I'm taking January off,
and while I'm away, I have lined up some brilliant guest videos to take over this channel.
We start with Trace Dominguez, who is one of the most enthusiastic and bouncy science communicators I know.
His channel splits up big topics into small parts,
from all of human history to how we get to space.
But today's video is a one-off.
He's going to test an old myth and try to fail a drug test on purpose.
Trace, good luck.
- It's weird to be this excited about potentially failing a drug test.
I should...
should fail.
- Hey there, poppets, Trace here.
Every middle-schooler exploring the world of drug myths for the first time
has heard of the poppy seed defence.
There were definitely rumours at my school
that someone-someone-knew from the big bad schools down in Lansing,
had actually tricked a cop by eating a bunch of poppy seeds
before their drug test.
And I always wondered, "Is this a thing?
"Can I actually trick an opiate test
"by eating seeds from poppy flowers?"
So I'm going to eat a bunch and take a drug test for science!
The scientific name of the poppy is papaver somniferum.
The papaver species is native to Turkey,
and it contains a milky sap that can be harvested to make opium and its derivatives,
morphine, codeine, oxycodone, methadone, and heroin.
The Game of Thrones Maesters called that sap, "the milk of the poppy".
And that's pretty apt.
It's a milky latex fluid that grows in the unripened seed pods of the flower
and surrounds the poppy seeds... which grew in opium!
The seeds are usually washed and processed
so that they can be safely put on muffins, cakes, and breads.
Sometimes some of the residue from the sap can slip through
and end up making you have quite the breakfast(!)
And this is why sometimes you can accidentally fail a drug test
after having a poppy seed bagel.
Because depending on where the seeds are from,
how much processing they've had,
and even how much rainfall they experienced while they were growing,
all of this can affect whether there's opium on them at your favourite bagel shop.
And if there is, you can get what's called a false positive.
False positives happen when a test registers positive,
even though the person didn't actually consume the substance in question,
leading to the poppy seed defence.
Poppy seed defences did actually change how we drug test for opiates.
Because originally, the test would show positive
if you had 300 nanograms per milliliter in your urine,
but in 1998, the US government raised the limit by almost seven times
to try and eliminate false positives.
The thing is, I actually want one, so I gotta go do my homework.
Luckily for me, you can still get 300 nanogram tests online.
And so I ordered some on Amazon and they are...
already here because I did this a while ago, and that was totally fake.
I think it's good to point out that these tests
can't actually [doorbell] tell the dosages of alkaloids...
That doorbell was very convenient timing!
I think it's good to point out that these tests cannot tell the dosages
of any of our alkaloids, only the presence or not.
But the ones I got on Amazon are specifically at that 300 level.
To make sure the cheapo drug tests are not always false positive,
I made an appointment to get a real drug test.
Then I set up the camera,
I grabbed some bagels from that local bagelry,
I sliced 'em up,
I toasted 'em, as is my preferred way to eat bagels.
I know you're not supposed to toast fresh bagels,
but it looks so cool on camera!
And then I ate them two hours before I tested myself,
because you have to wait for them to metabolise for the drug test guidelines.
YouTube's content policies say that I can't actually show you the urine part of this,
so here's an approximation of what's happening.
Here are the resulted tests...
and I totally failed!
I tested positive at home at 12 hours, 24 hours, 36 hours,
but then negative at 48 hours.
And of course I repeated the experiment and tested positive again.
So let's understand how this works.
In the case of opiates, there are two ways to detect
if a human has consumed the drug,
firstly, you can look for the drug itself in your system,
but you can also look for byproducts of the body's metabolization
of the psychoactive phenanthrene compounds and alkaloids present in poppy milk.
And when your body breaks those down, you get all of these different things.
And in fact, almost 7% of humans can't even fully metabolise something like heroin.
So they have to detect a completely different chemical in the body.
This is why drug testing is so important and has to be so specific.
Either way, these should be detectable in your system for between 48 and 60 hours,
according to the US Doping Agency.
And it depends on how much you consume, I would imagine,
because your body only metabolises it at a set rate.
So now we know that I can get a false positive at home
with these tests that I bought on the internet.
The question is, can I test positive for morphine and other opiates,
by going to a real lab out in the real world?
And there's only one way to find out and that's to go to my appointment.
Unfortunately, the only appointment left at the official lab was so early in the morning.
Because of the two hour window to eat the bagels and have them metabolise,
I had to get up so early, buy them,
and then I could head to the lab to get my official test.
Okay, here we go.
I can't actually film in the lab for obvious reasons,
but I think you probably all know what's happening.
I'm really excited to fail. Is that weird?
I think it's weird.
At that point, I have to wait three to five days to get my results.
My report on my phone 'cause, I know, classic 2020.
Negative for cocaine, oxycodone, methadone...
Opiates.
Positive!
Positive for opiates, for codeine and for morphine!
I did it.
I failed a drug test!
Both the at home and in-lab tests showed false positives for poppy seeds,
which means it can happen to anyone.
A Maryland mom was rushed to the hospital to give birth
and she was told that she had tested positive for opiates.
The hospital took her baby away from her for five days,
but in reality, she had just eaten poppy seeds.
And I've seen this go wrong in my own life and in my own family,
and maybe you have too.
Drug testing is expensive and it's difficult.
And failing one can be devastating, especially if it's a false positive,
which as we know can happen.
It's a balancing act.
If the threshold is too low, we get those false positives,
too high, and the test is basically useless.
So now that we know we can get a false positive, both at home and in the lab at 300 nanograms,
what should we do about it?
If you ever do have a false positive, the first thing you should do
now that you know how this works, is get tested again,
because it will metabolise out sooner
because of the low dosages that you're going to be consuming,
if you've just eaten poppy seeds.
Remember, I only false-positived for 36 hours.
Or as backup, keep Instagramming your breakfast choices,
you know, 'cause then nobody is going to doubt that you're eating
'cause you're just, you know, posting it.
Thanks for tuning in, I'm Trace and I'll see you in the future. Anyway, what do you think?
Delicious(!) ...it's been here for so long.
- Go check out Trace's channel!
You could start with his series on brain-computer interfaces
or on humanity heading for the stars.
I have no idea how he keeps his energy levels that high all the time.
Next week, we're headed to Australia
to talk about satellites with someone who reminds me a little bit of younger-me.