Bomber: I’m back after years of torment, dark days

Declaring “I’m back again and I’m emotion superior about myself”.” Thompson claimed “I missing my way. In the conclusion I just did not treatment. I did not treatment about the hurt. I just had no inner thoughts, you know. Lifetime had no reward.”

Thompson’s to start with ways on the road to restoration took put in early 2018 in rigorous therapy sessions with a psychologist organised for him by mate James Hird and Adrian Dodoro.

“On the to start with day I satisfied her, inside 5 minutes, I was bawling my eyes out,” he reveals.

“She picked it in just one (he was struggling article-traumatic strain disorder),” he claimed.

His health issues had been triggered by the Essendon medicine scandal — a bitter, drawn-out saga that saw 34 Bombers players wiped out for doping by the Court of Arbitration for Activity in January 2015.

Thompson used a long time obsessively fighting in the qualifications in the hope of exposing the “injustices” of the verdict.

But the mission would take in and ultimately overwhelm him, primary to the destruction of his marriage and abuse of methamphetamines living by yourself in his Port Melbourne warehouse apartment.

Now, Bomber has opened up to the Herald Sun’s Michael Warner about the road to redemption, reconnecting with his household, the latest death of Shane Tuck, the bogus world and his new lifetime.

MW: Excellent to see you again, Bomber. What’s a regular day glimpse like for you now?

MT: A regular day is, I get up about 7.30am, I have breakfast and then I go to operate.

MW: You have located a new passion for woodwork out at your manufacturing facility in Airport West. How did that all appear about?

MT: Considering that I stopped doing the job in footy, I realised very swiftly that I did not know substantially about the world. I’d been in this tiny bubble – the footy bubble – the place you know a great deal about footy and men and women in footy and what is heading on in footy, but you really do not know substantially else.

I missed what’s heading on in the serious world. Occasionally I was house, but I was not genuinely house, you know, especially when I was coaching at Essendon. The job was consuming.

I stumbled across resin tables and imagined, ‘Geez, they are fantastic’. It’s some thing I’d never ever noticed ahead of.

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MW: Tell me about the resin tables.

MT: They are just tables with colored epoxy glass in them. It’s two-pack epoxy resin. You just mix it up then you put the color in it, the dye — loads of varieties of color.

So I make tables and breadboards and food stuff servers, and I like it.

Below, I received this recycled timber from Welshpool pier, down in Gippsland, off a service provider in Geelong. And it comes in massive blocks and we just chop it up.

It’s all rotted and he was attempting to discuss me out of buying this wood. He claimed ‘It’s not heading to be any superior mate’. I claimed ‘Well, you really do not know what I’m heading to use it for, just relax’ (laughs).

And so I have bought a honest bit of it and it’s appear up wonderful. Fantastic character in the timber. It’s received a historical past and it’s being renewed and reused so it’s a fantastic issue. I’m just understanding.

MW: So it’s a bit of a passion for you, you’ve been via some difficult instances and it offers you a bit of convenience?

MT: Perfectly it’s good when you can really make some thing and men and women appear and say ‘I’d like to have that’ or ‘That appears to be like great’. It’s very fulfilling, it offers me some thing to do, it receives me out of the house and retains me busy.

MW: Has it helped with your restoration?

MT: It undoubtedly has, yeah. When I still left footy I did not genuinely do substantially for 4 or 5 a long time, so now I have some thing to do. I have made the tables, now the next job is attempting to promote them! (Laughs)

MW: Ended up you generally superior with your fingers?

MT: Yeah. I was an electrician. I relished making and renovating households, I generally liked to use my fingers to make issues. It’s been superior up there (at the manufacturing facility) due to the fact my brother (Steven) is there. He employs his two sons, so there is me, Steven, and his two sons and me and my son will work for Steven, also, so that is 5 Thompson boys in there all through the day.

MW: Has it been superior to reconnect with your household?

MT: Yeah. Even Steven’s household, I have been up at his house a great deal for evening meal. I hadn’t performed that for a few of a long time.”

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MW: You had your ex-spouse and three youngsters transform up to courtroom final yr to assistance you.

MT: That is been a superior issue to appear out of it. It was an unforeseen assistance which I appreciated. Considering that then I go all-around there for evening meal from time to time. I went there for Christmas Working day also.

My mum and father turned up for a bit, and my sister and some of her household.

MW: What about cryptocurrency? Are you nonetheless into that?

MT: Not substantially.

MW: What was the final yr like, being on a community correction get?

MT: It just involves having a person glimpse out for you and glimpse after you. Mine entailed psychology. I had to go and see an officer every two months.

It was genuinely superior. I’d meet up with with them every number of months and they just go via a collection of issues and they discuss about your targets and what you are doing the job on and whether or not you are attaining them.

Mark Bomber Thompson states he finds solace in desk making after footy

At the start I located it genuinely challenging to try out and operate out their process, but by the conclusion of it I recognized it and I sailed house pretty properly.

In the conclusion, it was beneficial. They are superior men and women. They are there to rehabilitate men and women. That is what the application is all about.

MW: Ended up you counting down the days right until it was about?

I was so substantially on the lookout ahead to it all being finalised, just to have it all wrapped up but the time arrived and we weren’t permitted to go out of our house (laughs). I would have long gone away, in all probability.

MW: Abroad?

MT: It’s possible. But I hadn’t prepared anything.

MW: How did you cope mentally? When I final interviewed you when the courtroom circumstance was on, you did have melancholy.

MT: Yeah, I did, yeah.

MW: Have you received on prime of it?

MT: I have. I was very messed up. I did not genuinely know why I felt the way I did.”

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MW: How did you sense?

MT: I just felt helpless. Like I just could not do anything. Just issues retained heading about in my head that I should not have even been considering about, like the nutritional supplements stuff. Even then, yeah. I just had article-traumatic strain.

MW: Do you feel it was the Essendon nutritional supplements saga that tipped you about the edge?

MT: It was a blend of elements, but it undoubtedly did not aid. (You generally push oneself away from what is hurting you. That is the place I went. Folks go somewhere.)

MW: How poor was it, Bomber?

MT: I was not pretty optimistic. Lifetime had no reward. There was very little I could do to get the reward that I was on the lookout for.

MW: Did you at any time feel that it was not really worth being alive?

MT: I was in a poor put and I imagined about it. I never ever went to do it. Not even shut. But I was in a poor put.

MW: What about close friends? Who trapped by you?

MT: Do you know what, you get a great deal of men and women who adhere by you, an amazing sum of men and women. But then there is one more team of men and women who really do not even know me that very well, that are on the lookout out for me, also, and certainly, I feel, they have had some type of variety of psychological health issues them selves and they recognise how significant it is to discuss to men and women and to have men and women glimpse out for them.

MW: Everyone you want to mention?

MT: Not genuinely. Just random men and women you’ve only satisfied the moment or twice”

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MW: What about men and women in soccer?

MT: Blokes I performed with and worked with have been very superior. As quickly as I received billed, the next day Hirdy (James Hird) and (Adrian) Dodoro arrived about and claimed we are using you to go and see a person. A psychologist.

I went and saw the psychologist. And on the to start with day I satisfied her, inside 5 minutes, I was bawling my eyes out. She picked it in just one.

MW: What did she choose?

MT: The article-traumatic strain disorder.

MW: Do you nonetheless see her?

I haven’t noticed her considering the fact that the get stopped … but I want to proceed to see her just as some tiny refreshers to keep me on track.

MW: Can you imagine what occurred to you?

MT: No. I can’t imagine I received to that put. I can’t imagine it. I missing my way. In the conclusion I just did not treatment. I did not treatment about the hurt. I did not treatment. I had no, yeah, I just had no inner thoughts, you know.

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MW: Did that shock you that you could get oneself to that put?

MT: Yep. And the issue is, all my lifetime has been footy men and women and that was the issue I had to get away from due to the fact it was the issue that was driving me crazy.

I did not want to mix with soccer men and women. So, I’m getting away from my operate and my social team and I have missing my spouse (Jana).

I was heartbroken for six months. The world was not performing me favours, mate. And I was not performing myself favours.

MW: Shane Tuck took his individual lifetime not too long ago. Is it a bogus world, soccer?

MT: Not just soccer, mate. It’s a bogus world. Entire stop. Because six gentlemen get rid of them selves every day in Australia. When we have fatalities all through COVID it can make sensational news, as it should.

But it happens every day for Australians having difficulties with psychological wellbeing. Every day. So it’s not just in soccer the place there is not sufficient assistance for men and women.

It’s a stress filled world and the number of instances I have spoken to psychs and psychological wellbeing practitioners, I sense superior when I discuss to them.

I’m not just one that is forthcoming in giving information about myself, my weaknesses and the place I am hurting and everything else.

So to sense self-confident sufficient to go and discuss to a man or woman and for them to give me some reasoning as to why and how I am emotion and why I have performed what I have performed is a fantastic issue, due to the fact I did not know why it had occurred.

My field is soccer and I have noticed a great deal of men and women leave the field and struggle. I’d noticed it and I realized it would be tough but I imagined, ‘I’ll be right’. But I was not suitable.

MW: How superior is lifetime now Bomber, in comparison to the place you have been a number of a long time ago?

It’s a great deal various.

Don’t Pass up Section II in Monday’s Herald Sunlight: Bomber and the law enforcement raid that saved his lifetime

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