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Adding Water to Your Urine Does Not Help Pass a Drug Test

Among all the methods of passing a drug test, the most popular now is dilution, which can be internal or pre-collection dilution and external or post-collection dilution. Unlike internal, which implies drinking a lot of water, external dilution means adding water directly to a urine sample to dilute it to such an extent that even traces of drugs become undetectable. This simple and obvious idea seems very attractive. But does it work?

Table of Contents

adding water to urine sample

How Are Urine Samples Collected?

Since you are not the first person who came up with this idea, drug testing labs are ready for attempts at dilution and have done everything to complicate the task for you, namely:

  • You cannot collect your sample at home or anywhere else except at a designated collection point.
  • At the sample collection point, you are not allowed to take anything with you when you go to the toilet, so you will have to leave all your belongings in a separate room.
  • A lab technician will inspect you to ensure you’re not concealing anything. He or she may even ask you to raise your clothing and pull down underwear.
  • A supervisor may listen, and in case a direct observation test is appointed, even watch how the sample is collected to ensure that you are not trying to alter it in any way.

How Can You Add Water?

Even if you are not under direct observation and have some privacy, finding a water source is another challenge. As mentioned earlier, you can't bring water with you, but you can get it right on the spot. A bathroom usually has two sources of water:

  1. Sink
  2. Toilet bowl

Unfortunately, screening companies are ready for that too: they turn off faucets and add dye to the toilet water making it impossible to add it to a urine sample.

The Most Common Tricks

Still, some people find ways to twist the lab, for example:

  • If the dye is added to the water inside the toilet bowl and not in the tank, you can take water from the tank; otherwise, you can try to take it directly from the pipe using the feeder tube. In both cases, this will not be easy because you will have to remove the top of the tank, which will make some noise. If your sample collector hears you, it will be considered a refusal to test. At best, you will be required to take another test, and at worst, you will fail.
  • Another option is to bring a small bag of water in your underwear or even inside your body, for example, in your vagina, if you are a woman.

Does This Help Pass a Drug Test?

Adding water to a urine sample can only help for passing a home test but not for the test conducted by a certified lab because lab staff verify each sample in three steps:

  1. Visual evaluation. Normal urine color ranges from light yellow to amber, but when you dilute it, it becomes pale and clear. Although an abnormal urine color may have natural causes and cannot itself be a reason to accuse you of tampering, it will be used as evidence if your sample does not pass further checks.
  2. Temperature check. According to guidelines, sample collectors are required to check the temperature of a specimen within four minutes of obtaining it. It should be between 90 °F and 100 °F (32 °C and 38 °C), and it’s not easy to keep it within the required range after adding water to your sample.
  3. Adulteration test. Urine has other important characteristics, such as specific gravity, pH, and creatinine levels, and the lab will check them all. When you dilute your sample, you decrease the concentration of all the components, not just drug metabolites. If the laboratory detects that they are outside their normal levels, it will report your specimen as diluted.

Having a diluted sample is worse than getting a positive result because this is considered cheating. In case of probation, it is considered a violation of probation, and you may go back to prison. If this was a preemployment test, you will be blacklisted and never get a job in that company.

Does Spitting in a Urine Test Work?

No, it won’t help. Saliva’s only advantage over water is that it has body temperature and therefore will not change the temperature of your urine sample, leaving it within normal range. But there are also disadvantages, such as:

  1. Your saliva may not be enough to bring the concentration of drug metabolites below the cutoff level.
  2. Even if there is enough saliva, just like water it will still alter other characteristics of the urine, such as pH and creatinine, which will show up in an adulteration test.

What Can Help?

Detox from drugs by using internal dilution is the best way to pass a drug test. Drinking from 0.5 to 1 liter (15-30 ounces) of water will clean out your system. Although excessive drinking also changes the composition of urine and makes it look pale, in this case, you can use some means, such as B vitamins and creatine supplements, which restore the normal appearance and chemical properties of your sample, allowing it to pass an adulteration check.

Or you can use some pre-mixed detox drinks, which include all the required components to get drug metabolites out of your system and help you pass a drug test for sure.