I recently had the pleasure of meeting a fellow nurse in my state's monitoring program. Our program is supposed to be three years long but in reality its more like four years. The way it works is that you agree to be in this hellish existence for a period of three years. They evaluate you, take away your ability to make a living at least temporarily, place you in endless rehab you may or may not need.... You all know the story. However, the days don't start ticking down until the board signs off on your contract. Typically, a nurse will toil in this program for 6-8 months before the contract officially gets signed and three years after that you can asked for the gates of hell to creak open and you can escape. Apparently, you "official" release takes more time on top of that.
Anyway, the nurse in question did almost four years on her "three" year contract. She completed all her requirements and her case manager led her to believe that she was done. She went out with some friends and had a couple drinks which is something I think many might contemplate and (you guessed it) she got picked to be tested and popped for a very small amount of booze residue on the ETG test on what would have probably been her last test. Her punishment was to start the program all over again. That's right another 4 years of hell for some wine at dinner. I (of course) think this asinine but what can we say they got us by the short & curly hairs.
The moral is don't celebrate until you have official release papers in hand. Be well fellow citizens of Nazi Monitoring Land
