Jomtien, 15th July 2010.
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In case anyone is wondering, I’m still alive and still sober.
It’s been an eventful couple of days and I hope to recount what has happened in detail tomorrow.
For now I will just confirm that I made it to Bangkok for my appointment with the therapist, despite feeling very unwell on Tuesday morning.
It was a good session and we will continue. He also recommended that I see a psychiatrist who I will now be seeing next Monday, before my second session with the therapist next Tuesday.
As my day in Bangkok wore on I felt more and more unwell, but managed to make it to Dave’s house around noon for my planned visit.
I thought I may be feeling so ill because I hadn’t eaten, so accepted Dave’s invitation to have some home cooked Indian curry, following which, I felt even sicker.
By 3 p.m. I was feeling so bad, that I decided if I didn’t make an immediate run for Pattaya, I might be stuck in Bangkok with some unknown illness.
So I did make a run for it and in spite of feeling increasingly sick, I managed the drive back to Jomtien without incident, arriving home at 4.45 p.m.
As soon as I walked into my bedroom, I felt extremely nauseous and just made it to the toilet in time to throw up all my lunch and a lot more besides. This is most unusual for me as I haven’t thrown up in years – not through countless drinking binges and many cases of severe food poisoning. But this all changed last Tuesday evening and I spent the next hour in the bathroom retching like there was no tomorrow.
Tukta chose this precipitous moment to opt out of our relationship. In between retching, I called to enquire her whereabouts and she told me she wanted out and would not be coming to see me that evening. I told her I was sick, but that didn’t cut any ice with this particular Thai ice maiden. (more about this tomorrow).
I still wasn’t sure what was wrong with me as I hadn’t experienced any problems with my bowel movements – a sure sign that I might have food poisoning yet again. But I didn’t have to wait long. When the retching urge finally started to subside, my bowels opened and the diarrhoea commenced. I passed water for the next few hours and became weaker and weaker.
It was now clear that I had some kind of food poisoning, so I dosed myself regularly with electrolytes and decided to lie down to wait out the course of my illness.
I was feeling very poorly, with no help at hand, but what could I do?
The illness raged all night and all Wednesday morning and afternoon. But by late afternoon I felt and observed signs of improvement.
Since then it has been a steady recovery but I still feel quite weak. It was a remarkably speedy turnaround and although I am still far from 100%, at least the diarrhoea seems to have finally stopped and I have been able to get out and about.
In fact I did go out late Wednesday afternoon and evening and have been out for most of today – including my first attendance at an AA meeting for many weeks.
More about all this tomorrow.
Jomtien, 12th July, 2010.
12 Jul 2010 Comments Off
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As you may have noticed, I have been tinkering with the ‘appearance’ of my blog.
Unfortunately it has become more of an onerous task than I had anticipated. Originally, I only wished to change the format in order to accommodate a larger and squarer “Header” photograph, but when I changed one thing it had a knock on effect on many other aspects of my blog layout, including the title headers and colours.
So have had to do a fair bit of work to get the blog back into a readable and acceptable state, and my apologies to those who have been reading it during the intervening period, when at times it might not have been readable.
I am, after all, a 64 year old drunk with minimal computer skills, so these things don’t come so easily to me as to some of you young computer-literates out there. I am pretty much self taught since I came to Thailand, as in my business career I was too molly coddled and everything of a technical nature was taken care of for me. (I even dictated my e-mails).
I will just report that I am still sober and actually feeling not too bad. I know it is barely 48 hours since my last drink, but compared to how I felt even yesterday afternoon, I have to say I feel a lot better, mentally and physically.
My withdrawal from alcohol has followed its normal path. Very depressed, lethargic and feeling very ill for the first 24 hours and a gradual improvement thereafter.
I sleep for long periods, but fitfully and have extremely vivid dreams. I usually wake up very early, turn on the TV and eventually drift off again for several hours and wake late morning.
This is quite normal for me when I come off the booze. I also think I was addicted to Xanax so that should be well out of my system and the withdrawal feelings have now gone.
My mental state is not too bad and I still have the Tukta here looking after me.
There have been a few calls from a few ladies who have wondered where I have disappeared to, including the so-called ‘virgin’ from Walking Street who is now in Khon Kaen but wants to back to Pattaya and live with me and take care of me.
It is tempting, but she is even younger than Tan so I think I will pass. She keeps calling. It is becoming a bit of a nuisance. I have to put my phone on ‘silent’ and then I miss important calls.
Tomorrow I will drive to Bangkok for my appointment with the psychotherapist. After that I will drop by and see Dave, (the alcoholic who has more lives than me). Remarkably, he claims to have been sober and more or less clear of prescription drugs for quite a while.
In fact he has been very supportive to me just lately and helped me through some of my darker moments.
So I will see him for a couple of hours before driving back to Pattaya tomorrow evening.
All being well I will unblock the comments section later this week, when I return from Bangkok – hopefully still sober.
Jomtien, 11th July, 2010.
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Yesterday I stayed home all day and drank a bottle of wine, a few beers and some whisky.
I slept quite late, well after midnight, and awoke at 6 a.m. Then I slept fitfully until around 9 a.m.
Since I came out of hospital I have been taking Xanax to help me sleep, but a highly knowledgeable friend told me to stop as it is highly addictive and will create problems with my brain chemistry. Xanax is a depressant and as I also take anti-depressants she suggests that the mix will increase the effect of the Xanax and make my depression worse!
So two nights ago I stopped the Xanax. I believe it was already having an adverse effect on my depression and I also suspect that I was becoming addicted to it. I felt so bad yesterday, (as you can see from my blog), and not a lot better today.
Today, as of 3.00 p.m., I have not touched any alcohol and I intend to try and stay off it completely, at the very least until after I have seen the Doctor in Bangkok on Tuesday.
So today is already very tough day, and will get worse as the day goes on. If can make it through to Monday, there is every chance I can string together a few dry days and see what the doctor can do for me.
Tukta is still here taking care of me. I don’t know how long she will stay, but for now I think it is better that I am not alone, and she is a very kind and cooks for me. As long as she is here it will help me to stay away from the bars.
To all those who have wished me well and posted helpful comments, I apologise for blocking new comments. I do miss all the familiar names but I don’t think my present state of mind can take the adverse, abusive comments that will also inevitably be made.
If I can turn this around, then I will un-block the comments.
Jomtien, 10th July, 2010
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I am still drinking, and it’s all just more of the same.
Booze, wine, women and song, and horrendous, depressive hangovers which can only be cured by more booze.
Yesterday I made some enquiries about finding a therapist and to cut a long story short I have an appointment with a psychotherapist in Bangkok on Tuesday morning.
So I have done something positive and am praying that something good will come out of it.
I have nowhere else to go now. I am near the end of the line now. It is becoming harder and harder to carry on.
I don’t suppose anyone who reads this can understand what is happening to me but I am in so much emotional torment. I just want it to be all over, one way or another – the sooner the better. I cannot go on living like this.
I hope I can make it to Tuesday.
Jomtien, 8th July, 2010 – trying to get sober yet again
08 Jul 2010 1 Comment
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I don’t know where to start really.
I suppose my relapse was all pretty much down to my continuing attempts to come to terms with the loss of Tan and the my abject failure to persuade her to give it another go.
I know it is all pretty crazy, and to be honest if I had been successful in winning her back, there would have been every chance that at some time in the near future I would have kicked her out myself.
It was never going to work. She wanted to go and see her friends in the bar every day, she was lazy and became bored very quickly and was just looking for an ATM to take care of her and her baby. All this was as clear as daylight and eventually I would have decided enough was enough.
It was just an affront to my self esteem (if I have any left) and certainly my ego. How dare she dump me!
The bottom line is that it was an excuse to start drinking again.
In attempt to shake off my infatuation with Tan, I started to line up a list of potential successors.
For I understand myself well enough to know that a new “live-in” will help me to get over the old “live-in”. That’s exactly how I finally managed to get over the separation with Dang – my wife of 6 years.
Recently I have started to develop new relationships all over the place – from Jomtien, to Walking Street, to the ‘Dark Side’ and even in Bang Chang. All these ladies were in their 20’s, some very early 20’s, some mid 20’s and one was 28. Some had a kid or kids, some had no kids. Some spoke English and had previous relationships with farangs, some were pretty new to the game and spoke no English. One was even a virgin! (Or so she claimed).
They were all very pretty – of course – but some were ‘drop dead gorgeous’ and others didn’t quite qualify for that epithet.
So I had to weigh up all these various factors when trying to narrow down the shortlist to manageable levels. A bit like trying to pick the English football team and we all know what happened to that select bunch. Maybe I should pick the team, and Capello should choose the future Mrs Mobi.
Another thing that I had to try to determine was the nature of their real feelings for me. Did they really like me or was it was all just an act to get into Mobi’s ATM?
Most important of all, was the nature of our sexual relations. Many of my previous relationships have floundered on bad a sexual relationship.
It took me many years to realise just how important good sex with your partner is. It is probably the key factor that destroyed my last marriage. Dang wasn’t getting what she wanted at home, so she decided to look for it elsewhere.
Good sex is like having a good personal relationship. Sometimes it clicks, sometimes it doesn’t. I enjoyed pretty good sex with wife number 4, (the miserable bitch who was the mother of my daughters and was married to me for 26 years), and I could always satisfy her. Dang was a much more complex matter.
It is only since I left Dang that I have really learnt the art of sex and how to be unselfish and how to satisfy most – but not all – women. In fact for quite a while I couldn’t even satisfy myself when I slept with a woman, but in the past year or so, all that is changed and I am having the greatest sex of my life, and I don’t even need the magic ‘V’.
When you succeed in satisfying a woman it brings your own satisfaction to new heights.
I decided to draw up a check list:
Kids; age; looks; dress sense; sex relationship; home town (nearer to Pattaya the better); cooking skills; good ‘homemaker’; compatibility; personality (moody, liable to anger, control tendencies etc); period of time in the ‘profession’; education standards, and so on and so forth.
After a while I managed to whittle the short list down to five lovely ladies.
The first I have written about before. Mam is a very lovely girl who works in the only go-go bar in Jomtien. She hails from Udorn and has no kids, she is 22 years old. I wasn’t too keen on her as she tends to act like an 18 year old and the most telling point against her was when she told me, in Thai, that her mum had no house – NOT YET!!
The second girl was the so-called virgin: a lovely, bubbly 22 year old from Walking Street, called Ping. She has only been in Pattaya one week, and this became apparent when it took us two hours in broad daylight to find her room in a Soi behind Carrefour because she forgot where she lived!!! Ping is very nice and very pretty but it was all too much for me. She actually looked younger than she was and that could be a bit worrying!
Then there was the 23 year old from Bang Chang – no kids. Onn had been in a previous relationship with a Scotsman for 6 months and spoke fair English. She wasn’t particularly beautiful, but pretty enough and she really seemed to be into me, well certain parts of me anyway. We got on really well together and she was keen to come and live with me.
The ‘Darkside’ candidate was extremely pretty. 23 years old, and had a young baby. I liked her a lot and we seemed to get on very well together. Her name is Noot, and I will write more about her below.
The final candidate was a 28 year old who worked in Pattaya. Tukta also has a very young baby (four months) who lives with her and her mother in Soi Kow Talo. She previously had a three year relationship with an Englishman, and by her own admission, she was the cause of the relationship breaking down.
In fact he still wants to get back together with her but she said it is better just to forget it and move on. ( Much like me and Tan). The baby is from a Thai man who she fell for on the rebound from the farang, and of course he promptly dumped her as soon as the baby was born.
A week or so back I went to Tan’s bar and spoke to some of her friends and they all told me that they couldn’t understand her attitude. She even refused to say ‘hello’ to me.
A couple of days later, I was still feeling pretty aggrieved, (of course I was drinking by this time), so my feelings of resentment hit the surface (in spite of the fact that I never bear any resentments) and I decided to take Tukta and her friend to Tan’s bar for a drink. I told them to dress as sexy as possible and they were happy to oblige.
Now I never bear grudges, but you should have seen the look on Tan’s face when she saw me with these two beauties. If looks could kill I would be dead, and all evening Tan pointedly sat staring at the back of the bar with a look of thunder on her face. I believe she was being ridiculous. She had broken my heart, had finished with me, would never talk to me and she would never answer my messages, so what the hell was she so mad about. What did she want me to do? Pine over her forever?
At midnight I received an sms from Tan. She said: “If you think that bringing two girls to my bar will make me jealous then you are wrong! Take them home and fuck them!”
At least I had provoked a reaction – this was the first message I had received from her for weeks. Why did she bother?
It so happened that I had ordered some homemade sausages from the bar but had forgotten to take them with me, so the following evening, Tukta and I returned for a repeat performance (and to collect the sausages).
Tan studiously avoided me again, but after an hour or so, Tukta managed to engage her in conversation. Amazingly, and for me very satisfyingly, Tan didn’t offer any reason why she had dumped me. She didn’t complain about my behaviour or that I had done anything wrong and even told Tukta that I had treated her very well and had been very generous to her.
She gave Tukta the impression that she wouldn’t talk to me or message me and give me the final ‘heave-ho’ because she was ‘holding me in reserve’.
Then the following night, around midnight I received a call from Tan. She told me that she had a new boyfriend and had finished with me for good. I asked her where the boyfriend was, and she said he wasn’t in the country and she was waiting for him to come back. She told me she loved him and didn’t want me anymore. Yet only two weeks earlier she was asking me to take her back again. It seems pretty unlikely that she would meet, fall in love and for him to leave Thailand in the space of less than 2 weeks.
I suspect that she has taken up again with her old boyfriend but didn’t want to tell me because she had promised me faithfully that she had finished with him for good when she first came to stay with me.
Whatever – I had finally been told what I wanted to hear, and that was that. I now have total closure and can move on. It still hurts – but not a lot.
I don’t need to tell you had some very drunken sessions during this period.
A few days later I was back on the ‘Darkside’, chatting up Noot, one of my five ‘live-in’ candidates who was then at the top of my list.
Noot is very pretty and has a lovely, sexy figure. I decided to bar fine her and her friend, also lovely and sexy, and go for a meal at Tan’s bar. (Yes, the resentment was still boiling). These two girls were absolutely stunning – even more than Tukta and her friend and that’s saying something as they were also pretty exceptional.
Guess what? Tan was madder than ever. She was totally enraged. All the other girls at the bar thought it was hilarious and laughed at her but she couldn’t see the joke. Even her aunt, the bar owner, came over to me and said that she would be happy to marry me any time I liked!
I would seem I am well out of it.
I took Noot and her friend down to Walking Street and we took in a few Go-go shows and then went to Tawang Dang, a Thai night club on 3rd road and finally made it back to my condo after 4 a.m.
I was totally pissed and passed out. When I awoke, both girls had disappeared. I called Noot and she was furious with me. She told me that I spoken very badly to her and that I had played music very loud when they were trying to sleep. I have no recollection of any of this. All I could do was apologise, but since then she has refused to speak to me so God only knows what I must have said or done.
So Mam, Ping and Noot were off my short-list. That just left Onn and Tukta.
Last Monday I planned to drive down to Bang Chang and see Onn. I called ahead to make sure she was there, but as I was leaving Pattaya I received a call from Tukta who asked me to pop in and see her for five minutes as she wanted to talk to me about something.
I duly complied with Tukta’s request and was completely bowled over. I had never seen her looking so lovely. We had a few drinks, and decided: “To hell with Bang Chang”.
At this particular venue all the girls are ‘free lances’ at so they can come and go as they please. So I took Tukta and her friend out for a meal and after that we went on a bit of a drinking binge. At 4.30 a.m. I had really had enough but the girls (by now there was three of them – not too sure where we acquired the third one) wanted to go to sing in a private Karaoke room at Excite night club on Third road.
I didn’t want to go but asked Tukta if she wanted to. She said yes, so I agreed to go with them.
By this time the alcohol was weaving its evil magic on me. I wanted to go home; I needed to go home and I was aggrieved that Tukta couldn’t see this. I had asked her to help me cut down on the drinking, and she knew I had to take care of my wrist when I got home (I had to massage the scar in warm water for 15 minutes) and take a mountain of medication – at night not at dawn. If I had insisted she would have gone home with me, but I didn’t insist as I knew I was planning to make trouble.
I had sewn the seed. It’s what we alcoholics do.
We were shown into one of those awful rooms with karaoke TV screens and all kinds of electronic technology and the terrible off key singing began. Drinks were ordered, and when everything was in full swing, I made my exit. I went to reception, paid the bill and buggered off and left them to it, wondering how long it would be before someone realised I had gone.
I was staggering along Beach Road when the phone call finally came. I told Tukta in no uncertain terms what I thought of her and her friends going to Karaoke at four in the morning and rung off.
I stopped at a bar for a beer and then tried to call her back but she had closed her phone. I kept trying, but to no avail.
I thought that there was a chance she might have gone back to the condo to wait for me so I decided to go home.
But she wasn’t there, and her phone was still off.
I decided to go to her room on Soi Kow Talo where her mum was living with Tukta’s baby.
It must have been around 5.30 when I woke everyone up and within a short while the whole block was awake with the kerfuffle. Frantic phone calls were made to friends of Tukta, and eventually I was informed she was on her way back.
However, it was another hour before she finally appeared; a very angry young lady.
We chatted, I apologised profusely and eventually she came back to the condo with me where we must have crashed at about 7.30 in the morning, having been up all night. Tukta was far from happy, but at least she hadn’t dumped me – well not yet anyway.
That was last Monday. I slept most of Tuesday and Tukta went out and did some shopping and came back and cooked for me.
Since then we have been together. She is a nice girl and she cooks every day, and every day we go to see her baby and play with him for a while.
She knows I am a crazy, mixed up, self-destructive alcoholic, but so far she is prepared to try and help me sort myself out.
I am still drinking – mainly wine, and I am getting ever closer to booking myself in for a detox and therapy.
I missed two appointments with my surgeon to check up on my wrist, and when he finally saw me he castigated me for taking the splint support bandage off, and told me that the x-rays showed that the bones were not healing well. I also had bad inflammation of the scar tissue and in future I must follow his instructions.
So the splint support is back on, and it must stay there for another six weeks at least.
Jomtien, 3rd July, 2010. No longer sober
03 Jul 2010 Comments Off
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As the most perceptive amongst you have probably deduced, I have lapsed yet again.
It’s quite a long, complex story and I will write about it soon.
In case you are wondering, I have blocked all comments for a while.
The advice I receive through your comments is appreciated, but I don’t feel I can handle the abusive and “I told you so” comments at the moment.
But I can’t filter the comments – good or bad – without reading them.
When I am on back on something resembling an even keel I will turn them back on again.
Take care, everyone.
