Drug testing is becoming increasingly popular in all kinds of situations such as by employers, schools, governmental agencies and law enforcement agencies. If you are required to take a urine drug test it may come with little or no warning and it may provoke a lot of anxiety and fear. So what is the best detox drink for the drug test? There are many ways of cleansing your system from marijuana and its psychoactive component THC and we will examine most of them. We will take a look at the best THC detox drinks in detail.
What are urine drug tests looking for?
Urine drug tests are mainly looking for pot or its psychoactive component THC or Tetrahydrocannabinol. Actually, the EMIT urine drug test does not test for THC directly but instead tests for THC-COOH which is the main metabolite of THC. THC is first absorbed into the bloodstream by way of smoked weed through the lungs or by way of the gastrointestinal tract if products such as gummies, cookies, brownies or coffee or tea are used. THC is then taken to be “carboxylated” in the liver and turned into THC-COOH which is then transferred to and excreted in the urine. THC-COOH is fat soluble and is stored in fat tissues within the body. Drug tests may also look for other substances like methamphetamine, heroin, cocaine or opiates.
How long does weed stay in your body?
Several factors affect how long weed stays in your body. The main factors are:
- How strong is the marijuana product that you use?
- How frequently do you use marijuana products?
- What type of marijuana product do you use?
- How much body fat do you have?
- How fast is your metabolism?
- How much do you exercise?
- What kind of diet do you eat?
Let’s explore each of these factors individually.
How strong is the marijuana product that you use?
Marijuana is designated a Schedule I drug by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) which means that the FDA considers marijuana to be of no demonstrated medical value and to possess characteristics which make it open to abuse and addiction. The FDA via the USP or US Pharmacopeia carefully measures the content of FDA approved drugs but since pot is a Schedule I drug there is no legal system to measure and certify just how much marijuana is in any weed product. It is against federal law to use or possess marijuana products, in spite of the fact that several states have now legalized the medical and recreational use of marijuana. It should be mentioned that the FDA does recognize two forms of medical marijuana but these products which are used to treat nausea and vomiting caused by chemotherapy drugs and a certain form of childhood epilepsy can only be obtained with a prescription from a physician.
As a result of this designation by the FDA, there is no reliable way to know what the strength of THC might be in any weed product that you might use. If you are a regular user you may be able to figure how roughly how strong your marijuana product is but the psychoactive effect or “high” from marijuana products doesn’t tell you a lot about how much THC might be in your blood or how much THC-COOH might be in your fat tissues, or your blood or your urine.
How frequently do you use marijuana products?
THC-COOH is detectable in urine for several days after a single use but can be detected in the urine of regular users as long as 90 days after a period of abstinence. The more weed you use and the stronger the THC content the more THC-COOH will be formed and the longer and more difficult it will be to detoxify your body.
What type of marijuana product do you use?
The way that you use marijuana is also a factor in determining how long it will stay in your body. Smoking marijuana is the fastest way to get it into your bloodstream and then into your body’s own detox system. Marijuana taken in the form of edibles like gummies, cookies, brownies, and tea or coffee takes longer to get into the body and therefore longer for the body’s mechanisms to detoxify it and make sure that you have a clean urine test. It goes without saying that unfortunately abstinence is the best and most reliable method to allow your body’s natural processes time to detoxify your system of marijuana, THC, and THC-COOH but it is impossible to say exactly how long a period of abstinence alone will take to detoxify your system to the point that you can successfully pass a urine drug test.
How much body fat do you have?
The proportion of your body that is fat or adipose tissue has a significant effect on how fast you clear THC and THC-COOH from your body. One way to get an idea of how much of your body weight is fat is to calculate your Body Mass Index or BMI. A high BMI indicates that a high proportion of your body weight is fat tissue and that you are likely to store THC-COOH and increase the time that it takes your body’s natural processes to detoxify marijuana products.
How fast is your metabolism?
Your rate of metabolism is a significant factor in determining how long marijuana products and their metabolites will stay in your body and thus, appear in your urine. You can use one of several easy methods to calculate your so-called basal metabolic rate or BMR. Your BMR is the number of calories your body will consume at rest. The higher your BMR the faster you burn nutrients like carbohydrates, proteins and fat. At low BMRs, you tend to burn carbohydrates like sugars and at higher rates of metabolism, you tend to burn more fats. Exercise raises your metabolic rate and the higher your metabolic rate the more you burn fat which tends to release THC-COOH stored in fat cells and thus detoxify your body from the metabolites of marijuana.
How much do you exercise?
As mentioned, exercise especially vigorous, sustained, cardiovascular exercise, raises your metabolic rate and burns fat cells which release THC-COOH which is then excreted in your urine. It is suggested that vigorous exercise should not be performed during the three days immediately before a urine test for marijuana because doing so might increase the rate that THC-COOH is released from fat cells and unintentionally increase your chance of failing the test. Vigorous exercise should be pursued several days or more before a scheduled urine test to allow detoxification of your body of THC-COOH well before the time that a test is planned.
What kind of diet do you eat?
Diets rich in fiber will tend to attract marijuana metabolites like THC-COOH into the gastrointestinal tract to be excreted by way of the colon in the form of fecal material and away from the urine thus decreasing the amount of THC-COOH in the urine. Eating fresh fruits and vegetables while avoiding red meats and saturated fats like oil can drastically change how long pot stays in your body. High fiber dietary products taken shortly before a urine test can help reduce the marijuana products in the urine specimen and increase the chance of successfully passing the test.
To summarize, regular use of high potency marijuana products in people with high body fat content, with low metabolic rates, who do not exercise frequently and who eat diets low in fiber content will result in the slowest time to detoxify the body of marijuana and its metabolites which show up in the urine. Rare or occasional use of marijuana products in people with low body fat content, with high metabolic rates and who exercise vigorously and often and who eat high fiber diets, will result in the fastest time to detoxify marijuana and its metabolites from the body. If you are looking for a detailed and very scientific review of the difficult question as to how long marijuana remains in your system I suggest this source.
Now that you know what factors affect the rate at which your body is likely to naturally detoxify itself from marijuana and its metabolites, what can you do to speed up the processor in other ways help you to get a clean urine test?
There are a number of ways detoxing to help you to pass a marijuana urine test in addition to the natural methods we have discussed so far. These include:
- Dilution by drinking lots of fluids
- Taking B vitamins
- Taking Creatine
- Taking mineral supplements
- Taking pectin or Certo
- Using diuretics
- Taking aspirin
- Using someone else’s urine sample
- Using powdered human urine
- Using a detox drink or detox pills.
Let’s now look at each one of these items in some detail.
Dilution
Drinking lots of fluids is a way of helping your body to flush marijuana products or methamphetamines from your system naturally and to dilute your urine to reduce the concentration of any remaining THC-COOH or meth. Drinking only water will produce the maximum amount of urine but it can dilute your urine to the point that your sample will not pass the test for acceptability. Although drinking large amounts of water could theoretically lead to the dangerous condition of water intoxication that condition only occurs when drinking large amounts of pure water over many days. Drinking water over a few hours to pass a drug test is highly unlikely to lead to water intoxication but just to reduce the chance you can drink things like Gatorade to replenish lost electrolytes. Using dilution by drinking large amounts of fluids as your only means of passing a drug test is unlikely to prove successful.
B Vitamins
Taking B vitamins, particularly vitamins B2 and B12 will color your very dilute urine sample yellow to duplicate the appearance of normal urine
Creatine
Creatine supplements are converted into creatinine in the body and creatinine is an important component of normal urine. Eating red meat which contains creatine is also a way to get creatinine into your urine sample but eating red meat goes against the advice to eat a diet rich in high fiber-containing foods which are all vegetables.
Mineral supplements
Mineral supplements taken orally will get into a urine sample and again simulate a component of normal urine. Zinc is a mineral which is a way of masking THC-COOH in your urine. Zinc does not cleanse your body of THC-COOH, and more recent test methods may detect intentional manipulation of the test with Zinc and make the test invalid and require further testing.
Fruit pectin or Certo
Certo is one brand of commercially available fruit pectin. Pectin is a long chain polysaccharide which is a form of soluble fiber. Pectin has been promoted as a method of diverting THC-COOH from the bloodstream into the gastrointestinal tract and excreting it from the colon in the feces instead of in the urine. Since pectin is obtained from fruits it also contains carbohydrates which cause a sudden release of insulin in order to burn the carbohydrates and stop the burning of fat where the THC-COOH is stored and thus prevent THC-COOH from getting into the urine. The fruit pectin method must be started about 24 hours before your scheduled test and it alone will probably not cause you to pass your test. Using fruit pectin as a cleaner must be combined with other approaches such as dilution, vitamins, Creatine, etc. to be successful.
Diuretics
Diuretics are substances which cause the kidneys to produce more than a natural amount of urine and can help in the detox process. Midol, a medication used by women to help with the pain of menstrual cramps is a diuretic which is available over the counter. Virtually all other diuretics are available only with a prescription and they can cause secondary problems such as low potassium. Tea, which contains theophylline and coffee are also diuretics, and cranberry juice can also have some diuretic effect.
Aspirin
Aspirin, when taken in large doses, is a way of masking THC-COOH in your urine and can cause an apparent decrease in the THC-COOH concentration by as much as 50%. Large doses of aspirin can cause gastrointestinal bleeding and stomach ulcers and there are various recommended ways to take aspirin before a drug test. One suggested the method is to begin drinking large amounts of water and then take four 325 mg aspirin tablets 4-6 hours before your scheduled test and then be sure to urinate at least 2-3 times before the test. Another method is to take two 325 mg aspirin tablets 4-6 hours before your test and then another two 325 mg tablets two hours before the test and drink lots of water before, during and after taking the aspirin. As drug testing has become more sophisticated it is fairly likely that aspirin may be detected by the test facility and invalidate your sample but it may be worth a try if you use potent marijuana products regularly and you don’t have much time before your drug test.
Someone else’s urine
Using someone else’s urine who does not use drugs at all in place of your own can certainly result in a negative drug test but getting the alternate urine specimen into your test cup can be challenging. Various methods have been suggested to smuggle an alternate urine sample into the test including putting it into a condom or small squeeze bottle but it is important that the sample be body temperature because the temperature of urine specimens is tested before doing the actual THC-COOH test to ensure that it is a real urine sample and not just water or an alternate sample source.
Powdered human urine
Powdered human urine is easily obtained via the internet but it must be reconstituted properly and also it must be at body temperature at the time of your test so that getting the powder reconstituted and at the right temperature at the time of the test can be challenging. Since this is real human urine, it will certainly pass the test if you can get it reconstituted and the correct temperature at the time of the test. Also, if the lab uses a monitor to watch you make your urine sample this method will not work nor will the method of using someone else’s urine.
Home remedies
Before we get to the subject of commercially available detox drinks and pills it is worth mentioning that you can prepare your own homemade detox drinks for drug tests using some of the easily available methods we just discussed such as drinking lots of fluids, taking aspirin, using tea, coffee or cranberry juice as diuretics, eating a diet high in fiber and using fruit pectin. All of these approaches could make home remedies, but they take some time and effort to obtain and coordinate so let us now explore detox drinks or pills that are easily available and have all of the components in one easy place. Incidentally, other home remedies like apple cider vinegar and pickle juice are not helpful in passing a drug test for THC.
Detox drinks or pills
Perhaps the very best method for detoxification of your body is to use one of a number of commercially available detox drinks or pills. These cleansing combinations may come in kits which include all of the individual items that we have been talking about such as vitamins, minerals, natural diuretics, creatine, fruit pectin, and multiple herbal components. Certainly, you could assemble all of these components individually yourself and make a homemade detox drink for a drug test, but it would take time and effort and might be challenging when the detox drinks or pills have everything in one convenient place.
Detoxify XXTRA Clean Herbal Cleanser
Detoxify XXTRA Clean Herbal Cleanser is a combination of Vitamins A, C, and D, Zinc, B-12 nettle, and fruit pectin and is a one – day detoxification cleanser and one of the fastest acting products available. This cleaner is a tropical fruit flavored 20 fluid ounce bottle of the liquid combination of components for use 1-3 hours before your test with an expectation that it will last for about 5 hours. To make the cleanse more effective the drink is accompanied by six pills to be used twelve to 24- hours before your scheduled test. This product is intended for detoxing by people with stronger patterns of pot use and with larger body masses and therefore more fat tissue to retain THC-COOH. As with all of the detox drinks or pills, large amounts of water or electrolyte-containing fluids to flush THC are essential to a successful cleansing of your system.
Premium Detox 7-Day Comprehensive Cleansing Program
For those who have the time and wish to do a more comprehensive detoxification program, products such as Premium Detox 7-Day Comprehensive Cleansing Program has been suggested. Reviews of this product are quite variable and an examination of the ingredients shows that it is, in essence, a proprietary blend of a number of herbal varieties along with vitamins and carbohydrates. The product is suggested for those with light use of toxic substances and the product information stresses the use of many of the other techniques mentioned in this report such as abstinence from using toxic substances, dilution with water and other fluids, a healthy diet, exercise, etc. which in and of themselves, over a seven day period, could be expected to reduce or eliminate toxins such as THC-COOH.
Fast Marijuana Detox Kit
Another product, the Fast Marijuana Detox Kit, advertises that it is the same day product which works in 24 hours and that is legal and not detectable and allows you to keep on smoking and is safe for your health. This product which is a combination of a drink and 4 tablets contains in creatine and a proprietary blend of several herbal substances. It also contains a self- test kit to be sure that your urine is clear before you take the test. It also emphasizes drinking large amounts of water to flush your system and urinating frequently along with this product. The product is to be started two hours before your test and is said to last for up to 5 hours. Interestingly, and in spite of the earlier suggestion that you can continue to smoke when using this product, a later suggestion is that you stop using marijuana products as soon as possible! An extra strong version of this product has received some very favorable reviews.
Toxin Rid
A highly recommended product is Toxin Rid which comes in different forms for detox programs from one to ten days. The one- day detox cleanser is recommended for light users who need to be clean in 24 hours and the ten-day program is for very heavy users. Intermediate programs are for three or five days for those who use products on a moderately heavy basis. This product is recommended for detoxification from marijuana products, methamphetamines and other toxic substances such as heroin, cocaine, opiates, and ketamine.
The ten-day Toxin Rid Program
The ten-day Toxin Rid program consists of three components: Pre-Rid capsules, Detox liquid, and dietary fiber. The Pre-ride capsules contain Calcium, Iron, Magnesium, Chloride, Sodium, Potassium, Alfalfa Leaf Extract, Kelp and Boron. These components are said to act as diuretics, fat burners and as replacements for essential minerals, vitamins, and electrolytes. The Detox Liquid contains Magnesium, Chloride, Sodium, Potassium, Sulfate, Lithium and Boron. The third component is a combination of dietary fiber and Psyllium Husks, a form of non-soluble fiber which is thought to act as a laxative for detoxification of the digestive tract which may harbor THC dissolved in fat in the intestine and entering the bloodstream and urine.
The ten-day program consists of taking 3 Pre-Rid tablets each hour and drinking a cup of water for 5 hours per day for 10 days (15 tablets per day). On the day of your test, after your last pill, take a half ounce of Toxin Rid Detox Liquid and drink 16 ounces of water. After that do not eat or drink for two hours and take another half-ounce of Toxin Rid Detox Liquid with 16 ounces of water. One hour before your test, mix the dietary fiber with 16 ounces of water and drink the mixture. During the course of the program, a diet rich in lean protein and dietary fiber is recommended. As you can see this is a fairly complicated program but it appears from available reviews that users are quite satisfied with the results and have reported good success in getting a negative drug test.
Conclusions
As I think you can see, the question of what is the best detox drink to help you pass a drug test is not an easy one to answer. It seems clear that a detox drink or regimen alone is unlikely to help you successfully pass a urine test unless perhaps you are only an occasional user. For more regular users, abstinence, exercise, a diet rich in fiber and lots of fluids combined with one or more detox drinks or pills is likely to help you pass a urine drug test. Just to be sure, however, testing your urine at home will give you confidence when you approach such a test. Good luck!!!