Drug testing urine is pretty common nowadays, but that doesn’t mean you ever get used to it. Even though I’ve got the process down and am always pretty confident I’ll pass (and so far I always have), I’m still always a tiny bit nervous until I get those final results back from the lab. Which brings me to the topic of this post… which is that, regardless of how commonplace drug testing urine has gotten to be, you should treat EVERY drug test you take like it’s your very first time if you really want to pass.

Drug Testing Urine – Don’t Get Lazy!

The reason I bring this up is because I’ve known more than one person who didn’t pass a urine test just because they got kind of lazy, frankly. YES, it’s a pain in the butt to dilute before you go to your appointment. You have to drink a hell of a lot of water (which can be uncomfortable, to say the least), and you have to keep track of taking a bunch of supplements for covering up your dilution, yada, yada, yada. But you know what? If you really want to pass a piss test, you just gotta suck it up and do it.

Pretty much everyone is so freaked out and paranoid before we take our very first drug test, that we take every single thing about it dead serious. The problem is, once you successfully pass a drug test it’s easy to start thinking, “Hey, that wasn’t so bad after all. So what’s the big deal?” Well let me tell ya, that is dangerous thinking – because when labs are drug testing urine, they take each and every test REAL serious so you’d better too. If you start cutting corners when you dilute, thinking that you can get away with not doing this thing or that, then you’re playing with fire, man.

What Labs Are Looking For When Drug Testing Urine

Probably the most important advice I have for anyone who has a drug test coming up is to TEST YOURSELF AT HOME before walking into the lab. You can find home test strips for a few bucks each at most major pharmacies, and investing in two or three of them is pretty cheap insurance considering what’s at stake.

And if you’re really desperate to pass a drug test, you might want to also buy a specimen validity test. Those will set you back twenty to thirty bucks, but if you have the money just shut your eyes and do it. Because when a lab is drug testing urine, they aren’t just looking at whether or not you test negative for THC metabolites. They’re also looking for evidence to see if you diluted. If you’re doing a trial run at home first (which I HIGHLY recommend that you do), then a specimen validity test will let you know if you’re doing it right so that the lab won’t flag you for dilution.

Passing a Urine Drug Test Is Totally Do-Able

Bottom line, even though preparing for a drug test can be a hassle, it’s all worth it if you pay attention to each step and do it right. The hassle is nothing compared to losing your job, not being able to get a job, or especially failing a probation test. Big Brother’s drug testing urine isn’t going to go away anytime soon, but with some serious due diligence it doesn’t have to have a major impact on your life.

Myths About How to Pass a Drug Test for Marijuana

There are lots of popular home remedies passed around by very well meaning, but also very misinformed, pot heads. Including cranberry juice, Certo (also known as Sure-Jell), and niacin. You can find some facts about home remedies here.

One of the most prevalent myths about passing a drug test is that you should drink tons of water for days or weeks before your test. The roots of this particular myth are actually grounded in reality (as most myths are), but the real facts about it have become distorted over time.

Possibly the biggest misconception about passing a urine test for marijuana is that you can get rid of THC metabolites by ‘detoxing’ your body – in other words, completely cleansing your body and getting back to square one. This misconception is constantly perpetuated by companies who want you to buy their detox products.

But in fact, because THC metabolites store themselves in your fat cells, the only genuine detoxification you could do would be to somehow lose a lot of weight (and fat) in a big hurry. Needless to say, not a very realistic plan. But if you’re in the position of needing to know how to pass a drug test for marijuana, don’t be discouraged by these facts!

How to Pass a Drug Test for Marijuana – What Does Work?

Hands down, plain old dilution is the MOST effective method for how to pass a drug test for marijuana. But the big problem with it is that most smokers don’t understand exactly how to do it, and more importantly they don’t know how to hide it from the drug testing labs.

Dilution does NOT mean drinking lots of water daily for a long period of time, and it also doesn’t mean adding water to your urine sample during your drug test. For passing a urine test, dilution means drinking enough water in a very short time span to overload your kidneys with fluids. When this happens, your kidneys are temporarily unable to filter the toxins in your body (including THC metabolites).

To put it another way, your urine becomes so diluted  by all the fluids you drank that the metabolite levels are too low to even measure, and voila – you test negative. But this also means that your urine won’t contain any of the elements that it’s supposed to have (including color!), which is the big red flag to testing labs that you’ve deliberately diluted and are trying to beat your drug test. Any serious discussion about how to pass a drug test for marijuana, by using dilution, isn’t complete without information about how to get around this problem.

How to Pass a Drug Test for Marijuana and Get On With Your Life

In order to pass a urine drug test for marijuana, you need to be aware that testing negative is only half the battle – you also need to pass the ‘tampering test.’ There can be NO evidence that you deliberately tried to dilute your urine, or you could fail your drug test on the spot. But fortunately for you (and unfortunately for testing labs), there are some amazingly simple ways to hide dilution. I’ve done it myself many times now, and I’ve passed every single time.

How to pass a drug test for marijuana is serious business, but that doesn’t mean it’s a reason to panic. Go here to find out more about how to pass a drug test using dilution.

Urine Drug Tests – Why You Should Be Particularly Concerned About Them

While there are other forms of testing, the type that you will almost always face is a urine drug test. The process is very straightforward. Once your organization informs you that you need to submit to a drug test, you will have to visit a drug testing laboratory within their specific window of time. After submitting a sample of your urine to the laboratory, it will be checked for the presence of opiates, marijuana, methamphetamines, cocaine and amphetamines. Most every drug besides marijuana leaves your system within a few days to a week, so urine drug tests are of particular concern to pot smokers. Evidence of marijuana use can linger in your body for up to a month.

Once the laboratory has finished its analysis, your organization will receive a report showing whether you tested positive or negative for each substance. In some cases the lab will give you the results of your urine test before sharing them with your employer. If you fail your test for any reason, even if you have never used drugs in your life, be warned that you face an uphill battle proving your innocence.

Detection Periods For Urine Drug Tests

When faced with a drug test, many people first try to figure out how long marijuana stays in your system, and how long they need to stay clean. Although a quick Google search will return tens of thousands of websites with detection time tables, every single one is simply an estimate. Factors such as usage frequency and the composition of your body all play a role in the length of the detection period. This means your detection period could be significantly different from someone else in a similar situation. No two people will be exactly alike when it comes to figuring out whether or not you’re clean enough to pass a urine drug test.

The only 100% guaranteed way to pass a urine drug test is with some form of substitution. You can either substitute with the urine of someone you know (as long as you know they’re clean), or you can use real powdered urine. Of course, substitution is difficult if your drug test is supervised, but for some people it’s worth the risk. After substitution, the next most reliable way to pass a drug test is dilution. Dilution involves drinking a large volume of water on the day of your test, and then taking supplements that will hide the fact that you’re diluting from the lab. If done properly dilution has a success rate of around 99%, so it is still considered very reliable.

The Last Resort for Passing a Urine Drug Test

There are also many commercial detox drinks on the market that are touted to help someone pass a drug test. Their effectiveness rate is much lower than either substitution or the home dilution method, although some people swear by them. The bottom line is that if you need to pass a urine drug test, examine all your options and then make the choice that seems right for your situation.

First of all, if we’re talking completely 100% natural here, then the only option you have is to just abstain and let time take care of it. Unfortunately, that’s not an option for most pot smokers. But does that mean passing a drug test requires ingesting a lot of junk into your body? I guess it depends on your perspective.

Lots of folks who smoke pot are into green living, including when it comes to their own body. But there are many different philosophies about how to stay healthy, and here’s where it gets sticky. If we’re talking about basic vitamins and herbs like vitamin-C, B-complex, milk thistle, etc., even the most hard core purists wouldn’t have a problem with passing a drug test naturally. I consider myself pretty hard core when it comes to what I put into my body, but if I want to pass a drug test I know I’ve got to relax the rules a little, frankly.

How to Pass a Drug Test Naturally – You Might Need to Make a Few Compromises

The ways to pass a drug test that actually work don’t necessarily require you to drink poison, but you do need to be prepared to ingest some things you might not ordinarily. We’re not talking things that will have a lasting effect on your body, but they are things that aren’t what I would consider to be natural by any stretch of the imagination. For me, one of the biggies is Gatorade, which is loaded with sugars and food coloring. But it’s also loaded with natural salts that I know will make the density of my urine look normal when I’m diluting, so I just bite the bullet and drink it.

How to pass a drug test naturally means you should also take some creatine monohydrate, which some people consider kind of iffy. Creatine is in lots of foods that we eat, and if you have normal levels in your body it gets filtered by your kidneys and comes out in your urine as creatinine. Not all labs test creatinine levels, but most do nowadays. If you’re diluting, then you’ll have washed most of the creatinine out of your kidneys and it’s a red flag to labs.

How to Pass a Drug Test Naturally – Doing the Least Harm

But still, if you really want to pass a drug test without taking any more junk into your body than is absolutely necessary, then you’re better off buying all the ingredients and doing it yourself at home. It’s still better than buying a commercial detox drink, which is also loaded with unrecognizable chemicals along with food coloring. Making your own detox drink means that you at least know exactly what you’re putting into your body. Maybe that’s not exactly what you wanted to hear, but it’s the most honest answer I have for how to pass a drug test naturally.

The information you’ll find on this website is specifically for pot smokers, and it all got started when I had to start taking drug tests at my place of employment. What I’ve learned about how to pass a drug test has been a real eye-opener, to put it mildly. Probably the biggest shock is how much money we smokers spend (millions!!) on products that don’t even have a chance in hell of actually working. Desperate people will take desperate measures, and the companies who sell detox products are counting on it.

There is no ONE detox method that will work for every kind of drug (regardless of any marketing hype you may have read), because different toxins are metabolized in our bodies in different ways. The method I recommend for passing a urine drug test for pot is dilution, but dilution probably won’t help you if you need to know how to pass a drug test for any other substance. For the detection times of drugs other than cannabis, see ‘Links to Useful Resources’ over in the sidebar area of this page.

First of all, how to pass a drug test can be broken down into four basic methods:

1) Detox products
2) Dilution
3) Synthetic urine or substitution
4) Natural detox

How to Pass a Urine Drug Test Using Detox Products

There are so many different detox products on the market for passing a drug test that it boggles the mind. But they can basically be broken down into two categories: detox kits and detox drinks.

A detox kit is how to pass a urine drug test only if you have some time before your test. Most companies selling these products advertise anywhere from 10 days to 30 days for the product to work. But if you’re a pretty light smoker and you have 30 days notice, then you’ll definitely be clean by the time you take your test anyway, so you should just save your money. On the other hand, if you’re a heavy smoker and you only have 10 days to plan, then a detox kit definitely won’t work for you in time.

On the other hand, if you have very little advance notice, then a detox drink can be a good method for how to pass a urine drug test in a hurry. The people who have the most success in passing a drug test with them are light to moderate smokers. Detox drinks are really just a convenient way to use the dilution method (see below). The drink itself contains ingredients to help mask the fact that you’re diluting, and the instructions that come with them tell you to drink lots of water along with the product. However, they’re not among the best ways to pass a drug test if you’re a heavy smoker, or if you happen to be overweight. For one thing, the amount of water that they recommend you drink is usually much too low for those situations. Also, some of them tell you that you’re safe for passing a drug test for up to 5 hours after you drink the product. You should NEVER take a detox drink that far ahead of your test – 1 to 2 hours before your test time is safest.

How to Pass a Urine Drug Test Using The Dilution Method

As I’ve already pointed out above, I’m partial to dilution when it comes to how to pass a drug test. Mainly because it can be adjusted to work for anyone, whether you’re a light smoker or a heavy smoker. If you’re a light to moderate smoker you might prefer the convenience of just going to a store and buying a detox drink. But for heavy smokers, your safest bet is to do it the old-fashioned way so that you can control the process.

Dilution is a very effective and affordable method for passing a drug test. The way it works is pretty simple – you just need to drink enough fluids so that your kidneys are overloaded to the point that your urine is completely diluted. When that happens, then there aren’t enough THC metabolites (or much of anything else one usually finds in urine, for that matter) present in your urine for it to register on a test.

Contrary to the misinformation that gets passed around, there is NO need to load up on extra water before the day of your test. Drinking lots of water everyday is good for your general health, but as far as how to pass a urine drug test goes, it’s a complete waste of time and effort. What IS effective is drinking enough water in a short time span (2-3 hours) so that your urine is as dilute as possible.

But diluted urine is very clear, and not the normal yellow color it’s supposed to be. Of course this is a red flag to drug testing labs, so you’ve got to take a few steps to make it appear normal. Taking between 50-100mg of a B-complex vitamin (specifically B-2) about an hour before your test will make your urine appear yellow again. You also want to make sure that your urine contains normal levels of a substance called creatinine (you can buy a supplement called ‘creatine monohydrate’ in just about any health store that will accomplish this). Most labs also test the density of your urine specimen. You can get detailed, step-by-step instructions on how to dilute properly in my e-book about passing a drug test.

And if you really want to make sure you know how to pass a urine drug test using the dilution method, I highly recommend buying drug test strips and doing a trial run before your real test. You can get the strips in major pharmacies (Wal-Mart is probably cheapest, if there’s one in your area) and sometimes in smoke shops, but they tend to be expensive there. If your recreational drug use is limited to just pot, then you’ll save money by getting single-panel strips instead of the 5-panel strips. If you have time to plan, the cheapest place I’ve found them on the Internet is on this website.

How to Pass a Urine Drug Test Using Substitution or Synthetic Urine

Substitution was one of the earliest ways to pass a drug test used by pot smokers. All you have to do is ask a friend for some of their (clean) pee, and then smuggle it into the lab. Sounds simple in theory, but it can be very risky since lab technicians will monitor you to try and prevent you doing this.

Just smuggling your sample into the lab is only part of passing a drug test this way. You also need to somehow keep it at body temperature, since that’s one of the first tests a lab will do. Cold pee = failed test, game over. But you can keep the sample at body temperature by securing it in a zip-loc bag to the inside of your upper thigh, or you can buy devices on the Internet that are specifically designed for this. Since a lab technician is usually close by to monitor you, you also want to make certain that the container you use doesn’t make any noise when you open it (no rubber bands or tape, etc.).

Using synthetic urine works the same as substitution, except that instead of using a friend’s pee, you’ll be smuggling in the synthetic pee. It can come in powder form (which you’ll have to mix with water) or in liquid (pre-mixed) form. Labs have tests they run to try to detect synthetic urine, but the companies who make it are constantly working at staying one step ahead of them. If you’re successful at the smuggling part, then the odds are high that the synthetic urine will pass.

Depending on the circumstances at the lab you’re going to, both substitution and using synthetic urine are among the riskiest ways to pass a drug test for most people. If you’re caught, any false positive arguments go out the window and you won’t get a chance for a re-take. So knowing how to pass a urine drug test this way definitely requires that you have some advance knowledge about how closely you’ll be monitored by a lab technician.

How to Pass a Urine Drug Test by Naturally Detoxing

If you know you’re going to be needing to take a drug test in the future, for example if you’re going to be looking for a new job, of course you can always just stop smoking altogether and wait until THC metabolites have left your body through natural means. A serious workout regimen to lose weight will hurry the process a little bit, since THC metabolites are stored in your fat cells. But this method is only how to pass a urine drug test if you’ve got plenty of time, really (and assuming you can handle being separated from mary jane for an extended period). Both of those complications makes this one of the hardest ways to pass a drug test for most folks.

If you’re an average weight person who is a very light pot smoker (maybe a bowl once a month), then you’ll be clean in just a matter of days, like less than a week. If you’re a once daily moderate smoker, give yourself 3-4 weeks to get clean, depending on your metabolism. And if you’re a heavy smoker (several times daily), or if you’re carrying some extra weight on your, then passing a drug test by naturally detoxing will generally be between 4-6 weeks. These are just ballpark figures though, because your individual metabolism has a huge influence here. But in general, the faster your metabolism is and the less body fat you have, the faster you’ll get clean.

Final Word of Advice on How to Pass a Urine Drug Test

Regardless of what method you choose to use, how to pass a drug test consists of knowing exactly what you’re going to do when you walk into the lab. This is one situation when the saying “knowledge is power” is especially true. People pass drug tests EVERY DAY, and there’s no reason why you can’t too if you take the time to do your homework beforehand. And one big benefit of being prepared is that it removes a huge amount of stress from the entire issue of how to pass a urine drug test.

Any discussion about how to pass a drug test should start with the basics, which is that THC metabolites are stored in your body’s fat cells. Over time your body just naturally cycles them out, and they get flushed out in your urine. Every time you smoke you’re putting more metabolites into your fat cells, but at the same time they’re always leaving your body when you pee. Remember this, because these basic facts help to explain how some of the most persistent myths about home remedies for passing drug tests got started in the first place.

Home Remedies for Passing Drug Tests That Actually Work (More or Less)

1. Water

No doubt you’ve heard about dilution for passing a urine drug test. It’s true that it will help you pass, but probably not the way you think it will. The information you’ll see being passed around about dilution is that you have to start drinking as much water as you can for days, or even weeks, before your drug test. WRONG. What you really have to do is drink as much water as you can during the few hours right before your test. By overloading your kidneys in a short time frame, you dilute your urine to the point where there aren’t enough THC metabolites in it to register on a test.

Dilution is the method by which commercial detox drinks work, but I included it here because it’s so easy to do the same thing at home. You just have to take some common supplements that make your urine appear to be undiluted. These are the same supplements that are in detox drinks, but they’re much cheaper (and usually more reliable) if you buy them yourself. Of all the home remedies for passing drug tests that are out there, dilution is by far the one that’s most likely to actually help you pass a drug test (assuming you’re getting a urine test, that is).

2. Diuretics

Diuretics by themselves are useless for passing a drug test. But when you combine them with dilution, then you’ve got a winning combo. In order to really get your urine clear of THC metabolites you’ve not only got to drink a lot of fluids, you’ve also got to pee a lot to flush them out of your system quickly. Diuretics aren’t necessarily a requirement for how to pass a drug test using dilution, but they can be a big help.

3. Cranberry Juice/Capsules

Cranberry is a mild diuretic, so it can be helpful for the same reason as any diuretic is. Somehow it’s reached a legendary status as the Big Daddy of home remedies for passing drug tests, but believe me – there’s nothing magical about cranberry juice. If the only thing you do to pass a urine test is take cranberry capsules or drink cranberry juice, it just ain’t gonna be enough. But – combined with dilution, cranberry can be very helpful.

4. Exercising

To get rid of fat you exercise, right? And since THC metabolites are stored in fat cells, losing weight (real weight, not just water weight from taking diuretics) helps you cut down on the amount of metabolites your body stores at any given time. The problem with this, though, is that it takes a long time to lose a significant amount of weight. If by some wild chance you have so much advance notice that you could work on losing weight in order to pass a drug test, why put yourself through all that stress? You could just quit smoking pot altogether for 4-8 weeks and you’d be clean anyway. But one really good argument for losing weight is that the less body fat you have, the less time it takes for THC metabolites to leave your system after you quit smoking.

Whatever you do, don’t go overboard with exercising in the week just prior to your test – losing weight at that time will work against you, since it means more metabolites are being flushed out of your system than you might want on your test day. However, if you already work out regularly then you don’t need to stop. Exercise won’t cause you to lose weight (and fat cells) if you’re already pretty fit to begin with.

Home Remedies for Passing Drug Tests That Definitely DON’T Work

1. Niacin

This myth seems to have started as a result of a book written in the ’70s by L. Ron Hubbard, called ‘Clear Body, Clear Mind’. In case you don’t recognize his name, L. Ron Hubbard was the founder of the controversial  Church of Scientology. In his book, Hubbard (who didn’t have any medical or nutritional training, by the way) laid out a detoxification program that he claimed would help people get rid of all the toxins in their bodies, including prescription and non-prescription drugs, and pesticides. Niacin was one of the things he recommended. Somewhere along the line, someone trying to pass a drug test probably just thought Niacin = Detox, and the legend began.

Of all the home remedies for passing drug tests you’ll hear about, taking massive doses of niacin is by far the most dangerous. Our bodies only need about 15mg per day. People trying to pass drug tests commonly take 50-100 times the recommended daily dose, which can cause permanent damage to your liver. Just google ‘niacin poisoning’ to read about people who have ended up in emergency rooms from a niacin overdose.

If you’re thinking about using niacin to pass a drug test, here is the bottom line: small doses help to detox your liver – but since THC metabolites are stored in your fat cells, not your liver, that means niacin is absolutely useless for passing a drug test for marijuana.

2. Vinegar

The only thing vinegar does is change the PH of your urine, if you add it to your urine after you pee. I’m not too sure how this one got started. At any rate, it’s one more home remedy that’s totally useless for passing a drug test, since current testing methods routinely check for this adulterant.

3. Bleach

Another adulterant that labs routinely test for. Maybe this one got started when someone had the bright idea of ‘cleaning’ their urine. I’m going to guess that many years ago (before drug testing labs got savvy) someone passed their test this way, and even though modern test methods can detect common adulterants like this today, for some reason it’s a myth that just won’t die. Whatever you do, don’t be stupid enough to actually drink it. Miniscule amounts are safe for purifying drinking water in an emergency, but it’s easy to go overboard.

4. Phenylpropanolamine

Phenylpropanolamine was the active ingredient in an over-the-counter appetite suppressant called Dexatrim. You can’t get phenylpropanolamine without a prescription any longer, since it apparently made your heart beat erratically and increased your risk of stroke. The dangers aside, it isn’t any good for passing a drug test anyway. Vets use it today to help prevent incontinence in aging dogs. In other words, it’s used to help dogs stop peeing. The exact opposite of what you want if you’re going to flush THC from your urine. Another one of those home remedies for passing drug tests that are not only useless, but dangerous.

5. Goldenseal

Goldenseal was never effective for helping anyone pass a urine test for weed, however it was somewhat effective for helping people pass tests for other classes of drugs, like opiates. Which is why labs routinely test for it now, so don’t even go there.

6. Certo (Also Known As Sure Jell)

I saved the best for last: the ever-popular Certo Method For Passing a Drug Test. Certo and Sure Jell are brand names for pectin, which is a gelling agent made from plants and it’s used to make things like jam (so you can spread jam on your toast with a knife, instead of pouring it on like syrup). Pectin is technically a dietary fiber, and it passes through your intestines more or less intact (in other words, your body doesn’t absorb it).

The legend goes like this: Certo coats your stomach, which is somehow supposed to prevent THC metabolites from getting into your urine. This theory falls apart when you realize that metabolites are cycled out of your body through your kidneys, when you pee. Last I checked, your stomach isn’t in any way connected to your kidneys, so as far as home remedies to pass a drug test go, I give this one the award for being the silliest.

I can see why people get fooled into thinking this works, though. If you read on a forum where someone is giving instructions on how to pass a urine test this way, they ALWAYS include drinking lots of water along with the Certo / Sure-Jell. So if you pass, it’s because you diluted, not because you used Certo. And if you’re lucky enough to be tested in a lab that doesn’t perform authenticity tests for dilution, I can see why someone would think that Certo helped them pass their drug test. Problem is, most labs do check for dilution, so more people fail using this method than are actually helped by it.

There are definitely home remedies for passing drug tests that will help you, but the reality is that most of what you’ll hear about is based on rumors and myths passed around by people who either got lucky, or are just repeating something they heard. It is absolutely possible to pass a drug test, but you should gather all the information you can and use your common sense before deciding on which method to use.

Does Detoxification Work for Passing a Drug Test?

First off, some basic science about where the evidence of marijuana use is found in your body. THC metabolites, which are the by-products that testing labs will be looking for in a urine test, are stored in your fat cells. They’re NOT stored in your liver, they’re NOT stored in your kidneys, and they’re NOT stored in any other major body organ. THC metabolites are only found in your fat cells. Which is why so-called ‘detox’ products are useless for passing a drug test – they can help cleanse organs like the liver and kidneys, but you can’t ‘detoxify’ fat cells – your only option for getting rid of THC metabolites in a hurry is by getting rid of fat cells in a hurry. And if you can do that, you’ll be a millionaire and you probably won’t need to pass a drug test anyway. :-)

But over time, these THC metabolites get processed naturally through your body and are eliminated through your kidneys, just like many other kinds of toxins and chemicals that we ingest. So if you’re a daily smoker, everyday you’ll be losing metabolites in your urine, and also adding new ones to your store of fat cells. Any discussion about how to pass a drug test has to start with the facts, and now you know: passing a drug test is possible through other means, but you cannot actually ‘detox’ your body in time to pass a test that you’ve got coming up the next day or the next week.

Just How Long Does Marijuana Stay In Your System?

To illustrate what this means for you, let’s use an example of Smoker A and Smoker B. They both smoke the exact same amount of weed everyday, and the exact same grade. And since they’re both smokers, they’re both looking for info on passing a drug test. Will the exact same method work for both of them equally? Very unlikely, and I’ll explain why…

Let’s say Smoker A is a sports freak who works out every day of the week. He runs, lifts weights, goes rock climbing, the works. This guy is a total hardbody without an ounce of extra fat on him. Smoker B works at a desk all day, and when he goes home his favorite sport is smoking a bowl while sitting on the couch and watching TV until bedtime. Over the years he’s slowly put on a few extra pounds (okay, probably more than a few).

Are you starting to guess where this is going…? It’s not rocket science. Smoker A doesn’t have very many fat cells where THC metabolites can hide out, so they’re constantly being filtered through his body and being excreted through his urine. If he completely stopped smoking today, he’d probably be clean in 10 days to 2 weeks, even though he’s a daily smoker. He still has to worry about passing a drug test on short notice, but if he has any kind of advance notice at all he can pass a urine test just by abstaining for a while.

But things aren’t so simple for Smoker B. Because he’s got quite a few extra fat cells where THC can plant itself, it takes a lot longer for it to cycle out of his body and into his urine. For him, passing a drug test means it’s definitely time for panic mode. Depending on how much extra weight he’s carrying, if he stopped smoking today it could be anywhere from 1 to 2 months before he’s able to pass his drug test.

So What’s Your Best Option for Passing a Drug Test?

So what can you do…? The reason why it’s so hard to know exactly how long marijuana stays in your system is because a person’s metabolism is very seldom as cut & dry as the difference between our friends Smoker A and Smoker B. We’re all completely different, and the only way to know if you’re clean or not is to buy a home drug test and just test yourself. If it comes up positive, and you know you’re going to be given a urine test, you’ve really only got one option: dilution.

Contrary to popular misconception, dilution does not mean drinking a gallon of water a day for a week or a month before your test. For passing a drug test, all you need to do is drink enough fluids right before your test so that your urine becomes dilute. Remember how I told you that the THC metabolites in your fat cells end up going through your kidneys and getting flushed out in your urine? Well, all you need to do to pass a urine test is drink so much that your kidneys become ‘overloaded.’ When that happens, your urine gets so dilute that your pee actually comes out clear, instead of yellow. And that means that anything that would normally show up in your urine (THC metabolites, and also other substances) is basically non-existent.

Every single detox drink on the market works on the principle of dilution. Their instructions tell you to drink a certain amount of water, and then what the drink does is add these ‘other substances’ back into your urine that are supposed to be there (for example, creatinine). Labs know that people try to dilute, so they run some tests specifically to see if you’ve been trying to game the system. Detox drinks have a sketchy track record of success, but if you’re a light smoker, with a fast metabolism, then your chances of passing a drug test with one of them are actually pretty decent.

Passing a Drug Test for Heavy Smokers

If you’re a pretty regular pot smoker, then using a commercial ‘detox’ drink is a big gamble. In that case, your best bet to successfully pass a urine test is to do your own dilution method at home. You can buy the same ingredients that are in the detox drinks and achieve much more reliable results by controlling the process. And especially if you’re overweight, you’ll also most likely need to drink quite a bit more water than the detox drink instructions tell you to, to help guarantee you’ll pass.

There are a lot of sites on the Internet talking about how to pass a drug test, but most of them are commercial sites of companies who want you to buy their products. But another real advantage of diluting on your own is that it’s a LOT cheaper. Which means you can afford to do a trial run and give yourself a urine test at home first, to make sure you’ve got the process down. You can pick up a home drug test in any major pharmacy, and once you can pass at home, then you can be confident of passing a drug test at the lab.

JOHN: Yes, the color of the urine specimen (or rather, the lack of it) is the first most obvious indication of a dilution attempt. And even though we’re discussing dilution here, I should probably add that even before that, the temperature of the specimen is recorded to rule out the possibility of substitution. But assuming that the specimen passes the temperature and color test, and that it tests negative for THC metabolites, then additional tests are run to measure its specific gravity (sometimes referred to as relative density). To put it simply, the density of normal, undiluted urine falls within a certain range. Diluted urine will have very little density to it. So if the measured density of the urine specimen is below the normal range reference, a lab will flag it as diluted urine.

As for the specific elements that are measured in a urine drug test, there is only one: creatinine. Not all labs measure this, but the lab that I worked for did and I would say that most do. And as I know you are aware, creatinine levels that are below the normal range are yet one more indication of a diluted urine sample, regardless of whether or not it passes all of the other phases of the test.

DEE: So besides the obvious stuff, are there any specific tips in passing a drug test that you can recommend to people?

JOHN: Well, I think that what you recommend in your book about diluting at home more than adequately addresses all the points I’ve already mentioned, but there are a couple of things that I’d like to elaborate on if I may. One of the most important tips in passing a drug test that you mention yourself is the use of a B-complex vitamin supplement to put some color back into one’s urine after diluting. But the specific B-vitamin that provides the yellow color is B-2, so that’s all a person really needs to buy. And I would actually recommend that people take a higher dose than you recommend, like perhaps 5X the recommended daily dose on the label, or about 50-100mg. I realize that you’re probably trying to be conservative when you tell people to take double the daily recommended dose, but for just one day it’s really quite safe to take the higher amount. And a higher dose will turn urine yellow much quicker, and will also help ensure that it’s still providing color if someone has a long wait at the lab.

The second point I’d like to mention is the use of aspirin. I was impressed that you didn’t claim that this was effective for passing a drug test, but I do think that in the next edition of your book it would be a good idea to leave out any mention of it at all. There is nothing in aspirin that would have any effect in passing a urine test, and its use can be quite dangerous to some individuals. Aspirin is a much more serious drug than many people realize, particularly when it’s taken on an empty stomach. It causes small bleeding in the lining of the stomach wall, which can cause serious complications. So, since it isn’t helpful for passing a drug test anyway, it should be avoided unless it’s clearly indicated for an inflammatory condition.

DEE: Point taken. I do caution people about using aspirin, but if you say it’s not even helpful then I definitely will remove that the next time I revise my e-book. Well, I think we can wrap up and I won’t take up any more of your time, unless there’s something you’d like to add.

JOHN: I think that’s about it. Except that I would just really like people to know that it’s possible to pass urine test if they dilute properly, and that they shouldn’t necessarily see a drug test as a death sentence to their career. You’re providing a great service to people, Dee. Good luck with getting your message out.

DEE: Thanks for the encouragement and pat on the back – it means a lot to me coming from you. And good luck to you too in your new job! Thank you VERY much for taking the time to do this interview with me, John.

JOHN: It’s been a pleasure.