A Hot Commodity

During the most awful time in my life I got arrested five times in just as many months. I wasn't really that bad of a kid. I was a stoner with hair down to my shoulders and girl pants round my butt, but I grew up in the heart of the most religious county on earth. It was like growing up in the truman show and I was the anomaly. Wearing tight pants, a stoned face, and long hair in my city was paramount to placing yourself on the "Most-wanted list."

The worst part about all these arrests wasn't going to court, paying thousands in fines, getting put on probation, locked-up, having my license taken away, my vehicle impounded, or any of that. The worst part about it was that they put me in monitored government counseling with randomized drug tests and weekly checkins with a beefed up probation officer. In sum, I couldn't smoke pot any more.

I had become addicted to this petty plant and therefore did not cope will with it being removed from my diet. After my first few weeks of being sober, over-the-counter cough medicine couldn't cut it anymore, I needed to get high. So I calculated about how many drug tests they would do in a given period of time. I peed in a few Ziploc baggies and saved them for later. After one month of being able to successfully utilize my pee bags to pass the government-issued drug tests, I started gathering pee in bags from my sober friends.

However, the process of gathering bags of pee from sober friends quickly grossed me out, so I changed my strategy without delay. Not to mention I really didn't have a lot of sober friends, and I didn't feel comfortable approaching strangers with this request.

I did some research on the most effective methods for cleaning my own system of drugs. Each month I would take niacin, goldenseal, cranberry extract, and a few gallons of water. I would sit in the steam room and sauna for several hours for several days in a row. After self-administering a drug test to make sure I was clean, I would store my own pee in a few Ziplocs and hide them around the house. Let me briefly emphasize my position here: if I were to fail a drug test, it would be the end of life as I knew it. By fabricating my test results, I was guaranteeing that I could continue going to school and continue life as a normal teenager.

Many people were not sleuth enough to pull off the pee bag trick. They always managed to make their Ziploc crinkle too loud or made some other blunder that unveiled their deceit to the constable monitoring their case. I, however, nailed it every time. And by doing this, I enabled myself to continue spending time with the few and only people whom I called my friends. The only reason they hung out with me, of course, was just to smoke weed, but they were all I had, and sacrificing them would have messed me up good.

As these friends and I were smoking, they playfully began spreading rumors. I wasn't sure if they were trying to joke with me or if they were being serious, but after some long hard contemplation, I figured the latter to be true. They said that the courts were now requiring that drug testers start recording the temperature of the pee to make sure that people who were cheating the system like I was could not get away with it. I laughed it off; the concept seemed ridiculous. I could picture some government worker dipping their hand into my cup of pee with a thermometer dangling between their fingers in an attempt to measure the precise temperature and ensure I hadn't faked it. It seemed improbable, laughable even.

Wouldn't you know it, though, the moment I got home, my mom rushed down the stairs, pushing me out the door and slamming it behind her. The first thing out of her mouth was, "We're late, get in the car. You have a drug test today, and they're closing soon!" She was already whooshing towards the car and frantically urging me to do the same. If I missed or failed the test, it meant jail time, and her fuming frustration showed me that she knew it. I told her I needed to go to the bathroom and pleaded with her to please let me in the house. She caved and threw me a key.

I quickly sprinted downstairs to pick up one of my Ziploc bags, and then a little light bulb went off inside my head, reminding me that pee now needed to be warmed up to pass the new tests. I looked around frantically and, after seeing no other alternative methods, decided to throw it in the microwave. I gave it one minute and thought it should be fine, then I pulled it out and tucked it inside my pants (the only place they weren't allowed to reach into and check to make sure I wasn't cheating the system). At that exact moment, I knew I'd made a bad decision.

Almost instantly, I started cringing. The pee was literally scalding my skin; it was scorching hot. At the same time, though, my mom was honking and honking because if I missed the drug test, they'd count it as a fail. I ran outside as quickly as I could, and boy was that car ride awkward, I couldn't stop shifting around, just trying to spread out the burn.

I had blisters on my skin, red hot marks molded into me from the bag of molten piss. Nonetheless, I passed the test. I would prefer the consequences of a small burn over getting locked up and put on house arrest any day. I am not exactly proud to say, however, that, in my battle to outsmart the justice system, this instance was not an isolated one. While my other engagements with bagged urine, fortunately, did not end up giving me blistering welts, they did throw me through the wringer once or twice.