How Long Does Crack Cocaine Stay In Your Urine?

Crack cocaine is a form of white powder cocaine that has been crystallized and broken into rock-like fragments that can be smoked.

Hair tests can detect crack cocaine in your body for years, long after you have detoxed. But how long does cocaine stay in your urine?

It depends on a number of factors, including:

• how often you use crack cocaine
• how much you take when you use cocaine
• how long you have experienced cocaine addiction

Detecting Cocaine In The Urine

A drug screen for cocaine is commonly a urine test because it is an easy test to complete and has a longer time frame for detection than other testing methods like a saliva test or blood test.

Urine tests will often be used, for example, in intensive outpatient programs to ensure a patient completes cocaine detox.

Urine Test

When enzymes metabolize cocaine, they break the drug down into compounds called metabolites, including benzoylecgonine and others.

Urine tests for cocaine typically can detect cocaine metabolites for two to four days after the last use of the stimulant drug.

However, for people who heavily use cocaine, the drug can be detected in urine drug screens for as long as 14 days after the last use.

Crack Cocaine Half-Life

The half-life of cocaine is about one hour, which means it takes about an hour for your body to metabolize half of the amount of cocaine that you took.

This means that the more cocaine you ingest, the longer it will take your body to process the drug. This is why it can be detected longer in your urine with a large amount of cocaine than if you take a comparatively small amount.

Factors That Influence Crack Detection Times In Urine

There are many different factors that can influence the detection times of cocaine in urine. These factors can include everything from what you eat to other substances that you take with cocaine.

Liver Function

Liver (and kidney) impairment can interfere with detection times for a urine cocaine drug screening.
One of the side effects of cocaine is damage to the liver. This means, among other things, that the liver has difficulty metabolizing drugs or the inability to metabolize them at all.

Diet

What you eat or drink can also have an impact on the detection time of cocaine in your urine, because all substances you consume are being metabolized to exit your system.

For example, caffeine can bind to cocaine metabolites and cause them to exit more slowly. This can increase the amount of time for detection.

Length Of Use

Cocaine can build up in your system. Length and frequency of use create more cocaine metabolites for you to get rid of, lengthening how long cocaine stays in your system.

Body Fat

Body fat can also increase the length of time cocaine can be detected in your urine, because the cocaine metabolite benzoylecgonine can be stored in fat tissue.

The more body fat you have, the more likely it is that detection windows for cocaine will increase.

Use Of Other Substances

Other forms of substance use with cocaine can impact detection time. For example, drinking alcohol with cocaine can increase detection time.

Method Of Abuse

The method of crack cocaine use can also affect detection time. Basically, the more quickly it gets into your system, the more quickly it leaves.

Smoking or injecting crack cocaine initiates the high the quickest, so it also leaves promptly in comparison to snorting it.

Treatment Options For Crack Cocaine Addiction

Unlike opioid use disorder, there is no medication-assisted treatment for cocaine. Evidence-based therapy is the treatment option that provides the best success.

Treatment programs for crack cocaine must address mental health issues that arise because of the intense psychological addiction that forms around the drug, as well as withdrawal symptoms and side effects.

Find Crack Cocaine Treatment At Bedrock Recovery Center

At Bedrock Recovery Center, a treatment center on the east coast, we know how important it is to resolve the underlying psychological problems that have led you or your loved one to cocaine substance abuse.

It takes time and persistence, but we can guide you from active drug addiction to lasting sobriety.
Call our helpline and start your addiction recovery today.