Brit of the Cloth --Wat Tumkrabok

                                      

                                                                               


                                           photo  courtesy of  Stuart Isett

                                          


The early morning sun rise reflects off the craggy limestone mountains in a riot of colours, as a
western monk in flowing robes cuts through this oriental postcard of golden pagodas and an array
of Buddhist statues. In the distance explosions from the nearby rock quarry can be heard piercing
this serene landscape.

Covering over 784 acres, this working temple has been home for addicts since 1959. And Phra
(Thai for monk) Greg , a former heroine addict from England, is one of the 100’s of thousands
of patients who have passed though the temple’s outreach rehab centre to purge their demons.

Blaring over the temple’s speakers is Peter Schelly’s Love me Love my Dog which is carrying
across the verdant grounds while the western monk is mindfully strolling down a dusty road to
the temple’s herbal garden, where he collect fresh herbs daily for the sauna that he operates.



“Freedom is a dusty road heading to a highway…” wails Peter, as the traffic from the nearby
highway ahead compete with the Golden Oldies of Wat Tamkrabok.


On the way back to the sauna with his herbal quota of lemon grass and morning glory, the foreign
monk passes a raised platform that’s a testament to a dream of the abbot and founder of this
temple, Luangpaw Charoen. Towering above a platform is the personification of his somewhat
eccentric vision: a Dharma Wheel, representing the cycles of life, forged from molten stone,
surrounded by obelisks and other half complete visions of Buddha at different stages of his life.

Everything about this temple is surreal. It seems to thrive on unorthodoxy.


And for Phra Greg, it’s a far cry from two years ago, when the smack addict of 12-years was
legging it down a high street, being chased by store detectives, to feed his hundred pounds a day
habit. It was an extreme set of circumstances and a prophetic dream that brought Brother Greg to the
other side of the world to this way-station temple of Wat Tamkrabok, which means the “cave of
those with something to say”. Situated in Saraburi province, 120 kilometres north of Bangkok,
substance abusers here are administered herbal concoctions and Buddhist ministrations to kick
their addictions.


Phra Greg Gert, 51, is in all senses of the word a success story. For many drug addicts like this
former patient who were too far gone, this is their last resort. Oddly enough, while battling a 12
year addiction, the soft spoken Brit always knew that he would be monk. “It began when I was about 16 years old,” recalls the former electrician from Reading who grew up Surrey. “I had this dream that I was a monk in this eastern dress. And we were going into a forest collecting plants, and going into caves, collecting minerals and herbs.”


When Phra Greg, who’s adopted Thai surname – Gert – (means the ‘one who is reborn’), arrived
at the temple’s gates back in early 2005, he says it was like déjà vu. “I got out of the minibus,
looked around, and said, ‘This is the place.’ It felt right,” says Phra Greg, who has renounced his
past life for the spiritual cloisters of this Thai monastery.











For many former addicts like Greg, this is the Q train- the end of the line for addicts who tried
every treatment in the west to no avail. And understandably many addicts, who finish the 28- day
treatment, usually return the favour by donning robes. There are not many foreigners who come to Thailand to get spiritually enlightened who come from a troubled back ground of excessive drug taking. But here at Wat Tamkrabok, this temple is an exception to the rule, where many of the foreign patients decide to ordain, joining the 120 monks that make up this temple commune.



Half the Thai monks, who were former addicts themselves, encourage western patients to unwind
after the treatment in robes, to forge their ‘sattja’, a holy vow to abstain from narcotics and
alcohol, into a powerful tool for staying clean for the rest of their lives.



Currently there are five western monks, consisting of two Brits, one Swiss, a Belgian, and an
American, Phra Gordon who runs the other herbal steam bath. Gordon Baltimore, a former mercenary from Harlem, is a larger than life character. As the story goes, he arrived at the temple 26 years ago when the bus he was travelling on got punctures on all four of its tires. “And when he got out of the bus the abbot was waiting for him at the temple gates,” explains Phra Greg, who doesn’t mind cultivating the many myths surrounding this temple. “And the abbot supposedly said, 'I've been waiting for you!'

And Gordon still says to this  day, that this is just a bus stop!”



It wasn’t only mercenaries on waylaid buses that stumbled on this temple. In the 60’s Hippies
found this unorthodox temple and word soon spread in the west of the outreach program at Wat
Tamkrabok. One of the staples of treatment is a dark herbal medicine that is brewed up in big
vats by the local medicine men. Consisting of over 108 herbs, minerals, and barks, and minerals
from the caves, patients are expected to vomit this purgative herbal blend for the first five days
of their treatment.


Patients here are encouraged to feel the pain, while imbibing an herbal cocktail that accelerates
the body's purification through vomiting and eases the symptoms of withdrawal. The emphasis is
put on living the horror of withdrawal, purging out the demons that had lured them to addiction in
the first place.



Many of the Thai monks consider the treatment here to be the ‘journey of the hero,’ where
patients must plummet to the depths of their despair and then ‘rise above it.’ But Greg sees it
more emphatically as an epic Greek journey: Homer of the Odyssey, “it’s got to be a journey to
hell and back. Only then do we come back a bit wiser.”


It was a chance meeting in 2004 with Mike Sarson, a Berkshire-based drugs counsellor from
East West – Detox, at a Drug and Alcohol drop in centre called the Foundation, that would
facilitate Greg’s dream of coming clean and donning the robe of the order of the forest monks.
“He was stuck on the substitute medication methadone for many years going nowhere,” recalls
Sarson who through East-West Detox has sent over 18 patients from the UK since setting up the

Charity organization in 1997 – after being disillusioned with the ‘quick fix’ approach of Western
treatment. And he told me he had number of dreams over the years of becoming a monk. He truly believed he was led spiritually to East-West Detox.”Heroin addicts are faced with the harsh fact that methadone treatment isn’t effective enough.According to a recent study by Prof. McKeachney at Glasgow University, it revealed that while monitoring 800 people who were prescribed methadone over a period of 3 years, only 3% managed to abstain from methadone substitute. While an Australian study found that less than 30% of addicts studied who had been to Wat Tamkrabok went back on drugs within a year.


“All they want is people on methadone,” says Phra Greg, who casts a cynical eye over treatment
in the west. “Then they have control over you then. It's all about control and money. They make
big money on methadone while we are still slaves to our addiction.”

In contrast with the Twelve Steps program of Alcoholic’s Anonymous, where addicts are
putting responsibility for their lives in a higher force, Phra Greg believes that the approach
here at Wat Thamkrabok is more honest, putting the responsibility back to the individual.
“What most people say is that when they try the 12 steps, is that it takes too long,” explains Phra
Greg. “So why go somewhere where you keep reminding yourself that you are an addict, "Hi my
name's Greg. I'm an addict. I've been clean for seven years." If you're been clean for seven years
then you're not an addict.”


When he first arrived, he thought the place a bit primitive. “The shower is just a little hose that
comes out of the wall that’s fed from the lake,” he explains - guarding him is Silly Bitch, a grey
Thai Ridge back who is one of the 13 street dogs that he feds. “All your mod cons are taken
away, and you are stripped down to basics, and that’s where you start from and build up. “

According to Luangpor Charoen, the founder of the temple who started treating opium addicts
in 1959, the physical detoxification is only 5% of the Thamkrabok treatment. “You must do the
remaining 95% of the work in your mind and through your actions.”


“It’s all down to personal will power,” explains Phra Greg, who acts as a councillor for other
patients who check in at the Hay, the foreign living quarters, which ironically nicknamed after s
heroine. “The person that walks out of here is a completely different person that walks in. It only
works when that person is ready to give up. Nothing will work until you are actually ready to do it
yourself. You can't do it for any body else.’


He says doing ‘cold turkey’ at one of the worlds most Spartan rehabs is “the easiest cluck.
Everyone coming off heroine is waiting for the cluck to begin, but here it never happens. If it
was in the west, they’d be climbing up the wall, and going out shop lifting to get a bag of gear.”

“For every addict who checks, the monks must deal with two personalities, “adds Phra Greg,
who on many occasions is called to the Hay by senior Thai monks to reassure the doubting
patients. “First you are talking to the addict, and secondly, the person who wants to come clean,”


“Most of the time it’s easy. After five minutes I can turn them around, because the person who
wants to come off is still there. The first week here is like being on a roller coaster; it’s up and
down all the time. But after that, there are more ups than there are downs.”


On the second day of his vomiting, the Reading lad wanted out; he couldn’t stand the constant
heaving caused by the herbal liquid that is a cross between cod live oil, and the dregs of a
bong. “Just disgusting at first,” recalls Greg who, like many other patients before him, tried every
trick in the book to terminate treatment.


“I’d lie on my bed, feeling sorry for myself, saying, ‘I’m not fucking doing it’’. But I remember
hearing the patients, who had finished their five days of vomiting, encouraging me along. ‘Come
on Greg, get it done!’ And then you vomit, and feel much better. Any sickness that I was feeling
that day went as soon as I did the vomiting.”


The hardest part of the vomiting, he says, is drinking all the water. “Anyone can drink eight pints
of beer but you try to drink eight pints of water,” he explains. “When you first come here, that first
day, worried about being sick, which you associate with being not well. I always say, don’t think
about being sick. All you have to do is drink the water. Because once that water mixes with the
medicine, you don’t need to worry about being sick, because it happens automatically.”
Its late afternoon, and Dire Straits is blaring from Greg’s CD player. As the foreigner, who can’t
speak a word of Thai, throws more wood in the sauna’s boiler, he gets an unexpected visitor. It’s
Deano Barron, a former patient and friend of Phra Greg who is back on a visit with his wife.


“He was fantastic,” said Deano, 50, from Sydney, who did the 12 day detox over a year ago. He
said that Phra Greg was his mentor. “Because of what he's been through, I couldn’t have asked
for a better qualified councillor,” adds the steel constructor, who says he hasn’t taken a drink
since he took out his sattja over a year ago. “Jesus, I thought my problem is nothing compared to
his. I latched onto him because he was a real down to earth bloke.”


“Just keep the sattja strong,” advises Brother Greg, who is touched by the compliments, yet
totally humble about it. “We like success stories here,” he adds.


Deano, in all earnestness, like he’s taken a holy sattja not to lie – he truly is an established
member of the Tamkrabok family – relates one of the more legendary in-house titbits of this
temple. “There was a local Thai smack dealer from a nearby hotel,” says Deano, who speaks with
the conviction of the Gospel. “He had a kilo of smack on his bed and knew he had been tipped
off. While the police were running up the stairway, the drug dealer implored to Buddha, “If you
get me out of this shit, then I’ll be a monk for life.


“Then he climbs out the window, and enters the room next door. On the bed was a set of robes
which he put on. Then he walked down the stairs, passing the police who were on their way up
to bust him. The robed monk didn’t turn a head. He apparently kept on walking to the monastery
here where he’s been a monk ever since.”


Phra Greg, who lets out a little chuckle – an anecdote he no doubt told Deano - says that he has
never been a spiritual person. But he believes that Wat Thamkranbok changes people. “Some of
the changes here, you can only put down to spiritual. And I've never been a really spiritual sort of
person. I've seen things happen here which there isn't any physical explanation.”

Brother Greg seems to have found his vocation. Asked if he were to return to Reading,
would he relapse? Prah Greg answers like a Zen adept. “This place changes people.”
It’s true, this place does, offering hope to those who were once too far gone.





Note: A friend of mine went to the temple as a patient in 2009. He informed me of the sad news that Greg passed away. He had a heart attack. His last resting place is a little walk from the sauna he operated. He always wanted to be preserved in the Stone Balls where the venerable monks were laid to rest. I will miss you Greg. You have proved that it is possible to overcome  your demons. I am not sure if this is true, it still needs to be verified through the organisation below.



Heroin: Facing the Dragon







 

Facing The Dragon is an intimate and shocking documentary following two desperate drug addicts on a journey from the drug addled streets of England to the toughest detox in the world.


Produced in association with East West Detox.

If you have been affected by any of the issues in this film, or would like any further information on the detox experiences featured, please contact http://www.east-westdetox.org.uk/http://www.east-westdetox.org.uk/