If you've been taking drugs for whatever reason, you may be concerned they will show up on a blood test. Failing a drug test can have profound consequences for a person. If it's part of a workforce drug screening, you may be placed on probation and ordered to take treatment. If it's a pre-employment drug test, the job offer will almost certainly be withdrawn. As for court-mandated testing, well, let's not even go there:
So, how can you pass a blood test? If you go through a detox, how long does it take have a clean drug test? What about the other forms of drug testing?
Passing a blood test
Unlike with many other forms of drug testing (see below), there are no easy ways to pass a blood test. Blood is drawn directly from your body, so there's no opportunity to swap it or add adulterants. What's more, no bodily mechanisms can be exploited to lower the concentration of drug metabolites in it. This means you need to spend the time on a full-body detox.
So, how long does it take to have a clean drug test?
Due to inherent unpredictability of bodily processes, the following should be treated as guidelines rather than accurate times. It's always better to allow a little extra time to be safe.
Alcohol and amphetamines should be out of your system within 24 hours, but many other drugs will take anything from a few days to a week to leave your system. Heavy users of cocaine or marijuana need to wait a little longer, ten days and two weeks respectively.
Given the timescales involved, a weeklong detox program should fit in nicely, although heavy users of cocaine and marijuana might want to repeat it for a second week. Combined with some healthy lifestyle habits, you should easily be ready to take a blood test.
Passing other drugs tests
Blood tests are actually fairly rare outside clinical settings, mostly because of the invasive and difficult nature of drawing and handling blood, as well as the high costs involved. You are far more likely to face a urine or saliva drug test, or possibly a hair drug test in some circumstances. Saliva tests usually have detection times similar to blood, but urine drug tests can take much longer to pass, especially for marijuana. Hair drug tests are arguably the hardest to pass, because they can detect drug use from the previous three months.
Fortunately, unlike with drug tests, you have many options to help you pass these tests. For example, using a detox drink before a test will lower the concentration of drug metabolites in your urine. Similarly, saliva tests can also be passed by applying a special detox mouthwash shortly before going to your test.
Even after a sustained period of abstinence, you can still fail a hair drug test (up to three months later). This is because as your hair grows out, it takes drug metabolites from the blood with it. These then stay there permanently until the affected hair is cut off, no matter how much you wash your hair, unless you use a specially developed detox shampoo.
