How long do drugs stay in your system?

Bobby Wiggins, Drug Prevention Specialist, gives important information answering the question of how long do drugs stay in your system.

Mr. Wiggins was addicted to drugs for 16 years and he put an end to his addiction by completing Narconon drug rehab program. He has gone on to educate others and help prevent drug abuse for over three decades.

Watch the other drug education videos of this 10-part series:

1. What is a drug?
2. What are the Effects of Drugs on the Mind?
3. Why Do People Take Drugs?
4. What is addiction?
5. Is Alcohol a Drug?
6. What are the long term effects of weed?
7. Is ecstasy safe?
8. What do drugs do?
9. What do drugs do to your nervous system?
10. How long do drugs stay in your system?

Drugs stay in the body for only a short time. True or false?

Once again that is false.

Most drugs are what are call fat soluble substances. In other words, they mix with fat.

If you took, let’s say frozen orange juice and mixed it with water, you stirred it enough, it would go into a mixture. That’s because that orange juice is a water soluble substance.

Most drugs, let’s take THC, tetrahydrocannabinol in marijuana. THC is a very, very, very fat soluble substance as is LSD, heroin, many, many other drugs.

So if you tried to dump that substance in water, you could stir until your hand fell off, and it will never ever mix. It always separates or floats to the surface of the water.

So this is what happens when a person ingest the drug. No matter how it taken. If it’s smoked, if it’s injected, if it’s swallowed in a pill form, it doesn’t matter. It always ends up in the person blood stream.

So watch what happens. There’s the person’s blood stream. Here’s the fat tissue, which is butted right up against the person’s blood stream. And here comes the drug. As the drug moves through the person’s blood stream, because the fat tissue is so close, that fat tends to draw that drug into it almost like a magnet. Little tiny drug residues. Little dark bits and pieces of that drug just start lodging or sticking more and more and more in the fatty tissue of the body until after a while, honestly, this guys kind of like a walking drug store. He’s got all these drugs that are stuck inside his body.

Well first of all who cares? Big deal. Why is that even important?

Well for one thing, as I mentioned earlier, the nutrients are burnt up. When this is circulating in a person’s body, he has almost a continual destruction of nutrients in his body. So he has to eat better, he has to try to take vitamins, anything to keep his health up.

But even more important than that, especially to us at Narconon, is this; How long does this stuff actually stay inside a person’s body?

Very quick story if I may. I was addicted to drugs myself personally for about 16 years. I started smoking marijuana, drinking alcohol, taking pills, speed, amphetamines in college. Begin to take LSD, many other drugs, ended up very heavily addicted to cocaine and alcohol.

In 1977 I entered the Narconon program and at that point and time, for us, it was just a healthy regiment. Lot’s of vitamins, minerals, exercise, stuff like that and then life skills so we could re-orientate to our new lives drug-free. At that time they did not have a program which we currently have called the, Sauna Sweat Out Program. I did what was called the, LSD Sweat Out Program where you had to actually go out and you had to run 4-6 miles a day. Eat fresh vegetables, vitamins, the whole idea was to little-by-little purge these drugs from your system.

Well I did that program every single day. 4-6 miles a day, running, drinking lots of fresh water, lots of vitamins, lots of vegetables, on and on and on. 14 months later I felt great. About 6 months later the executive director called me into her office and she said, “Have a seat.” I said, “Sure. What’s the deal Patty?” She said, “Well Bob, we have a new program.” I said, “Well, what is it?” She kind of laughed when she said this. She said, “Well it’s actually designed to flush all of the old drugs out of your body.” I said, “O, wo, wo, wo, wait a minute. I already did that.” She said, “Yea, yea I know, but this is sort of like the new and improved and besides you’re a counselor now so we think you should do it.” I said, “Agh what the hell, I’ll do it.”

At any rate, I started that program. On the third day I was in the sauna reading my newspaper. All of a sudden I started feeling kind of weird. I looked over at my partner and my partner melted. The next thing I know, there’s purple frogs, pink mushrooms, stuff, I’m seeing stuff that’s not there everywhere. I walk out of the sauna. I sit down. I get a glass of spring water and the counselor comes over and says, “What happened?” And I told him, “I was in the middle of an LSD trip.” This trip lasted 45 minutes. That particular thing happened to me 7 times out of 31 days on the program. Cocaine, marijuana, many, many other drugs flushed out of my body as I done this. I had been drug-free for 3 ¹⁄₂ years and the stuff was pouring out of my body.

Anyway, how long it does stay depends on the person, depends on their body, but it stays much, much, much longer then people think.

We’ve given you a lot of negative information on drugs here, but what can you do about it?

Well I know the Narconon program definitely saved my life. Not only saved my life, but created a whole new life where I can go out, I can have fun, I can live life to the fullest and basically I’d like other people to have that also.

So if you know someone who has a drug problem, family member, friend, anyone at all, contact us, www.narconon.org.

Narconon drug education video answering the question “how long do drugs stay in your system?” Drug facts relating to the physical effects of drugs. You may find more information about drugs on our website.

If you have a loved with an addiction problem whether to alcohol or other drugs, please contact us at 800-737-5250 or email us.