Drug testing is becoming more common nowadays. It is like nervousness has shifted its course from the employment interview to the post-interview drug testing. Yes, drug testing is a barrier to many people proceeding with their next step in their career.
Whether it is pre-employment or probation or during reassurance, drug testing is becoming omnipresent. According to the sources, nearly 17% of the population get drug tested randomly, 10% during probation and 8% during reassurance.
If you are one who is about to take the drug test in the upcoming days, then what you need to consider is time. It is the time that can determine a heavy user to pass the drug test and even a light user to fail it. For light users, the drug metabolites will take 5 to 7 days to get excreted out and for heavy users, it might take two to three weeks.
If you are running short of time, this article will help you achieve the goal of clearing your Cannabis drug screening test with flying colors.
Table of Contents:
- Best Recommendations To Prepare For A Cannabis Drug Test
- Research On Your Drug Screening Process
- Hydrate Your Body With Fluids
- Using Regulated Diet – An Advantage
- Enhance and Control Your Metabolism
- Slow Down Your Metabolism With Junk Food
- What Should You Do On The Test Day?
- Dealing With Your Drug Test On Short Notice
- Consuming Caffeine and Vitamin B12
- Precaution
- How To Prevent The Dilution Of Urine During The Drug Test?
Research On Your Drug Screening Process
It is essential to know the amount of THC and drug traces in your urine to create a strategy for your drug test. Having knowledge about the detectable THC in the urine can help device a plan. You can sketch a plan to dilute the drug traces from your urine within the time-frame.
Detecting the THC drug traces in the urine is not a difficult task. You can buy a couple of low-cost THC-only test strips online or over-the-counter. It is best recommended to use two of them every day. You can use one test strip once you wake up in the morning. The urine will be more concentrated with all the impurities in the body collected by the bladder through the night. Testing this urine for THC will help you to analyze the amount of THC present in your body. If your first test result is negative, then you can relax and attend your drug test with confidence. If you test positive for THC, you can try to dilute your urine by adding a few glasses of extra water to your daily routine.
At the end of the day, you can use the second test strip to find if you test negative or positive for THC in your urine. In this way, you can learn to eliminate the drug metabolites in a targeted manner.
Hydrate Your Body With Fluids
Boost up your body with enormous amounts of fluids. Even if you are a clean person with no drug record, it is best recommended to do so if you are about to take your drug test. It is because water can flush out all the impurities out of your body and keep you clean. So, while kicking yourself in a baseline strategy, drink more water to allow the THC metabolites to get out of the bladder as soon as possible before the test.
It is best recommended to drink 72 ounces of water per day for the best results. You should limit yourself from drinking more than a gallon (128 ounces) of water since it may result in water intoxication. Whether you are a light or a heavy cannabis consumer, drinking 72 ounces is enough to flush THC out of your body.
Using Regulated Diet – An Advantage
A strictly regulated diet will help you to kick the THC metabolites out of the body as soon as possible. Include healthy foods in your diet instead of fried foods. Your diet should include fruits, vegetables, chicken and red meat. Ensure you consume low-fat food since the THC has the ability to get stored in the body fat and tissues leading to the failure in the dilution process.
The creatine present in the red meat, when consumed, turns to creatinine. This is the substance which most of the test centers check for the dilution of water in the urine samples. If you don’t consume red meat, then you can try taking creatine supplements along with plenty of water for dilution before the upcoming test.
You can also take fruits and vegetables that are rich in fibers, vitamin A and vitamin C to help enhance the metabolism. Faster the metabolism, faster the flushing rate of THC out of the body. You can also take spicy foods to speed up the metabolism in the body.
Avoid consuming any fried foods since it will only aid in storage of THC metabolites in the fatty cells. This will in turn increase the detection window for THC and yield a positive result.
You can increase your metabolism not only by taking nutrient-rich foods, but also by physical effectiveness you give to your body.
Enhance and Control Your Metabolism
Body heat will enhance the metabolism rate. So, it is best recommended to perform light to heavy exercises for 30 to 45 minutes per day. You need not hit a gym to do these exercises. Metabolism increasing exercises are mostly aerobic exercises. Aerobic exercises include running, jogging, cycling, squats, jump roping, etc. These exercises not only make you healthy, but also increase metabolism thereby leading to the elimination of THC at a faster rate.
Exercises help in reducing the fat tissues in your body. Hence, no THC can cling on to the fat tissues. It is best recommended to exercise at least three days before the drug screening.
Slow Down Your Metabolism With Junk Food
Yes, you heard it right. After working out and trying other alternative options like taking healthy foods for a certain period, change your strict routine with some fat-filled routine. Yes, by following the above strict routine, your metabolism would have whooped up and the fat cells would be deduced to a minimal amount and eliminated most of the THC metabolites. Still, there could be some free floating THC metabolites hanging around.
You can stop the strict diet and exercises, and allow your metabolism to normalize. Then start taking deep fat fried foods to lower down your metabolism. The fat cells will recapture the floating THC and store them for a short period. So, during drug testing, there will be very little amounts of THC metabolites in your urine. This will help you to pass the initial drug test.
You should follow this plan only after following the increasing metabolism routine strictly. If not, you need to follow the routine on your phase until the last day of your test. The aim here is to try to eliminate completely or decrease the amount of THC in the urine as low as possible.
What Should You Do On The Test Day?
On the day of the drug test, you should follow certain things to ace the drug screening. Firstly, after waking up, you should empty your bladder as many times as possible. Take more breakfast than you usually do. Alongside, you should drink plenty of water in order to help flush out the remaining THC in the bladder as well.
If you are doing the baseline strategy, you will have a clear idea of what the situation is. It does not mean that you should manage drinking water on that specific day. Since you have stopped increasing the metabolism one or two days before, there are chances that some of the THC metabolites get settled in your body. So, you have to drink enormous amounts of water irrespective of taking the THC strip test.
It is mostly recommended to schedule your test appointment towards afternoon, so that you could have more time to drain out your bladder before you provide a urine sample to the tester.
By following these above steps, you can clear your drug test easily with the dilution mechanism whatever level of smoker you may be. But if you are still doubtful in clearing the drug test, then you should follow further steps.
Dealing With Your Drug Test On Short Notice
The thought of having a drug test on short notice might invoke panic. It is quite challenging to pass a urine drug test if you are a cannabis consumer. If you are an infrequent smoker, THC metabolites may go undetectable in 1 to 5 days. Regular users may receive positive results within one to three weeks after stopping.
All you have to do is to give a clean urine sample to receive a negative result. However, if you are worried about the cannabis drug use being detected, you can take some extra measures and follow the tips stated below.
Consuming Caffeine and Vitamin B12
Taking caffeine and vitamin B12 supplements or associated energy drinks will have a positive effect before the drug screening test. It is best recommended to take an Extra Strength 5-hour Energy Shot, which is available in all Wal-Mart stores and gas stations. The benefit of taking this drink is its caffeine and vitamin B12 contents. Taking this drink will be of two-fold advantage. One, it has acceptable levels, 500 mcg, of Vitamin B12. This will help in adding the color “yellow” to your diluted urine.
Since vitamin B12 is cyanocobalamin, this chemical supplement is yellowish red, releasing slightly yellow traces in the urine. It is well known that pure diluted urine will raise suspicion; hence it is more important that your urine is yellow colored. Also, the presence of caffeine in the energy drink will increase the flow of urine and get rid of excess water in the body. This will in turn lead to dilution of the urine.
A few hours before the test, you can drink a large glass of water, then drink the energy shot and continue drinking as much water as you can until you are unable to drink anymore. Drain your bladder by urinating at frequent intervals and take some more water. Do this until an hour before you are going to provide sample for the urine test.
After a short period of time, drink another two glasses of water and provide the urine sample to the tester. This will have a positive effect on passing your drug test with more confidence.
Precaution
Diluting your urine more will have a negative effect on your drug test results. If the sample is more diluted, the result will come back as “diluted sample.” This will not be considered as a failure, but a lack of confirmation of the drug traces. So, you will be asked to take the drug test again at a later date. You will have much more time to get yourself clean. In that case, you should be careful about diluting your urine. Because, if your drug test result comes back diluted again, then there are chances that you will get declared as “Not Pass.” This will make things complicated.
Testers detect diluted urine through certain methods. They use certain validity checks that include the creatinine amount in the urine and the specific gravity. Specific gravity is the concentration of urine substrates in a particular amount of sample. The specific gravity of normal urine stands at 1.002 to 1.030. But if the urine is diluted, then the specific gravity will be between 1.001 to 1.003.
How To Prevent The Dilution Of Urine During The Drug Test?
Urine dilution can be prevented by doing certain things like restricting the amount of water you take before the drug test and by reducing coffee. Since we are struggling to erase the traces of THC in the bladder, we need to be cautious while reducing the water intake.
If your first urine drug test result returned as diluted, you have to plan accordingly to reduce the THC traces without deteriorating other substrates in the urine. You need not give up taking enough water or following a baseline strategy. You need to trim your intake to keep your urine from dilution.
Most of all, you need to monitor when your urine is free from THC metabolites. Then, you need to limit water and caffeine so that your next sample will be more or less accurate for testing.
Final Words
No one in this competitive world is perfect. So, first of all, get rid of your fear that you will fail your drug test. Technically speaking, passing the urine cannabis test is not a difficult task if you are clean. If you are a light or heavy smoker and your days are short to meet the drug test, you can follow the above-discussed methods to get rid of the THC in your bladder. Too much elixir is also bad. So, if you are following the above methods, modulate according to your body preferences and conditions and follow it to pass through your drug test. All the best.