Last Updated on July 31, 2019

If you are either a professional athlete, your career demands unheralded doping tests or cannabis consumption can cause a revocation of your driving licence, you might wonder how long THC stays in your system. In fact, THC goes through your blood, your liver and consequently, your urine where it is often detected via a urine test. Interestingly enough, THC is also found in your fat storage and in the molecules that ooze out of your skin.



However, there is a lot of confusion around the actual time span during which THC can be found in your system. There are even some methods claiming to prevent THC from being detected by drug tests. So without further ado, and in order to get the misconceptions out of the way, let’s take a look at scientific studies and documents to shed light on the subject.



THC metabolism is individual

How fast THC leaves your system depends on many different variables. Due to this, you can’t give a concrete number that is true for everyone. In fact, your weight, body fat percentage, metabolism speed, hydration level and physical activity all play a big role in it. According to scientific research, THC enters your bloodstream minutes after you have inhaled the marijuana smoke into your lungs. In the case of oral consumption, it can take up to three hours. What’s more, the research goes on to state that once THC has entered your bloodstream, THC is tied to blood proteins and carried throughout the body, where it is either absorbed into body tissue (including the brain, heart and fat cells) or transformed into water-soluble metabolites by the liver. These metabolites then get readily excreted into the urine.

Furthermore, THC is said to leave your body within seven days after a single occasion of marijuana consumption. One point which is often overlooked is that chronic cannabis consumption quickly leads to an accumulation of THC because it tends to be stored in fat tissue. As a consequence, activities that burn a lot of fat can lead to higher THC levels in your urine, even long after you stopped consuming marijuana. This is due to the fact that THC is quickly absorbed into the body tissue and then slowly released back into the bloodstream where it is carried to the liver and metabolised.

Why are common drug tests inefficient?

Urine tests are very inefficient because they do not detect the psychoactive component in marijuana, THC, and, therefore, in no way measure impairment; rather, they detect the non-psychoactive marijuana metabolite THC-COOH, which can linger in the body for days or weeks with no impairing effects. While this is only subject to some countries within Europe, according to Sensiseeds, most countries within the EU have extremely low THC limits, meaning that you could even lose your driving licence for consuming hemp seeds, hemp protein or other hemp products on a daily basis.

Although hemp products sometimes contain small quantities of THC, there is no way to experience the effects of THC without consuming large amounts of such products. In fact, a dose of 5-10mg of THC has no psychoactive effects on most people and hemp food contains significantly less. A study from a German institute concludes that ‘the experimental findings summarized above, suggest a safe maximum THC single dose of 5 mg for a healthy person of 70 kg, corresponding to 70 micrograms per kg body weight (BW). The safe maximum THC daily dose is 10 mg, or 140 micrograms per kg BW. These doses do not result in any acute perceptible psychotropic or physical effects nor in any chronic adverse effects’.



Another study by the AAA Foundation for traffic safety analysed the driving ability of people with THC blood levels above and under the THC limits which are commonly used for tests. What they found was that ‘all of the candidate THC concentration thresholds examined would have misclassified a substantial number of driver as impaired who did not demonstrate impairment on the Standardized Field Sobriety Test (SFST), and would have misclassified a substantial number of drivers as unimpaired who did demonstrate impairment on the SFST’.

The study goes on to state that ‘based on this analysis, a quantitative threshold for per se laws for THC following cannabis use cannot be scientifically supported’.



Yet, most countries still have absurdly small THC limits. Germany, for example, withdraws your driving license if their test finds more than one nanogram in your blood serum. Other nations such as Belgium or Luxembourg have determined the same limit, but in these countries, the result is determined relative to the blood as a whole. In Germany, the THC volume is calculated based solely on the blood serum, which consequently leads to a reading that is more than twice as high.

To make matters worse, THC blood levels and THC urine levels do not adequately correlate with the psychoactive effects of THC. In fact, studies have shown that ‘[…] the blood level of THC can be dropping at the same time that the feeling of being high is increasing’, according to the non-profit corporation wesavelives.

THC test manipulation

Ironically, a driving licence is urgently needed for many people and can lead to severe consequences, career and social wise, especially if your job depends on your driving licence. That’s why it is preposterous to revoke people’s driving licences so frivolously. In the hopes of bringing a suitable solution to this problem, some engineers have come up with some ideas to manipulate the THC tests. To pass a urine test, for example, one could decide to go for a Screeny Weeny, a fake penis with fake urine. For most people, this is certainly not worth it, for others, it might be. However, when it comes to cheating the blood test, there is very little you can do. If you are subject to a blood test, bite the bullet and read carefully. This way, you might avoid a perfect storm.

How do I pass a blood test?

The first thing you have to do is to stop consuming cannabis products at all costs. If you have CBD cremes, hemp balsam or hemp food, get rid for it for a while.

The second thing you want to do is to speed up your metabolism. To put it into concrete terms, you must ensure the proper hydration of your body.

Drink a quarter litre of water each half hour. Do this until you have reached a water consumption of four to six litres, depending on your weight. Then, do a lot of physical and sweaty activities such as sports of any kind, HIT, sauna or swimming. You want to burn fat and sweat out the THC!



After that, make sure that your calorie consumption is higher than your calorie intake. A powerful method to increase fat burn while increasing HGH release is intermittent fasting. Intermittent fasting is a diet method which describes the act of fasting for 16 hours within 24 hours while eating during the remaining eight hours.



What’s the best preparation for a urine THC test?

Using a calculator can be very helpful to estimate your current THC levels. Besides the activities mentioned above, you should cautiously stop doing sports for 1-2 weeks before the urine test, to make sure your body doesn’t excrete THC into your urine for the timespan of the urine test. To check your current THC levels, you could consider buying THC urine tests on Amazon.

What about CBD?

CBD is not typically tested in any police or traffic test. However, while most CBD products contain less than one per cent of THC, this can already be enough to make you fail a THC test, especially if you are smoking CBD flowers several times a week.

Conclusion

If you are dependent on your driving licence, you might consider quitting cannabis consumption altogether. Given the fact that most states have grotesquely low permitted limits, you might need to move to a state where the legal situation of cannabis is in your favour.