The Drug War

The deep shadows cloaking the rear of the compound in semidarkness filled with imagined danger had finally begun shifting into an alternate state, darkness fading before light in a mathematically precise retreat as the sun began climbing over the top of the eastern perimeter wall. Waiting for something to happen, the slightest variation to the daily routine, was part of the punishment I had decided the previous day during the intake process. That the guards would purposely build a long wait into every routine procedure seemed almost fair, but the idea something as immutable as the break of dawn – a cog within the vast turning clockwork of the universe – was delayed until well after sunshine had greeted the rest of world by the shiny concrete barrier seemed cosmically unjust. Not that there was anything to look forward to with anticipation. The day unfolding was sure to be every bit as miserable as the night that had just crept by in growing increments of self-induced pain, of that I was certain. Heroin withdrawal savages mind and body but nevertheless, even with a looped newsreel detailing the ruination of an all too privileged life in vivid detail, those first rays of sunshine were nevertheless tipped with optimism. Until my arrest nine days earlier, the idea I would ever spend time behind bars was unthinkable. I was a journalist. I didn't star in drug busts – I covered the drug war – shamelessly regurgitating the propaganda used to sell the Forever War. At the age of 40, after more than 25 years of continuous drug use with almost no legal repercussions, I was a colder than stone junkie but never once had I felt like a criminal. It certainly wasn't part of the self image that had built up over the years as a reporter regurgitatin...

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... the foreigners in Thai jails are from other countries in the region but there is also a sizable contingent of criminals from further abroad. About thirty per cent of those men were faa-rang, the word Thais use to address Caucasians of every nationality, and in that category, Europeans outnumbered North Americans by a large margin. That diverse group ranged from wide eyed tourists on a two week holiday who had been busted with a joint, to international heroin smugglers nabbed at the airport with a multi-kilo load. The largest contingent of foreign inmates, by far, was made up of men from Africa, Nigeria in particular. Blacks were automatically lumped together as Nigerians, no matter what country they are from, and in a justice system that routinely rapes anyone unlucky to come in contact with the law, people of African descent were gang-banged by the justice system.