Why do poppy seed foods trigger drug tests for opioids, but don’t remotely get you high?
In: Biology
There’s only about 20 micrograms per gram of seeds, a ridiculously small amount of morphine, meaning it is unable to get you high unless you somehow managed to eat 20,000 grams of seeds (44 pounds of seeds), you wouldn’t be able to get a typical medical dose of morphine
Opium is harvested from the poppy plant (probably many, but specifically the papaver somniferum type), and unwashed seeds can carry some of the latex that is turned into the drug. Enough to set off some sensitive tests, but not typically enough to feel the effects because it’s so miniscule.
Interestingly, if you consume enough unwashed poppy seeds from the right type of flower, you *can* have psychoactive effects. Some people make tea out of it, and I hear it’s disgusting.
First drug tests don’t test for the drug itself. They test for a chemical reaction that is present when the drug is around. So there are a lot of things that can trigger a positive chemical reaction even if you’ve never taken the drug.
Surprisingly that’s not the case for poppy seeds. Opium and poppy seeds come from the same pod. If the seeds aren’t cleaned well enough the opium is not washed away, and when you eat the seeds the opium goes into your body. Now it’s not really enough to be dangerous but it is enough to possibly test positive.
It takes time for your body to process whatever stuff you throw at it.
If you take opioids today and have a drug test tomorrow, most, but not all, of the opioids will have been processed away. If you eat a poppy seed bagel in the morning before heading into the clinic for the test, you’ll consume a minute amount of opioids from the seeds, but you won’t have enough time to process through any of it.
The problems is, if you want the test to be able to detect the small amount you have left from using drugs yesterday, it’ll also detect the unprocessed small amount you consumed for breakfast.
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