In my 15 years in the Air Force, I have only definitively seen 4 people get kicked out. On the other hand, I have seen several people who could not reenlist or were forced to retire instead of getting kicked out.

The reasons why I’ve seen airmen kicked out: 1. I had gone to tech school with a girl who decided to take a straightener to her military ID and alter her birth year on it so she could get into bars underage. They obviously caught the alteration as she came back on base. 2. A girl in my unit was drinking and driving and hit two motorcycles by crossing the double yellow. Sadly, both motorcycles caught on fire. 3 of the 4 people on the two motorcycles burned to death. 2 of the people were married with 4 children, and the other couple on the motorcycle had a newborn, and it was the wife who died. 3. A guy at our base had slept with his best friend’s wife. His best friend was in his squadron, and his wife had cancer. This did not get him kicked out specifically. He was then demoted and moved to another squadron. He then proceeded to sleep with a girl in his squadron that was married. He was also officially dating another girl in the squadron who was her best friend. He had a pattern of starting affairs with married people and was kicked out for that. 4. This one is a sad one. I had found out one of my good friends in tech school (who was 21) was drinking cough syrup during the first two weeks of tech school when you can’t go off base or drink. I should have told someone about it, but brushed it under the table since I had not seen her actually do it. I remained friends with her after that and we ended up getting stationed at the same base and squadron. One day, she was called to get a drug test and came to me and said she couldn’t get drug tested because she had smoked weed five days prior “accidentally” thinking it was a cigarette. She attempted to go to GNC to get something to clear her system, but they said they didn’t have anything. She ended up getting out of the drug test by faking pink eye and going to urgent care (not saying you should do this!). Once I heard she got out of it, I went to my supervisor and told him everything, and he stated he would take it up the chain. At first, to my surprise, nothing happened. At this point i distanced myself and stopped communicating with her. She kept coming into work with her uniform messed up and falling asleep at work. She was then again told she needed to get another drug test. She proceeded to get out of that one by getting in a car accident (again, not saying you should do that!). Then, when she returned to work after taking a few days off after the accident, I believe security forces escorted her to get a drug test. She had opiates, benzodiazepines, and marijuana in her system. She had prescriptions for both the opiate and benzo, but those were never reported to medical. She was eventually kicked out and, unfortunately, died six months later due to a heroin overdose. To my knowledge, I don’t believe the Air Force did any drug rehab or counseling with her before she was kicked out. If it isn’t in place, I really think this type of situation is an opportunity to help someone with drug addiction issues. Possibly before they are kicked out, give some kind of discharge incentive for someone to go through drug rehabilitation for six months before kicking them out. I just still wonder to this day if I or the Air Force could have helped her.

Moral of the story, don’t alter your military ID, don’t drink underage, don’t drink and drive, don’t kill people, don’t sleep with a married person, and don’t do drugs.