“Can only drinking water help to pass a drug test?” is one of the most asked questions among marijuana users. Those who have to take a drug test with only a few hours advance notice may not have a detox drink handy.
That’s why many of our readers ask about the possibility of only using water to pass their urine drug test. After all, almost all detox drinks require the user to consume large amounts of water with their product.
Health Benefits and Uses
It goes without saying that water is essential to life. Water is important to all living things including animals, plants, birds, and insects. In fact water accounts for 60% of the human body.
Why is water so important?
- Water is the major component of our cells. It makes up 90% of plasma, which carries blood elements like red blood cells, white blood cells, platelets and clotting factors. Many of our bodies’ secretions rely on water.
Saliva, gastric juice, tears and mucus are just a few of the bodily fluids that contain water. Water is also very important for the formation of stool in our large intestines. Without water in our stool, we would suffer from extreme constipation.
- Water is excreted from our bodies in the forms of stool, urine, sweat, and from the lungs as vapor. Urine is important for the excretion of toxins and metabolites from our bodies. If dehydrated, our kidneys can suffer from what is known as acute kidney injury, which can have severe consequences to our health.
- Sweat is important too. Without it, our bodies would overheat. Our bodies need to be at the right temperature in order for our organs to function properly. This is why we worry when someone gets a fever or hypothermia. On hot days, or with extensive activity, sweat keeps our bodies cool.
- Finally, water is important for our brain, which contain water and circulate in CSF (cerebrospinal fluid). CSF acts as a source of nutrients for the brain and helps it eliminate toxins. CFS is also very effective as a cushion for the brain, as it keeps it from coming in direct contact with the skull.
Life revolves around water! Not just for us, but for almost all living things.
Does Water Have Cleansing Properties?
Water has cleansing properties through its presence in urine and sweat. Both of these allow for the elimination of toxins and metabolites. If you don’t drink enough water, and aren’t producing urine, toxins will accumulate in your blood as they have no means of elimination.
Patients who suffer from renal failure need to be put on a dialysis machine to extract the toxins that are normally extracted by healthy kidneys.
It’s not just toxins. Electrolytes like potassium and calcium are also affected by urine. These electrolytes are particularly important because if they’re too high or too low they can lead to serious cardiac arrhythmias.
To answer the question, yes – water is one of the primary participants in the bodies cleansing process.
How Can Water Help You Detox?
Water plays a very important role in our bodies’ detoxification process. As stated above, water helps to cleanse our body from toxins through urination and cleansing our bowels.
However, it takes times to detox our body naturally by drinking only water, exercising and following a healthy diet.
For a light marijuana user it may take up to 5 days to detox the body naturally. For a moderate user, it may take up to 10 days detox the body naturally. And for a heavy user it may take from 35 to 90 days from the time of last of use of the drug to detox naturally.
Can Only Drinking Water Help to Pass Drug Test? Is it Reality or Myth?
The concept that drinking only water alone can quickly help you pass a drug test is a myth.
You must abstain from use of drugs for the above mentioned periods of time to detox naturally with the use of water. If it were that easy to quickly detox by drinking only water, people would do so all the time and there would be no market or need for detox drinks and/or whole body detox programs.
If you are caught by a surprise and not prepared for a urine test, trying to dilute your urine quickly by drinking lots water rarely works. The fact that you are trying to dilute your urine by only drinking lots of water can easy be detected through lab tests as described below.
Labs have multiple ways of testing urine.
1.The first is to look at your urine. It is easy to detect diluted urine because it’s almost transparent instead of yellow.
2. If you manage to take vitamins B12 to add a yellowish color to your diluted urine, labs will check other chemical levels in your urine such as creatine and can easily detect if the urine has been diluted or not.
3.If your test results comes back showing the urine has been diluted, your potential employer will probably think that you did it on purpose and not hire you.
Alternatively, they might give you the benefit of doubt and ask you to either retake your urine test or undergo a hair follicle drug test which is much more challenging to pass if you have recently used drugs.
Moreover, the amount of water you need to dilute your urine can have serious consequences on your body. Those who have heart, kidney, or liver problems should never attempt this approach as it can end up in the organs being fluid overloaded.
Pregnant women also shouldn’t drink excessive amounts of water without medical advice.
Pros/Cons
Pros
- Very low cost.
- Available everywhere.
- Safer than detox drinks.
Cons
- Is not effective enough – even for light users.
- If it does dilute your urine, the lab will detect the dilution resulting in failing your urine test.
- Drinking large amounts of water is bad for your health and won’t provide any added benefit.
- Patients with heart, kidney, and/or liver disease can develop very serious side effects from drinking too much water in a short period of time.
Summary
Drinking only water to pass a urine drug test isn’t the smartest thing to do. If it worked, everyone would be doing it. Labs have methods of detecting diluted urine and will send that report back to the institution asking for the test. Drinking too much water will just be putting you at risk of health complications with no real gain.
There are two more effective approaches of how to increase the odds of passing your urine drug test, which are described below.
- If you are a light or moderate user and don’t have enough time to detox naturally or complete a whole body detox program, on your drug test day you might consider using a detox drink.
There are a few popular detox drinks that can be effective enough to drop your THC levels below cutoff levels. Even though such drinks cannot guarantee 100%, passing your test they can at least help to increase your chances of passing the test.
and
- So far I have seen that if you a heavy user of marijuana, the best outcome in passing your urine drug test come from (a) either abstaining from using the drug from 45 to 90 days before your test (depending on your THC exposure) or (b) completing a 5 to 10 day whole body detox program – combined with light aerobic exercise, visiting a sauna, eating healthy foods and drinking plenty of water.
Thank you for reading our “Can Only Drinking Water Help to Pass a Drug Test?” posting.
We would love to hear about your experience in using only water in order to pass your urine drug test. Please leave your comments below. I am sure others in the same situation as you will appreciate and benefit from them.
Helpful links:
“How Long Does Weed (THC) Stay in Your Urine? – Important Data You Need to Know!!!”
“Fact or Fiction – You Can Beat a Drug Test with Home Remedies?”
Learn more here:
https://www.webmd.com/men/creatine#1
https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/vitamin-b12-benefits
https://www.healthline.com/health/food-nutrition/why-is-water-important#circulation
