Emily

This may-not belong in this perticular message board but oh well. I was wondering if anyone knows how long it takes for drugs to clear out of your system? if there are any special tricks to help drugs clear out quicker? I'm not a heavy drug user and only smoke cannibus on occasion. resently I found out that for my new job I have to take a drug test..and I really want to pass!what should I do? I think they should only accuire people who act dumb around the job to take a drug test.

Godot

Do you happen to know in advance what drugs are going to be tested for? Or even the type of test (i.e. blood vs. urine)?
I'm not sure of the legality of drug tests in the workplace. You may want to see if they actually have the right to do so before submitting to any proceedure.

Loren Pechtel

Pre-employment testing is legal and very common here.

Godot

Ick!
I can see that it might have some merit if it was pertinent to the job in question, but doing it for the hell of it is just plain silly (IMHO). I can understand if the purpose is to avoid hiring chronic heavy abusers, but if the system is being used to oust casual/social drug users, then I think it's gone too far.

miss djax

i can give you some help...i read an article once j/k

in all seriousness, there are things you can do.

1. thc is fat soluble. what this means for you is that you want none of the thc stored in your fat to make it into your bloodstream and work its way thru your system to end up in your drug test. you have a couple of causes of action. a) stop exercising. this burns fat. which you don't want to do. b) eat more fatty foods for the 5-10 days before your test. this will make sure your body is using the fat from your food recently digested, not your reserves.

2. drink loads of water..duh this helps flush your system

3. take niacin. also helps to flush your system

if you drink loads of water before your test, you can dilute your test to the point of non-readable, and your results inconclusive. your potential employer can require one additional test. however, if your second test is also inconclusive, its a default pass. you can not be legally required to take a test for the third time.

at least this was true about 4-5 years ago..things may have changed..

hope that helps it helped my, uh, friend

miss djax

Enai

Of course, you can also acquire and read Marilyn vos Savant's book "The Power of logical Thinking" and, basing your objection on the section about false positives in drug tests, claim that the positive result is because of a quirk in your particular body chemistry.

The argument goes as follows: Suppose, your drug test has a rate of 95% accuracy, meaning that only 5% of people who do take drugs test negative and 5% of people who don't test positive. Suppose you test a population of 10000 people, 500 of which (5%) do take drugs. So, you get 475 true positive reasults (95% of the drug users) and 25 false negative results (the drug users who do test negative in spite of taking drugs). You also have 9025 true negative test results (the people who don't take drugs and do test negative) and 475 false positive results (the people who don't take drugs but do still test positive). So, given your sample of 950 people with positive results, only half of them are actually drug abusers!
Of course, the numbers vary with varyind numbers of "real" drug abusers. The less actual drug abusers, the more innocent people test positive in relation to guilty people testing positive.

I'm not sure I'd want to be part of a company that blindly relies on such relatively blunt instruments to find out your suitability for the job, especially since I suspect they assume a 100% accuracy of the test in the kind of: "The test says s/he is/isn't clean, therefore it must be true." That's mistaking a dream for reality. Oh, and a second test won't usually alter the outcome, because if you really are false positive, the quirk in your body chemistry won't disappear.

/rant against blind mindless testing. Please return to your perfectly legitimate "How do I get through drug testing despite having actually taken some"-thread. I wish you luck.

Enai

seanie

A lot depends on the type of test. Hair retains traces for a long time. I think dying your hair can remove it but don't take my word for it. There's some information here.

Godless Dave

Cannabis (actually the THC) is detectable in urine or blood up to at least three weeks from the last time you smoked, if you are a light user as you say. For chronic users (smoking almost every day) it can be detectable up to six weeks.

Golden seal root is an herb that masks THC in urine. It's sold in capsules and as a tea. It's been around a long time and rumor has it some tests can detect if it has been used.

There are other products on the market that claim to do the same thing. I don't know which ones work and of course there are no FDA studies on them. High Times would probably be the most reliable source of information about them.

If at all possible, schedule the test so you can abstain for three weeks ahead of time. Drink lots of water and caffeine during your abstinence period to help flush your system.

Another option is to order guranteed pure urine from Privacy Protection Services or Assured Testing Resources.

auto-da-fe

There are also some things you can buy at Head shops that could help. There is something called "ReadyClean" that you can drink that is supposed to help, but you have to be careful because "ReadyClean" is what is known as a masking agent, and some companies test for masking agents just like they test for the drugs themselves. Not only that, I can tell you from personal experience that ReadyClean is about as nasty a thing as you can put into your mouth. It is utterly disgusting, but it works.

You can rest a little though in knowing that most companies have tolerance levels for cannibis. If you don't smoke that much you may fall under that tolerance level, and they won't even be told of your positive test. Now other drugs such as cocaine or heroin don't tend to have tolerance levels, and any positive will be grounds for termination (or not being hired in the first place).

Loren Pechtel

Actually, it's a sensible precaution for the companies these days.

The problem is that if you're the one company that doesn't drug-test you'll get all the druggies.

A casual user can simply abstain when job-hunting but an addict is going to flunk. It lets the companies avoid hiring the addicts.