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Pot, coke, MDMA, boom, pow. I did ’em all in college. By the time I walked across the stage at graduation, my brain was a big pile of mush and my kidneys and liver were on life support. I made a pledge to myself during my junior year: I would stop doing drugs after college. I would quit cold turkey. I had student loans north of $50,000 and a set of parents that would be demanding I find employment (desk job or not) right after graduation. So that meant the drugs had to go bye-bye. I didn’t know which jobs would drug test me and which ones wouldn’t, but it’s better to err on the side of not being a dirty stoner.
I still allowed myself to drink and smoke cigarettes, because this is America and things that kill you are legal, damn it. Outside of the booze and cancer sticks, I found myself pretty cool with quitting the drugs. I wasn’t a drugged out loser in college. I graduated with a respectable GPA, never failed a class and went relatively disease free, despite a herpes scare my sophomore year, which turned out to only be a cold sore.
Lucky for me, I found my job in around two-and-a-half months out of college after about two weeks of real job searching. I spent the first month after graduation pretending to look for jobs so my parents would stay off my ass. In reality, I was trying to cleanse my body of any traces of THC, MDMA, TRI and any other shit that I may have accidentally taken in the last six months. Looking back, I should’ve stopped the drug use after the fall semester, but that wouldn’t have been any fun, now would it?
After about 17 interviews and two second interviews with multiple companies, I finally got my third job interview. You know, the one where they show you around everywhere in the office and introduce you to everyone as if you already have the job, but in reality, it’s just one massive cocktease, or so I thought. The next day, I had my job offer. $30k/year plus health insurance and performance bonuses! My ship had come in. Part of the job was operating machinery, although it wasn’t a manual labor job or anything like that. A fringe benefit of the job was that we got to drive a Gator 4×4 around the massive complex. If you’ve never driven a Gator 4×4, I highly suggest doing it before you die. Those things can get up and go for being no larger than a golf cart.
Of course, when part of your job is operating machinery, you have to get drug tested. No big deal, I’d been clean going on 90 days. It was a pee test, too! No hair or anything weird that would reveal too much about my dazed and confused past. I’d pass the drug test, and celebrate with a bowlski. Just blaze that shit up like it was 2009 and there was a Lord of the Rings marathon on TBS.
That vision of glory was quickly stricken down as I was told that I would in fact, be drug tested no less than twice a year, AT RANDOM. Those are the two worst words a former/wanting to be current drug user can hear. At random? What is this, prison? Are you going to toss my office at your leisure? Throw away my lunch if I take to long to eat it? This job is a fucking prison on planet bullshit in the galaxy of this sucks camel dicks! You think you can just give me a living wage and then shit all over my rights as an American? I took government class. I know my rights.
The reality sunk in soon after. If I wanted to not work at Subway like every other stoner that refuses to shape up, I would have to submit to the company’s demands. No drugs for me. That chapter of my life was over. I didn’t even get to say goodbye to my favorite mainstays. No more bowls before going to see movies. No more lines of blow off the kitchen counter before hitting the bars. No more MDMA before festing. No more chemically-enhanced fun. My employer could ruin my life with one shake of my weiner into a small plastic cup and I wasn’t about to buy a Whizzinator. God forbid they ever switch to hair testing. My test chart would come back lit up like a Christmas tree. There’d probably be shit on there I don’t even remember taking. Like weird shit.
No less, growing up is hard to do, especially when you were a borderline drug addict for four years. In fairness, I get to drive the shit out of that sweet ass Gator 4×4 multiple times a week. It really is the little things in life, you dumb fucking stoners.
Respond
Coke and MDMA only stay in your urine for a few days, so if you were extremely bold and daring you might be able to pull it off. That said, you’d be dumb to lose your jobs over a few hours of fun. That’s the downside of working with any type of machinery. OHSA gets a hard-on for drug testing in those environments.
If you have a job in a typical post-grad workplace, I’d doubt you get tested passed an initial tox screen unless you’re showing up to work blazed out of your mind and the company is looking to fire you anyway. Maybe finance or something is a bit more stringent but it’s not been my experience.
Brushing off herpes as “just a cold sore.” TFM.
$30k a year and you can’t do drugs you can’t afford? That’s insulting.
I miss drugs.
My old boss told me that my last company didn’t test because drug tests were for poor people. I miss that job sometimes.
“Maybe finance or something is a bit more stringent”
That was pretty funny
Maybe the traders and I-bankers don’t get tested, but the only time I’ve ever been tested was when I’d have access to HIPAA or SOX audited systems as a consultant/contractor.
As an I-banker I was not tested, but we are the outlier.
No one in banking gets tested.
People who do bookkeeping for companies (ie the finance department) get tested out the ass