In 1988, I lived on the backpackery Khaosan Road, Bangkok, in a hotel which offered heroin on room service. It went like this: in the morning, you padded down the teakwood stairs to the little kitchen and you asked the pretty Thai girl for breakfast – scrambled eggs, bacon, ‘extras’. Ten minutes later the same sweet girl would arrive in your room and graciously set down your tray, with scrambled eggs, orange juice – plus two straws of China White heroin, neatly paired on a saucer.

The police would do a token raid and arrest some poor Euro-American guest and give him ten years

After that you spent the rest of the day smoking your heroin, eating tiny bananas, and lying in a hammock, chatting with all the zoned-out Italians in the hotel (young Italians in the late 1980s loved heroin). The next day you did the same, then the next. My friend and I meant to spend only a couple of weeks in that guest house. We ended up living there for three months.

During that time, we learned the backstory: heroin was absolutely illegal, but the hotel was paying off the local corrupt coppers. Every so often a farang would overdose and die in his room, and his corpse would be left in the middle of the street to be carried away, then the police would do a token raid and arrest some poor Euro-American guest and give him ten years in the ‘Bangkok Hilton’ (this nearly happened to us). But then life languidly carried on – scrambled eggs, extras, etc.

This remarkably stupid, exhilaratingly mad experience set me up for a long life of continued experimentation with drugs. Recently, for a memoir I am writing, I sat down and worked out a list of all the substances I have deliberately ingested to alter my mental state.

QOSHE - Drugs / Think legalisation is a good idea? Visit Fentanyl Land - Sean Thomas
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Drugs / Think legalisation is a good idea? Visit Fentanyl Land

4 17
21.02.2024

In 1988, I lived on the backpackery Khaosan Road, Bangkok, in a hotel which offered heroin on room service. It went like this: in the morning, you padded down the teakwood stairs to the little kitchen and you asked the pretty Thai girl for breakfast – scrambled eggs, bacon, ‘extras’. Ten minutes later the same sweet girl would arrive in your room and graciously set down your tray, with scrambled eggs, orange juice – plus two........

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