In front of us, dozens of men line up to take a sweltering steam bath together, despite the temperature outside hitting 35C.
When they emerge from the heat, they drink a dark green liquid of more than 100 ingredients as music plays.
After drinking the secret potion, the men vomit while they kneel on the floor alongside each other.
It is an obscure, uncomfortable ritual to witness, but they emerge seemingly revived.
What we have witnessed is part of a “cold turkey” detox programme in a monastery for Thai men addicted to yaba, a methamphetamine mixed with caffeine.
The stimulant is so powerful that it is known as “crazy medicine”.
Wat Tham Krabok monastery, about 85 miles north of Bangkok, has put more than 100,000 addicts through detox, with the patients first taking a sacred vow to ditch the drug.
“After vomiting, I feel a bit dizzy. But after that, I’m much better. I feel fresh. It feels like all the toxins have left my body,” Akadech tells me.
Fluk, who works in construction, has been taking 10 yaba pills a day.
He says he initially started taking it for energy, so he could work. But when he didn’t, it was unbearable.
“On any day that I didn’t take it, I wouldn’t be able to do anything.
“I couldn’t even sit up straight. I couldn’t get up. I would sleep all the time.”
Tone, another patient here, says yaba is absolutely everywhere.
“It was available at my job, in my neighbourhood. I took it to help me work.”
The high-stakes search for smugglers
Once the opium capital of the world, the Golden Triangle – the jungle borders of Myanmar, Thailand, and Laos – is now home to a huge surge in synthetic drug production flowing across the border from Myanmar.
Conflict and lawlessness there have proved the perfect cocktail for methamphetamine production.
In the Golden Triangle, we join Thai soldiers immersed in a deadly game of whack-a-mole with smart smugglers who are constantly finding new ways to get through a long and porous border.
We are with the Tupchaotak Task Force as they try to search for people, their guns poised as they navigate dense woods.
Punctuated by the sounds of croaking insects, you can hear the rustle of synchronised footsteps.
It’s high stakes – smugglers carry between two and three thousand pills in bags on their backs and move in groups of 10 to 50 people.
The smugglers are often armed with AK-47s.
“As soon as we spot them, we demand to search them. But the smugglers often start firing on us,” says Lt Ketsopon Nopsiri.
Col Anuwach Punyanun, who oversees this vast area, says the civil war in Myanmar is making drug producers incredibly hard to reach.
“Drugs are manufactured in these ethnic minority areas in Myanmar, where soldiers from neighbouring countries are unable to operate. And the groups need income to develop their militia forces.”
‘No limit to how much you can produce’
On the outskirts of Bangkok, a 10-hour drive south, we see just how big the problem is.
Eight million yaba tablets have just been seized by Thai police.
They are being inspected by a large forensic team – a sea of red pills scattered across a table as they delicately pour over them.
A police inspector holding seized packs of yaba
What makes these pills so appealing is how cheap they are – sometimes as little as 10p each.
They are made with precursor chemicals, supplied in vast quantities from China and India.
Benedikt Hofmann, from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, explains the simplicity of the process: “With synthetic drugs, you can essentially produce as much as you want, as long as you have access to chemicals and the good chemist and the place where you mix them together.
“And so there’s almost no limit to how much you can produce.”
That’s led to an exponential growth of production and trafficking of methamphetamine, with Shan State in Myanmar the hub.
The year 2024 saw record levels of seizures of methamphetamine in East and Southeast Asia too.
Two hundred and thirty-six tons were discovered last year alone, marking a 24% increase compared to 2023.
Mr Hofmann says it’s hard to compute the wild and rapid spread.
“If we’re looking at the number of people who are targeted by these drugs in the market, I mean, it’s just staggering.”
‘When they took it, they became addicted’
The yaba problem isn’t new but right now it’s booming. Dirt cheap and easy to get.
Phra Ajahn Vichit Akkajitto, deputy abbot of Wat Tham Krabok monastery, says the government has been cracking down on yaba use, but previously tolerated too much.
“There was a period of time when the government allowed people to have up to five tablets of yaba.
“It encouraged people to take it, who’d never tried it before. When they took it, they became addicted.”
Thailand is now leading the way in yaba seizures in Southeast Asia, but there’s a huge market to crack and a vast border, so many can slip through.
A supply-driven market with a war-torn nation pumping out tons of a highly addictive drug.
