Will Poppy Seed Bagels Make you flunk a Drug Test??

dannyking

Well-Known Member
I seen this on a site and just thought you guys would get a laugh from it!!!
Will poppy-seed bagels cause you to fail a drug test?

[SIZE=-1]03-Apr-1998[/SIZE]​
Dear Cecil:
Can eating foods with poppy seeds (i.e., bagels, muffins, etc.) really cause someone to fail a routine corporate drug test? I've heard the answer is yes, but I am a skeptic. Aren't drug tests specialized? Are they really testing for opium, which I understand to be the only drug made from the poppy? And even if the test did search for opium, wouldn't the number of poppy seeds needed to make even a minute amount of opium be far greater than that in the foods we eat poppy seeds in? Help! --Peter Schilling, Minneapolis
Dear Peter:

Let's not beat around the bush. The answer to your question is yes--eating a couple of poppy seed rolls, bagels, etc., can cause you to fail a routine drug test. This news will produce one of two reactions, depending on whether you're a law-abiding citizen or a drug fiend:
  1. Panic (if law-abiding citizen): "I could lose my job by eating breakfast!"
  2. Elation (if drug fiend): "I could keep my job by claiming I ate breakfast!"
So the real corporate drug test is to tell your employees about poppy seeds and watch their reactions. The happy ones get the ax.
At this point you figure I'm going to say: whoa, relax! A drug-testing lab is savvy enough to be able to distinguish between muffin eaters and opium addicts.
Uh-uh. While many drug testers and researchers claim they can separate "false positives" from the real thing, other researchers dispute this. Sure, some guy with pinhole pupils and a tendency to walk into walls is going to have a hard time claiming he got that way due to excessive bagel consumption. The fact remains that if you got fired due to a borderline positive and had no follow-up tests or corroborating signs of drug use, a good lawyer would be able to cram that drug test--and your pink slip--down your bosses' throats. Currently, 87 percent of positives are reversed on follow-up.
This murky situation may not last long, though. Largely because of the poppy seed problem, the federal test threshold for morphine and codeine will probably be raised in late 1998 from 300 nanograms per millileter to 2,000. The feds figure they might miss a few drug abusers but they'll eliminate most of the false positives. No doubt many corporate drug testers will follow suit.
Now let's take some questions from the floor.
Q: You're telling me the poppy seeds in baked goods come from the same type of poppy used to make opium?
A: Maybe not all, but a lot of them do. Of the 90 or so species of poppy, one, Papaver somniferum, is commonly used for two things: drugs and food. In the U.S. possession of opium poppies with intent to grow more is a crime. But possession of opium poppy seed is perfectly legal--in fact, you can (or could) buy opium poppy seeds from gardening catalogs. (But God help you if you try to grow anything with them--see Michael Pollan's scary article on this subject in the April 1997 Harper's). So-called bread-seed poppies (P. paeoniflorum) are also legal, though botanically they're the same as P. somniferum.
Q: You mean I could get high eating poppy seed rolls?
A: No, goofball, I said they might make you flunk a drug test. The amount of morphine and codeine in poppy seeds varies enormously. One study found that Dutch, Czech, and Turkish poppy seed contained minimal opiates, Australian seed was up there, and Spanish seed sounded like it should be sold by creepy-looking guys on street corners. But, while test volunteers who ate poppy seed products sometimes flunked urine tests, nobody really got what you could call stoned. (Possible exception: one volunteer who ate 23 grams of seeds was accused of "giggling and acting silly.") You're limited by the fact that the poppy seeds are usually contained in food--you get full long before you get high.
Still, if you're desperate enough there are ways to get a buzz from poppies. In parts of England prior to World War II, tea made from boiled poppy heads was recommended as a way to cure what ails you, or at least not get overly concerned about it. Poppy tea has come back into favor among UK drug users in recent years, and some people have reportedly become addicted to the stuff. One guy boiled 14 poppy heads daily, which he obtained from florists. Another addict was a baker who each day drank two liters of tea made from four kilograms of poppy seed. His secret was discovered when he went into convulsions. Serves him right. Even the Bible warns about bad seed.


 

VictorVIcious

Well-Known Member
Our son didn't find this funny when he was on probation, he failed a test, showed positive for opiates, from eating Spaghetti salad. The seasoning had poppy seeds. It was his first drop after sentence, had to take the bottle to his po. That would have been in 2004 if I remember right. VV
 

crazy-mental

Well-Known Member
i work for the drug and alco team,as a "drug worker" and we sample people all the time, and the testing is so good nowadays, plus a few seeds wouldnt show up, unless you were eating them allday.
 

korvette1977

Well-Known Member
I asked my PO that yrs ago when on probation... He said you would have to eat a 1 lb bag of them in order for that to show up in a urine test .. Im just saying what I was told ..
 

crazy-mental

Well-Known Member
I asked my PO that yrs ago when on probation... He said you would have to eat a 1 lb bag of them in order for that to show up in a urine test .. Im just saying what I was told ..
i would say the same, plus say you took herion other things would come up in the test, not just opium, also the stuff that is mixed with it.

or maybe just dont eat them, if on probation."maybe".
plus if you ate lots of seeds they would be out your system after a few hours, herion is 1 to 3 days to leave you system.
so poppy seeds wouldnt take long unless you were eating them every day.
 

VictorVIcious

Well-Known Member
Funny, thats what the po said too. He never failed another one. And the only difference was the poppy seeds. VV
 

speedhabit

Well-Known Member
Mythbusters confirmed this like 2 years ago in great detail.

There was also a woman who won a very impressive civil suit against an employer (may have been 6figure +) because she failed a drugtest in this fashion and was fired.

Also they dont test for heroin, they detect the presence of opiates in the urine. This could be oxycontin, morphine, heroin, opium, whatev
 
Last edited:

AKronic

Active Member
well i know they poppy seed muffins are not allowed on the North Slope were oil field workers get randoms all the time. they just don't want them up there so no one can use it as an excuse. i take athsma steroids and apperently those sometime come up as meth!!! i never touch that crap no way
 

CaliGrower420

Active Member
i failed a test after eating just one poppy seed bagel!!!!!!
u will fail the test, although most po's will let u go the first time if u tell them u ate the seeds.
 

marijuanajoe1982

Well-Known Member
Mythbusters confirmed this like 2 years ago in great detail.

There was also a woman who won a very impressive civil suit against an employer (may have been 6figure +) because she failed a drugtest in this fashion and was fired.

Also they dont test for heroin, they detect the presence of opiates in the urine. This could be oxycontin, morphine, heroin, opium, whatev
All of what you say is correct, but there are better (and more expensive) drug tests now that can actually determine what kind of opiate you have been using. There is one mid-level test that tests for heroin, opium, and most other opiates in one comumn, and tests specifically for Oxycodone and Oxycodone HCL (Oxycontin) in another. The next step up can actually tell the difference between Hydromorphone (dilaudid) and Morphine, or between Oxycontin and Oxycodone even though they are practically the same thing. Chemically the only difference is the Hydrochloric bond, I don't know how that makes it such a different feeling, but it is.

I was an Oxycontin addict for about 10 years and I am now about 3 months clean. I am perscribed a medicine called Suboxone that suppresses urges as well as suppresses withdrawls. It works very well. If you are an opiate addict I reccomend this. Anyway, they use really high tech drug tests at this place, and can figure out specific substances, not just what family of drugs your positive belonged to. These tests can cost between $200-$400 dollars, depending on how much drugs are in your piss. It must be a mass spectrometer test or something.

This being said, most normal drug tests are not like this, and are exactly as stated above. opiates take like 36 hours or something to get out anyway, so even if you actually failed, you could just claim you ate a bagel, take a couple days off the drug, and you would piss clean by the time the next one was scheduled, unless it was the next day. This was a life-saver for me on one occasion. I failed, claimed I had eaten 2 poppyseed muffins for breakfast (I'm 250 lbs so they believed me, lol), and came in like a week later after no use and pissed clean. This method will usually work. However, I am clean for real this time, and not going back. It feels good, but it will ruin your life eventually.
 

ThunderLips

Well-Known Member
All of what you say is correct, but there are better (and more expensive) drug tests now that can actually determine what kind of opiate you have been using. There is one mid-level test that tests for heroin, opium, and most other opiates in one comumn, and tests specifically for Oxycodone and Oxycodone HCL (Oxycontin) in another. The next step up can actually tell the difference between Hydromorphone (dilaudid) and Morphine, or between Oxycontin and Oxycodone even though they are practically the same thing. Chemically the only difference is the Hydrochloric bond, I don't know how that makes it such a different feeling, but it is.

I was an Oxycontin addict for about 10 years and I am now about 3 months clean. I am perscribed a medicine called Suboxone that suppresses urges as well as suppresses withdrawls. It works very well. If you are an opiate addict I reccomend this. Anyway, they use really high tech drug tests at this place, and can figure out specific substances, not just what family of drugs your positive belonged to. These tests can cost between $200-$400 dollars, depending on how much drugs are in your piss. It must be a mass spectrometer test or something.

This being said, most normal drug tests are not like this, and are exactly as stated above. opiates take like 36 hours or something to get out anyway, so even if you actually failed, you could just claim you ate a bagel, take a couple days off the drug, and you would piss clean by the time the next one was scheduled, unless it was the next day. This was a life-saver for me on one occasion. I failed, claimed I had eaten 2 poppyseed muffins for breakfast (I'm 250 lbs so they believed me, lol), and came in like a week later after no use and pissed clean. This method will usually work. However, I am clean for real this time, and not going back. It feels good, but it will ruin your life eventually.
Not to steer away from topic, but its good to hear your doing good now. I kicked the pain killer habit in the late 90's Demeral was may favorite ;) but I know back then we were getting 10s of Oxys like candy and we really didnt know what they were at the time or how addictive they can be, we would pop 4 or 5 like it was nothing, the next day poppin morphene or even getting our hands on methadone and using that, the point is I was self destructive and no longer use.... I have had 3 friends in the past 8 years die from oxycontin... now it wasnt so bad when I was using, but eventually my friends got so bad they were snorting any pain killer they took, hell i think my best friend was even snorting asprin when he needed to get rid of a headache just because he couldnt swallow a pill anymore.

What i wanted to inform you about is a pill they gave my friend bryan to help come off of oxycontin and methadone... I will do some research and find out what the pills were called to let you know, but they are for kicking the same addiction. Anyhow, what the Dr. didnt tell bryan is that the pill he was given to come off of his addiction was only supposed to be taken for no more than 3 months due to the extreme addiction this other pill can cause. He was never told that this other pill would have withdrawls and cause similair effects as just coming off of dope(Heroin).
Any how, the recover rate from people who have used this other pill to come off presc. drugs is very good, somthing like 75% of users who used the pill for 3 months fully recovered..... what they dont tell you is that if used over 3 months there is a 2% reovery rate due to the addictivness and withdrawls of the other pill.
With that said, bryan was on the pill for over 1 year before learning about this. The doctor who prescribed him these pills later dropped him as a client due to threats and other crap bryan said to him. Bryan is still on the pills, he takes 1/4 of a pill a day to keep the twitches, and spasms to a minimum, all related to this "other" pill as I refer to it for now.
He is having major health problems because of his abuse as well as this "other" pill.
I will try to figure out what pill it is exactly and get back to you, I dont mean to scare you if i did or make you think your gonna die, I just wanted to tell you a bit of my story so you can possibly check into what it is youre taking and find another before its too late if needed.
Its always good to see another one has made it.

I think the difference in the hydrochloric bond is the time release......??
 
Last edited:
Top