My Dreams of Becoming an Air Force Pilot Were Just Crushed, I Need Advice!?

Question by j.gustaf: My dreams of becoming an Air Force Pilot were just crushed, I need advice!?
Back when I was becoming a teenager, my father passed away and I began to hang around the wrong crowd. Of course this led to the experimentation of smoking marijuana several times, which I guess is referred to as “drug abuse”. However, when I got into high school, I straightened up, realized the importance of my future, and became very motivated to reach my life long dream of flying for the USAF. I isolated myself from that bad crowd, got involved in amateur boxing, worked part time, and focused strongly on my academics. Over these four years, I became disciplined and completely turned my life around. I made straight A’s my entire senior year, and graduated with a 3.35 gpa, with 20 college credits, and 5 scholarships. I began investing much of my own time and money to work on my private pilots lisence. Flying my first solo at only 12 hours, my instructor said I’m natural for the part. I now have 20 hours. I just settled into my dream university and while taking some summer courses, which I continued to ace, I’ve been working real hard towards maxing out my PFT. Today came time to get spiffed up and walk into our ROTC building to sign up for my future. Everything was going great, until we got to filling out the last page of the application. It asked if I had used marijuana, I said yes. It asked if I had used any other illegal drugs, I said yes. The sargent saw this and handed me an additional form asking me to explicate these situations and elaborate. I admitted with all honesty that I had smoked marijuana about 5 years ago numerous times, and how I had taken one vicodin given to me by my mom when I had my wisdom teeth extracted and I had run out of mine for pain relief. The sargent pulled me into the hall and talked to me, saying that from what it looked like, it is highly unlikely that I could be accepted into ROTC, let alone the USAF. However, he did not have the full authority, and I could set an appt. with the head commander to further go over these occurrences, as well as consider other aspects of me such as grades, fitness, moral, character, etc. and hope that he waives this to allow me to join. I honestly drove home in tears, realizing that my ultimate life goal to fly for the AF and serve my country had no hope. That all of that hard work and determination, waking up every morning with this dream pushing me to work hard, was crushed simply from something stupid I did many years ago. Let me state this, I haven’t used drugs in a while, and do NOT intend on using them in the future. That phase of my life is completely in the past and regretted, but cannot be changed.

So my question is, Is it worth it to make this appt. and try to get this waived? I mean of course I’m going to try, its just in my blood to never give up. But lets assume that he does waive this “drug abuse”, will I ever have a shot to become a pilot in the air force with this drug abuse waiver on my record? I really have no where else to turn in life, and I hope I don’t have to look for another path to follow.

Best answer:

Answer by Ravenhood
Don’t give up, I have known people that have been ex users that have gone into the military. don’t let this one recruiter get you down. make the appointment, and get the spot. maybe you won’t go ROTC, but that doesn’t mean you should stop trying, go for regular airforce.

check out this article

http://usmilitary.about.com/od/joiningthemilitary/a/enlstandards2.htm

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