You’ve had a great weekend, you relaxed, watched Harold & Kumar, and ate way too much junk food. Unfortunately, Monday morning you get told that you are going to be facing a drug test at some stage in the next month. It’s not paranoia if someone really is out to get you, and your relaxing, slightly pot induced weekend has just taken a sinister turn. So, what are you going to do about it?
Shaving Your Head Is Not A Solution
You might think that shaving your head is an option. You could always say that you’re raising money for cancer, that would be a believable cover. Unfortunately, even if you do have the head shape to still look great with a shaved head, it won’t prevent your hair drug test from happening. All that you have done is to ensure that the testers are going to need to take a sample from somewhere else. If you happen to be a woman who shaves, or a man with very little body hair, I’m afraid to say that yes, pubic hair is quite adequate to run a drug test on.
Washing Your Hair Free Of Drugs
What you really need to do is to find a really, really, good drug detoxification hair shampoo. Unfortunately, these can be hard to find, and there are a lot of fakes on the market.
One of the reasons that you may have difficulty finding a good detoxing shampoo is because one of the preferred options, Aloe ToxinRid, was taken off the market a few years ago. It was rereleased, but with a change in formula, much weaker and easier on your scalp. You could probably use it daily now. Unfortunately, the new formula just doesn’t seem to work as well as the old version to actually remove toxins from your hair. And by toxins, we mean any traces of drugs that you may have enjoyed in the last few months.
What’s In Those Shampoos?
The active ingredient that is in the detoxification shampoos is normally either propylene glycol or ammonia. Ammonia hydroxide if often a key ingredient in hair dye designed to bleach any color out of hair, so you can imagine that it should be capable of stripping a few metabolites from your hair. Unfortunately, this doesn’t seem to be the case. In order to have an ammonia-based shampoo that is strong enough to actually strip your hair of any traces of drugs you are very potentially running the risk of stripping the skin from your scalp and causing your hair to fall out. It can be very caustic if not used properly – and certainly never ever use it undiluted!
Propylene glycol on the other hand, is actually used in food products as a sweetener, and can be found in coffee drinks, ice cream and soda. At different strengths propylene glycol is also found in beauty products, is used in hand sanitizers to stop your hands from drying out, and even gets used in automobile anti-freeze products. It is also biodegradable in water. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propylene_glycol
Yet despite the fact that on the surface it appears propylene glycol would not be as effective as ammonia hydroxide is to remove toxins from your hair, it actually works better.
Part of this is the way in which the shampoo uses a gentle approach to coax the scales that overlap to form the outer layer of the hair open. Once they have been lifted it is then possible to actually clean under them, and to have access to the central hair shaft as well.
However, to use a propylene glycol-based shampoo to pass a hair drug test does require time, and a process. Part of which involves letting the shampoo sit for a time, rinsing and repeating. This normally is done over a period of a week, shampooing your hair with the special detoxifying shampoo each and every day.
Often the instructions will suggest you combine your hair care routine so that you use the propylene glycol based shampoo to do an initially cleanse, opening up the hair shaft, then use an alternative deep cleaning solution, which may include a diluted form of ammonia, and then follow up finally with a rinse – this is sometimes simply just white vinegar (like this), or sometimes the method suggests a particular hair conditioner.