@StonerNurse this series of questions and especially the last one are solid. In your original post you did mention that you’re in drug court which means that you’ll be given UAs routinely and probably by surprise. If you aren’t sure, let me promise you that they will be testing for meth when you give your sample. If it’s a simple 10 or 12 panel and you’re getting away with fake urine, be careful. I have heard of plenty of drug court programs that will send out to a lab either randomly or if they think someone is passing bad samples. The lab LC/MS tests are incredibly accurate and it is the standard for secondary testing in treatment programs.
My wife is an analytical chemist who works on an LC/MS routinely for her research. Mutual curiosity and discussion about half lives of drugs led us on a bit of an adventure. She found urine testing standards used for urine analysis in various mandated treatment systems across the United States (they are very similar pretty much everywhere). I provided dirty urine with measured amounts of meth (20mg), benzos (10mg diazepam), subutex (8mg Buprenorphine), and alcohol (2oz of 80 proof liquor). Then she ran the sample I gave her using the standards from the State of California. We chose the CA testing standards because they were the same, or so close it doesn’t matter, to many other states. New York, if memory serves has the same process as CA.
What we learned was that it took 3 days for a small amount of meth to fully leave my system. The Valium and Bupe never left in 2 weeks because I am prescribed them. The alcohol took 2 days. She ran several brands of “good” fake urine through as well. None of them passed. Additionally the testing standards looked for markers of gender so that people can’t have a clean friend give them urine to pass off. We diluted samples with the best fake pee & water too, it doesn’t work either. At the 12 and 24 hour marks when we tried dilution, my wife could tell at a glance that they were the altered samples.
All of this is to say, unless you know your testing schedule and you’re CERTAIN about it, you are better off doing one of two courses of action. First, abstain from drug use through June. Or go to a doctor and get prescription for Adderall or whatever you need to carry you through.
Drug court varies from place to place and it sucks, but if you stick with it you are quite likely to find that it helps you with your substance abuse issues. I went through 11 years ago and it changed my life for the better.
You’re a nurse and I’m betting that if you don’t pass drug court and those charges come up you will lose your job and probably have one of two things happen with your board certification: 1) You’ll have to jump through some crazy ass hoops to keep it. Or 2) As a person with a felony possession of a controlled substance they’ll just take it from you. I hope that the weight of the conviction and the opportunity to get it removed are enough that you graduate in June. Keep yourself focused on the outcome and work through to June.
If you find that you need opiates perhaps look into occasional kratom use, it will scratch the itch a bit and allow you to keep it together. As a nurse, how were you unfamiliar with meth? You must have heard of it, but never seen it before?
Anyways, I don’t know why I just wrote a small novel. Probably because I heard a lot of BS from the people I was in drug court with that I knew wasn’t true and if you don’t take it seriously, some programs just charge you and put you in jail. Probably you have a little room for error in NY but no program is going to let more than a certain amount slide.
