The face of addiction is sometimes unrecognisable.
It is not the limp, pockmarked soul lying in the crack den or on the side of the street.
It can just as easily be your colleague, your boss or your successful, high-flying friend.
Walk into The Cabin Chiang Mai, a luxury rehab clinic in Thailand's north and you are likely to see executives, models, celebrities, elite soldiers, businesspeople and even Olympic athletes.
You could easily mistake the clinic – all lush, manicured gardens dotted with daybeds, brilliantly-patterned butterflies dancing overhead and a restaurant perched on the Ping River, serving Thai delicacies like a pomelo, mint and peanut salad, for some sort of yoga retreat.
When Briony*, 46, arrived the "yoga retreat" vibe was what surprised her the most.
Expecting "crack and meth heads and old alcoholic men", instead she saw "expats who looked healthy on the outside".
Briony, too, looked healthy on the outside.
A successful PR executive, she had been living life in the fast lanes of London, Hong Kong and eventually Sydney.
After-work events were standard fodder and the heavy drinking culture was something to raise a glass to.
Coming home and smoking a joint, a habit she had since the age of 16 to quiet an overactive mind and soothe loneliness, was simply a way to wind down and take the edge off. It was not something she viewed as problematic. Nor was the cocaine sharpeners she had to straighten herself out during a night of partying.
"It seemed sensible to do coke if you were drinking a lot," she says now.
None of it ever seemed a problem because she didn't relate to the stereotypes of alcoholism or addiction.
"A lot of people think of addicts as being on the street," she says. "I wasn't passing out, I wasn't drinking at lunchtime or drink-driving."
Besides, no one ever told her she had a problem. She tended towards friends who enjoyed long boozy lunches or all-night parties, she had only casual relationships and people would tell her she was a "really funny" drunk.
"I wasn't belligerent," she says.
But, somewhere along the way, her relationship with alcohol and drugs became the most important in her life.
She had started out using them to "enhance" how she felt, now she used drugs and alcohol to "change" how she felt and to suppress a sense of emptiness and sadness.
Even when she promised herself she would, she couldn't go a night without drinking or smoking.
"I'd get to the end of a stressful day and think 'f--- it'", she says. "I never stuck to having a few nights off."
Her intake gradually increased in line with her tolerance and she began planning her life around her habits.
She would buy alcohol from different bottle shops, worried she would be judged for the frequency and bulk she was buying in and only go to parties if she could get a lift to and from because, "why go to a party and only have two drinks?"
Instead, staying home to watch DVDs, so she could drink and smoke herself into a stupor, became preferable.
For Greg*, 35, isolation also became a distinguishing point in his descent from recreational to serious alcohol and drug-use.
"It's a lonely existence," the chef and restaurant owner admits.
But, like Briony, a workplace culture of getting on it, made his habit seem acceptable, at least for a while.
"I can be at work pissed or high and no one says anything," he says of hospitality.
He started working in kitchens at 16 and took to snorting speed in the toilets with the others, a cheeky bonding exercise that helped them to ride out the long hours, high-heat and intense pressure.
"It was fun till I was 23," he says. After that, most of his mates moved on, began relationships and the big nights of partying were no longer the rule.
"I was still taking pills on a weekday."
Three months in rehab as a 25-year-old did little. He spent the next eight years having stints of sobriety punctuated with binges that would last three days.
"It's not glamorous," he says, recounting one three-week bender in Las Vegas, holed up in his hotel room the whole time, on his own, his nose caked in blood, unable to speak or leave.
Despite regular relapses, he owned and was running successful restaurants that received media acclaim.
But he was becoming unreliable.
"I was running it via text and email because I couldn't talk," he says. "I was wasted."
At the end of February last year, while recovering from another bender, he had finally had enough.
"It was after another Christmas of being high the whole time," he says.
"I thought, I'm 35 now. Y'know that old, creepy guy who is out and f---ed up on drugs? Suddenly, I was that guy."
He started going to Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) meetings but they weren't enough. "I went straight to the pub after the meeting," he says.
So he began looking around and settled on The Cabin because "it's a bit of a getaway, like going to a five-star resort".
Briony had the same idea.
After being unable to stick to a new year's resolution of just a few days' abstinence, she finally acknowledged she had a problem. It wasn't until a holiday in Bali seven months later though that she had what she calls a moment of clarity.
She went into autopilot, looking at rehabs, and decided upon The Cabin for its holistic approach, incorporating yoga, meditation, a high-intensity exercise regimen as well as cognitive behavioural therapy and a secular adaptation of the 12 steps program.
She told all but one person she was booking into a yoga retreat and ended up staying there for six weeks.
"I cried pretty much solidly for two weeks," says Briony, who has now been sober for "two years, a month and a bit" and who has changed careers and moved to a town that is less fast-paced.
Greg, on the other hand, hit the ground running when he returned to Australia.
"I took a year off last time I went to rehab and got sober," he explains. "I got back to work and relapsed."
This time Greg, who has been clean for nine months, decided to get straight back, implementing the mindfulness practices he learned while at The Cabin.
"The second or third day, there was a mindfulness session and I thought 'what's this crap?'"
He now sees a connection, he says, between the 12 steps program and the mindfulness teachings incorporated in The Cabin's program. "Twelve steps is designed to be mindful – live in the now, be in the moment and just for today," he says.
"There was an analogy the teacher used about how you take your shoes off – my whole life has been to kick them off and throw them off."
Now, he is trying to have more care for how he treats himself and how he walks through his days.
He meditates most mornings, no longer works night shifts, has an AA friend he calls and is starting to reconnect with friends.
It's not easy.
"There's a mindfulness saying that sometimes you have to reset your day. I've had days where I have to restart three times.
Briony also has tough days.
"I certainly still miss drinking at the end of a stressful day," she admits.
"But, I'll book a massage, meet friends for lunch or do something else as a treat.
"I'm a lot less irritable now ... and I feel like there are so many possibilities. Life had become so narrow. Now I have so much more freedom."
High-functioning addicts
Some academics contend the notion of high-functioning addicts and say it is an exception, according to the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre at UNSW (NDARC).
But, The Cabin's program director, Alastair Mordey, says a high proportion of "clients", about half of which are Australian, are high-functioning addicts.
"They're not your average group," says the former addict, who worked as an outreach worker in London after he regained sobriety 10 years ago.
"It's certainly different to the crew I was working with in London."
For this reason, one component of the treatment is high-intensity exercise, including mountain biking, white-water rafting, abseiling and power-lifting.
"About 40 per cent [of the clients] can do high-intensity exercise quite quickly," says Mordey, whose recalcitrant spirit is still apparent, despite the tailored suit he is wearing, in the skull and crossbones cufflinks he wears and the unapologetic, tough-love approach to rehab.
"Studies show the link between neurogenesis and lowering rates of depression and anxiety. I think what naturally creates that is extreme activity or cardio. It activates the brain's own heroin [through dopamine] so you feel good."
Another aspect of the program, designed to provide skills for coping with good or bad feelings, is mindfulness, says Mordey, who meditates daily.
The yoga and mindfulness sessions help with anxiety, depression and insomnia that those in rehab often suffer from, says teacher Rupert Jackson.
"If we can start watching the mind we give ourselves a better chance at staying sober," says the Londoner and who is a reformed addict, like 95 per cent of clinicians at The Cabin. "Through mindfulness, we have to start waking up to our own bulls--- and see we don't have to act out the insane thoughts and feelings."
Jackson believes the inclusion of mindfulness in treatment programs are imperative.
"Mindfulness can be summed up in two words – pay attention," he says. "Once you notice what you're doing you have the power to change it."
"They have to have been through it themselves because they will know the tricks. A non-addict wouldn't pick up on the subtle cues," he says.
Addiction in Australia
Addiction statistics are not comprehensive in Australia, but there are more than 1900 Alcoholics Anonymous meeting centres and about 18,000 members.
According to NDARC, in any 12-month period in Australia, 1.4 per cent of the population will be alcohol-dependent. This translates to 224,215 Australians. Although rates of alcohol dependence are higher among those who are unemployed, a significant number of Australians are working and alcohol-dependent.
Males were twice as likely as females to exceed the lifetime-risk guidelines for drinking alcohol while close to half Australians aged 14 years or older have illicitly used drugs at least once.
