Saturday, 08/02/2008 - 6:00 am
by Angela Wilson
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Today book blog editor Angela Wilson chats it up with poet - and PS reviewer - George Thompson.
Who is George Thompson?
George Thompson is a preacher’s kid who has gone to the “bad” side and returned spiritually. My early life was nurtured in Biblical studies and going to church every Sunday. That was Sunday morning for services and again Sunday night. I even went on Wednesday nights for prayer meeting and Thursday night for choir practice. My life was centered around my church.
I guess I rebelled when I went off to college because I wanted to try the things that I couldn’t have while I was at home. Dancing, card playing and booze (I got drunk every weekend when I stayed on campus.). I never experimented with marijuana—at first—and stuck to hard liquor every weekend.
It was after I entered the US Air Force that I started drinking a six-pack of beer with a friend. My wife didn’t want alcohol in “her” house, but I reasoned with her that it was better for me to drink at home than for her to search for me at some bar. I stayed with beer for the longest time and once we separated and subsequently divorced, I switched to wine and then started experimenting sexually. I went to gay bars because my roommate was gay and I liked what I saw. Men were hitting on me and I liked the attention; I took quite a few home with me. I was 33 at the time that I admitted I am gay and it changed my life. I’m comfortable with who I am.
Wine was my forte until I decided to switch to whiskey and bourbon. I would buy a 750 milliliter bottle and drink it in three nights—alone. One morning when I was off from work and had a doctor’s appointment, I fell asleep at the wheel of my car and ran into the back of another car. The victim called the police and I was given the road test for sobriety and blew .198 on the Breathalyzer. I was hauled off to jail, fingerprinted, and spent the day in the jail. I surrendered my driver’s license and was told I would have to go through a regimen of tests to determine what came next. The tests all indicated that I was an alcoholic and I enrolled in a rehab program for 30 days at a hospital. The program was sponsored by AA and I finally admitted to myself and everyone around me that I’m an alcoholic. I discovered and went through the 12-step program in 2002 and have been sober ever since.
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