Honesty scares people. I had a similar story and glad it turned out the way it did.

Lying is predictable, it's controllable, it's something they can hold against you later if needed.

It's not a liability.

It's leverage.

The problem is liability. If someone (not you obviously) were to take up drugs while on duty and end up with something horrible happening (even if it was completely out of their control) - they'd be taken to the cleaners.

If there was a 100% fool-proof way to guarantee truth, then I think this issue would be solved.

My younger brother went to West Point. And they ask you questions about whether you've done illegal drugs from time to time. Well, one day he made the mistake of answering truthfully and the fellow just looked at him and said something along the lines of, "I don't think anyone has ever answer 'yes' to that before." My brother got in trouble, but managed to graduate all right.

I can see the whole liability thing. Here's one way it would play out:

-Incident occurs where cop gets prosecuted for doing bad thing XYZ on the job (shooting when he shouldn't have, losing temper, whatever).

-Cop goes to court. Cop thinks of some bullshit defense to get the heat off himself. Claims he had a flashback, and that it (thus) wasn't his fault, since he couldn't help it. He says it's the department's fault since they knew he had taken hallucinogenic substances in the past, and they should have known better than to hire him. Probably ends up actually believing the story, due to cognitive dissonance style rewriting of memory.

- Plantiff sees deep pockets in the police department, sues police department for hiring someone with a history of "drug abuse".

- Plantiff wins easily, since "someone has to be blamed", and it's at least "plausible" that if one hallucinogenic "could" cause flashbacks, maybe any could (and they'll find some 'expert' to testify that this is the case). That, or the cop will just lie and say it was acid rather than shrooms.

-Department loses millions.

Maybe we need tort reform, but our system will produce this kind of result for now.

I answered truthfully to occasionaly using marijuana in an army interview. The guy was like 'why didn't you just answer no' and had to refer the matter to his superior. Got through though. I thought being truthful would have been more important for them to judge character.

At times I'm still blatantly truthful, and when its something that doesn't conform to the norm, you get a sort of weird reaction, like an aversion, sort of.
It's really strange, cause if you're honest about your actions/intentions/values etc, theoretically it allows others to make a good assessment in whether or not they want to deal with you, yet more often than not you're put into the strange/unpredictable category and its a turn off for some...

This is a sad truth.

Many people tend to grip on the past instead of present. Their fear comes from the thought that human always repeat past mistakes. This makes people who have experience of did something wrong having hard time as this mindset of many people marks them as "bad".

You and I have had this discussion before.

"Radically honest, radically transparent" - I'm a big fan of this.

Ya, honesty can cause you to lose opportunities, but in the bigger scheme of life, it generates massive respect and even more opportunities. You know why? Because it's so fucking rare. People find it acceptable to tell a little white lie here and there. Fuck that, and those that find lying acceptable.

-JP

Hmmm...great, thoughtful post, Sebastian.

Are there situations where it's simply better to lie so that you can "get" to the good/important stuff? I can see why lying about drug use, religion, medical issues, sexual orientation, etc. at times could be useful. Not because you need to please people or to fit in, but because if you don't the larger point or thing you're looking to do would be missed for the stupid stuff.

There is another alternative. Point out that that the question being asked is simply none of the questioner's damned business. If that's a problem, walk away.

> Things are often off-track a little bit, but if you open up about all of it you can really screw up people’s lives.

Interesting post. Do you have some examples of this?