PottyMouth22

Will airlines see that you failed a drug test in the past and not hire you? Will having a past drug life affect your medical and if you fail a drug test or anything will your medical get taken away? Talking about Marijuana. Not the other crap.

I'm currently 18 years old. Pre-solo. I'd love to take it a lot further and hopefully make a career out of it.

I'm gonna go ahead and truthfully say I've never failed a drug test. I know what some of you may think. I'm just wondering how bad I screwed up. I currently hold a class 3 by the way. I hope this post doesn't affect my flying at all (like, track me down and report me) but this is really bugging me and I'm too embarrassed to ask my instructor or Uncle (retired airline pilot). Might as well ask anonymously on an internet forum.

Thanks for understanding. Starting to get some anxiety about it. I'm clean now though.

Slice

So what's the problem or is that sentence incorrect? Drugs and flying don't work at all. If you're serious about the career, stay clean from this point forward!

de727ups

If you fail a random screen, which all professional pilots are subject to, you are done.

That's pretty much it.

MEMpilot

Its really impossible to reconcile the two regardless of if its simply marijuana.

Not even as a professional pilot, but in your training, if you were involved in even a small incident, the FAA would make you pee in a cup. Marijuana stays in your system for up to a month, so if even if weren't using the day before, but say a week before, you could potentially fail a drug test. If you want to take it to the next level, then you have to put it in the rear view for good.

PottyMouth22

Right now I consider myself psychologically addicted. Though I've never smoked in a little over 6 months it's still on my mind constantly. I just need a bit of incentive to move on with my life. Having someone directly say to me (even though it's just the internet) that staying clean this day forward is the way to go helps tremendously. All I needed to hear (read). I don't want to be some grumpy old guy who threw away a career because he wanted to get high. To be honest that thought scares the crap out of me.



Thanks for the replies.

UnlimitedAkro

First off you should know you have to be honest with any employeer. Doesnt matter if it is airlines charter or simply a flight school you want to instruct at. And here is why:

Lets say you get hired somewhere one day. And somehow during your background check, someone finds that you had failed a drug test, and never admitted to it. Now you have 2 problems. One, you are fired. Two, it is going to be a piece of cake now for any employeer for the rest of your life to find out that you failed that drug test because most all companies contact previous employeers. By law, there are only a few questions they can ask about you, and one of them is if you have ever failed a drug test.

First lesson learned. Get away from the drugs if you want flying in your career. Clean up and let some time go by. It will take a while to get all those rating and flight time anyway. Second, when you interview you have to be honest. I know people who have interviewed at airlines, been hired, and then been pulled out of training and fired because they lied about a criminal history that they thought the airline could not find.

Ewfflyer

Stay clean and go foward. I'm getting the impression this is for personal motivation. You want a high, you're about there for your first solo. That is a great great feeling to do it for the first time. Every new experience is a great feeling. I'm flying TBM850's, as well as all sorts of random aircraft at my new job. It's great and exciting every day. Don't look back, but honestly if this mental addiction is consuming you, maybe you should seek some sort of professional help. You've made the right decision to stop, but you might need some help getting it completely away from you. Maybe your friends, environment, etc... Good luck and fly safe!

rickair7777

The good news is that you're young enough to move beyond this. If you have a minor weed possession-type thing on your record that should not harm you in the long run as far as flying goes. If you were selling drugs however, I'm not sure that airlines would ever be OK with that.

The important thing is to stay away from that stuff from here on out.

The airlines will find out all the details anyway, whether you tell them or not, so there's not much point in beating around the bush. If you tell us exactly what happened we might be able to make better guesses about how it might affect you.

poor pilot

Depends on the test: pre-employment non aviation related= no public record. anything DOT related =Public. Employers will ask (have you ever failed a DT or in the past two years...........) I don't care what anyone says this is one of those topics you just can't be honest about unless it was a long time ago and you were a kidd at this point 18 years old you can't pull the long time ago card so let them find it. PM me

de727ups

"Right now I consider myself psychologically addicted. Though I've never smoked in a little over 6 months it's still on my mind constantly."

I've seen that in kids I know. It's hard to get over it. They say smoking cigarettes is even harder to quit.

Anyhow, if you want to be a pilot, you simply can't be doing drugs and expect to get far in the career. I get randomly tested two or three times a year. You just never know.

I make upwards of 200K a year. There's some motivation for you. Smoking weed ain't worth losing that...