How long does hydrocodone stay in your system?
Curious about how hydrocodone (the main ingredient in Vicodin) stays in the body? Got mandatory or random drug testing for Vicodin for work or school coming up? We review half life, detection times and signs of hydrocodone problems here.
Half life of hydrocodone
The half-life of a 10 mg dose of hydrocodone is about 3.8 hours (± 0.3 hours). This means that it takes almost 4 hours for the body to process this amount of hydrocodone and eliminate half of its compounds from the system. Withdrawal symptoms from hydrocodone usually begin to manifest 6-12 hours after your last dose of hydrocodone.
Hydrocodone drug testing
Employers usually want to check for hydrocodone before employing you to ensure safety/drug free workers, to check after an on-site work accident, or to identify drug problems. Drug testing is not generally not looking for current impairment or drug use but for past use of pain meds like hydrocodone.
It takes only traces of hydrocodone or its metabolite to be present in the blood or urine for a hydrocodone drug test to be positive. This measure is known as a “cut-off level,” and some drug tests set a low cut off level to determine passive users and to decrease the chances of negative testing.
How long is hydrocodone in the system?
Drugs are eliminated from the system at different rates and thus detectable for different periods of time, often long after the drug’s effect has worn off. Hydrocodone has a certain “detection window”, which is the amount of time after ingestion during which evidence can be detected by a drug test.
Hydrocodone detection times are unknown for blood and sweat screens. However, hydrocodone can be present in the saliva 12 – 36 hours after last dose or 2 – 4 days in the urine. Hydrocodone is also present in the hair for up to 90 days after last dose.
Hydrocodone and addiction
Hydrocodone in often prescribed combination with at least one other medication and is used to relieve moderate to severe pain or to help relieve coughing. If you like the euphoric effect of hydrocodone, and take it for non medical reasons, it’s possible that you may be addicted to hydrocodone. This is because hydrocodone may be habit-forming, and you can develop both a physical and a psychological dependence on the medication. Here are some tips for taking hydrocodone and avoiding addiction:
- Call your doctor if you develop a strong desire to take more medication than prescribed.
- Do not crush, chew, snort or inject hydrocodone.
- Do not take a larger dose of hydrocodone.
- Do not take hydrocodone for a longer period of time than prescribed .
- Do not take hydrocodone more often than prescribed.
- Take hydrocodone exactly as your doctor describes.
3:19 pm
January 31st, 2012
Hi there. My husband has a RX for Norco 7.5. His script ran out on a Wed. and he was unable to make another doctor’s appointment until three weeks later. So he decided to see another doctor in the same practice. This was the following Monday. So five days later. He had one of his pills left over and he took that Sunday night (I know because I handed it to him). The new doctor ran a urine screen and the medication didn’t show up so she sent it off to a lab (haven’t heard anything back on that yet). So why didn’t it show up in the urine test? Just to clarify my husband did not run out of his medication early. He simply failed to reschedule with his regular doctor on time.
3:58 pm
February 3rd, 2012
Hi Lynn,
Thanks for your question. Perhaps the levels of hydrocodone were undetected because they were under the cutoff levels for misuse? I’m not sure. Also, why was the doctor testing in the first place?
4:15 am
February 7th, 2012
I really don’t know why she tested for it. Maybe to be sure he was taking it? Which really didn’t make sense because he told her the RX ran out five days prior to the visit (he had his RX bottle with him). He had one left over that he took the night before. She’s not his regular doctor and was leery of giving him a refill. She said that she doesn’t usually prescribe “that type of medication”. She did give him a much weaker version of the same medication that would last for a few days and told him that if the meds showed up in the lab work she’d call him in the rest of his medication. None of it made a whole lot of good sense to me.
2:28 pm
February 8th, 2012
Hi Lynn. That does seems weird. Maybe it was a case of “CYA”? I do know that in opiate treatment programs (for former drug addicts), drug testing is part of protocol…but this does not seem the case with your husband. Anyway, I hope that he gets his meds sorted out…and let us know if we can help further!
9:52 pm
March 17th, 2012
I have been prescribed lortab 7.5 for 3 years now and i have a drug screen for school coming up. I know Im fine because i have the prescription, but Im curious as to how long they stay in my system because I’ve been taking them for so long. Do they compound in your system? Im so confused by all of it.
4:21 am
March 18th, 2012
Hello H. Thanks for your question. Hydrocodone Dos build up in your system. As you become tolerant to the effects, you have to take more to get the same pain relief. But hydrocodone will leave you body totally once you stop taking it. The process is called withdrawal and can be uncomfortable. Withdrawal lasts from a few days to a couple of weeks, but most symptoms are gone after about 7-10 days. Are you thinking of stopping your Lortab?
10:09 pm
May 11th, 2012
I have taken lortab 10 for several years I always test positive for this on my employment drug screen / test I have a presciption 3 times a day I have RA and my back has been broken in 4 vertabrates do they check my actual drug level or are they just checking for the presences I never miss work and I have had several promotions I also was on compensation for the back injury as it was work related does work know I am on this or is this screen always negative because of the prescription.
5:53 pm
May 13th, 2012
Hi Terry. When you present a prescription for Lortab to the Medical Review Officer (MRO), the person in charge of reporting test results to your employer, the MRO reads the presence/levels on the drug screen and reports a NEGATIVE or POSITIVE drug screen based on whether or not you are taking Lortab as prescribed. So even though hydrocodone is physically present in your system, as long as you are taking hydrocodone as prescribed, the drug screen should test NEGATIVE.
I am confused as to why you have tested POSITIVE in the past….?