If you’re trying to get a new job, many places that do drug testing don’t always do urinalysis. Especially since there are many ways to fake urinalysis results these days. For example, some people may use synthetic urine products, which are designed to mimic the composition of real urine. Others may attempt to dilute their sample by adding water or other fluids. In some cases, people may even try to add chemicals or other substances to their samples in order to alter the results.
In fact, in recent years, it is becoming more the standard that big-name companies are using hair follicle drug tests. This can actually be quite unfair when you’ve changed things around or if you’ve actually only used once and never did again. You don’t want to risk losing a career opportunity because of one mistake or wild night.
In general, people think they just test for meth and marijuana, but the truth is they test for the following products:
Phencyclidine (PCP)
Amphetamines
Methamphetamine
Ecstasy (this can contain pseudoephedrine and many other chemicals)
Cocaine
Heroin, codeine, and morphine
With hair drugs, they can detect drug use in either the past 90 days, or even the past year (if you haven’t cut your hair). Don’t let them fool you and think that after 3 months you’re in the clear. Some jobs will actually decline your job if they detect that you used a drug 8 months ago. Also, some things such as vitamin B delivered by methylcobalamin in extremely high doses can cause false positives. If you are looking to beat a test, check out Pass Hair Follicle Drug Test.
Does Anything I Do Affect the Test?
The only thing you can do to affect the test is to cut your hair, but if you had long hair during an interview, then shave your head or cut it extremely short, this can raise certain questions when it comes to your employers wondering why you did such. If you think dying your hair, or wash it (unless you use a special type of shampoo directly used for stripping the chemicals from your hair frequently beforehand), then you won’t generally affect the test because the test can still extract this information out of your hair.
What if it’s Positive?
If you have a positive drug test, they can’t just say you’ve used drugs and leave it at that. They have to do extra testing to confirm this, and will try to ensure that your hair was in fact affected by drug use in the past 90 days. Otherwise, they’ll use more time lengthy processes in order to ensure that you weren’t actually using drugs.
Conclusion: How accurate is the Test?
Hair follicle tests are pretty much 100% accurate. However, there is a possibility for false positives. That’s why when they test your hair more than once. By doing so they can actually detect even MORE than just the drugs listed above to verify whether you were actively using a narcotic or not. Some products such as hemp seeds and poppy seeds can actually lead to false positives, as well as the vitamin B taken from certain energy supplements listed above. That’s why they have one test called ELISA, and a second confirmatory test called a GC/MS test. Hair tests also cost the companies more money because of the test types, and because of the accuracy of the result. A urinalysis test is usually cheaper, but businesses haven’t been using them so much because they’re not only easy to “fake”, but also because almost 85% of the time, a urine test only shows drug use in the past 3-5 days.
