Chapter 11: Diversion

Diversion was a six-month program. You attended weekly three-hour meetings similar to Alcoholics Anonymous. Except everyone there was a serious drug addict. Everyone but me. The meetings were at the community center of a nearby town about ten minutes from my house.

The initial sign up was $300. Then you had to pay weekly payments of $30 for each meeting. The meetings were held in a classroom style setting with a big circle of chairs facing each other. The man running the program sat at the front of the class.

Each meeting we would go around the room, and one by one everyone had to talk. It was mandatory. It did not matter if someone was new to the group you always had to introduce yourself again every week. Then you had to explain how you got arrested and what your drug of choice was.

Needless to say, whenever it was my turn and I said my drug of choice was weed, the whole room full of serious adult drug users booed me. I did not really make any friends.

To finish it off you had to explain how you were feeling that day. You were not allowed to give them a simple answer like I feel fine or good. You had to explain in a paragraph long monologue how you were feeling and why.

“Hello, my name is Jay. My drug of choice is weed. (pause for boos) I was arrested for meth. Today is Wednesday after 5pm and I am feeling a little tired from work. As always, I am anxious to go home and looking forward to being done with this program.” is usually what I went with.

There was one guy that told the same long-winded story about trafficking drugs up his ass from Hungary every week. He was a bit slow, and I assumed it was from years of heavy drug use. I think he just liked attention.

"Hi everyone, my name is Laszlo! Anyone ever smuggle heroine in their ass? My story begins about five years ago when I visited the Black Forest for the third time...You'll never guess the types of drugs you can buy in Amsterdam and then my father's home country Hungary is just a train ride away."

By the fifth week I knew his whole story word for word.

Everyone in the program seemed to smoke cigarettes but me. The meeting felt extra-long each week due to the number of smoke breaks we had to take.

The whole class would sit outside together smoking cigarettes and talking shit on me sitting in the class waiting for them to finish. I could hear every word. They were not quiet.

There were a few times we got to watch movies. It was always movies that had anti-drug messages.

Twice during the program, you were given a mandatory surprise drug test. The man running the program meetings would tell you the week before that you had been selected. Everyone eventually had to pass two tests before they could complete the program.

I had tried to quit smoking but with all the stress of everything going on I only made it about a week. The general consensus is you need a month of not smoking at the least to not test positive for weed.

When it came my time to be tested, I was once again shitting in my pants. If I failed my drug test I was going to jail.

I told my dad about the situation. My dad absolutely hated weed. Majority of my high school years we did not get along. My dad had to be an authority figure because I was always fucking around and getting in trouble.

Despite my dad’s hatred for weed he offered to hide in the bathroom stall at the diversion meeting so he could pee for me.

We even drove over to the community center the day before and I showed him where the bathrooms were. My dad waited in the parking lot for me to text him during my meeting.

The meeting went on like normal. Then halfway through the meeting the man who handled the drug tests called my name and a few other members.

“Follow me please.” he instructed.

He led us to a bathroom that was on another floor of the community center than the bathroom my dad and I had practiced in. Even if I had given him the signal in time the plan would not have worked.

In the end I just went through with it and took the test. I went inside the bathroom stall and peed. I brought the test out and the tester looked at it briefly. It had only been a few seconds since I peed so possibly the test had not registered my results yet. The tester quickly glanced at my test, saw it was not showing positive for anything at all, and told me to throw it out and I had passed.

As I placed the test in the trash bin, I noticed the test had started to indicate positive for weed but the tester did not see. I tried to bury the test in the bottom of the bin as best as I could without drawing any more attention.

That my friends was a genuine miracle. Many people have told me I was just lucky. I honestly believe it was divine intervention. God was honoring his end of our deal.

The second drug test never actually happened. Towards the end of my six months in the program, our counselor, a former heroin addict, had a major drug relapse and quit.

We went through a few “substitutes” before the new permanent counselor showed up on my second to last day in the program, I lied and said I had been drug tested twice already, and the new counselor believed me.

Apparently, the old counselor took all his paperwork with him, so they had no proof otherwise.

That was the second miracle.

The diversion program gave me the paperwork I needed for court to show I had completed the program. I went to court on my court date, showed the judge my paperwork and I was done with the ordeal.

Once I completed the program and had my court date, I felt a sense of relief, but I also felt very paranoid. Technically I was on informal probation. I could not get in trouble again for a few years. The things I had experienced with the detectives really worried me. Since I could not even risk getting into trouble, I decided it was a good idea not to start selling weed again.

Jason stayed in business but not at the levels we had reached selling for Lil Ron. I mainly just hung out with him and backed him up and gave advice when he did deals. I gave him any lingering customers that tried to call me for weed.

In return he always hooked me up with my personal weed for the price he purchased it and refused to turn a profit on me.

Chapter 12: Carson Santini