After taking prescription medication, such as opioids or stimulants, it’s common to wonder how long it might take for the substance to leave your system. This is especially true if you’re worried about passing a drug test, had a bad reaction to it, or are struggling through withdrawal symptoms after extended use.
Whatever your circumstances, we’ll provide a full overview in this article covering different types of medications, factors that extend the time in your system, and potential side effects you may experience. Let’s get started with a quick overview of drug elimination and your body’s natural process of removing substances from its system.
Understanding Drug Elimination
When you take a prescription medication, it’ll go through four distinct stages as it’s processed and eventually eliminated from the body. Those stages are:
Absorption: Typically, when you swallow a prescription pill, such as an antibiotic or painkiller, it’ll get absorbed into the stomach and eventually enter the bloodstream.
Distribution: Once the medication enters the bloodstream, it’ll get distributed throughout the body. This is where you’ll feel the height of the medication’s intended effects.
Metabolism: The drug’s metabolites will eventually make their way to the liver, where they’re broken down to prepare for elimination from your system.
Excretion: Here, your body will finally remove the substance, typically through the urine.
The Half-Life Concept
When looking up drug elimination timelines, you’ll often see the term “half-life” come up. The half-life of a substance is the estimated time it takes for half of the drug to leave your system.
After the first half-life passes, someone might start to feel the effects of the drug leaving the system more prominently. This is particularly essential in addiction treatment when someone has misused or abused a prescription medication for an extended time since they might begin feeling withdrawal symptoms here.
Factors Influencing Drug Clearance
Ultimately, the half-life of a substance is just an estimate of the time it takes for a medication to leave your system. Biological factors, the type of drug, and medication use history can all affect drug detection windows. Let’s review the factors in a bit more detail.
Individual Differences that Impact Drug Clearance
Some of the key individual factors that can affect drug clearance are:
- Age: Research shows that our kidneys begin to decrease in size and function after the age of 50. Since the kidneys help manage blood flow and produce urine, this can cause drug clearance to take longer.
- Body mass: Certain medications like opioids and benzodiazepines will bind to fat cells in the body as they’re distributed. Therefore, heavier individuals who hold more fat may require more time for the body to remove the substance from their system.
- Organ function: How well your organs function, mainly the kidneys and liver, can greatly impact how long it takes the body to remove drugs from its system. Therefore, reduced function with age or diseases like cirrhosis in the liver or an infection in the kidneys could lead to drugs being in your system longer.
- Genetic factors: Certain genetic factors could also cause drugs to stay in your system longer. For instance, studies have found that variations of the gene cytochrome P450 can slow down the metabolism. Genes also affect the number and types of receptors in the brain, which could impact drug processing times.
How Dosage and Frequency Impact Drug Clearance
When you take high doses of a substance or use a drug consistently for a longer amount of time, it’ll typically stay in your system longer. Several studies have shown that certain medications, such as prescription opioids, can have an increasing amount of metabolites build up in your system over time.
Therefore, someone who uses a substance once or twice may have their body remove it from its system within a few days to a week. However, with long-term use, it may take a month or more before the drug is completely undetectable in the urine.
How Drug Properties Affect Metabolism
Certain drug properties can also impact elimination timelines, such as:
- Fat solubility: Certain medications, such as benzodiazepines, are highly fat-soluble, which typically slows their release from the body compared to water-soluble substances.
- Protein binding: Drugs that bind to proteins, like barbiturates, will typically stay in your system longer.
- Extended-release: Medications with an extended-release variation, like methadone, will usually stay in your system longer.
Typical Elimination Times for Common Drug Classes
Since the type of drug can affect how long it takes a medication to leave your system, here’s a quick overview of elimination times for common drug classes.
- Opioids: The average half-life of prescription opioids is 2-4 hours. They’ll typically remain detectable in your urine for 1-3 days, blood for up to 12 hours, and hair for up to 90 days.
- Benzodiazepines: In general, benzodiazepines have an average half-life of 1-12 hours. They’ll remain detectable in the urine for 1-3 days, blood for up to 48 hours, and hair for up to 90 days. That said, benzos can come in short and long-acting versions, so long-acting ones like Valium may take longer for the body to remove.
- Stimulants: The average half-life of prescription stimulants like Adderall and Ritalin is 2-12 hours. They’ll remain detectable in the urine for 1-3 days, blood for up to 12 hours, and hair for up to 90 days.
- Antibiotics: The average antibiotic half-life is 1-4 hours. They usually aren’t screened for in drug tests, so there isn’t any reliable data on how long they’re detectable.
Drug Testing and Detection Windows
The most common drug testing methods are urine, blood, hair, and saliva. Based on how the body holds metabolites from drugs, each one has a slightly different window where a substance could be detected in your system. Here’s a quick breakdown of each one:
- Saliva: While a saliva sample is very easy to collect and non-invasive, it has one of the smallest detection windows. It’s usually able to show that someone has used drugs within a few hours of use and sometimes up to a full 24 hours after.
- Blood: You’ll get a slightly longer detection window with a blood sample. For most drugs, it’ll be at least 12-24 hours and sometimes up to 48-72 hours. However, a blood draw is harder to coordinate and uncomfortable for many, so it’s usually not a go-to option.
- Urine: The best middle ground is a urine sample. Most drugs will be detectable in the urine within 1-4 days of the last use. Sometimes, they may even be detectable for up to 1-3 weeks.
- Hair: The hair holds drug metabolites the longest, so you’ll have by far the biggest detection window here. Many drugs are detectable in the hair within 90 days of the last use.
Implications for Recovery
In addiction treatment, it’s important to be aware of these testing windows to be able to tell if someone has used drugs recently, signifying relapse.
When testing for addiction relapse, it’s important to balance testing windows with individual needs. While an option like a hair sample has the longest detection window, it isn’t always the best option in recovery when someone recently entered rehab. Therefore, selecting an option like urine may be better suited to detect more recent drug use.
Health Implications of Drug Retention
Having drugs in your system for a long time, which is usually due to ongoing use, can have many health consequences. Those include:
- Damage to vital organs like the heart, liver, and kidneys.
- Potential for cardiovascular issues, developing arrhythmias, or having increased blood pressure.
- Changes in cognitive structure that lead to poor memory, trouble concentrating, and reduced motor abilities.
- Increased risk of mental health problems, such as anxiety or depression.
- Higher likelihood of experiencing withdrawal symptoms like shaking, nausea, or insomnia after stopping drug use.
Ongoing addiction or dependence on a substance is very serious. However, you don’t have to go through it alone. Seeking help at a drug treatment center or talking to your doctor can be a great first step to getting the right help and support to make a full recovery.
Conclusion
Wondering how long a medication will stay in your system can feel concerning. That’s especially true if you’re worried about the potential onset of withdrawal symptoms after stopping drug use.
If you or someone you care about is considering coming off drugs after long-term use, resources are available that can help manage withdrawal and get on the right track to maintain long-term sobriety.
We offer medical detox and residential treatment for drug and alcohol addiction at the United Recovery Project. All of our services can be tailored to your needs to ensure well-rounded support each step of the way.
Contact us today to learn more about how we can support you.
References
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