Alternative Drug Testing Methods
Whenever drug testing is mentioned, many people think about pee in a cup. While many institutions still use urine for drug tests, this is just one of many solutions that are available. Therefore, if you are not comfortable with urine tests, you can choose another way to test for drugs when that is required of you.
Here are alternative testing methods that could be suitable replacements for urine samples:
Oral fluid
Also known as saliva, oral fluid has become a common sample in drug testing. This method is suitable to detect the drug in a short while after it has been ingested, and it could be effective up to three days. No other method is able to detect drugs this faster, but the downside is that for someone who consumed the drug about a week earlier, the results may not reveal any traces. It is applied during post-accident and suspicion drug testing.
Benefits of oral fluid specimens
- Easy to administer because pre-collection procedure is much simpler
- Collection process is simple and fast; typically takes about 5 – 8 minutes
- Drug usage can be detected after minutes of ingestion
- It’s not easy to adulterate or substitute the oral fluid
- Can be used for testing illicit drugs and alcohol
- This is the least invasive method of drug testing
photo/ Welshsk via wikimeida
Hair follicles
Hair follicles could be used to dig into your past to reveal things like bold experiments with dye and drug abuse. This method of drug testing will show your history of drug use. It is not used to reveal a single occurrence as some methods do. When it comes to revealing the truth about a person’s history with drugs, this is the most trusted methods.
However, you can still beat a hair drug test with some tricks that many experts offer you before you go for testing. The window of detection in this test method is longer and adulteration is quite challenging if you are not an expert. There are downsides though; because this is an invasive process and may be uncomfortable for many people. You may be required to cut a patch at the back of the head to give out the sample.
Blood and sweat
Other institutions will recommend blood and sweat tests instead of solutions like urine and saliva. Sweat reveals a record of drug usage prior to the tests, but in this case only low concentrations can be detected, which results in a variety of results. Additionally, there are not many collection devices available and this process could cost more because it is less established. As an alternative, you could opt for blood, which is quite invasive and also costly. The advantage with blood testing is that it will detect the parent drug. This is also uncommon because of the cost and invasiveness.
Testing for drugs is a process that demands that you share samples that will be used for the investigation. There are several methodologies that you can opt for including blood tests, testing of the urine, and hair follicles. Although these tests could reveal the drugs you have been taking, there are few ways to beat the system if you don’t want to be caught especially at school or at work.
Author: Colin Steinway
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