A well-known Vancouver street artist is undergoing addiction treatment in Thailand after he was hand-picked for a private rehab opportunity that would normally cost thousands of dollars per month.

“I’m doing very well thank you, 100 per cent better,” Jamie Hardy a.k.a Smokey D told Global News in an interview from The Hills Rehab in Chiang Mai. “I love it here.”

In mid-October, drug and alcohol interventionist Andy Bhatti and peer support worker Kevin Parker caught up with Smokey as he was painting in a Downtown Eastside alley – and offered him a six to nine-month scholarship at the in-patient addiction treatment centre.

“Why wouldn’t we give it to somebody who’s grateful and who’s helped other people right, so we thought let’s ask him,” recounted Bhatti.

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Bhatti works with The Hills Rehab, which offers a select number of sponsored beds to Canadians who want to get clean.

“At first I thought they were joking around,” said Smokey.

The 55-year-old was chosen because he’s known for building bridges through art and raising awareness about the toxic drug crisis that’s claimed many of his friends – all while battling his own addiction.

“He’s like, if I’m going to get clean I’ll go all the way, let’s go,” said Bhatti, who got Smokey a passport within 24 hours.

“The next 48 hours I was on a plane here – I didn’t pack a bag, I just left,” recalled Smokey, who spent the last 17 years supplementing prescribed methadone with street drugs.

“I always felt like trapped you know what I mean, there’s no way out,” he told Global News.

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Now, he’s doing yoga and getting life skills training – while hanging out with elephants. 

“They’re very gentle…they kiss your face and stuff like that,” said Smokey. “It’s like paradise.”

In less than eight weeks, Smokey’s life has been transformed.

“I’ve gained a lot of weight and I feel a lot better,” he said. “I can’t even put it into words.”

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Back home, Smokey was recognized in March 2023 for his quarter century of community service in Vancouver with his own ‘Smokey D Day’ on March 11 – and the keys to the city.

Still, Bhatti said Smokey was never offered a plan to get off drugs in his home province.

“You looked at him like a harm reduction drug addict who’s never going to get clean,” the interventionist said.

“Safe supply and all that stuff, it’s a band-aid,” Smokey told Global News.

Because fentanyl could kill you, Bhatti said under the harm reduction approach, it’s safer to use safe supply.

“But at the end of the day, if you use two drugs and you go out and smoke crack or do cocaine and now you’re high, you need an opiate to come down,” Bhatti told Global News. “If you have no safe supply left, you’re just going to buy fentanyl anyways and if you relapse while you’re doing safe supply – now you have to convince the doctor to give you more safe supply because the fentanyl was stronger than the safe supply so how are you ever going to get off of it.”

Smokey said he tried everything to kick drugs in the Downtown Eastside but the therapy and housing options needed to stay clean were not available.

“I’ve tried to get out so many times and there’s the same kind of like vicious, victim circle – you could never get ahead of it,” he told Global News. “I’d get released and be right back where I started.”

In Thailand, Smokey has access to a full-time doctor, 24-hour nursing, and a psychiatrist and psychologist for one-on-one trauma counselling,

“Smokey is very famous,” said Dr. Somkiat Tanwatana, the psychiatrist overseeing the artist’s mental health care at The Hills Rehab. “He can go anywhere in rehab and he choose us and I’m in honour about that.”

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In Canada, Bhatti said users don’t receive enough opioid replacement therapy to stop them from getting sick while the treatment lacks wraparound care – including psychiatrists and psychologists to address the trauma of addiction.

“In Thailand, they can increase your methadone really quick so you’ll never be sick and then you can decrease it really fast with another medication to help you not feel the withdrawal.”

That, said Bhatti, has allowed Smokey to medically detox from illicit drugs.

“He’s decreased 90 per cent of the medication that he was taking for opioid replacement therapy to be almost 100 per cent clean and sober where it would take you eight months in Canada.”

Where the system is backwards according to Bhatti, who would like to see governments fund proper treatment instead of putting so many resources into medication and harm reduction services.

“If you’re not giving somebody the option to change, how are they going to change?” said Bhatti.

Smokey is receiving art therapy as part of his treatment in Thailand, where he has also joined a graffiti club.

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According to Bhatti, Smokey will be auctioning off a canvas to help pay for uncovered medical expenses and to extend his stay overseas.

After another month in rehab, Bhatti said Smokey will enter a long-term recovery centre where a private psychologist will work with him three days a week to deal with the emotional scars from witnessing so many overdoses.

“Sober living – that’s our final goal but we do care that we will step by step with him,” said Tanwatana.

Smokey said he won’t be returning home without a recovery plan in place.

For now, he’s enjoying sobriety and said he hasn’t felt this good in years.

“I never thought I could, but I do, and I feel a lot happier,” he told Global News. “I wake up every day (with) a smile on my face.”