, the vast majority of
detox patients eventually succumb to their drug cravings, nearly 70%
of the tens of thousands of troubled men and women who have been
through treatment at Wat Thamkrabok since 1958 have managed to stay
drug-free, according to one Australian study. But the place is a far
cry from such celebrity-friendly detox haunts as the Priory or Betty
Ford Clinic.

The temple's brutal vomit cure proved too much for the musician Pete
Doherty, the self-destructive frontman of the Libertines punk-thrash
band, who earlier last month bolted before dawn on day three of his
10-day detox treatment. He ran away with another English addict who
claims he cut short his own rehabilitation just two days before it was
due to come to an end in order to give the angst-ridden guitarist
"moral support".

Doherty surfaced briefly in Bangkok before jetting home, only to be
arrested for reckless driving and possessing a flick knife. Worried
about the health of their lead singer, the Libertines were forced to
cancel performances at Glastonbury as well as at the Isle of Wight
Festival.

"The singer seemed unwilling or unable to let go of his dark side,"
says Phra Hans, a Swiss spiritual counsellor at Thamkrabok.

A statement signed by Doherty before he fled says: "Thamkrabok
Monastery have done everything they could to help me, but I am not
strong enough for this treatment."

Suffering withdrawal pains to the strains of a pop star howling out
taunting heroin lyrics such as "The horse is brown/come on round"
proved divisive for newcomers in the monastery's drug-treatment
compound. All but one persisted with the rhythmic vomiting and herbal
steam baths designed to accelerate the body's purification and ease
withdrawal symptoms. The noisy celebrity in their midst was soon gone.

"When we lost the two English lads it was very disheartening," says
Richard, an ex-convict from Leeds, who kicked his own "smack and crack
habit" seven months ago and is now a monk at Thamkrabok.

Some 40% of the monks here are former addicts who have stayed on at
Thamkrabok to become ordained. With cigarettes dangling from their
mouths, some look decidedly impious, but the abbot, Charoen Panchand,
allows them to taper off gradually from nicotine dependence.

Patients line up once a day to swallow a shot glass of a
mouth-curdlingly bitter herbal extract which leaves them retching and
spewing into concrete gutters. The organic purgative is a viscous dark
brew made from 108 seeds, leaves, and tree barks that can be foraged
locally. The secret formula is said to have come to Luang Poh Yai, the
visionary aunt of the abbot, in a dream, and is administered free of
charge to all comers.

Gulping water from a pail, and violently expelling a great plume of
vomit can elicit applause from the gaggles of spectators who are
brought in to witness the wretched fight their drug demons at public
"vomit shows".

Monks who take a daily dose to expel any toxins remaining in their
bodies offer tips on the proper stance for projectile vomiting.
Shoving fingers down the throat won't always speed up the process.
Knocking back copious amounts of water is better. First-timers used to
be encouraged to vomit to the accompaniment of drums, but silent
sessions are now the norm. The mere sound of retching induces others
to follow suit.

Most of the participants are Thais, but a growing proportion of the
addicts are middle-class Europeans who have relapsed after gentler
treatment at medical clinics back home. Britain's National Health
Service has even agreed to fund selected patients to attend the programme.

At Thamkrabok there are no chemical crutches, no night nurses, no
sleeping-tablets, no guarantees. No Aids tests are required, either.
Methadone addicts suffer immensely. Because the synthetic opiate has a
longer half-life in the brain, it's more insidious than heroin, with
which it is often combined. Nathalie, a 22-year-old from Sheffield who
has been an addict since the age of 16, told me how she thrashed
sleeplessly night after night, fighting off the sensation of worms
writhing in her bone marrow. Wandering off the premises is forbidden,
as the highway to Bangkok is just 10 minutes walk away and illicit
drug offers are plentiful, even before you reach the nearest village.

One strapping Australian hooked on methadone once remained awake for
48 days straight, according to Phra Hans. Rhythmic sweeping helped
soothe his jangled nerves, and now a "broom meditation" is
incorporated in the programme. If addicts are able to stand, they must
rise at daybreak to sweep in unison.

Last week, five Britons turned up for the monastery's radical detox
regime. Jet-lagged after a 13-hour flight, they must cope
simultaneously with withdrawal symptoms and extreme culture shock.
Despite its picturesque backdrop, the monastery is built on a flyblown
site wedged between pock-marked hills, a quarry, and a teeming refugee
camp where Hmong tribes from Laos have lived under armed guard for
three generations. Even though daily herbal steam baths and Thai
massage are on offer to ease bodies racked by convulsions, by no
stretch of the imagination can Wat Thamkrabok be described as a spa.

"At Bangkok airport, I noticed two guys on their way out," says
Austin, a trembling addict from Yorkshire in his third day of rehab.
"You could tell they were both on heroin. You could smell it on them.
They spoke English and I was tempted to ask them where to score one
last time, before I came here to dry out.

"I was a bit shocked when we arrived," he confesses. "I thought it
would be some majestic place in the mountains, and there were all
these chickens pecking around and lizards in the rooms." The
dormitories for foreigners have scrubbed tile floors and patched
mosquito nets draped over the simple cots. No cellphones are allowed,
because addicts must sever all ties with their drug-taking past. For
the moment, the use of personal stereos is controversial. Music helps
many people deal with the rigours of rehabilitation, but the more
orthodox monks worry that music associated with past drug experience
can create "a toxic womb" that keeps reality at bay. Bathing is
accomplished with a jug of rainwater and a basic metal bowl.

The rigorous detoxification process requires addicts to take the
purgative elixir for the first five days. Alcoholics or opium addicts,
who risk vomiting blood, are given black herbal pastilles instead. The
monastery's sexagenarian herbalist, Wala Yanghun, gathers fresh
ingredients from the garden and brews the bitter black medicine in a
vat. Visitors who use the monastery steam baths in the afternoon drink
a diluted tea made to the same formula. It tastes rather like castor
oil churned with coffee grounds, pond scum, and laced with Fisherman's
Friend lozenges.

It was in the early 1960s that the outreach programme at Wat
Thamkrabok took off, when opium addiction was becoming a widespread
problem. Wandering hippies who completed the programme spread the
word, and foreign addicts began to arrive unannounced. Its popularity
peaked in 1997, linked to a boom in methamphetamine addiction. More
than 2 000 desperate addicts requested help from the abbot to quit.
Numbers have since dropped, but more than 400 people detoxed at the
monastery last year, and 125 have passed through since January this
year.

Sajta, the sacred vow of abstinence, is as much a key as the medicine,
Phra Hans explains. If addicts treat it frivolously and go back on
their promise, the monastery will not excuse them. No second chances
at detox are possible. Thamkrabok is not a clinic with a revolving
door. After a week, the abbot dispenses a kahtah, a divine phrase that
must be committed to memory and repeated in case of temptation.

Unlike a classic 12-step programme, in which addicts place
responsibility for their lives in a greater power, the Thamkrabok way
stresses the importance of experiencing the agonies of withdrawal.
Through pain, the addicts can forge mental strength to figure out what
drove them to seek oblivion in drugs or drink. Addicts must will
themselves to be stronger than the substances they crave.

Phra Hans likens the detox programme at Thamkrabok to the epic journey
of the hero. On his quest, a hero must seek out an alien place and
accept the help of strangers in order to return home
transformed.

Well, if nothing else, Thamkrabok is quintessentially alien. Rather
than meditate in quiet repose, the recovering addict monks are kept
busy realising the abbot's eccentric visions. They have built a
100-ton water wheel as well as a mammoth speedboat, which perches
unfinished in the monastery grounds.

If Austin and his four British roommates can endure the hardships of
this brutal purge, and journey with their Thai colleagues through all
the paranoia and the pain, their task is indeed heroic.