I grew up with many adults in my village who were stoned either on ganja imported from Thailand or ecstasy pills or 'pil khayal' bought from some pharmacist in the town of Johor Baru.

Had I not got hooked on books and slept with them and run around the kampung exploring the world carefully, I would have ended up as another 'Mat Gian' or Joe Addict, getting high all day all night sniffing glue, smoking gangsta ganja, or drowning my sorrows with bottles of Tiger Beer or Carlsberg or Guinness Stout I would need to swallow my 'pil kuda' or those horse-powered pills with.

I would have died sitting down near a corner of the Johor Baru bus station. Or I would be as sure dead as I could with my face buried in a plate of rice and gangsta chicken curry late at night, overdosed as overdosed as a gangsta ganja ghost could be.