What is a comprehensive Drug test?

Answer 1

A drug test or screening is a way to determine, wether a person has used drugs or abused certain types of medicine.

Screening means that it is a test used to distinguish between people who have used drugs and people who didn't.

Most common is testing the urine - whether it contains drugs, certain abusable medicines or parts of those drugs that are still in the body after the effects of the drug have long gone. (These parts are called metabolites).

Basically it works like this:

The person that is tested has to 'pee' into a beaker. Sometimes while being watched so that he/she can not tamper with the urine sample. (e.g. fill urine of a person that has not used drugs into the beaker).

Then test strips are dipped into the sample. The strips contain chemicals that react with a drug or metabolite. This reaction is visible - e.g. a pink line appears on the strip. If there is a reaction like that the person has very likely used a drug recently.

Other tests include more complicated lab testing of the urine, of sweat or hair.

After a person has used a drug, this will show in urine screenings for days to weeks. Testing hair is very expensive and rare but will show drug use for most drugs that have been used while the hair was still part of the body. If a hair 5 inches long is used it will contain traces of most drugs that were used over a period of 15-20 months.

Standard drug screenings test for cannabis (weed/pot), phenethylamine-type drugs like amphetamine/speed/pep/meth/crystal/exstasy/..., benzodiazepines (e.g. valium), barbiturates, pcp, cocaine (& crack) and opiates (heroin/morphine/...).

They also test for the most ways of trying to fake the test.

This may differ a little, depending on where you live.

Standard screenings do not test for LSD, 5-HT-type drugs (shrooms/psilocin/dmt/...) and other exotic stuff...

There also are blood tests and breath tests. Blood tests are sometimes used if a person is suspected to be under the influence of a drug at the time of testing. Then the test can show how much he/she took.

Urine testing is used to see wether a person has used drugs some time before the test and it will not show how much of the drug was used:

In many countries a breath test (with an electronic sensor) is used to determine if a driver is driving under the influence of alcohol. Then a blood sample is drawn to determine the amount of alcohol the person drank (blood alcohol level, BAL).

Answer 2

One that tests for around 250 drugs and costs several hundred dollars. They're usually only run when you come into the emergency room overdosed on SOMETHING and they don't know what. Outside emergency medicine, a comprehensive test might be taken on someone checking into a rehab, but just as a random test it's too expensive.

Answer 3

A test that uses blood instead of urine to detect drugs in your system.

Answer 4

It is a test to check if a person is sensitive (allergic) to a certain drug or groups of drugs.

Answer 5

In a drug screening test, the test will be looking for things such as marijuana, cocaine and a myriad of other drugs.