8am Lets Drink!

Got up early and out on the road fast today, was awake by 630am and out on the road at 715am. I got down to the area where the canal garbage collectors homes and boats are at about 8am. I had an hour to kill before they were scheduled to leave so I walked down to the area where the drinking men and glue sniffer teenagers hang out. There 4 drinkers in their regular spot, 3 of the drinkers were 1/2 sober 1/2 drunk, one was completely drunk. I talked to Khune Ot and Khune Dang who were polite to me, they defended me a bit from the drunk man who I met for the first time, telling him in Thai that I was a friend and not to ask me for money and there was no need to try to speak English to me because I spoke Thai.

Khune Ot told me the Thai whiskey they drink is 45% proof (I think thats what he said). He was sitting in the same spot with the same expression in the same position as when I left him 2 days ago and 3 days ago and 4 days ago. He seems never to move, he just sits there and drinks and drinks. 8am in the morning and Ot has a shot glass with whiskey in it and I am photographing him. Khune Dang was much more friendly today and open with me, allowing me to photograph him more easily, last time (the first time I met him) he was wary of me. He even gave me some Buddhist pendents after explaining (had me smell one amulet he called it "Sweet") in depth what they were and where they were from (I understood very little of what he said). Later on Khune Dang asked for 60 baht for whiskey, which I gave him.

Geez these guys will not live long drinking like that everyday, how can you be drunk everyday of your life? There is such sadness and desperation in that group, such a waste, so many aimless lives. They seem like nice decent men, I have rarely seen anger, they are almost always smiling, maybe in a a different life they could be productive people. Addiction is really difficult for me to understand, I have never been drunk in my life, never did drugs, or drink never smoked. Its hard for me to look at people like this and really understand what they are going through. Why can they not stop? How hard is it to stop? Will their body shut down if they try to stop? What damage has been done? Why do they drink?
One interesting tidbit I learned today. The drinkers look down on the young men who sniff glue in the area, they consider the glue sniffers a bad group but is there really a difference between them?