why do drugs stay in one’s system for much longer than their effect? For example, diazepam stays in a person’s system 8-10 days, but it’s effects last 4-5 hours? Why the difference?
In: Chemistry
Drugs (all kinds including naturally occuring, man made, supplement, prescription drugs, and recreational drugs) need to be at a certain concentration in your blood stream in order to be effective. That specific concentration is different for every drug. Drugs that are more potent are able to have meaningful activity at low concentrations.
This is very different from the concentration needed to be “detectable”. THC, for example, needs to be present at a relatively high level in the blood stream to have effects on the brain and make someone feel “high”. Drugs tests can pick up small levels of THC in your system, so the drug test can be positive for many weeks after your last toke.
One final thing is a pharmacologic principle called volume of distribution. Essentially, some drugs wind up getting distributed in fatty tissue. Which means those drugs could linger at low levels in some people for a long time, depending on how much fat they have. As a result, certain drugs like marijuana can show up as positive on a drug test months after the last exposure.
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