Drug Testing Timelines: How Long Does Each Drug Type Stay in Your Blood, Urine, and Saliva

Drug testing timelines help you to understand just how long drugs will stay in your system. This can include your blood, urine, saliva, and hair. Drug detection times are a point in time where drug testing will prove positive for drug traces in your hair, urine, or saliva.

Some of the drug testing isn’t testing the drugs in your system but the presence of one or more metabolites. The body chemically alters the drug by metabolizing it and this can be detected through urine tests. This range is from the time you took the drug to the point you will test clean. Most drugs will appear in your blood, saliva or urine for up to 8 hours. A hair test can detect drugs for up to one week after you used.
How long each drug stays in your blood, urine, and breath can vary. The methods of drug testing also has variable windows of detection. Drug testing timelines will have a lot to do with many factors. Your physiological makeup, height, weight, how much body fat you have, your age, your state of health presently, your exercise patterns and your state of mind. When you take drugs, how you’re feeling at that moment can play a part in how long drugs stay in your system. How often you use drugs and for how long will also be a contributing factor. Addiction plays a role in how quickly your body will get rid of the drugs also.

How Drug Testing for Blood, Urine, and Saliva Works

When you’re given a drug test, they are not just looking for the drug in your blood, urine, or saliva. They are looking for a metabolite which can be found through a urine test. This is the indication that drugs have been in your body. When you take a drug, your body turns it into one or many metabolites. The urine tests determine if you’ve been using drugs by identifying the metabolites.
When your body doesn’t use metabolites, they become stored in fast growing cells. This includes your hair, fatty cells, and nails. The greater fat content you have, the longer the drug can be detected in you. Blood and saliva work differently because the parent compounds of the drug can be found in blood. This makes it more accurate and determines how much of the drug is in your system.  The saliva test, is measured by the drug you’ve taken. When drugs are detected in saliva, this indicates the drug has entered the blood stream.

The Varying Detection of Drug Testing Timelines

The following is a list of drug testing timelines and what the variables are. It’s likely that if you’re addicted and use a drug chronically, it will have a longer duration window where you will test positive. Although you’ve built up a tolerance, you are likely not healthy and have a slow metabolic rate.

• Single or small doses of any given drug won’t last as long in your system and are not as easily detected.
• If you have a fast-metabolic rate, you will have a shorter detection of the drug in your body.
• Your body mass will determine how fast or slow your body metabolises. Those with more fat content will have the drug remain in the body for longer.
• If you’re physically active, the drug won’t be detectable for as long as someone who is overweight and out of shape. This is due to less body fat which means a reduced number of metabolites that can store themselves in your fat cells.
• Your age may define the speed of drugs leaving your system. As we age, our metabolism tends to slow down.
• If you have a tolerance to any given drug, this can lead to a shorter time of detection.
• The pH of your urine can have something to do with drug detection. Having more acid in your urine will create a shorter detection timeline.

Why is there Drug Testing?

Even prescription drugs can fall under scrutiny in a job setting. As drug abuse among prescription drugs have become such a problem, this is one of the drug tests in pre-employment screening. Especially when it comes to positions where safety is paramount, drug testing is administered. There were over 9 million urine drug tests done within the U.S. workforce in 2015.
Pre-employment drug testing is primarily a urine sample but they may ask for blood, saliva, sweat, or hair also. For jobs that require a high level of safety, there may also be random drug testing.

Drug Testing Options

• Urine drug testing

• Saliva drug testing

• Blood drug testing

• Hair drug testing

Many people will opt for a urine sample to determine if someone has been using drugs. It may be used during detox.  The urine drug test screening is quick, convenient, and quite accurate. Even after the effects of the drug has worn off, urine is still capable of detecting its presence. Drug testing timelines do vary depending on what type of drug it is. Urine drug tests in a job setting will usually be screening for amphetamines, cocaine, marijuana, opiates, nicotine, and alcohol. Urine tests target metabolites within the body and not the psychoactive element of the drug. The number of metabolites in your urine may increase and decrease which can lead to different results within the drug testing detection window.

Drug Testing Timelines

Drug Testing Timelines for Cocaine

If you’re a casual user of cocaine, it is detectable for a short time generally. It usually remains in your system for no more than four days. If you are addicted to cocaine, taking it chronically, your detection window will increase. You will only experience a high for about an hour, which means that half the cocaine you took will have left the body. For someone who has been using cocaine for a long time and often, it will accumulate in body tissues.
If you had a heavy binging episode with cocaine, a urine test can detect it for 12-21 days. Urine tests and their effectiveness will depend on the purity and dose of cocaine taken. Blood tests will detect cocaine from 12-48 hours since you last used it. Cocaine also remains in your sweat for up to several weeks. It can be found in a hair test for years once you’ve stopped using cocaine.

Methamphetamine

LSD

Amphetamines

Opiates

Barbiturates

Benzodiazepines

Marijuana

Drug testing is necessary for protecting people in many areas of life. For those working on job sites that require you to be fully functional for safety reasons, drug testing may be necessary. Even legal drugs can become a problem when they alter your brain functions. Opioid prescription painkillers are being misused by many sadly. Marijuana is legal in many states now but that doesn’t make it safe when you need to operate equipment.

The three common tests are designed to cover all the bases of drugs in your body. While urine measures the by-product compounds metabolites, they don’t detect the drug itself. Blood and saliva measure the parent compound.

Blood, urine, and saliva drug tests may also help within a drug rehab setting in outpatient programs. Maintaining the truth about your recovery to parties that have invested in you is helpful. Even if you can convince yourself that you’re okay, these drug tests reveal that more recovery is needed.
The various kinds of drugs out there metabolize differently in the body. They also remain in the blood for varying times. If you’ve been taking drugs and you are tested outside of the detection window, it’s possible your test will come up negative. The detection windows above were created to offer the full range of possibility. That doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re going to come up negative if the detection window is outside of the parameters. Every body deals with drugs differently.

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