
Thai Meth Epidemic and Vomit Rehab
Yaba, a cheap methamphetamine pill, has overtaken heroin as the Golden Triangle's dominant drug, and this film follows the addicts and treatment methods trying to keep pace with it. The camera travels to Wat Thamkrabok, a Buddhist monastery north of Bangkok where addicts submit to a five-day detox built around a bitter herbal drink that induces violent vomiting, taken while chanting a vow never to use again. Monks oversee rows of men retching into buckets, a ritual meant to purge both the drug and the addict's old identity at once. Interviews with users, family members, and monastery staff lay out how yaba's low price and easy production have spread it through rural villages and city slums alike, and how little the Thai state has managed to do about supply coming across the Myanmar border. The film treats the vomit cure without judgment, presenting it as one community's blunt, spiritual answer to a public health crisis that conventional rehab has failed to contain.