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call you up to the stand and ask you how you plead, and you’re going to
say ‘Not guilty.’ That’s it. That’s all you have to do. Two words. ‘Not
guilty.’ ”
The judge called Drake to the witness stand. Drake settled into the hard
wooden chair just below and to the right of the judge’s bench. He was asked
to raise his right hand and promise to tell the truth. He promised.
He looked out at the people in the courtroom. He looked at the judge. The
judge turned to him and said, “How do you plead?”
Drake knew what he was supposed to say. He planned to say it. Two
words. Not guilty. The words were almost on his lips. So close.
“But then I got to thinking about this time when I was five years old and I
asked my dad for ice cream and he said I’d have to wait till after lunch. I told
him, ‘I ate lunch. I went next door to Michael’s house, and he gave me a hot
dog.’ But the truth was I never went to Michael’s house. Michael and I
weren’t really friends, and my dad knew it. Well, my dad didn’t waste any
time. He picked up the phone right then and asked Michael, ‘Did you give
Drake a hot dog?’ Then my dad sat me down, totally calm, and told me it was
always worse to lie. He said lying was never worth the consequences. That
moment made a big impression on me.
“All along I’d been planning to plead ‘not guilty,’ just like the lawyer told
me. It wasn’t like I made a different decision before I took the stand. But the
moment the judge asked me, I couldn’t say the words. I just couldn’t say
them. I knew I was guilty. I had been drinking and driving.”
“Guilty,” Drake said.
The judge pulled up in his chair as if waking up for the first time that
morning. Slowly he turned his head. He squinted his eyes right at Drake,
drilling into him. “Are you sure that’s your final plea? Do you realize the
consequences? Because you can’t go back.”
“I’ll never forget the way he swiveled his head and looked at me,” Drake
said. “I thought that was kind of odd that he was asking me that. I wondered
for a split second if I was making a mistake. Then I told him I was sure.”
Drake called the lawyer afterward and told him what happened. “He was
definitely surprised.”
Drake’s lawyer said, “I respect your honesty. I don’t usually do this, but
I’m going to send you your five thousand dollars back.”
And the lawyer did. A full refund.
Drake spent the next year attending mandatory DUI classes. The classes
were in remote places. Since he couldn’t drive, he had to take the bus, which
could end up taking hours at a time. At the mandatory meetings, he sat in a
circle with people he normally wouldn’t have been exposed to. “A lot
different from the people I was with in medical school.” The other people in
the class as he recalls were mostly older white men with multiple DUIs.
After paying over $1,000 in fines and spending tens of hours in mandatory
DUI classes, Drake got his driver’s license back. Turns out that was only the
beginning.
He finished medical school and applied for residency, reporting the DUI
conviction on all his residency applications. When he applied for his
medical license, he had to do the same thing. And again when he applied for
specialty board certification. At the end of all that, when he took a residency
position in the San Francisco Bay Area, he learned that none of the DUI
classes he took in Vermont counted in California, so he had to do them all
over again.
“I’d work these long days and into the night, then rush from the hospital to
get to these meetings by bus. If I was one minute late, I had to pay a fee.
There was a point then when I wondered if I would have been better off
lying. But now, looking back, I’m glad I told the truth.
“Both my parents had drinking problems when I was growing up. My dad
still does. He can go for weeks at a time and not drink, but when he does, it’s
not good. My mom has been in recovery for ten years now, but she was
drinking the whole time I was growing up, though I didn’t know it and never
saw her drunk. But even with their problems, my parents were good about
making me feel like I could be open and honest with them.
“They always seemed to have love and pride in me, even when I
misbehaved. They didn’t indulge me. They never gave me money to pay my
legal fees, for example, though they had some money. But at the same time,
they never judged me. I think they created a comfortable and safe space
growing up. That allowed me to be open and honest.
“Today, I myself rarely drink. I’m prone to doing things in excess, and I’m
a risk-taker, so I definitely could have gone that route. But I think telling the
truth at that one crucial moment in my life, when I got that DUI, may have put
me on another path. Maybe being honest over the years has helped me be
more comfortable with myself. I have no secrets.”
—
Telling the truth and suffering accelerated consequences may have changed
the trajectory of Drake’s life. He seemed to think so. The searing respect for
honesty instilled in him by his father at an early age seemed to have a bigger
impact than even his considerable genetic load for addiction. Could radical
honesty be a preventive measure?
Drake’s experience does not account for how radical honesty might
backfire in a corrupt and dysfunctional system, or how the privileges of his
race and class in American society contributed to his ability to overcome the
considerable repercussions. Had he been poor and/or a person of color, the
outcome might have looked very different.
Nonetheless, his story has convinced me as a parent that I can and should
emphasize honesty as a core value in raising my children.
—
My patients have taught me that honesty enhances awareness, creates more
satisfying relationships, holds us accountable to a more authentic narrative,
and strengthens our ability to delay gratification. It may even prevent the
future development of addiction.
For me, honesty is a daily struggle. There’s always a part of me that wants
to embellish the story just the slightest bit, to make myself look better, or to
make an excuse for bad behavior. Now I try hard to fight that urge.
Although difficult in practice, this handy little tool—telling the truth—is
amazingly within our reach. Anyone can wake up on any given day and
decide, “Today I won’t lie about anything.” And in doing so, not just change
their individual lives for the better, but maybe even change the world.
W
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