That guy in Singapore

I’ve been thinking about that guy in Singapore who got hanged for drugs. He was 23 years old when he got caught and 25 when he got hanged. When I was 23 I was in Singapore, and I was looking for drugs. I was on a ship, we stopped in Singapore, my drug supply was gone and I was looking. I was asking cab drivers and bartenders where to score. Everybody said the same thing, “There’s no drugs in Singapore, they hang you for drugs here. When we want to get high, we go to Thailand”.
But I didn’t care, I wanted drugs and I kept looking, knowing that if I got caught, I could be hanged. I never found any, never even got warm.
Now I’m 45 and don’t do drugs any more. I read about that kid they hanged and think it could have been me.
I can imagine it was me. I would be thinking, “I knew it!”
It would be scary walking up to the gallows, them putting a rope around your neck. Seeing the crack from the trap door in the floor, someone putting a black bag over your head, and waiting…
Me now isn’t the same me as me then. I was lucky then. I’m still lucky now.

0 thoughts on “That guy in Singapore

  1. We all change and make bad choices when we are young. It might be drugs, alcohol, and more often relationships. It is amazing to think what happens in other countries and we take for granted our freedom to truly choose how we live without paying the ultimate price for a mistake made at a young age while you have your whole life ahead of you.

  2. Well I haven’t really done anything stupid like that yet. Nothing that I can look back on and think “wow that was lucky, that could have been me”. But you know, I’m still young. I have time to make such mistakes :)Isn’t it creepy when you actually stop to comtemplate your own mortality? To envision all the details leading up to your own extermination and try to imagine the thoughts and emotions you’d be going through at the time…. morbid.

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