How to Take a Drug Test
You and I would never take drugs or try to cheat something as important as a drug test. But perhaps you have a “friend” who is interested in how tests work. Here’s what your friend needs to know.
Depending on the time, you may not have to cheat
Urine drug tests are the most common type of testing, and in many cases they fail to identify the medications you took in the last week, let alone those that happened several months or years ago.
Quest Diagnostics, which sells testing services to employers, provides a chart of what each of their tests might detect. Here’s what they can find in urine:
- Amphetamines: 24 to 72 hours
- Cocaine: 24 to 72 hours
- Opiates: 24 to 72 hours
- PCP: 1 to 5 days if used occasionally; 30 days for intensive and frequent use
- Cannabis: intermittent use for 1 to 3 days; 30 days of intensive, frequent use
Hair tests are the opposite: they cannot detect recent drug use (within the past two weeks or so), but can detect drug use within the past three months. Hair grows about half an inch a month, and the test usually uses a sample of the last (closest to the scalp) 1.5 inches of hair.
A lab can’t test hair that you don’t have, but if you suddenly show up at work bald on the day of a drug test, you’ll look suspicious. (They can also collect what they need from body hair, which is sure to be fun.) But if you’re starting your job search now, why not try a cute professional pixie haircut to leave some ancient history on the salon floor?
Improve your chances
We’ll get down to outright scam in a minute, but first consider if these completely legitimate strategies might be all you need:
- Find out the date (or approximate date) of the test and adjust your drug use accordingly . Three days’ notice is sufficient to clear most drugs from the body (see table above). Probation tests usually follow a set schedule, and workplace tests tend to follow a predictable pattern, so even “random” testing doesn’t necessarily catch you off guard. Follow the calendar.
- Drink plenty of water . The more diluted your urine is, the less drugs are detected. However, don’t overdo it; laboratory rejects samples that are too watery. (They do this through chemical testing, so no, turning your urine neon yellow with vitamin tablets won’t help.)
- Pee (not into a cup) first thing in the morning . This first morning urine is usually the most concentrated, so try not to interfere with it before heading to the lab.
Try these tricky strategies – be careful
There are tons of products, strategies, and home remedies that can work, but they are all more or less risky. You might get caught. You also don’t know what exactly you are putting into your body if you buy a schematic “detox” – and are you not taking questionable medications the way you got into this mess?
However, here are some of the things that might work:
Someone else’s urine
Usually, in employer tests, no one looks at how you write; they just give you a minute to do your thing. However, you probably won’t be able to bring something like a bag to the bathroom with you. It is also necessary to ensure that the urine is warm enough (sometimes the temperature of the sample is measured). Could you discreetly tuck a bag of urine into your bra or underwear?
Synthetic urine
It is a powder that, when mixed with warm water, will look like urine and will give correct results on all major “this is urine” tests (for example, they check pH, creatinine, and specific gravity). The caveat here is that there might not be warm water in place to mix it with. Laboratories have been known to shut off taps (damn clean hands) and even paint eau de toilette blue.
Adulterers
These are the chemicals that you add to the sample to try and destroy the drug’s traces. Many of them are effective. Hooray! But test labs know about them, so they just test them. Quest says, “The most common impurities tested include oxidants such as nitrites, chromates and halogens (such as bleach and iodine).” The American Clinical Chemistry Association describes some of the popular Impurities and related tests here . One fun fact: one of the more potent chemicals marketed under the ingenious brand name Urine Luck can actually cause false positives for amphetamines in some tests.
Detox
The idea of “detoxifying” your body for health is mostly bullshit, but there are a few supplements you can take that can change your drug test results. Some are just diuretics, so they make you urinate more and help you liquefy your urine. Others, like zinc, can bind to certain medications, so they end up in your feces and not in your urine. The daring guys at Vice tested three detox brands that seemed to work as advertised. But again, test companies may be looking for clear signs that you have used them, so be careful.
Get expert advice
There is a kind of an arms race between the people who create and advertise things that help you cheat and the people who develop laboratory tests. Everyone wants to outsmart the other, and you get in the middle.
For example, tests exist for almost all popular impurities , but the more thorough the testing lab, the more expensive the test is. So if your employer (or whoever ordered the testing) is cheap, some of the cheats may pass. The trick is to know which one.
On the other hand, some impurities and detox formulas may be considered difficult or impossible to detect, but how do you know the lab hasn’t figured them out lately? For example, the AACC implies that Visine eye drops may interfere with results and are not detectable, but this article was written in 2015 and I’m not sure if it will be relevant.
Fortunately, the two experts who spoke to Vice have a way to get some inside information about what might work. Go to your local store and ask indirectly for their best “detox”. The people who work there will have an idea of what works with the most popular testing labs in your area. Their information is not guaranteed to be correct, but it might be the best you can get.