at the end of the day its Codeine. Unless he's taking something they ain't showing I don't really see the point of it apart from create some desperation with him and Hastings both having an artificial deadline to crack the case and save their jobs.
Funny story, I once 'failed' a drugs test. The doctors didn't tell me straight out - they just asked if I'd taken anything recently.
I'd already coughed to having shared a joint with someone the night before, which is why they gave me the test.
I filled the cup, gave it back... and then they started to get a bit prickly about things.
Baffled, I prised, and was told they suspected me of taking heroin. I assumed they thought I'd coughed to the joint to cover up a worse crime. Although the drug test was a voluntary thing.... made no sense.
I then remembered I'd taken two OTC Codeine/Ibuprofen last thing before bed. The codeine is metabolised by the liver into diamorphine - Heroin. Two OTC painkillers are insignificant next to the levels in a heroin addict, but the urine tests do not distinguish the level - just that it is present.
And after all that, I tested negative for Cannabis. The illegal drug I'd definitely fucking smoked.
I looked again at it from the point of the doctors, and I realised how in the dark these people are about a lot of things. They can only use firm evidence. And sometimes the tests and records do not match a patient's actual experience, they might suggest something else. It's a bit of an eye opener as to how the practise of medicine works. It's not perfect, but eventually I realised, it's the best we can hope for. Because patients are fucking liars. We really are.
From that moment forward, I was earnestly honest with my doctors for several years. It didn't help or change anything, I just looked back one day and realised, hang on, I've actually still lied to them all over the shop - I've just gotten cleverer and neater with it. I pretty much couldn't help it? Watching that play out leads me to believe I probably don't have an honest bone in my body... or more accurately, that true honesty is a rare thing indeed - more of an attitude that I'll probably never learn. Really, most people are just picking from a selection of versions of 'the truth', things they could realistically say. Truth and lies are mixed up in all of them.
And now I'm almost totally convinced, that's about as good as it gets for humans. Because I've noticed that alternatives for people striving to be perfectly honest, include things like, avoiding a massively uncomfortable truth, by pushing the focus onto another truth altogether. It's still a lie of omission - they are still lying to themselves, sometimes massively. It just happens in the blink of an eye. And that's easier to resolve with the idea that 'I'm always honest', than telling actual lies, or the bullshit we end up coming up with when trying to tell the truth in as far as people will let us and we can actually stand.
Because, as Lionel Hutz would say...
Human beings. Fucking crazy.
