How People Beat Drug Testing
Drug testing is a way for corporate and government employers to monitor their employees to see if they have illicit drugs in their systems.
Lets be clear, no one supports or condones the use of drugs while on the job or when operating a vehicle, but at the same time, many are at risk for losing their jobs even for substances as benign as marijuana.
Let's delve into understanding common methods that people use to foil drug testing
How Drug Testing Works
Most often companies will carry out policies because of their own liability insofar as workplace safety and or government regulations.
Typically drug testing is done on urine samples, but hair, saliva, sweat and blood can also be used to detect drugs in your system which were not legitimately prescribed by a medical professional.
There are four main methods for beating drug tests: abstinence, flushing, substitution, and contamination.
Abstinence
Abstaining from drug use also includes avoiding so-called over the counter drugs, as many of them can trigger false positives. Below is a list of substance specific times for the following to safely leave your system:
- Amphetamines: 2-4 days
- Alcohol: 12-24 hours
- Barbiturates: 2-4 days
- Heroin, Opium: 2-4 days
- Tranquilizers: Up to 30 days
- PCP: Up to 1 month
- Cocaine: 12-72 hours
- LSD: 20-40 days
- Marijuana (heavy use: 4-8 weeks
The length of time that substances can stay in the body can obviously vary due to the person's weight, age, metabolism, quality and purity of the drug or its additives, and other various physiological factors.
These are some over-the-counter or prescription drugs that can give false positives:
- Ibuprofen (Advil, Nuprin, Mortin) for Marijuana
- Cold and asthma medicines (Diatec, Dexatrim, Co-Tylenol, Triaminic, Primatine, Brunkotabs, Nyquil)for Amphetamines
- Vicks 44, Demerol, Mydol, Primatene-M, and antidepressants like Elavil and Tofani for Opium and Heroin
- Primatine for Barbiturates
- Benadryl for Methadone
- Other medicines to avoid include Alka-seitzer plus, Allerest, Bronkaid, Contac, Donnagel, Sinutab, and Sudafed
Flushing
With this method, you are basically washing yourself out over time to reduce the concentrations of any metabolites of banned substances. Drinking lots of diuretic fluids such as coffees, teas etc will help, as will the necessary intake of lots of water.
You can boost your fluid output by taking natural diuretic herbs such as Stinging Nettle and Pygeum.
Cranberry extract also has this effect and is most commonly used to help heal urinary tract infections by flushing the infection/bacteria out of the bladder. I would advise to stay away from prescription diuretics, as they have many serious side effects and can also trigger false positives.
The main diuretic used to beat drug tests is Lasix (furosemide), somewhere around 50-100mg, used several times before your test.
Ideally, you want to be drinking two gallons of water in the time leading up to your drug test. Do not over do it as you can get water intoxication. People have actually overdosed and even died from "water intoxication".
The night before the test drink lots of liquid - as much as you can stand. Be sure to empty your bladder the next morning, since urine that accumulates overnight tends to be contaminated with higher concentrations of waste metabolites.
This is why if at all possible, avoid giving a sample from the first urination of the day. Also, if possible, avoid giving the first bit of your urine stream as a sample, use the middle or end portion.
To throw off the testers who will see an unusually clear urine sample, taking 100mgs of vitamin B-2 or B-12, which will help give your urine a more yellow color. Note: drinking copious amounts of water will produce a very dilute sample.
The way to offset this is to boost creatinine levels, which can easily be done by using an over the counter creatine supplement from the health food store.
Another fine product to help flush drug metabolites out of your system is M.D. Labs Naturally Klean 1 Hour Quick Flush Capsules. These Naturally Klean 1 Hour Capsules achieve effective cleansing in only one hour!
They are formulated to completely cleanse your system of detectable toxins within one hour, keeping your body toxin free for up to 5 hours.
Perhaps one of the best tools in the arsenal is activated charcoal, which absorbs and binds all toxins in the blood, urine, feces and digestive tract.
The person would abstain from any other drug or contaminant and start taking 10-12 grams of activated charcoal as many days as they can before the test, preferably 1-2 weeks before, drinking 3-4 quarts of water a day or more if possible to flush their system.
Activated charcoal can be bought cheaply in 500mg capsule form at any health food store or online.
Substitution
The most difficult way of beating a drug test is to switch your sample with a clean one. This can get quite difficult depending on how closely you are watched when you are tested. It is best for you to try to beforehand learn as much as possible of testing behaviors, looking for patterns. Hopefully, this will help you game the system.
One company, Spectrum Lab's, "Quick Fix Synthetic Urine" even has synthetic samples to use in substitutions strategies. The company's Quick Fix synthetic urine is premixed laboratory urine designed to protect your privacy during a urine test. The Quick Fix is unisex so a male or female can use it to pass drug tests.
To ensure passing a urinalysis, the Quick Fix contains all the ingredients normally found in urine and is balanced for pH, specific gravity, creatinine, and several other urine characteristics.
The Quick Fix bottle comes with an attached temperature strip and heating pad to ensure the sample is at body temperature. The switched urine sample cannot be more than 48 hours old (after that it deteriorates which be noticed in a lab test) and it should be kept warm so it seems fresh.
Contamination
Finally, the last thing is to try to contaminate your own sample, in an attempt to buy time, during which, you continue to abstain and flush! One compound to use is zinc sulfate. Zinc is proven to attach to drug metabolites and divert, or "chelate" them towards the urine for excretion.
People who are being tested for "workplace smoking" have noted that within 48-72 hours of last smoking to have passed urine tests! One could stack up on zinc sulfate before the test.
According to reports, dosages of 250mgs of zinc sulfate 2-3 times before the test, twice the day before and then once several hours before the test does the trick. Zinc sulfate is available in tablets from pharmacies.
Another technique is to drink saline solution or salt water, as this will disturb the pH balance necessary for the test to get an accurate reading.
Lastly, good luck to anyone having to deal with addictions. There are many good sources available to help one get off of any sorts of addictive substances.