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.”
PHUKET AA
Phuket Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) operates in six locations across the island, with meetings held in Surin, Chalong, Phuket Town and Patong. For a full list of meeting times and locations visit sites.google.com/site/aaphuket
Everyone is welcome. Phuket helplines are either 081-895-4763 or 081-737-2246. Email: phuketaa@yahoo.com. The international website can be found at aa.org