Ex-Husker Thompson works to rebuild her life
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BY KEN HAMBLETON / Lincoln Journal Star
Tressa Thompson’s partners were her meth spoon and needle.
Her addiction tore up her life, her family, her dreams.
“I sabotaged what I had. And I had a lot. A family that loved me. A career. And I was one of the best.”
Tressa Thompson, a standout basketball and track athlete at Bloomfield High School, started her track career at Nebraska in 1993.
In high school, Thompson also played offense and defense for the Bees on state champion and state runner-up football teams.
She was gregarious, outgoing and admired.
At Nebraska, her reputation grew to national and international levels as she rose to the top of the world in the women’s shot put. Four-time Big 12 champion. Three-time NCAA champion. Three consecutive NCAA records.
She is considered -- alongside Merlene Ottey, Charlie Green, Kevin Coleman, Rhonda Blanford, Carl Myerscough, Ineta Radovica and Nicola Martial -- as one of the best Husker track athletes ever.
In the summer of 2000, just before the U.S. Olympic Trials, Thompson tested positive for cocaine and was banned for two years.
She accelerated her use of meth.
Last summer, a family friend who saw the Thompson family tearing apart wrote the A&E Network show “Intervention.”
Producers followed her and her family for four days in October. The show aired Monday.
Since then, Thompson, now in rehabilitation in Orange County, Calif., has received more than 500 e-mails, hundreds of phone calls and letters of support.
Meth
Methamphetamine, known also as crank, ice, crystal, speed, glass, fire and meth, is a powdered substance that is injected, snorted, smoked or swallowed.
It is relatively easy to make meth. Key ingredients include car starter fluid, drain cleaner, the guts of Lithium batteries and two different kinds of acids.
The drug is highly addictive because the high lasts longer than many other drugs. The effects of the drug are intense, euphoric and can create unpredictable behaviors such as aggressiveness, insomnia, decreased appetite, convulsions and heart attack.
Consistent use can cause brain damage, stroke, toxic psychosis and severe dental damage.
“Meth has a highly addictive propensity because unlike alcohol, for instance, which takes a long time and a lot of use to become an alcoholic, meth works faster than almost any other drug,” said Topher Hansen, executive director of CenterPointe, a Lincoln program that works with substance abusers. “Cocaine is more expensive and the high doesn’t last as long as meth.
“To address the addiction it takes more than ‘just putting it down.’ The addiction becomes the equal to the human food drive. Nothing else in the person’s vision is as important as the next use of the drug.”
Hansen said related issues -- mental health, for instance, and physical health, isolation and loneliness -- must be addressed, too.
“We have to treat the entire system that led to the addiction,” he said.
“It could be you just feel different and meth, alcohol, other drugs, are a way to help,” Hansen said. “The problem is that once you come down from the high, you’re in need of another high.”
Meth can “live” in the body and take as long as a year to get cleaned up, he said.
Thompson, 32, was a three-time NCAA shot put champion and record-setter from the University of Nebraska when a drug test disqualified her from the 2000 U.S. Olympic Trials.
She entered rehab this past October, and she’s ready for a change.
But giving up — by shooting up — is not an option.
“It was only a matter of time before I killed myself — get more in the spoon than I need and shoot up. I’d be dead pretty quick if I did that again.”
These days, Thompson wakes at 7 a.m., eats breakfast and heads to the day’s first group therapy session at the Hope By The Sea facility in San Juan Capistrano, Calif.
Then she grabs lunch, rejoins the group and gets a ride to a gym about 10 miles from her apartment.
Thompson works with high school and middle school kids at the gym.
“I can do this. I see the fire in their eyes. They want to learn. They want to be strong. I’m getting a kick out of that, and I’m getting my strength back. I’m getting my passion back to rebuild my body.”
After dinner, she attends a Narcotics Anonymous meeting.
The 90-day intensive in-patient therapy at Hope By The Sea, followed by a stay at a halfway house and more therapy, was paid for by the A&E show “Intervention,” which profiled Thompson’s addiction in an episode that aired earlier this week.
Thompson’s stay was supposed to end Jan. 23. But she’s still there. She wants to stay longer.
“They really do care about me, and they’ve got me going,” Thompson said.
She wants to rebuild her life, but it takes more than sobriety.
She wants to rebuild her body, but she must realize the damage done by meth.
She wants to regain her family, but she knows coming back to Nebraska may be a long time off.
“The reason I think it will work this time is I realize the link between my life and the drugs,” Thompson said. “It’s kind of like when you know you have to change. Like when you go from high school to college. You grow up. You realize things.”
This is her fourth attempt at rehab. In the past, avoiding drugs wasn’t a solution, just a postponement.
Officials at a Bible-based Kentucky program asked Thompson to leave four days before her discharge date because they discovered she is a lesbian. She caught a cab to downtown Louisville to another recovery center.
She was sober another two months.
Then she got out, bought crack, got high.
She returned to Nebraska to face trial on a felony prescription charge. She pleaded guilty and took part in the Douglas County drug court program.
Ten more months of sobriety lifted the felony from her record.
The day after she completed the program, she celebrated with marijuana and crack.
It was back to the good old days, like when she graduated from heavy college drinking to her first drug binge.
Thompson began her first affair with drugs one February night in Omaha in 1999.
“We ended up doing coke all night long, and I fell in love. The drugs. The people around me getting high all accepted me,” she said.
Track was still important in her life, her road to the future, a significant income, an Olympic gold medal.
“It felt good to be a good athlete,” Thompson said. “For me, it was two spins from the back of the (shot put) ring. I’d build up the speed and let it go. I could throw the shot in my sleep.
“I would feel like a ballerina going across the ring. It was a beautiful feeling.”
But the drugs were part of her life, too.
“I could compete, get high and compete again.”
But her shot put marks were dropping, her strength was waning.
“But I was losing weight because of the meth, and that kind of helped my self-esteem because I looked better,” she said. “I didn’t know and really didn’t care it was eating my brain, my health, my teeth and my life.”
She was competing with the best in the world in European meets. She was making money in a sport where only a very few cash in on their talents.
And then — just before the Oregon Track Classic in June 2000 — she became upset over a broken relationship.
She took coke and meth a few days before the meet. Even though she finished last, she was selected for drug testing.
She tried to convince herself that because a couple of days had passed since she took the drugs, maybe she’d pass. Besides, they usually looked for steroids and other performance enhancers.
She was wrong.
She got a call from the USA Track and Field legal counsel: She was banned from competing in the Olympic trials.
She thought about contesting the test. She tried shrugging off the ban.
Her coach, Mark Colligan, said she had to face facts and plead guilty.
He and Thompson had become close friends. Colligan’s wife, Jean, was a dorm monitor where Thompson lived while in college.
Thompson said Jean Colligan was the first person to face her about substance abuse problems.
“I was drinking on the weekends back then in college,” Thompson said. “Jean came to me and said, ‘You may have a problem.’ I brushed it off.”
Colligan still checks his emotions when talking about Thompson.
“Tressa had put herself in such a great position to reach the highest level of competition, all she had to do was show up and even drop the shot into fair territory, and she would have been going to the Olympics,” Colligan said.
“We had seen Tressa work so hard and become a star. She had a light about her.
“People around her loved her.”
As fast as she spun across a shot put ring, Thompson slid into addiction.
Into stealing, lying, cheating.
Buying meth.
Shooting up and partying.
“Back when I was getting started as a regular meth user, I would work construction for a couple of weeks and spend about three-fourths of my paycheck on meth,” Thompson said.
The plan was to buy plenty of meth, use some and sell enough to buy more.
“That didn’t work, because I’d either use it all, have a party and give it away and scrounge, steal, lie, whatever, to get more,” she said.
Thompson’s mother, Syble, and sister, Rachelle Pinkelman, stayed in touch. Tressa would get high or get scared or both and call back home to Bloomfield.
“I was high and I’d call, and Mom would come down to Omaha and pick me up, take me home. Sometimes she’d come to get me and I’d hide. Stick around. Live in my car. Live with the other drug users. Live with drug dealers.”
Her dad, Jim Thompson, would lock up Tressa’s championship rings, his guns and other valuables because, more than once, she was caught stealing goods so she could pawn them to get money for drugs.
A friend of the family’s contacted “Intervention.” The Tressa Thompson episode was shot in late October. It aired Monday.
“It came across more positive than I thought it would,” Tressa Thompson said. “I got more than 500 e-mails that I’m slowly working my way through. I got some phone calls. I got a lot of support, and I think I touched a lot of lives.
“Best of all, Dad called and said he’d support me, no matter what. I’ve stopped running away.”
Last week, her mother, sister, nieces and nephews joined her on a trip to Disneyland.
“I see those kids who adore me, and they are at the age where they understand I messed up,” Thompson said. “I see my sister and my mom still love me. All of that is good for my recovery.”
Much of the show revolved around Thompson’s sexual orientation.
She had lived with a couple of women and declared herself a lesbian.
On the “Intervention” episode, Jim Thompson talked about how he believed that was wrong in the eyes of God.
“Dad would say if I went back to the Bible, I’d get a boyfriend and I’d quit drugs,” she said.
Thompson had to learn to deal with her family’s perceptions.
“Basically, people didn’t know how to deal with homosexuality, people who were Christian-raised, like my folks.”
She admitted she is also perplexed by her sexuality.
Now she doesn’t view herself as a lesbian.
“I’m a big, strong woman, and it was hard to find a man — a man who could handle me.”
She wanted to love somebody, she said, and she wanted to be loved. And women were there.
“Now I feel that being with females is not the right thing to do. I grew up believing in the Bible and being gay is a sin.
“I could be asexual, for all I know. Track was my first love. When I messed that up and lost it, I became like a widow.”
Reach Ken Hambleton at 473-7313 or khambleton@journalstar.com.
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