Shy bladder at a supervised drug test: the worst day so far

I’m 31, and last week I got through a supervised drug test in about the worst way I can imagine.

I’ve had shy bladder since I was around ten. School bathrooms were where the teasing happened, and my parents added their own comments in shopping centres about me waiting until they were out of sight. By my mid-twenties I couldn’t go at home at all. Therapy and medication for anxiety slowly got me to the point where a busy stall is fine. Nobody had really worked on the peeing itself.

Then I took a job with one drug test a year. I had a month to prepare, and I practised exposure with my therapist. The test came in my first week, after the offer.

The room

I asked the nurse if I could undress and wait in a dry room with no sink. She said no. The door stayed open and she stood a few metres behind me, watching. She told me to drink until my bladder was bursting, and that people sometimes cried but got there eventually.

I tried three times. My stomach went before my bladder did, and I had to stop with diarrhea. I was nearly in tears, and in the end I’d soiled myself and pushed out just enough for the cup. I handed it over, asked her to leave me alone, binned my underwear and cleaned up as best I could.

Then I sat in the car and phoned my therapist and my psychiatrist. I cried on both calls.

Afterwards

I kept the job. My psychiatrist says she’ll write a letter asking for an accommodation next year, so I won’t have to decide anything while I’m crying in a corridor. I also wouldn’t gulp that much water again without asking a doctor first.

For now it’s paruresis practice at home most evenings, and the letter goes in the folder with my contract.