This post was made in partnership with Green Gone. Read more about my sponsorship policy on my disclosure page.

When You Can’t Have THC in Your System

We’ve come a long way in recent years to legally grant adults the right to use cannabis medically and recreationally, but however far we’ve come, there are still many reasons one might need to detox all THC out of their system. Whether it’s employment, custody, court, or just to take a needed tolerance break, responsible adults need a guaranteed way to flush THC from their bodies so they can pass a drug test.

I, fortunately, have never had to do this, so I cannot speak from personal experience about detoxing other than brief tolerance breaks. But I do know a lot about being a responsible adult, and for a long time my husband and I decided that as the main breadwinner he should abstain from cannabis use so that he would always be employable. That’s a part of being a responsible cannabis user.

Things have changed since then, we’re both working in the cannabis industry and have plenty of freedom when it comes to smoking herb. But my point is, being a responsible cannabis user means using common sense and making sacrifices when necessary. Using cannabis shouldn’t have to come before being able to provide for oneself and family.

Why Detoxing from THC is so Difficult

Getting THC out of your system is notoriously difficult and confusing. This is because the half-life or time the drug stays in the body varies greatly from person to person. There is no one-size-fits-all solution for this, and so anecdotal methods of detoxing should always be taken with a grain of salt.

Age, gender, size, lifestyle, and use amount are all factors that come to play when it comes to detoxing. A one-time user can take 3-5 days of abstinence to achieve a negative urine test. An infrequent user may take a week or two. A daily user might take several weeks to well over a month of abstinence to test negative. There are also case reports linking longer required abstinence to both heavier people, and those with very frequent use (consuming cannabis several times a day).

THC is fat soluble and clings to fat cells. Everyone carries fat cells differently, for example women tend to have more fat than men, and so what works for a skinny user might be completely inefficient for a user carrying more weight.

There is also the high protein binding of THC metabolites in the blood stream to albumin. Your body can only eliminate unattached THC through the kidney and bowel.

An individual’s liver metabolism also plays a role in detox time. The liver must turn THC into a variety of more water-soluble metabolites before it can flush it out.

Tips for Detoxing from THC to Pass a Urine Drug Test

Start Abstaining Early

Abstaining from cannabis use is the only way to get THC out of your system. You should quit using at the very first indication of a drug screening in your future. Burning through your fat cells and making new ones takes time no matter what your lifestyle looks like.  

Practice a Healthy Lifestyle

Regular exercise helps burn existing fat cells, and a healthy diet rich in fiber and vegetables helps to create new (THC-free!) ones. Focus on healthy meals for the entirety of a THC detox and get in exercise when you can. Avoid foods that slow down your metabolism like sugar, sodium, and fat. Eat as much greens and vegetables as possible. 

Use a Detox Supplement like Green Gone

Detox kits help by speeding up the flushing process. Green Gone can halve the time necessary to achieve a negative test result. Avoid any products that claim overnight results.

Test yourself at Home

Green Gone is great because they include several urine testing strips with their detox kits, as well as selling additional strips on their website. A responsible user should be screening their urine at home during the detox process to guarantee a negative result before the official test.

Stay Hydrated and Drink More Tea

Drinking tons of excess water will not speed up the detox process, but it is important to up your levels of self-care during a detox. Hydration is critical for health and expelling toxins. Additionally, drink tea high in antioxidants or that is focused on the liver.

Concentrate on Self-Care

Diet and exercise are part of this, but really because abstaining from cannabis when you’re used to it or use it medically, can be difficult. Focusing on whole body health will help ease transition pains. Be kind to yourself during a detox and try to frame it in your mind as a time dedicated to your health and wellness.

On Detox Kits

A good detox product will shorten the time necessary for flushing metabolites from the body. There are many “detox” products out there that are just masks meant to defraud a screening test and that make outrageous claims of a negative test result in 24 hours. The truth is that there is no product or trick that will get THC out of the system in a day, and one should be wary of any product that boasts that kind of result.

The creator of Green Gone is a pharmacist who became annoyed seeing so many of these fraudulent masking products available, and developed Green Gone to be a professional product with real results as the end goal.

Green Gone is a capsule you take three times a day containing 5 key ingredients to efficiently remove THC from the system.

• A basic salt helps to increase urinary pH to help dissolve more THC into urine to dump it.
• A fiber source helps bind THC in the gut to be excreted in feces.
• A natural non-steroidal anti-inflammatory helps boot THC out of your blood.
• A liver inducer helps boost liver metabolism.
• Lastly, a diuretic helps to both dilute your urine and increase urine volume for higher clearance.

Green Gone contains the following herbal blend to eliminate THC metabolites:

St John Wort – A natural plant proven to be a potent liver enzyme inducer. THC is heavily metabolized by the liver through enzymes separated into CYP families based on their cytochrome spectrum of activity. St John Wort has been show in studies to more than double the activity of these enzymes, specifically 2C9 and 3A4, the same enzyme systems responsible for the metabolism of THC to more water soluble compounds such as the carboxylic metabolite THC-COOH, and other hydroxylated derivatives that can then participate in phase 2 chemical reactions such as glucuronidation, in which a sugar moiety is attached to the partially metabolized THC to increase urine solubility and subsequent clearance of the THC.

Sodium bicarb – This helps to increase the pH of urine. One of the limiting factors of clearing THC is the acidic metabolites are similar in pH to that of urine, which also normally runs slightly acidic on a 1-14 standard pH scale. pH is also a logarithmic scale so for every 1 unit it increases on the scale is a 10 fold change to solubility potential, a change of 2 is 100 fold and so on. The idea here is to constantly keep your urine pH 1 or 2 units higher than usual. This will encourage ionization of the acidic metabolites and greatly increase their solubility in an aqueous polar solution like that of water, and your urine is almost entirely water.

White willow 15% extract – This was another big breakthrough for us. Using molecular docking software, we were able to make a 3-dimensional model of both THC and the albumin binding sites in the blood. THC is usually 95-99% protein bound to albumin. The bound THC cannot be metabolized or cleared through the kidney because it is stuck to the protein that is too large to pass across the nephron membrane into the urine. Your body does this naturally to maintain vascular pressure. White Willow contains salicylates similar to those found in aspirin, which is aminosalicylic acid. Salicylates are similar in chemical structure to THC metabolites, causing them to bind to some of the same sites on albumin. With a salicylate now bound to albumin in THC’s normal binding position, this free metabolite can now be both metabolized and cleared. This is a pharmacology concept known as competitive binding where 2 chemicals are competing for the same binding sites, and the protein binding effect in this situation is thereby reduced.

Horsetail extract – A mild, all natural diuretic. Many of the products online contain diuretics but we wanted to take it further. By modifying the above so now you have: increased liver activity, decreased protein binding in blood, and increased urine pH now not only are you simply making more urine, but the urine you are making has significantly higher concentrations of metabolites when compared to prior.

Psyllium husk – Half or more of all THC is excreted through the bowels. The idea here is to add a source of fiber to bind THC in the gut, minimize reabsorption in the lower intestinal tract, and increase excretion in the feces.

– greengonedetox.com

Determining Your Green Gone Program

Green Gone is great because they have a THC Detox Calculator right on their website. To determine how long and how often you should take the supplements, simply answer the questions about weight and consumption amounts and see your results immediately. When I answered the questions for someone of my size and daily use, a prompt came up recommending a ten day kit. Green Gone also takes special interest in communicating with customers beforehand to determine the appropriate detox routine, so if you have any questions at all you can call a detox advisor at the phone number listed on the site.

A Note on Using CBD for Medical Relief During a Detox

For those using cannabis as an integral part of their medicinal routine, cutting out cannabis, even out of necessity, can really suck. If abstaining from your medication causes great pain or discomfort, try switching to pure CBD (presuming your drug screening does not test for CBD – THC is typically the single cannabinoid tested for as it is psychoactive) for medicinal relief without THC. If you go this route be absolutely sure you are buying a pure CBD isolate that contains only CBD. Avoid any CBD product that says “full spectrum” or “broad spectrum” as those will contain trace amounts of THC detectable in a drug screening.

Final Thoughts

Whether or not you use a detox program like Green Gone to pass a urine drug screening, the most important step for an effective detox is to start early. The reality is that achieving a negative test result takes time and is different for each person. Start early, practice exceptional self-care, and be sure to invest in home testing strips so you can guarantee your result before going in.

Learn more and purchase Green Gone with a 30 day money back guarantee here. And as always, remember to be safe and responsible with your cannabis use!