tricky military drug test question

[sibellius]

so this goes above and beyond the simple "will i be clean in time?" i'm in the military and had a piss test recently and a bit worried about results. i have adhd and take prescribed adderoll daily for it. my command is aware and i have a waiver so it won't cause problems with drug tests. now the issue is that i smoked a bowl a couple weeks ago. going by the DOD standard 50 ng/15 ng, i'm confident i'm well under the 50 ng screening level for thc, BUT it will still detect the adderoll. now correct me if i'm wrong, but this just shows up as a generic pop and they have to continue the process once this happens. at that point they do a 15 ng test and then the gas chromatography will isolate the drugs to find out what is what and would then see i'm clear for amphetamines. i'm concerned that i could still possibly be in the 15-50 ng range for thc and they could detect this the second time around b/c of the adderoll.

some specific facts to add
-19-20% BF
-exercised moderately first week and didn't do much second week
-drank decent amount of green tea
-made myself piss a few times before the actual test. gulped some water down first but the piss was still a solid yellow color.


do i have anything to worry about??

[demoreal]

when you only smoke once thc leaves your body in a few days. when i was younger i smoked once or twice a week and i once got drug tested a few times 2 days after i smoked nothing showed up. i weighed about 120 though. thc leaves your body fast. UNLESS you have a heavy habit smoking everyday, then it takes about a month or two. so i think you are fine. drink tea if you are worried,
ummm
and thanks for representin the US
peace

[demoreal]

i forgot i was on rittlen then too.
i hope this helps, cause i didn't really get all the tek stuff you said'

[sibellius]

thanks for the info.

does anyone know if i'm correct regarding the testing process? does the confirmation phase of testing at the lower cutoff levels test for everything again or just what drug class came up positive in the initial test? and would a negative in the initial test and positive in the confirmation phase result in an overall positive drug test?

[Burnt Toast]

Nope, thats incorrect. When a particular drug is negative on the initial screen, it does not go thru confirmation. It would be a huge waste of money for both the client and the lab to do so.
Therefore, the confirmation GC/MS is only used on the drugs that tested positive on the initial screen.

[sibellius]

Ohhhh i see....never been so happy to be wrong! Thanks for the clarification!

[smokez4u2]

Nope, thats incorrect. When a particular drug is negative on the initial screen, it does not go thru confirmation. It would be a huge waste of money for both the client and the lab to do so.
Therefore, the confirmation GC/MS is only used on the drugs that tested positive on the initial screen.

I asked this a few weeks ago and did not get any replies...

I am not doubting you but do you know this for fact? I run urine samples/drug tests but I do run GC/MS samples all the time (surface waters). When you do a GC/MS run the resulting chromatogram will show everything that is in the sample at its cooresponding weight.... Its not more expensive and the machine will quantitate the peak areas automatically. For example, lets say the targeted THC metabolite peak is at 300 m/z and adderall metabolite peak is at 180 m/z....there are going to be peaks.

However, I would imagine a few scenarios where it could be possible 1) depending on what you fail for, there may be certain calibration ranges. For example if you only fail for THC then maybe a more narrow calibration range around the weight of those peaks is run? On the other hand, from a financial perspective I would think they would have one calibration to just scan for everything....it would be faster and more "streamlined" which is what these labs like quest diagnostics and Labcorp are all about....streamlined laboratory processes to turn a profit and run as many samples as possible.

2) Immunoassays are super specific, GC/MS is not. There may be a bunch of metabolites in in the GC/MS sample but only one specific peak is being quantitated and the quantitation limit is 15 ng/mg which may be about the same as 50 ng/mg.

The reason they use GC/MS is because it is a quantitative measurment and colorimetric assays are not quantitative (i.e., the concentration from a faint line does NOT mean there is more THC than a darker line). It may but its bad science to assume so.

Anyways...id like to pick somone's brain that has run GC/MS samples in a drug lab...

[Burnt Toast]

I am not doubting you but do you know this for fact?

I run urine samples/drug tests but I do run GC/MS samples all the time (surface waters). Were not talking about surface waters, we are talking about the process of drug testing. As a matter of process, the lab will not run the GC/MS on every drug on a given panel, especially after the drugs being tested have been negative on the initial assay screen. Youve said in your other thread that youve spent $80-$120 dollars just testing your surface waters. Thats considerably higher than what it costs to test for all the drugs on a multipanel assay, and no client would be willing to pay that kind of money, particularly when the client has a good number of employees, recruits, or probationeers to test. For the sake of S&G's, if the lab were to GC/MS all of the drugs on a given panel, why bother with the initial assay?

There is such a thing as a medical panel (several, actually) that can test for as many as 50 - 75 different specific drugs and derivitives of drug bases. To be able to test for all, they still need to do assay on all of them, because it would run in the hundreds, if not thousands of dollars to do a GC/MS on all of them.

Drug tests just arent conducted in that manner. Youre speaking apples, Im speaking oranges. Drug testing is not CSI, despite what youre led to believe.

[RooRip]

I am new to this forum and have actually never posted anything on any forum EVER. I have an inquiry that is extremely important to me however, and that is why I came here. Any knowledgable help would be GREATLY appreciated.
I am in the Air Force and had to take a piss test last Wednesday. I smoked a bit on Monday. I had about 2 hours to "study" for my test. I drank 16.9 onces of water, took a detox called Formula 3 (phylion rm) and drank to more 16.9 oz water bottles. At the testing facility I delayed citing I did not have to go. I drank to more bottle there and then went and peed. I gave a midstream. Summary, I drank about 80 onces of water.
First question- what are my chances?
Second-how long does it take the AF to get back to you if it comes up positive?
Again, thank you for any proper answer.
Also, I'm sorry to the original poster that I had to post this on your thread. I hope you don't mind.:)

[Satisfied]

I think your AF test would be fine, unless it's too diluted.
I have no idea about the scientific data for testing...but do have a question.

How do synthetic urines play into this picture? Are they easily detected?

[Satisfied]

Thank you both for your service to our country!