Meth: a Ticking Timebomb Gone Viral

Ommm

Before I left Australia, I was determined to learn to speak Thai. I now realise that's not going to happen. The Thai language is not just words, but tones. I listen to them speak and it seems men's tones are different to women's. I consider myself to be a good mimic, and I try to (quietly) mimic the locals when they are conversing (not in jest, but to replicate the tones). I have discovered there are some sounds I simply cannot do. Add to this the many different dialects spoken around the country and luckily Google Translate is always there on my phone.

A few days ago I was waiting in line at the market and two Thai men stepped in front of me. I didn't react, and instead of getting angry, I walked away If that happened in Australia, I would have put my hand on a shoulder and told them to get to the back. I guess being a minority and standing out has both positives and negatives to go with it. I decided not to let it affect me and smiled all the way home. People who passed must have wondered why the Farang was so happy that day.

I am the type of person who doesn't do things by halves, and now I am meditating, I want to dig deep and discover the full amount of benefits. I 'normally' (it's only been a week since I began) close my eyes and sit in silence (if I can find it because the complex I live in can be noisy). Research brought me to chanting meditations. The other day, my neighbours were talking loudly and I couldn't focus. I'm a complete novice and easily distracted, so I tried my first chant. It felt weird at the start, but served the purpose of drowning out the voices next door.

I was breathing in and out through my nose and doing the Om on the exhale. The first part was short, but in the second part, I allowed the exhale to go on until I ran out of breath. That's when I noticed a vibration in my nasal passages. I began playing with the pitch and frequency, which focused my mind away from the distractions.

There is a theory...that we can and should raise our frequencies. It goes that if a person is depressed, under a lot of stress or like me, using drugs and not in a good place spiritually, the vibrations we send to the universe can attract negative energies (spirits or entities), or at the very least, cause us to remain in that depressive state.

I've always been a sceptic, and if the events of the past year had happened to someone else, I would probably think like most people, that they are suffering from a mental illness caused by drug use...and fair enough. I've never denied that is the likely cause, but I cannot change the past, and at this point, the cause of my psychosis is of little consequence to me. What I am more interested in is a cure.

This may sound delusional, but there has always been something strange about how these hallucinations act. I cannot afford to write off any theory as to what the hell is going on...be it real or imagined. Then, last night was the first time in a long while that the demons weren't in my face when I laid down to sleep. I could still see them, but they were faint. Upon inquiry ("Angel, are you feeling OK?"), she was very slow to reply.

Now, I am far from claiming a cure...yet. But it dawned on me that in the previous nights, the demons didn't interrupt me whilst I was praying, but when I began to meditate, were immediately up in my face. I thought perhaps God was protecting me from them during that time, and that may be so...but I have a different theory. The entities/demons (or just my mentally ill brain in all its complexity), for some reason, don't care if I pray, but seem to do all they can to stop me from meditating peacefully.

To continue the experiment, Om will become my neighbour's new annoyance...and I couldn't care less what they think.