How Long Does Cocaine Stay in Your System?

When a person asks how long does cocaine stay in your system, they are asking a somewhat different question than how long does Coke stay in your body. Let me explain why.

Cocaine in the Human Body

When a person usually asks how long cocaine stays in your system they are most likely thinking of the short term prospect of how long cocaine can be detected in one's blood or urine.

What a person typically asks how long cocaine is in your body this is more of a long-term question such as how long cocaine can be detected in your hair follicles. Of course, many people, especially addicts wonder how long Coke stays at the cellular level in the nervous system and one's brain.

In the short term, cocaine can be detected in one's body through blood or urine tests from 1 - 5 days with the average testing equipment. But cocaine produces benzoylecgonine in the body and this can be detected by short-term blood and urine tests for up to 22 days.

The duration of short-term testing depends upon the amount cocaine consumed, the frequency, body weight, male or female, age, rate of metabolism, whether it was huffed, puffed, snorted, ingested or injected. Other medicines you may be taking also may bind with the cocaine and have an effect of how long this keeps in your system.

Now if you ask how long is Coke in your body, then this suggests a long-term worry and a different set of tests that check for this. Cocaine can stay in the hair follicles typically for 3 to 6 months. But this only suggests the length of time it can be detected by drug lab tests.

The Side Effects of Long-Term Use of Cocaine

As many neurologists, clinical psychologists and addicts themselves will attest, cocaine may stay in the body at the neurological and cellular level forever. "Once an addict, always an addict" is a statement often heard in rehab.

Experts say that cocaine changes the brain chemistry and the chemistry at the neuromuscular level. This means that even though cocaine may not be detected in the body by common hair follicle tests it stays in the body forever.

This is why cocaine addicts can go on the wagon for years, falloff, and then fall into a full blown cocaine addiction again rather than becoming a casual user. Of course there is also new technology being developed to check how long Coke is contained within the body and early tests show that coke can be detected for up to 25 years.

These tests may one day affect employment, insurance, the criminal justice system and many other areas of life that one cannot yet comprehend. Most addicts only think about the short-term benefits of using cocaine and not the long-term consequences. And, then reality sets in and that lasts a very long time.