I awoke with the sun slicing through the blinds, spotlighting the mess I didn’t want to face. My head throbbed. My mouth felt like sandpaper. The stench of stale whiskey clung to my sheets. My stomach turned as I blinked through the haze, heart racing from nightmares I couldn’t remember. I reached for the half-empty bottle on the nightstand, then thought better of it and fumbled for an Adderall instead, my morning ritual.
After that, I lay back down and stared at the ceiling, waiting for the pill to kick in. By late afternoon, I’d take a Xanax to smooth out the crash. By nightfall, I’d start drinking again, chasing sleep I didn’t want so I could wake and continue a life I couldn’t stand.
The moment everything broke was when my brother, the one person I had spoken to every single day since we first got cell phones, cut me off completely. He didn’t make a speech. He didn’t give me a warning. He just disappeared.
I had said something awful about his girlfriend while drunk, something I don’t even remember. I was blacking out daily at that point, barely conscious of the damage I was doing. I’d been on a years-long bender, testing everyone around me, especially him. He had always been there. Always picked up the phone. Until one day, he didn’t.
Days turned into weeks, and the silence screamed louder than any fight ever could. My brother was gone. And it was because of me. Everyone else had already been pushed out in some similar way – worn down or driven off by my self-destruction. Losing my brother was my rock-bottom moment. And finally, after hitting bottom, I felt the urge to do something I hadn’t felt in a long time.
But before I could start climbing, I had to understand how I’d fallen this far. It wasn’t just about addiction or bad choices. It was about the life I had built, the illusion I had sold myself, and the quiet despair I had carried for years.
There was a time, not that long before, when things looked pretty good for me. I was working in the film industry. Props, set pieces, the stuff behind the magic. I had a reputation, a steady flow of gigs, and the kind of access people dream about. Big productions. Long hours. Consistent paychecks that looked good on paper.
But the film industry is brutal, especially on the labor side. Grueling hours, endless deadlines, and the expectation to be sharp and relentless every day. That’s where my Adderall addiction found its opening. I needed to stay locked in. Laser-focused. Always moving.
But when the sets finally shut down and the adrenaline wore off, sleep became a problem. After running hot for 16 hours, you can’t just close your eyes and drift off. So I reached for Xanax. Then alcohol. The nightly sledgehammer, I called it.
Then came the COVID shutdown. In an instant, every film production in Los Angeles came to a screeching halt. I lost my home in the Frogtown neighborhood of the city, packed up what was left of my life, and moved in with my father.
You might think I would stop using the drugs once the work dried up. But I didn’t. Each morning, I told myself I needed to stay alert “to look for work.” And later, I needed to knock myself out so I could “rest up” and be ready to try again tomorrow. It was a lie I fed myself daily, a hollow excuse to maintain a cycle that no longer served any purpose. I wasn’t chasing a coveted spot in the union with benefits anymore. I was wasting away in a chair in my father’s living room.
While the world spun into chaos, I sank with it. My career dissolved. My days blurred. Weeks folded into months, and I rotted away in mind, body and spirit. I woke up each day angry and ashamed, then lashed out at my father, the one person who had never walked away, who gave me more grace and patience than I deserved.
The weight of losing my brother eventually settled in fully. The silence between us was louder than any excuse I could concoct. For the first time, I stopped blaming the world. I stopped trying to spin the story to make myself the victim and accepted that the problem was me.
I started searching for something that could hold me steady. Something older and quieter than the chaos I’d built around myself. Something more meaningful than the drugs. That search led me to Buddhism. I wasn’t reaching for enlightenment. I just needed to learn to live with myself.
The first real step I took, like a true American consumer, was opening my laptop and buying a book: “Buddhism Plain and Simple” by Steve Hagen. It wasn’t a miracle fix. There were no step-by-step instructions. Just a quiet reminder to stop chasing answers outside myself and start doing the work within.
So that’s what I did. Every morning, instead of reaching for an Adderall or lighting a cigarette, I sat in silence for 10 minutes. And in those quiet moments, I slowly reclaimed a sliver of control over my life. Each time I resisted the urge to feed an old craving, I was pulling away from the things that had ruled me.
What once felt essential began to look hollow. The five-minute buzz from a cigarette lost its shine when I saw it in the context of the hours of anxiety and sluggishness that followed. I started to see the whole arc of my decisions, not just the flash of relief at the beginning.
“My future in America was a dead end: a failed career, broken relationships and a staircase of debt so steep it seemed impossible to climb. But abroad, that staircase looked smaller, more manageable. Rent for $300 a month instead of $2,000? That alone felt like hope.”
First to go were the cigarettes. Then the Adderall. Every time a craving hit, I meditated. Little by little, I began to gain control. The cravings came, but meditating had helped me learn to see them for what they were. Temporary. Passing. I didn’t need to obey them.
Eventually, it was time to stop the Xanax. There’s no “intentional sleep” when you’re quitting a benzodiazepine addiction. Sleep came when my brain gave out, when it simply couldn’t stay awake any longer. I had no control over when or for how long.
Through it all, my father was there. He cared for me, cooked for me and kept a quiet watch. He was gentle, patient and worried, but carefully cheering me on in his own quiet way. Every now and then, he would say, “Hey, I’m proud of you.”
I’d scoff, shrug it off, maybe even roll my eyes. In my eyes, I was a failure. A mess. A burden. But he saw someone fighting, someone trying. His words reached me, even if I didn’t want them to. They mattered, whether I believed them or not.
Slowly, I began to sleep through the night, and eventually I wanted more. I began looking at my life with clear eyes. After COVID, many of the jobs in the film industry had been scooped up by fresh faces. And without drugs, I wasn’t the same person who cared so much about the film industry anyway. So I began to research moving abroad.
My future in America was a dead end: a failed career, broken relationships and a staircase of debt so steep it seemed impossible to climb. But abroad, that staircase looked smaller, more manageable. Rent for $300 a month instead of $2,000? That alone felt like hope. Finally, I had a sober, stable foundation. All I needed now was a place to begin again.
Photo Courtesy Of Charles Samenfeld
After some searching, I found Siem Reap, Cambodia. It was a small city nestled beside the ancient ruins of the Angkor Wat temple — one of the largest religious sites in the world and a major tourist destination. Siem Reap had everything I needed: reliable internet, a strong expat community, and just enough infrastructure to feel easy, without the chaos of a massive city. It struck the perfect balance.
I sold everything, booked a flight, and said goodbye to my father. Those last few months with him were special. We stayed up watching YouTube videos about Cambodia, worked on the house together, cracked jokes like best friends. After a joyful but painful goodbye, I hopped onto a plane and into a different world.
Getting into the country was surprisingly simple. You pay $35 cash, answer a few questions on a screen, and walk outside the airport. That’s it. Stepping off the plane was one of the strangest experiences of my life. For the first time in a long time, I felt like I belonged. It was foreign, yes, but it felt like home almost immediately.
I settled in fast. Six months later, I’m living in a gated apartment with air conditioning, internet, and weekly cleaning for $200 a month, surrounded by restaurants and street vendors who know me by name. English is widely spoken. Life is slower, simpler, just what I’d been craving. I meditate and jog daily. Making friends came naturally, too.
I put together a small pet- and house-sitting business within the local expat community. Traveling is cheap in Southeast Asia, so when people travel to Thailand or Vietnam, I watch their cats, dogs and homes. Most people leave me food and between $100–$200 for a week or more of sitting. I spend about $5 a day on food, and I try to live simply and stretch each dollar. I don’t have much, but I don’t need much. The fewer things I own, the more space I feel inside.
Photo Courtesy Of Charles Samenfeld
I still get cravings, but they’re different now. Beating addiction through meditation felt like pulling the problem out at the root. I’ve rewired my brain so thoroughly that even in a country where I can walk into a pharmacy and buy nearly anything without a prescription, I don’t.
I no longer relate to immediate gratification the way I once did. When a craving does hit, I don’t just see how it would make me feel in the next five minutes, I see the fallout in the coming weeks. What used to be a strong pull toward escape now often turns into a 30-minute jog or a meditation session on my front porch.
I often wonder how my brother is doing. Christmas passed, then my 38th birthday passed, and he still hasn’t spoken to me. At this point, I have accepted that it’s my responsibility to break the silence. But I don’t feel as though I’ve made enough progress to reach out quite yet. At the moment, I am still working, adjusting and growing. I am proud of what I’ve accomplished, but there is still so much to do.
Still, at 38, I’m feeling real joy for the first time. Not a high or a buzz, but something lasting. Happiness when I lived in the States was always tied to something external: status, income, achievements. I chased money, titles and the illusion of security, and it nearly destroyed me.
This joy now is quieter, slower and simpler. It’s not the rush of achievement, or buying something new, or a dopamine hit from a drug. It’s sitting by the river after a jog, watching tuk-tuks pass by while I sip 50-cent iced coffee. It’s walking home with fresh fruit from the market and knowing exactly how far a dollar can go.
Siem Reap was originally an escape. After some time working and living here, I’ve started to see it as “life abroad on training wheels.” It’s incredibly easy to live here—the visa requirements, the lifestyle, the cost. But travel is addictive, and once you grow accustomed to a place like this, you begin to look further.
At first, I was happy to escape the U.S. and, honestly, I still don’t see myself ever returning. But over time, a new plan has taken shape: I want to enjoy the mountains of Laos, spend some years in Africa, and eventually make my way to Eastern Europe.
But for now, in Siem Reap, there’s no ladder to climb. There’s just life. People. Moments. And in these moments, I’ve found a deeper contentment than I’ve ever known.
Charles Samenfeld is a writer and avid reader who left Los Angeles to build a new life in Cambodia. His work explores themes of personal growth, sobriety, detachment, and the complexity of family relationships.
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