How Long Does Cocaine Stay in Your System?

How long does cocaine stay in your system – and why do some people test positive even after the drug should have been completely eliminated from their body?

How Long Does Cocaine Stay in Your System?

It’s a simple, straightforward question. Unfortunately, it doesn’t have an equally simple or straightforward answer.

One reason why this question is more complex than it first appears is that it may actually be asking two different things:

How long will actual remnants of cocaine remain in your body?
How long after last using cocaine will you test positive on a drug screen?

In the next section, we’ll discuss why the answers to these two questions are different. For the moment, though, we’ll focus on responding to the first one.

Cocaine has a plasma half-life of about 1.5 hours. A half-life is the amount of time it takes for your body to reduce the amount of a specific drug by half. For example:

If you ingested two grams of cocaine, your body would likely process and eliminate one gram in the first 1.5 hours.
Over the next 1.5 hours, your body would eliminate half of the remaining gram.
Over the third 1.5 hours, the remaining half gram would be reduced to a fourth of a gram.
This process would continue until the drug has been completely eliminated from your system.

Experts typically consider a substance to have fallen below a clinically significant level after four or five half-lives. In the case of cocaine, this means that traces of the drug would remain in your blood plasma for six to 7.5 hours.

However, cocaine won’t only be detectable in your blood. The substance will also be temporarily present in your saliva and urine:

Experts estimate that the half-life of cocaine in saliva is about 1.2 hours, which means that traces would usually be detectable in this fluid for about five or six hours.
In urine, cocaine has an estimated half-life of about 4 hours, so it could take about a day before the drug falls below a clinically significant amount.

Of course, these are general estimates, not exact predictions. The actual amount of time that cocaine remains in your system can be influenced by a variety of factors, such as:

Your age, gender, weight, and metabolism
How long you have been using cocaine
How frequently you use cocaine, and how much you typically use
If you have also been using alcohol or other drugs

Also, even after all the cocaine has been eliminated from your body, you could still test positive on a drug screen. To discover how this is possible, just keep reading.

How Long Will You Test Positive for Cocaine?

Often, someone who asks, “How long does cocaine stay in your system?” is actually trying to determine how long they might test positive on a drug screen.

You may not realize that drug screens don’t only detect the presence of certain addictive substances. They also look for metabolites, which are byproducts that are created as your body breaks down substances into their component parts in order to eliminate them. Metabolites are incontrovertible evidence that certain substances, such as cocaine, were recently in your body.

The main metabolite that’s produced when your liver processes cocaine is called benzoylecgonine. The half-life of benzoylecgonine is substantially longer than that of cocaine, which means it will be detectable after your body has processed and eliminated the final remnants of the cocaine itself.

Considering the influences that we mentioned in the previous section (such as body weight, metabolism, amount of cocaine used, etc.), here’s a general timeline for how long you might test positive for cocaine or benzoylecgonine on various types of drug screens:

Saliva test: One or two days after you last used cocaine
Blood test: About two days after your most recent dose
Urine test: Up to three days for occasional cocaine users, possibly a week or longer for heavy users
Hair follicle test: Potentially as long as 90 days (three months) after you stopped using cocaine

What Does Cocaine Do to Your Body?

Though cocaine only remains in your body for a relatively brief amount of time, it can cause considerable harm. Your risk of lasting damage can grow as the amount and frequency of your cocaine use increases.

The short-term impact of cocaine on your body can include:

Greater energy and focus
Diminished need for sleep
Decreased appetite
Elevated heart rate and blood pressure
Constriction (narrowing) of blood vessels
Dilation (expansion) of the pupils
Increased dopamine levels

When cocaine’s effects wear off, you may experience a dramatic drop in mood and energy. To maintain your high and avoid this so-called crash, you may be tempted to use the drug over and over again. This can quickly lead to addiction. The longer you struggle with compulsive cocaine use, the greater your risk becomes of long-term effects such as:

Disrupted brain functions
Heart attack and stroke
Blood clots
Hypertension (high blood pressure)
Damage to the nose and roof of the mouth
Liver and kidney dysfunction
Respiratory problems
Gastrointestinal distress
Seizure

The best way to avoid these and other types of cocaine-related damage is to not use cocaine. If you’ve become dependent on this drug, it can be difficult to quit on your own. But when you get the right type of professional help, you can stop using cocaine for good and live a healthier life in recovery.

Get Help for Addiction Today

If you’re ready to put your cocaine use in the past, LA Detox is here for you.

When you contact our cocaine addiction treatment center in Los Angeles, you’ll have access to a full continuum of customized services, including detox, residential rehab, and several outpatient options. Our team will work closely with you to identify the full scope of your needs, then develop a personalized treatment plan just for you.

To learn more or to schedule a free assessment, please visit our Contact page or call us today.

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