How To Beat a Piss Test Using the K2 Method

Overview

I recently had to take a 5 panel piss test as a precondition for employment. I ended up passing using basically the N2 Dilution method (which I include at the end of this article) which is probably sufficient. I am just paranoid (note paranoia is a relative concept since if everybody IS out to get you you are not paranoid, you are right) so I added a bunch of other stuff to this process to be extra safe. To quote Sir Isaac Newton "If I have seen further it is only by standing on the shoulders of giants".  I have a surface knowledge of many subjects but I have zero knowledge of chemistry since I never attended high school and only a few years of college (I passed a GED) so please forgive me if I do not explain the chemistry involved properly. 

The process I am about to describe takes about 5 days so it is not recommended if you have less than 5 days to prepare. It is probably overkill, but I have friends who have abstained for 60 days and still failed so I feel abstinence by itself is not adequate. I personally passed one about 20 years ago by abstaining 30 days and they say weed has a half life of about 45 days but based on your personal chemistry (% of body fat, metabolic rate, etc) your mileage may vary. 

If you want you can skip to the 'Process' section as the next few sections are simply background information and my ranting against the concept of drug testing for marijuana. 

The Philosophy

I am an old hippie. I have been smoking weed over 50 years now and it is my drug of choice. Not only did I encourage my kids to smoke weed rather than any other drug (including alcohol) I always taught my children that if you can't quit something for 30 days then you probably have a problem. I also believe if a company drug tests for weed then I probably don't want to work for them but as they say, "a drowning man will grab even at the tip of a sword" and so as I have gotten older and am now experiencing age discrimination in the workplace as well as the financial strains of preparing for retirement I find I no longer have the luxury of being particular and so while I would prefer Abbie Hoffmann's advice (bring in a vile of battery acid and blow the machine up) I now find myself having to play the game. 

I think it is stupid to drug test for weed. I have seen no harmful effects and have never considered it even when I owned my own companies. If I need to rely on a drug test to determine if someone is not doing their job I am a poor manager. At the time of this writing nearly half the states in the US have some form of legal marijuana and hopefully in the future it will be legalized at the federal level. Unfortunately the drug companies and alcohol manufacturers have some powerful lobbying behind them so it may still take a while. 

The Chemistry

Passing a piss test requires taking into consideration several components; body fat, THC content and urine gravity. 

First there is the percentage content of THC in the sample. THC typically has a half life of 45 days which means in most cases it should be below the acceptable level after 45 days if you abstain for the entire 45 day period, however, I have friends with high body fat levels who have failed a drug test applying to NASA after abstaining for 60 days so this in itself may not be adequate which is one of the reasons why I am writing this article. 

Your metabolic rate (how fast you burn fat) contributes to how quickly fat is burned out of your system so if you are a heavy set person who does not exercise (like me) you will lose THC more slowly than someone who is skinny and exercises a lot. In general women and skinny people have a high metabolic rate while fat males have a slower metabolic rate. I am a fat male. 

Using this knowledge we can start exercising about 5 days before the drug test (burn old fat out of the body) and then the day before the test we stop exercising and start ingesting new fat. About a day before the test we start ingesting fatty foods like cheeseburgers, potato chips, cheese, sausage, etc. This will cause the new fat to take over and it is this fat rather than the older stored fat which will show up more in the drug screen. So to summarize, about a week before the test exercise as much as you can and then a day or so before the test stop exercising and start eating a fat heavy diet. In my case I hate exercise so I simply walked at a fast pace about a mile a day (I am a very slothful individual) up until the day before the test. For three days before the test I tried to avoid fatty foods and the day before the test I ate 2 bacon double cheese burgers for lunch and the night before the test I ate a bunch of chips and dip and cheese and crackers. On the day of the test I ate a sausage and egg muffin about 2 hours before the test.

Second, there is the THC content in the sample. It would be wonderful if we could ingest something that would bind with the THC molecules and pull them out of the system when you evacuate (go to the bathroom). If this binding also caused the THC to appear weaker this could be beneficial and so to this end I used something called Sonne's #7. I am not endorsing this detox method over any other, it is simply the one I used. There are others which may be more effective and I am not aware of them. This particular solution is the one I used so I include it here based on my personal experience. From what I understand, the active metabolite (which is effectively clay) will bind to the THC molecules and help mask the THC. How, I do not know as I am not very well versed in basic chemistry. I simply mixed 5 tablespoons of Sonne's #7 with an 8 oz glass of water each morning and each evening for the five day period (including the day of the test) and drank it. The recommended dosage is one table spoon for each 50 lbs of body weight and I weigh about 200 lbs. FYI, I am also about 5' 11" tall. 

Third is the urine gravity, for lack of a better term. What this means is when they analyze the urine they look for markers which tell them how dense the urine is. If you simply drink a bunch of water your urine will be too diluted and they will think you are trying to hide something (which you are) and you will fail. One of the markers they use is creatine. The objective here is to do what's known as 'creatine loading', which will increase the creatine levels in your urine above the normal levels which is fine since we are going to ultimately submit a diluted sample so hopefully the higher than normal level will end up looking normal. Creatine comes from a variety of foods (red meats, beans, etc) and so in my case I ate rare steaks for dinner the three nights before the test and I ate roast beef sandwiches for lunch. I also bought creatine powder and took the recommended dosage for the entire 5 day period (including the day of the test) which is to say that immediately before I exercised I put 2 scoops in an 8oz glass of Gatorade and shook it well, then exercised, then I put 2 scoops in an 8oz glass of Gatorade after I exercised and drank it again. Why Gatorade instead of water? To also help with the urine gravity as I assumed Gatorade was a little heavier than water (every little bit helps). 

I drank 64oz of Gatorade every day of the 5 day process (which is probably not entirely necessary but creatine loading can dehydrate you a bit) and noticed my urine became extremely clear. To combat this I ingested vitamin B12 (which is recommended as part of the N2 Dilution method) each day as well as taking in about 10 times the daily dose the morning of the test. Even though I tried increased dosages and crushing the tablets to combat the time release aspect of them, to be perfectly honest I never really saw yellow urine the entire time, mine was always clear. I believe the B12 also helps with the urine gravity as described in the N2 method. 

These are the three general areas I focused on and how I went about dealing with them. It should also be noted I abstained for about 2 weeks (14 days) before the drug test. I would have preferred to wait an entire 30-45 days but that was not an option in my case but if possible give yourself as much time as possible. 

The Process

First, abstain for as long as possible. Obviously the longer the better. Then, about 5 days before your test …

Day 1: Go to the bathroom (both if possible) when you wake up and before anything else take your dose of Sonne's #7 (or equivalent) and wait an hour. Next (maybe around lunch time) mix your creatine powder with Gatorade and drink it, then do your exercise, then take another dose of creatine mixed with Gatorade. Try to ingest as little fat in your daily diet as possible. Also try to drink some water and/or Gatorade during the day as creatine may dehydrate you a bit. Finally, before bed at night take a second dose (mixed with water) of your Sonne's #7. I also started taking double the daily dose (2,000mg) of vitamin B12 each day. 

Days 2 and 3: The same as above but start eating a creatine heavy diet. In my case this was a roast beef sandwich for lunch and rare steak for dinner. Also try to eat lean cuts of meat. If your not a meat eater try to figure out what creation heavy foods you can eat. 

Day 4: We are now a day away from our test. Do the same as the previous day (including meat for lunch and dinner) but here we can start ingesting some new fat. In my case I switched out the roast beef sandwich for lunch with 2 bacon double cheeseburgers. I also ate potato chips and dip and cheese and crackers during the day and before I went to bed. 

Day 5: This is the day of the test. Basically follow the N2 Dilution method described below (using Gatorade instead of water) but in my case I also ate a sausage and an egg muffin for breakfast and a bacon cheeseburger right before the test. This is the morning I also crushed up about 10 times the daily does of vitamin B12 (10,000mg!) and mixed it with Gatorade. Also note I did not take aspirin which is the recommended first step. 

I took my test around noon so I had to start around 8AM that day. I pee'd in the cup and about 3 hours later I got the call that I had passed. It was an annoying process but I start work on Monday so all I can say is it worked for me. Hope this helps and good luck. 

The N2 Dillution Method

Note this was copied from marijuana.com.

I would have posted this there but I have been waiting over 3 weeks to get my account approved.

    DILUTION: aka WATER LOADING

    FOR BEST RESULTS ABSTAIN FOR A BARE MINIMUM OF 48 HOURS BEFORE THE TEST AND THE LONGER, OF COURSE, THE BETTER YOUR CHANCES.

    Time permitting, 2-3 days before the test you will want to begin raising you Creatinine levels. Creatine, which metabolizes into Creatinine in 24-48 hours, can be raised with red meat and/or Creatine supplement, available on line or at nutritional food stores. The amounts of Creatinine metabolites are measured as part of the urine integrity check (the check to see if the sample is urine and if it is diluted). Creatinine level must be 20mg/dl or greater. 200-250mg/dl ranges are ‘my’ normal. 

    Step 1. 4-12 hours before the test take 4 aspirin (not Tylenol or Advil). This step may be repeated every 4-6 hours up until 4 hours before the test.

    Step 2. 3-4 hours before your test, start by drinking 2, 8oz. glasses of water. Water can be substituted for with Cranberry or fruit juice, teas or even soft drinks. Then drink another 8oz. every 15 minutes for the next hour for a total of 6 glasses of water (48oz).

    Step 3. In about 1 - 2 hours (depending on your system) you should be voiding ‘clear’ urine about every 15 - 20 minutes. Continue to drink 3-4 oz. more water to replace what you've voided every 20-30 minutes.

    Step 4. 1-2 hours before the test, take vitamin B2 or B complex (about 10 times the daily recommended dosage). If the vitamins are time release, crush them before taking. You may also take vitamin B with each glass of water, 2 times the daily dosage, if you find it easier.

    That's it. Within 30 - 45 minutes of taking your vitamins, if you took your vitamin B in 1 dose, your pee should turn from clear to "vitamin" yellow and remain so for the next 2-4 voids. Be sure you have voided diluted urine at least 3-4 times before you test. It is always best to do a practice run as everyone is different and times may vary. Good luck, remember to post your results, and don’t forget that a diluted results, while not the results wanted, IS NOT a failed results but may require a re-test. For more info on diluting/water loading, go to http://www.dot.gov/ost/dapc/main/waterloading.pdf

    Hope that helps!!! N2

    PS There is no absolutely 100% effective dilution method. That includes ‘detox’, ‘xxx carbo’ or ‘super flush’ magic potions. But these guidelines will, IMHO, work as well as ANY magic potion, better than many magic potions and you got it here for FREE$$$$$$$

Evolution and Religion

Some people confuse Darwinism (or Natural Selection) with evolution. They are two very different concepts.

The concept of evolution is more of a religious issue than one of science. It is different based on the belief system one holds. In fact, from a philosophical perspective, evolution is not evolution at all. 

The ancient Romans believed each successive generation of man was weaker than their predecessors. Man started in the golden age, devolved to the silver age, followed by the bronze age, etc. Their concept of the evolution of man was actually devolution. 

Evolution is the belief that a species evolves over time towards some goal. Unfortunately not everybody agrees on what that goal actually is. Most Western religions tend to view man's evolution as the descent from perfection into chaos. The belief that man evolves towards a more perfect being over successive generations is actually a concept more closely aligned with Eastern and New Age religions. 

Natural Selection (informally known as Darwinism) is similar if the goal is defined as advantageous adaption to changes in the organism's environment, but it is important to note there are no religious connotations here. Man is just another species which has no control over how it will adapt to its environment. As a species man is not evolving towards a goal, he is simply adapting to changes in his environment. 

This is why it is incorrect to say that religion and evolution can not coexist. Evolution is just another religion if the goal is anything other than adapting to one's surroundings. 

Physical Thought, not AI

To a certain extent, any computer program by definition includes some level of artificial intelligence since the inherent concepts are human in nature to begin with. Computer programming languages may be thought of as nothing more than the codification of how we think we think. The behavior of the programs we create is simply a reflection of the behaviors we see in our everyday lives. When we program connections, electrical or otherwise, we are simply imparting our intelligence onto the entity. The entity is already by definition an artificial representation of our human intelligence. It is constructed to represent human behaviors. It is already artificially intelligent so perhaps a better term for the phenomena currently known as artificial intelligence might be physical thought. 

Physical rather than artificial because physical implies movement between connections while artificial implies not real, however, a robot is a real entity programmed by humans so I prefer something that connotes physical connections because to a certain extent that is all we are doing really, is designing interconnected systems and programming them.

Thought rather than intelligence because physical entities may be programmed to perform behaviors we could consider intelligent, like beating a human at chess, however, this is more a feat of knowledge than of intelligence. In fact we really don't know how to measure intelligence yet, we tend to design tests that measure knowledge rather than intelligence. Intelligence is a difficult concept to put a boundary around. 

Thought, on the other hand implies consideration or rationalization. We often add the ability to learn to this but learning is actually a different concept. Learning is more mechanical in nature than thought. Learning can be accomplished mechanically by adjusting weighted values in response to inputs over time but thought is a more abstract concept. 

Regardless, it is the case that whatever we create will be uniquely human in its approach to the world whether we call it artificial intelligence or physical thought, it is simply going about its business in a very humanistic manner because humans designed it and humans only know how they think humans think. Humans don't know how other forms of intelligence think; yet. 

Maybe You Shouldn't Kill Yourself Today

The easy way out. 

About 20 years into my career I found myself at an unfortunate crossroads. I had spent the first 10 years of my career as a computer programmer. After 10 years I decided it was the sales and marketing guys who had it made so I decided to switch over to sales and marketing. I worked my way up to the point where I was the Director of Sales and Marketing at a company called Aptek Williams but after several years for some strange reason (which is typically the case in my life) one day I just up and quit. Turns out its easier for programmers to find work than it is for folks at a director level to find work and so pretty soon I found myself broke and going through my second divorce. My wife at the time who was not working decided to take the only car we had when she left and so I had to borrow money (which I absolutely hate to do) from a friend just to buy a car. I had decided to get back into programming (my one true love) but nobody would hire me because I had not been programming for about 10 years as it was determined my skills were outdated (which in retrospect was true) and so here I was at around 40 years old, with 4 sons no money and no job. 

Now some folks cherish life to the point where they will do anything to avoid the inevitable end (like not skydiving, eating healthy, etc) but that's not me. I have had an odd fascination with death and since my early 20s (perhaps from reading too much Poe), it is really not something I fear as much as some folks do I suspect. Obviously this is a childish perspective and not something I am proud of but where I have grown as a person is in the concern for the effect it would have on those who love me. It has become apparent that my death will very much hurt my children and a small set of other individuals and so it is almost more out of concern for them that I will fight to the end, but for me alone, it is not a natural act. And so it was when back around 1997 I found myself at a point in my life where it seemed a quick bullet through the roof of my mouth would be more pleasurable then trying to recover from the debt I had accumulated and was accumulating on a daily basis. 

Eventually I found a friend in Georgia who decided to take a chance on my programming abilities and so around June of 1997 I moved what was left of my family up to Georgia and began work at a company called American Megatrends (AMI) writing device drivers for RAID controllers. It was a tough life though because the pay was low and the bills were killing me. To say I was living check to check would be euphemistic because after that year I was probably about fifty thousand dollars in debt and it wasn't getting any smaller. Suicide was a constant thought and I truly believed this had become my destiny; to struggle through my life and die poor. I was willing to do almost anything to break out of this depressing cycle and so when a co-worker told me about a technology start up (which at the time were few and far between in Georgia) I jumped at the opportunity to take a cut in pay and go to work at a 10 person company. Of course just as had been the case for most of my life even this decision seemed hexed from the start. Within two months I was told if we couldn't sell the company in the next month or so I would be let go since I was the newest employee.  

There is a saying that it is always darkest before the dawn and so I'll wrap up this narrative quickly but please keep that thought in mind. Sometime around a month later the company I was working for was acquired by Amazon.com, another start up, but quite a bit larger than ours. We were all offered a $250,000.00 sign on bonus just to report to work. Amazon relocated me, put me and my sons up in a beautiful rental house in Bellevue Washington, rented me a new Mustang and put me to work around a bunch of whiz kids who made me feel stupid. Other than feeling stupid, life was excellent. I paid off my debts, paid cash for a house near Orlando Florida, got my sons through high school and out of the house and about five years later I retired to my new house in Orlando with wife number three. So I guess the message here is that even when things are at their lowest and you are positive nothing can help, even if it seems death would be the easiest way out and best for all involved, remember, your life can turn around in an instant but you will never know that if you take the easy way out.

ADDENDUM

After reading this post it seems to convey that I am feeling sorry for myself so let me make it clear I believe we are all masters of our own destiny. I blame nobody for nothing but since that is probably logically equivalent to "I blame everybody for everything" I guess subconsciously maybe I do feel sorry for myself :-)

Strange Life

When I was young, maybe 8-12 years old, one day a vision of my future came to me and it has never changed. I find this odd.

I lived in upper New York state at the time and absolutely hated everything about my life as many youngsters do at that age. I guess to keep from shooting up the place I invented in my mind a vision of a future for myself where I lived in Fort Lauderdale on the beach, with a red sports car and a blond wife. Beyond my parking lot was a beach and the ocean. I had absolutely no idea how I would acquire any of these things, but I distinctly recall my vision because it has never left me.

When I initially moved to Florida I could not afford to live on the beach but after my first divorce I rented an apartment on the ocean in Hallandale Florida. Though I was finally on the beach,  it was not what I had envisioned for myself. Internally I knew this is not where I was to end up (whatever that means).

Around 2003 I thought I would retire to my home in DeLand Florida which I did but again, it just did not feel right. DeLand is 18 miles inland from Daytona Beach and though we looked at houses on the beach in Daytona, nothing we evaluated matched my vision. That and my wife's disdain for country living brought us to Pompano Beach Florida on A1A.

We have been here nearly 15 years now and I suspect this is where I will be when I decide to move on to the next stage of my life.

This picture was taken just outside my front door looking East with my red mustang in the foreground and the beach just beyond the condos across the street. I have had this vision in my mind for over 50 years now.

The Meaning of Life

I have always believed the meaning of life is a recursive definition.

The meaning of life is to discover the meaning of life.

I do not say this sarcastically but rather to point out that it is perhaps the case that we all come from and return to the same place, the same ONE, if you will, since energy is never destroyed but rather it is redistributed.

Yet it seems while we are one with the whole we are also individual in ways that transcend our physical being. Perhaps we are alive to learn to break through the screen of the senses, to experience while in a body the transcendent self we truly are.

To me, this has always seemed more likely than the belief that we are just the result of a series of random mutations. If not a series of random mutations, then are we evolving towards god (perfection) or devolving away from god (chaos), but in either case does it even have to be this way at all? Maybe its simply we are, as we always have been, and always will be.

It is entirely possible that the energy we use to produce thought is not required to be bound to the physical entity it inhabits. The fact that it is, is more a benefit than a burden (though many don't see life this way).

And so if we look at life in this way we can begin to see what is really important. It is not the material wealth we accumulate, the knowledge we acquire, the good deeds we think we have done. It is the net positive effect you have had on the whole. The validation that this was energy well spent so maybe in the future you may get a chance to pick your parents again.

But how do we accomplish this? How do we improve the whole from which we are borne? I have no fucking idea, but its a good question.

Knowledge Weight

When I think of AI I do not think of things like making a robot run or a program that can beat a human at chess. While these are difficult enough I consider them more mechanical in nature. 

My interest in AI has always been writing code that can emulate human thought. I do not believe we can ever write a program that thinks like a human because as a programmer I know a coder must understand the algorithm before he can program a computer to do it and to the best of my knowledge we still don't know the meaning of life so I don't know how we could write a program to live, but I digress. 

Part of the reason it is so difficult to model human thought is because we really don't quite understand everything around us yet and so we are not really sure how we actually accomplish a lot of what goes into the act of thinking. 

Just to be clear, in my opinion, humans think by manipulating concepts. In my world view everything is a concept. In fact our language, while conforming to various grammatical rules is typically spoken in idioms which seem to me to be a bit closer to the concept of a concept :-)

Now the problem with abstracting out knowledge stems in part from the issues we typically run into regarding reference. I have expounded on this in other writings in more detail, so just to summarize, a reference to a living human becomes a reference to a null object if the human is cremated. What should be left rather than a reference to a non existent human is a reference to a concept. Coupled with the concept of aliasing we can then deal with statements like "Samuel Clemmons was the writer known as Mark Twain" a bit easier.

But this alone still leaves us with issues like how do we even know that Samuel Clemmons actually existed? There is a belief among some that the combined works of William Shakepshere were not really an individual's writings but rather a collection of different individual's work over the years. In this way we can also deal with the concept of William Shakepshere, who in either case no longer walks among us. 

Which brings us to the topic of this post which is 'just how sure are we of what we think we know'? Now the process by which we accumulate knowledge is a far deeper discussion than I can go into here though it is obviously related but for now we will focus only on the strength of the knowledge we have. The knowledge weight.  

Consider how sure we are a person is alive when we believe to be in their presence. Let's call this 99%. We are almost positive (only because I don't believe in absolutes) the person before us is our uncle, for example. Now compare that with how sure we are we that person is alive five minutes after we just got off the phone with them versus someone we haven't spoken to in six years. So as we can see, there are varying weights we can give to knowledge based on various other factors. 

By the way, another reason why I say 99% and never 100% is because the person before us could be an impostor. They could be someone who looks just like the person we think we know. We could be fooled. If we didn't interact with them, and perhaps just passed them on the street we could be less sure. So knowledge may have weight. But there are classes of knowledge so maybe it would be better to categorize knowledge and then add a weight to that. 

For example, I think I know my friend Bob because when I am in his presence I can see, feel and  hear him. I recognize him from a combination of attributes and mannerisms. I also think I know that someone named Ghengis Khan existed at some point in time. They are two different categories of knowledge; direct and indirect. Anything my father told me is indirect knowledge. Anything I have physically interacted with is of a different category and within these categories I can assign a weight.