Passing a drug test when you don’t have a lot of notice beforehand can be tough, but it’s definitely not impossible. If you’re a daily smoker then it’s a sure bet you won’t have time to get clean just by abstaining for a while, but what if you don’t smoke all that often? Just how long does marijuana stay in your system, and do you even need to worry? Here are some basic facts, along with some solutions, about passing a drug test.

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.

But since it’s a pretty good bet that you’re asking because you’re a pot smoker who’s got a test coming up, maybe what you should really be asking is: “Do I need to be worried about whether or not I can pass a drug test?” Because the thing is, if you can HIDE the fact that you smoke pot, then you don’t even need to worry about how long does marijuana stay in your system.

Here’s an example:

Smoker #1 gets high several times a day – every day – and he has for years. But he knows exactly what he needs to do to get a false negative on a drug test, whether it’s a urine test or a saliva test. So, not only is he able to pass any drug test that gets thrown his way, he also never loses any sleep worrying about how long marijuana stays in your system. To him, it just doesn’t matter.

Smoker #2 just shares a bowl with one of his buddies once or twice a month. But he has NO clue how to pass a drug test, and he wouldn’t know how to get on the Internet if it sneaked up and nipped him on the butt. Since pot can show up in a test for a month or two AFTER you stop smoking, there’s a real good chance that this poor guy will fail – even though he hardly ever gets high.

So the real key to this issue isn’t knowing how long marijuana stays in your system – it’s knowing how to make it LOOK like it isn’t in your system. Once you know how to do that, then you can stop being paranoid about whether or not you can pass a drug test. I remember that feeling, and it totally sucks.

The plain fact is that you aren’t going to find any information on the Internet that will give you definite peace of mind about whether or not pot will still be in your system when you show up for your test. But hey, wouldn’t it be GREAT if there was somebody who could tell you, “okay, according to our calculations you won’t have any THC in your system after next Tuesday at 4 o’clock”? But down here on Earth, that just ain’t gonna happen.

Fortunately, how to pass a drug test isn’t that hard. At least, not once you wade through all the sales hype out there written by companies who want you to buy their expensive detox products. People DO successfully pass drug tests, every day, and they never lose any sleep worrying about how long does marijuana stay in your system.

Click here to find out how to REALLY pass a drug test, so you can stop worrying.

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