Cold Turkey

I had carefully written out the withdrawal procedure and given the instructions to a transsexual prostitute who is to follow them out to the very end. The reason for choosing a transsexual is nothing to do with any fetish, I may or may not harbour. I need someone caring yet strong enough to keep me in the room. Her name is Toy and she weighs about 80 kilos. She is advancing towards the end of her career and needs the 1000 baht a day I am giving her to keep me under lock and key. My instructions are simple.

Day 1 – 3 - 2mil diazepam tablets to be taken morning, afternoon and night. 4 400 mil ibuprofen tablets to be taken every four hours. One large bottle of beer Chang to be administered at 8pm. Junk food to be delivered whenever possible. Green tea and water.

Day 2 – 2mil diazepam tablets, morning and night. 4 – 400 mil ibuprofen tablets every four hours. 1 small bottle of Chang beer. Fruit in the morning. Junk food evening. Green tea and water.

Day 3 – 1 – 2mil diazepam tablet evening. 3 – 400mil ibuprofen tablets, morning afternoon and evening. Rice and vegetables. Green tea and water.

Day 4 – 3- 400mil ibuprofen tablets. 2 Atarax (antihistamine with tranquilizer effect) and 1 Tiffy tablet in evening. Fruit rice vegetables. Green tea.

Day 5 – 2 400mil ibuprofen tablets. Morning and evening. 1 Atarax and 1 - 2 mil diazepam. Any junk food

Day 6 – Cold turkey.

I have also instructed the lady boy to bring me every English language newspaper and a selection of novels. The TV has several English channels, which tend to repeat themselves over and over again. I need something to try and take my mind of the pschycogical side of the withdrawal.

I have no clothes. I am naked. I look in the bathroom mirror. It is 11am and I am beginning to feel the symptoms. Muscular nervous tension, temporal headache, generalised anxiety building into panic attack. Irrational fear, tremors, agnaphobia, thirst. My hands are beginning to sweat and my eyes experience light sensitivity. Heart palpitations, confusion, anger, depression, hate. Suicidal thoughts.

I sit on the bed and begin to dig my nails into my left arm, pinching at the skin. The focused pain helps for a moment. But then it comes back. Waves of fear wash through me to the bone. How I got to this point I don’t know. How does anyone. Over the years whilst drinking I thought that I was gradually becoming more addicted owing to the continual exposure. I thought that if I chose only to drink in the evenings, and maintained a smaller dose then the addiction would decrease. This wasn’t how it turned out. I became addicted to alcohol following an intense two month drinking period at the age of nineteen. I was as addicted then as I am now, eleven years later. But, as a consequence, I have missed out on a lot of life experiences, sober. The longer you leave it the worse it gets to a certain degree. The addiction is the same, but the behavioural patterns need more work than would have done had I say, tried to give up at an earlier age. What is easy to do is to blame alcohol for all your problems you have had in life. This can be problematic in it’s self because trying to function in the early stages of withdrawal / sobriety is much more difficult than trying to function drunk. So the drinker simply reverts back to drinking to get things done, like going to the shops or eating a meal. The first couple of weeks are very difficult. Many people can drink heavily every day for ten years and then stop and function normally. An alcoholic can not. No one really knows what it is that separates the alcoholic from the moderate personality. But it appears to be some kind of mental sensitivity to the drug.

I could, if I wanted, wrap a curtain around my naked body (I instructed the ladyboy to remove all my clothing from the room) and ask a motorbike taxi to go and buy me some beer. I have a gold wedding ring that he would be more than willing to pawn for me. But the anxiety makes me want to remain where I am. I am simply too nervous to make the attempt. And if I did then after the beer has gone I would be back where I started, without that wedding ring, which means nothing since I left her.

I walk back into the bathroom and bite a lump out of one of those small hotel soaps you get in these places. It tastes disgusting but I swallow and then gag in the toilet bowel. As I heave tears pour from my eyes which makes me feel better somehow. The comfort of despair. The last drops of spittle fall into bowel and I try the flush which doesn’t work. That humours me for some reason. As if the big man upstairs is pointing the finger at me. There’s a bin in the bathroom so I begin to fill that with water from the bath tub, but the plastic bottom of the bin has split and the water drains straight through – I think of an old song sang at school – there’s a hole in my bucket, dear Lisa.

But everything is hopeless. I hold my arms out and stretch my fingers and watch my digits shake wildly. The DTs – Delirium Tremors. The jitters. The shakes. The system. My head and chest are tight and tense as if being held in a vice. My hands are shaking, palms sweating. Adrenalin is being pumped through my body, my heart beating out of my chest. Kidney pains, I lie back on the bed and hug myself. Try to calm myself down.

The door opens. Hope.

Toy lays my medicine on the table next to the bed. One small pink tablet and one large one, she also has a MacDonald’s bag with her. Ronald will have to wait. I let the diazepam dissolve on my tongue rather than swallow it. It gets into the system quicker that way. Toy leaves the room and locks the door behind her.

I take in the room properly for the first time. A second floor apartment style hotel room with a writing desk, a large wardrobe, large bed and an old television set. The adjoining bathroom has running hot water, a bath, with a shower. I start to long for a bath. To sit back in the tub and let the hot water soothe my nerves. I get up and let the taps run.

I take the headache tablet and wait for the combination of analgesic and tranquilizer to take effect. My system needs some alcohol to wash this thing down with. But there is none and I am too weak to try and get any. I lay on the bed clutching myself, waiting for my nurse to return. Sleep is impossible. Everything is impossible. The water keeps running as a reminder of the time I need to get through.

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