My friend Liz had stopped off in Thailand on her way back from Australia while I was there. We spent a week or so doing the tourist thing. In Chiang Mai we went on a three day trek in the mountains organised by Libra guest house. The group we landed up with was really good – I am still vaguely in touch with two of them. Liz and I went back to Bangkok so she could catch her flight back to England and I carried on my little trip. Most of the rest of the trek group headed – together – further in to Northern Thailand. A while later by complete chance I bumped into them in Luang Phrabang in the Lao People’s Republic. By one of those wonderful coincidences several of us had similar routes planned and we stuck together as a group for quite some time.
Craig and I struck up a particular rapport because we had quite similar outlooks on life and the same backpacking timescale. We flew from Vientiane to Hanoi with the plan to spend most of the visa-allotted month travelling from there to Ho Chi Minh City. Craig and I were both on a hedonistic booze-fuelled tip. We got completely trashed in the hostelries of Vietnam. Craig and I became good mates.
I didn’t realise it at the time, but the amount of booze we were drinking (particularly the gallons of G&T) were catching up with the anti-malarial I was taking. The cumulative effect of the poisonous Larium, the oppressive heat and the copious cheap drinks was slowly but surely altering my perspective on the world. My mood started to change. My brain started playing tricks on me. I started to get paranoid and insecure. I was becoming more and more erratic. As my travelling buddy, Craig bore the brunt of my terrible behaviour and eventually he couldn’t tolerate any more. He lasted longer than most people would have. We parted on bad terms after a particularly OTT night at the Nha Trang Sailing Club.
A brief internet search at a beach-side cafe revealed that I had a classic case of drug-induced temporary psychosis. It was horrible. The world was a funny colour. I could see things that weren’t there. Everyone was out to get me. I behaved so badly that I am surprised I didn’t get lynched. I certainly would have deserved it.
Once I knew what was “wrong” with me it was relatively easy to sort it out. All I had to do was stop taking the pills and wait for my kidneys to get rid of what was already inside. I detoxed, chilled out and went back to “normal”.
I set myself quite high standards of behaviour, and so even all these years later I occasionally think about how badly I treated the people around me during my brief lapse. I have been contemplating writing about this horrific period in order to cleanse myself and hopefully do some sort of penance. Writing a blog post about it doesn’t take back what I did, but I suppose it could be some kind of apology. It is ridiculously unlikely that Craig will ever read this but if he does I hope he will accept my apologies for the way I acted towards him after he was such a good friend to me.
I have been thinking about writing this post for ages. I was unsure as to whether it was a good idea to write about this dark period. Would the fact that I once suffered a temporary loss of marbles change the way some of my friends think about and treat me? It shouldn’t, but you never know. Mental illness is one of those subjects not easily broached in polite conversation. But I decided it should be healthy to talk about this kind of stuff. Plus, in recent weeks I have become convinced that I have seen Craig in London. He is not from London and said (many years ago now!) that he would never move here. But every so often during my walk to work a man who looks very like him jogs past me. Because I only see him running away from me I am not one hundred per cent certain it is him, but his gait, shiny bald head and army rucksack match the man I knew in South East Asia. One day I will get a chance to see if it really is him. It really is a small world.
PS the pic is of the great man Blue Eyes eating at a very popular Hanoi restaurant. Craig and I had tried to go to a museum but had suffered from one of the hangovers from French rule: the long civil service lunch break. So we followed the civil servants to their favourite lunch time hangout. The dog restaurant.
[...] Here is the original post: Small world [...]
Wew have all done weird things and behaved in less thena creditable ways… doon’t sweat it.
You behaved in much the same way as most of our “customers” behave on a daily basis. Never giving themselves time to detox – or realising the error of their ways – means that they are in a constant state of erratic social disarray.
NB Labrador or poodle?
Confession of a vodka red bull fueled disturbance of uni house mates please!
Happens to us all. Medicine and alcohol never, ever mix. Bit of a problem if you need to take medication long term like anti-malarials.
I love the fact that that “ping back” is to a dog training web site. The Vietnamese have a good training method involving a large coal-fired bbq…
Mutley – I agree we are all allowed our little lapses. I reckon it is good to learn from them and apologise though.
Mike – I take the moral high-ground by admitting that I was wrong
Not sure, possibly labrador. Difficult to tell when the fur has been taken off.
Rich – cheers. I only think that story is funny if you know the characters but I will try. On Saturday D told me something about that night that I had not known before!!
Well sometimes things happen. I have a friend now exfriend who doesnt like me, doesnt want me near her because her friend behaved badly with me, and went back on his word and asked me for 1400 quid.
I said no and told him exactly where to go but she has taken it as an insult to her, which of course it isnt. Their friend has behaved badly and I didnt want to tell her the full story because a) I didnt want to break her friendship nor did I want an argument on the higher moral ground.
She has now told all her friends that were my friends aswell not to associate with me, which I find rather disturbing Its almost ganglike.
Im frankly better off without those kind of friends because judging someone that harshly is crap and the whole judgement by association thing is wrong
Your friend if he does read this, he may not/ may accept your apology
Let it go If you are destined to meet again you will if you are not then let it pass.
@BE – I don’t think you need to air every minnor indiscretion in public.
Shoot me an email letting me know what D said and we’ll call it quits!
Blue, I think it’s good you wrote this post as it is another endorsement of ‘normality’. People who smile and are *lovely* every moment of their lives simply aren’t being honest or are so shallow I wouldn’t want to know them anyway. I think everyone knows, as Raincoaster quite rightly said I used blogging as therapy, that I’ve had my dark period in full view. What I learned was that environment combined with what we put in our bodies IS mood changing. And so is pain. We DON’T just decide how we want to be. I was shut in for months, anaemic and on a starvation diet. My hair was falling out. That circumstance had an effect on mood and perception. We both learned the hard way, through experience. What I’ve become interested in now is how foods affect children. And I’ve started to learn the amount of toxins in food, especially foods aimed at children. It seems daft to compare 20-something excess with childrens treats but they are little and react more strongly to less, and some of the things I’ve found that are put in foods on general sale are a bit scary and have an accumalitive effect, as you say.
I’m so hungry. I haven’t eaten for 24 hrs.
The most important thing is to forgive that inexperienced chap that you described – who at the time was you, but viewed from the now was just you in name only. We shouldn’t keep blaming ourselves for the failings of our past when we had less experience than we do now. As the Pinkstone suggested, the real arsepipes are those who don’t twig that they are what they are, every bloody day. They are level 23′s. (On the Hogday sliding scale of humanity, a level 23 is just below the silverfish and tick and just above oozing mire).
Hogday you make me laugh! You are right I am not the BE who went away on his travels aged 22, but at the same time do we really change? I suppose you could get quite deeply into the whole nature/nurture/self-restraint thing.
Philipa – Have a bacon sandwich. You are right about food affecting our bodies in ways we cannot fathom. But I do not go in for all this faddish stuff. We don’t understand the pathways as well as we would like, but I would put my trust in scientific data above what health gurus and other fly-by-nights would say.
Blue – with you completely. Now the test is done I made myself a roast chicken bagette