Wow, your boss just informed you that next week you must take a urine test for marijuana use and you are a regular user of marijuana. Are you scared? A positive test could mean the loss of your job! Could taking aspirin help you pass a drug test? There are many ways of successfully passing a marijuana drug test and taking aspirin may be one of them.
What is aspirin?
First of all, what is aspirin? Aspirin is acetylsalicylic acid or ASA, and it is one of a family of drugs called NSAIDs or nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs. Aspirin has been used for many years to treat pain, especially headaches. It has also been used to reduce fever, and in recent years it has been used to reduce the risk of strokes or heart attacks because of aspirin’s effect in reducing blood clotting. Aspirin is often said to be a “blood thinner,” but it does not “thin” blood at all. What aspirin does is to prevent the aggregation or sticking together of blood platelets which are the process that starts the blood clotting mechanism. The blood which clots inside of blood vessels can clog up arteries which carry blood to the heart or the brain. Although this is an important beneficial mechanism of aspirin, it is also one of its major health risks because serious or even fatal bleeding may occur when taking even low dose aspirin.
Can aspirin help you pass a marijuana urine test?
With those concerns in mind, does aspirin work to pass a urine drug test for marijuana? The answer is most likely, yes! To understand how aspirin might help you pass a drug test, you need to know a little about how the urine test for marijuana works.
How does the urine test for marijuana work?
The most common test is the so-called EMIT test which stands for enzyme multiplied immunoassay test. This test is for THC-COOH which is a metabolite of THC or Tetrahydrocannabinol the psychoactive component of marijuana. THC-COOH or 11-nor-delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol-9-carboxylic acid ( 9 CarboxyTHC) is stored in fat and therefore leaves the body slowly so that a urine EMIT test may detect THC-COOH many days or weeks after THC itself is no longer in the body. Urine levels of THC-COOH below 50 nanograms/ml (ng/ml) are accepted as a passed test but levels above 50 are considered test failures. It seems that aspirin, when taken orally before a urine test for THC, can interfere with the EMIT chemical assay giving a false negative test result below 50 ng/ml. In fact, aspirin can cause as much as a 50% reduction in the recorded level of THC-COOH in an EMIT test for marijuana use! Wow, a 50% reduction-how great would that be?
How should you take aspirin to pass a marijuana urine test?
It is important to realize that the aspirin must be taken by mouth before the test and not added to the urine specimen itself. Aspirin added directly to a urine specimen will not help you to pass the test.
How should you take aspirin if you are trying to pass a marijuana urine test? Two methods have been suggested:
- Start drinking a lot of water
- 4-6 hours before the test take four 325 mg aspirin pill
- Urinate at least twice before the test
- Made sure your urine sample is midstream
The other method is:
- Take two 325 mg aspirin 4-6 hours before the test
- Take another two 325 mg aspirin two hours before the test
- Drink lots of water
- Urinate several times before the test and get a midstream urine sample for the test.
What are the factors affecting the outcome of a marijuana urine test?
How helpful taking aspirin might be in passing a marijuana urine test depends on several factors such as your body composition. THC accumulates and is stored in fat so people with larger amounts of body fat will store THC and its metabolite THC-COOH. Heavy exercise helps burn fat and thus rid the body of THC. Of course, the amount of marijuana used and how often it is used are the main factors which determine the amount of THC in a person’s system and how effective aspirin might be in helping you to pass a urine test for THC. Since the EMIT urine test measures the metabolite of THC which may remain in the body long after THC itself is gone and thus a drug test can be positive for some time after you stop using marijuana.
What are the possible health risks of taking aspirin to pass a marijuana urine test?
Are there any side effects or complications from using aspirin to help pass a marijuana drug test? If you use marijuana in one of the two methods described you would most likely not have any complications or side effects of aspirin. Stomach irritation which can cause burning stomach pain is a common side effect of even a single large dose of aspirin, and although it is unlikely, a stomach ulcer can happen after taking a single large dose of aspirin. Bleeding is unlikely after a single large dose of aspirin but the action of aspirin in reducing blood clotting may last for as long as 7-10 days so delayed bleeding into the stomach or GI tract or after a head injury is possible.
Does methocarbamol contain aspirin?
What is methocarbamol and does it contain aspirin? Methocarbamol is a muscle relaxant, and itself does not contain aspirin, but Robaxin and Robaxisol are two combination products which contain aspirin and methocarbamol. It is better to take enteric coated plain aspirin when you are trying to pass a drug test rather than complicate things with a combination product which contains aspirin and methocarbamol.
Why you might fail a marijuana urine test after taking aspirin
Why might you fail a urine test for THC even though you use the aspirin regimen described here? One reason may be that more recent THC urine tests can detect salicylates in urine specimens and declare the test invalid and require another test. More recent laboratory tests can detect a whole range of substances used to subvert drug tests including salicylates or aspirin. One way to avoid a negative test is to obtain a drug testing kit and test your own urine at home to be sure that you test negative before taking the mandatory test for your employer. If you consistently test negative you can be confident that you will pass the mandated test.
How to successfully pass a marijuana urine test
What can you do to help you pass a drug test if you don’t want to use aspirin or if you want to do something in addition to aspirin to improve your chances of passing the test? Unfortunately, abstinence is one of the best methods to help you pass a THC urine test, but it can take weeks or even months to clear your system of THC and its metabolites from your system depending on your pattern of marijuana use and your body makeup and metabolism and your exercise habits.
People with more body fat will store THC-COOH for long periods after using cannabis products, and these same people tend to have a slower metabolism so that the THC-COOH stays in their body longer than people with slender or muscular bodies. Heavy exercise, regardless of body type can speed up metabolism significantly and speed up the rate of clearance of THC-COOH from the body.
Powdered human urine is also available and can be used on very short notice, but the powder must be carefully reconstituted to be sure it has the same color and temperature as natural urine.
An excellent method you might try to pass a urine test on short notice is one of several available detox drinks or pills 12-24 hours before your urine test. The detox agents contain a variety of compounds such as A, B and C vitamins and creatine along with other substances which actually detoxify the body of THC and greatly improve your chances of getting a negative urine test. The use of detox drinks or pills along with aspirin can improve your chances of a negative urine test for THC, but no method except prolonged abstinence is a guarantee of a successful test.