Hair follicle drug tests paint an accurate picture of your drug use over the last three months.
Hair follicle drug tests are some of the most accurate ways of detecting if someone habitually consumes marijuana. These tests are so sensitive that they might even be triggered just by surrounding yourself with people who smoke it. They’re very hard to cheat, so if you regular consume marijuana and have a job that practices random drug testing, you’re in for some bad news. Here is why hair follicle drug tests are hard to pass.
Hair follicle drug tests can paint a pretty accurate picture of your drug use over the previous 90 days. If you’ve smoked weed in the past three months with some sort of regularity, you’ll most likely fail the test. If you smoked weed yesterday and took the test today, you might paradoxically be in the clear since it takes about 10 days for the THC in your body to bind itself to the hair that grows out of your scalp.
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How does weed end up in your hair out of all places? Crazily enough, the THC travels all the way there from your bloodstream. When you consume marijuana, the compound only stays in your blood for a short period of time — only while high — but it binds itself to other parts of your body.
As you’re consuming marijuana, your body breaks down the elements in cannabis and stores some of its compounds on the tissue and fat throughout your body, including your hair follicles. These cannabinoids will stay there until your hair falls off or until it’s cut.
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So, your one option of passing a hair follicle drug test might just be to shave all of your head and body hair and come up with a reasonable excuse as to why you would do something like this. Sudden alopecia or joining a weird looking cult isn’t likely to fly with your boss.
In short: passing one of these tests as a habitual marijuana consumer is practically impossible. But, if you only consumed cannabis recently or have only occasionally smoked marijuana over the past three months, you’re most likely in the clear.
