If you live in one of the 26 states (or the District of Columbia) with legalized recreational or medical marijuana, you may partake in this substance occasionally or even use it regularly under a doctor's supervision. However, many employers continue to utilize pre-employment drug screens or random drug tests for employees who are injured at work or who demonstrate performance problems, and because THC (the active ingredient in marijuana) is fat-soluble, you may fail a drug test days or even weeks after your last use.
What are your options to clear this THC from your system more quickly? Read on to learn more about some of the substances and methods that may help you flush away marijuana metabolites safely and effectively.
Detoxification drinks
There are a number of different drinks and products for consumption that advertise their ability to quickly remove THC metabolites from your bloodstream. Many of these drinks rely on large quantities of niacin or other vitamins or minerals that can help your kidneys and liver do their jobs more quickly; these drinks generally need to be consumed more than a week prior to an expected drug test in order to be fully effective.
Other drinks have a much tighter window of effectiveness, as they only eliminate THC metabolites from the blood stream on a temporary basis—after this drink has been completely absorbed and eliminated, the THC metabolites will reappear until they've been naturally eliminated over a much longer period of time.
These types of drinks can be ideal to have on hand if you're subject to periodic random drug tests at work or if you're expecting a pre-employment drug screen later that day; but if you're needing a drug-free bloodstream on a more regular or long-term basis, you'll probably want to instead learn more info about one of the longer-lasting drinks.
Exercise and weight loss
If you have a few weeks to prepare for a drug test or don't have access to detox drinks, you may be able to simply burn the THC away by losing some of the fat in which it's stored. The more fat you have, the longer the THC can stick around, so dropping some pounds (in a safe manner) can quickly reduce the amount of THC that can be detected in your blood stream. This method won't work for hair follicle drug tests, as burning fat won't change the chemical composition of your hair.
Dropping your pounds through both diet and exercise can also be more effective than diet alone; while it can take some major calorie cuts to encourage your body to begin burning its own fat stores for energy, adding exercise to the mix can increase this burn without much additional effort -- and the more muscle you have, the more quickly and efficiently you can burn additional fat.
Synthetic urine
In many cases, using synthetic urine to avoid a positive drug screen can constitute grounds for job termination or even re-arrest if you're taking drug tests as a condition of your probation; however, if you're not subject to these restrictions and are certain your blood's THC content will flag a positive result, you may want to investigate the use of synthetic urine in place of your own. This synthetic liquid is identical to urine in its chemical composition, but is lab-created and non-toxic, making it a good option for those who don't want to go to the effort to find, store, and keep warm clean human urine on their person until the drug test is finished.
If you're handing over your urine sample to a third party for testing, you'll want to ensure you have some way to warm the urine to body temperature—cool, cold, or ultra-hot urine can be an immediate red flag for the personnel designed to handle and test this urine.
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