When scouring the internet in the final days before your corporate drug test, having finally put the bong in the closet until all is clear, you’ll come across thousands of articles on how to detox your body in time. If you’re searching for all natural solutions, green tea is likely to come up again and again, but does it work?
Green tea is a lot of things aside from a delicious, earthy tasting beverage. It’s primarily known as an antioxidant and it has about a third of the caffeine of a cup of coffee, which is really just right. But the amount of tea you’d have to drink in order to even get a one time joint out of your system would have you bouncing off the walls on a caffeine high and you’d still probably get flagged for dilution.
So the short answer is no, green tea is not the solution to your drug test. Unfortunately there are few on-the-fly options out there that actually work, and only one that works 100 percent of the time — urine substitution. It might sound tricky, but things have come a long way in the methods of delivery of clean synthetic urine. From discrete tubing to fake penises, look for these replacements at sex shops and online.
What about other types of drinks besides green tea? The masking method does work sometimes, but sometimes it doesn’t. There are a lot of factors that go into passing a drug test and one of the major players is your body mass index or BMI. Most people trying to pass a drug test are trying to get cannabis’ leading cannabinoid THC out of their systems and THC loves a comfy fat cell. It’ll stay lodged there for 30 days or more, depending on your BMI. The reason this matters with masking is that you can only mask so much. If your system is literally inundated with THC, you’re likely not going to pass using a head shop drink.
The best way to pass a drug test is to be lucky enough to know about it weeks in advance and to have the willpower to then stop cannabis (and other recreational drug use) and flush your body of the molecules over the course of time. Green tea does help in this scenario, as switching between tea and water will help you pee more and will speed up your metabolism with the touch of caffeine, which really gets things moving.
Abstinence for a good period or time and synthetic urine are your safest bets. Green tea is good for an afternoon treat and has health benefits beyond antioxidants even, but it’s not the ticket to passing a drug test.
A few months ago, director and comedian Kevin Smith was performing two shows that would be filmed for his upcoming stand-up special “Silent But Deadly”. Afterwards, when Smith was in his dressing room, he started feeling ill and an ambulance was eventually called. He was suffering a major heart attack.
Somehow Smith remained calm and under control throughout the process—an attribute that doctors say saved his life. You might ask how, considering the circumstances. Well, the noted cannabis enthusiast had lit up not two hours prior.
“Even though they tell me I had a heart attack, I didn’t feel like I was in pain, so I never panicked,” Smith told US Weekly. “I was super f—king calm. After I got out of the hospital, I said [to my doctor], ‘Hey man, I hate to admit this, but I was blazed as f—k the day I had the heart attack … Does smoking weed have something to do with a heart attack?’”
Much to Smith’s surprise, his doctor said quite the opposite. During an appearance on “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” he revealed what happened, saying, “I honestly thought I was too high.” But, to his surprise, his doctor said the weed saved his life by keeping him calm.
Following the incident, Smith took his health more seriously. He’s lost 85 pounds by cutting sugar from his diet and replacing it with weed.
“Weed kind of actually works, believe it or not, as an appetitive suppressant to some degree,” Smith told US Weekly. “I don’t get the munchies … It just didn’t have that effect on me. I would smoke instead of eating. That became gratifying. Same way that I need to feel good, I was like, ‘You know what? I feel good smoking. Skip the cake and just have yourself a smoke.’”
You can tell a lot about our culture by the way we talk about marriage. Take the upcoming exchange of vows between Meghan Markle and Prince Harry. Press coverage will focus on aspects like the cost of the festivities, the size of the crowds and the fashion choices of the wedding party.
But since marriage represents one of the most important factors in predicting a person’s happiness, this marriage – and all marriages – deserve deeper reflection than the press tends to give them.
Marriage is increasingly described as an economic transaction, with marriage rates dictated by the conditions of the “marriage market” – whether matrimony will improve or worsen one’s financial outlook. It increasingly serves as a “status symbol,” a means for couples to signal their rank by sharing photos of expensive engagement rings and extravagant honeymoons on social media. Scholars also suggest that marriage is becoming less of a lifelong commitment, with spouses entering and exiting more freely based on their individual level of satisfaction.
Beyond status, money and personal gratification, none of these trends delineate what a good marriage should actually look like, and what expectations each partner should have.
Fortunately, one of the greatest novels ever published – Tolstoy’s “Anna Karenina,” which I teach regularly to my ethics students at Indiana University – provides deep insights on why some marriages thrive and others don’t.
The Pitfalls Of Restless Desire
“Anna Karenina” may have been published 140 years ago, but the doubts and desires of the characters ring true today.
The novel tells the story of four couples.
Dolly is the devoted mother of many children, while her husband, Stiva, cannot believe that he can be expected to devote his life to his family. The novel opens with a marital crisis precipitated by his infidelity.
Anna is a popular and astute socialite married to an honorable yet rather dry senior statesman, Karenin, who is 20 years her senior. Anna discovers that she longs for more.
Anna falls in love with Vronsky, a dashing cavalry officer who grew up in a wealthy but failed family, with no meaningful family life. Anna eventually leaves her husband for Vronsky, which results in her fall from societal grace.
Kitty is a debutante and Dolly’s younger sister, and Levin is a landowner searching for the meaning of life. Though Kitty initially rejects Levin’s overtures, the two later marry and become parents.
The rich human panoply of the novel cannot be boiled down into a few simple rules for a happy marriage. Yet it brims with insights on the differences between happy and unhappy families.
Consider Anna and her brother Stiva. Both see marriage as a contract into which they can enter or leave at will. Stiva cannot understand how a young red-blooded, convivial man such as himself could possibly find contentment by completely devoting himself to his wife, “a worn-out woman no longer young or good-looking, and in no way remarkable or interesting, merely a good mother.”
Surely life owes him more than that, he thinks.
Anna also finds her highly regimented marriage to Karenin less than satisfying and seeks the adventure of romantic love with Vronksy, a man to whom genuine family life is unknown. But ultimately even the lover of her dreams cannot rescue her from her perpetual dissatisfaction.
Levin is one of the characters who most realizes the richness of marriage. In preparing for his wedding, he “had thought his engagement would have nothing about it like others, that the ordinary conditions of engaged couples would spoil his special happiness; but it ended in his doing exactly as other people did, and his happiness being only increased thereby and becoming more and more special, more and more unlike anything that had ever happened.”
Levin is continually surprised by what he discovers of his wife, of parenthood, and of himself as husband and father.
Family life turns out to be far more fulfilling than he ever imagined.
Disciplined Devotion Pays Off
One of the novel’s central insights is this: Marriage is far more than a relationship that merely fulfills the emotional, romantic and material needs of each partner.
In Tolstoy’s view, the best that partners can hope for from marriage is to be shaped by it in ways that make them better human beings. On the other hand, those who enter marriage thinking that it is all about their own satisfaction – supposing that their spouse and union both exist primarily to bring them pleasure – can expect to endure considerable unhappiness.
Anna, for example, thinks she has the right to be adored by all. When others, including her new life partner, Vronsky, seem to take interest in other matters in life, she is overcome by jealousy.
Another damning Tolstoyan criticism of Anna is her willingness to leave the care of her children to wet nurses and governesses. Though she indeed loves them in some sense, she is so preoccupied with her own needs that she has difficulty focusing on the role of a mother for any extended period of time.
While the novel doesn’t promote arranged marriage, it does suggest that a good union is less about picking your one true love from a crowded field of bad prospects than submitting to the requirements – the discipline, even – of loving your family.
A roving eye and a restless heart can always find something to long for elsewhere. But someone who operates from such a perspective will never grow fully into any relationship – precisely because they can always find others to long for. From Tolstoy’s point of view, such lack of dedication represents a form of immaturity.
The mission of being a spouse and parent, Tolstoy would say, is not to satisfy the longings people bring to marriage, but to allow marriage to develop and deepen our desires, enhancing our devotion to what is truly most worth caring about. To flourish in marriage and family life – no less than in life itself – is to learn to love the very things, such as family, to which good people dedicate their lives. In other words, a good marriage makes us better people.
A brief exchange between Stiva and Levin encapsulates this truth beautifully:
“Come, this is life!” said Stiva. “How splendid it is! This is how I should like to live!”
“Why, who prevents you?” said Levin, smiling.
“No, you’re a lucky man! You’ve got everything you like. You like horses – and you have them; dogs – you have them; shooting – you have it; farming – you have it.”
“Perhaps because I rejoice in what I have, and don’t fret for what I haven’t.”
It’s impossible to get inside of the heads of these couples, but I do wonder if they loved their own beautiful lives and their vision of love more than they loved their spouses and their children.
Like Stiva, Vronsky and Anna, did they give their hearts – above all – to what they saw in the mirror?
Ghosting is one of the more annoying phenomena of dating. If you’re not familiar (lucky you!), ghosting is when someone disappears on you, rather than having the uncomfortable conversation about why they don’t want to see you anymore. But a new study reveals that those who choose ghosting over other humane routes of actual communication aren’t necessarily cowards, they are true believers in soul mates.
Yup. As if finding “the one” is any more believable than actual ghosts.
Gili Freedman, a postdoc at Dartmouth college in New Hampshire, aimed to find out why people “ghosted” by giving questionnaires to more than 500 men and women that would reveal their beliefs about destiny and ghosting. According toPsychology Today, about a quarter of respondents reported having been ghosted in the past, with about one-fifth of respondents reporting that they had been the ones to ghost.
What’s more, volunteers with strong beliefs in destiny were more likely to think it was OK to end a relationship by ghosting, compared to those with weaker beliefs in destiny: 22% more likely in the case of a short-term relationship; 63% more likely in the case of a long-term relationship. Growth beliefs weren’t related to feelings about the acceptability of ghosting a short-term partner, but believers in growth were 38% more likely than non-believers to think it acceptable to ghost a long-term partner.
Freedman believes the results are “consistent with the possibility that destiny theorists [people who believe that the ideal relationship partner is our “soul mate”] are more likely to act decisively on their relationship once deciding it is not ‘meant to be.'”
https://giphy.com/gifs/aziz-ansari-cPQDzwSnQrWFy
Translation? Why give any attention to someone who serves no purpose in your romantic life. I mean, who needs friendship, right?
Between superhero inspired sex toys and sex dolls that can talk, the sex toy industry has been keeping itself busy by creating all sorts of items to please fans of all demographics. There truly is something for whatever it is that you’re into, be that boring traditional stuff or more exotic sex toy. AND Wow, a soccer ball sexy toy in now on the market.
Via http://joannecasey.blogspot.com/2010/02/perfect-woman.html
When one discovers a jarring image of a furry ball with eyes and a mouth, one begins to wonder if this is a “thing.” You know, people who are into sexy soccer balls. And while the fetish is not the most common, it does have precedent.
Inflatable sex doll balls can be purchased online. They’re probably comfortable and easy to use, because they’re small. They’re also inflatable and much less attention-grabbing than a blow-up doll, allowing you to stash them discreetly under your bed or someplace safe, which is also a plus.
Still, why a ball? It’s 2018 and you could literally own any sex toy in the world. Maybe because it’s cheaper? It certainly looks cheap. It also provides a service to its owners. According to sources, users with sex dolls can develop deep attachments to them. And people are really crazy about soccer. Anyway, please make sure this picture of a furry ball is seared into your brain.
Although cannabis has been known to alleviate bouts of situational depression in people since the dawn of time, there are those who need a little additional help combating this blue world. Some of the latest data shows that nearly 13 percent of the US population is on prescription antidepressants – long-term medications used to pull people out darker days. Yet, this doesn’t mean patients suffering from anxiety and depression are willing to give up medical marijuana in order to live a doped up existence on “crazy pills.” But is it safe to combine cannabis and antidepressants like Celexa and Lexapro?
There has not been a lot of research conducted on the subject of possible drug interactions involving cannabis and antidepressants. But the studies that have been done over the years have concluded that adverse reactions stemming from combining these medications are few and far between.
In fact, some researchers found that it is “rare” or next to impossible for someone to encounter a negative drug interaction by using cannabis on top of their antidepressant regimen. This could be because the prescription psychotropic’s on the market today come with minimal adverse effects. Older medications may be more apt to bring on shiftier outcomes.
But this is not to say that marijuana is optimal for the millions of people on these prescription drugs. It is important to have an open dialogue with the healthcare professional responsible treatment in order to avoid any possibility of an unsavory reaction.
“There’s no known effect or interaction with those medications,” Dr. Ian Mitchell with the Royal Inland Hospital in Kamloops, British Columbia told Vice News. “We know that THC itself can bring on anxiety and paranoia. Especially in higher amounts. The cannabidiols, which is another cannabinoid, can upset that and can actually be used as an anti-anxiety treatment on its own.”
This is why patients using antidepressants should be careful choosing marijuana strains. Those with a higher THC content are more likely to make anxiety worse, while high-CBD, such as Granddaddy Purple and Jack Herer, can vastly improve the situation.
However, doctors may advise patients experimenting with antidepressants to refrain from cannabis use while their bodies adjust to the drug. As with any condition requiring medication, the physician will probably want to gauge results without any other foreign substances in the mix.
Some of them might even be skeptical about a patient who admits to using cannabis. Although it is legal in a growing number of states, there is some research indicating that people who self-medicate with marijuana and other substances are less likely to follow treatment protocols.
You know you’re a big deal when Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg knows your name. It’s an even bigger deal when you don’t even have opposable thumbs to log into the social media platform he co-founded.
Earlier this week, Zuckerberg invited JiffPom, a ridiculously cute Pomeranian named Jiff, to help him announced Instagram’s new augmented reality filters at the annual F8 conference (where they also revealed a new FB dating platform).
JiffPom, who has nearly 9 million followers on Instagram, was basically just sitting at a laptop on stage, likely trying to figure out WTF he was supposed to be doing. But in classic JiffPom fashion, he just sat there and looked adorable, like a big furry prop.
So, who is this dude and how did he get so famous? Here are 5 facts about the pup that may help answer that question.
He was the real star of Katy Perry’s “Dark Horse” video
Jiff holds a Guinness world record for being the fastest dog on two paws. And in 2017, he won the Guinness for being the animal with the most followers on Instagram with 8.4 million.
He won Favorite Instagram Pet at Nickelodeon’s “Kids’ Choice Awards” this year
He was carried out on stage palanquin-style to accept the award.
Australian brewers are hard at work trying to revive a 220 year old beer that they found on a shipwreck at sea. The yeast of the beer managed to survive due to the fact that the bottles remained sealed, and that the water in which it was located was ice cold.
According to Mashable, these beer bottles were found in the shipwreck of a merchant ship called the Sydney Cove, which was discovered over two decades ago by the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery. The ship is thought to have been traveling from India to the colony of Port Jackson. It was transporting beer, tobacco, tea, and rice, and it became shipwrecked at Preservation Island in 1797.
Brewing company James Squire is in charge of producing the beer in partnership with the museum. It’ll be called The Wreck Preservation Ale and it’s also porter style. It’ll have a limited release on June of this year.
Museum conservator David Thurrowgood said that they were cultivating the yeast because they thought that they were capable of cultivating a beer that “hasn’t been on the planet for 220 years.” He also expressed that they had to work hard to bring the beer back in order to enhance its “unique characteristics.”
After several tests, brewers were able to create a beer that has hints of blackcurrant and spices and that’s also a little funky. It’s officially the oldest beer in the planet.
Tom Markle Jr., Meghan Markle’s half brother, announced yet again that he’s pissed over the fact that he wasn’t invited to the royal wedding. This time, however, he declared his disgust in a handwritten letter (because this royal wedding has been devoid of drama and he needs to provide that for us).
The letter, published in InTouch, is signed by Tom Markle and it addresses Prince Harry directly, stating that marrying Markle would be the biggest mistake made in “royal wedding history,” and that she’s also the wrong woman for him.
Tom describes Markle as a “jaded, shallow, and conceited woman” who’ll make “a joke out of you and the royal family heritage.” He also says that she must be crazy, because she “doesn’t invite her own family to her wedding and instead invites complete strangers.” He finishes his thoughts with a “Who does that?” Okay? Maybe Tom should marry Prince Harry since he’s so invested in the legacy and well-being of the royal family.
According to Tom’s letter, Meghan’s father wasn’t invited to the wedding. “Her own father didn’t get an invite, whom should be walking her down the aisle. She forgets if it wasn’t for my father, she’d be busing tables and baby sitting,” Tom says.
Bucking the hiring trend of the past 30 years, companies have stopped drug testing potential employees for marijuana. The reason? Finding quality employees has become more difficult and excluding candidates who smoke marijuana would eliminate too many quality hires.
But a thin labor pool isn’t the only reason, according to an Associated Press report. At a time when nine states have legal recreational marijuana (with Michigan potentially joining that field come November), attitudes are changing regarding cannabis usage. Companies have always had the favor of the courts, but medical marijuana users in Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts have claimed victory in lawsuits where job offers were revoked or employees fired following a positive marijuana drug test.
One employment lawyer believes this perception change will become the “new don’t ask, don’t tell.”
Excluding marijuana from testing marks the first major shift in workplace drug policies since employers began regularly screening applicants in the late 1980s. They did so after a federal law required that government contractors maintain drug-free workplaces. Many private businesses adopted their own mandatory drug testing of applicants.
Most businesses that have dropped marijuana tests continue to screen for cocaine, opiates, heroin and other drugs. But James Reidy, an employment lawyer in New Hampshire, says companies are thinking harder about the types of jobs that should realistically require marijuana tests. If a manufacturing worker, for instance, isn’t driving a forklift or operating industrial machinery, employers may deem a marijuana test unnecessary.
Of course, removing cannabis testing is more pronounced in states where cannabis is recreationally legal. But even in states where it is not, the historically low unemployment rate is causing companies to re-evaluate their position. Employers of labor-intensive jobs will most likely see the biggest drop in testing. Regulated industries might continue testing for fear of safety concerns, especially those involving heavy machinery.
Like Stiva, Vronsky and Anna, did they give their hearts – above all – to what they saw in the mirror?
