Exact Answer: Ninety Days
As a person ages, their health goes on degrading. With age, there are many illnesses that a person acquires. If not diseases, a person will for sure have pains in different parts of the body. It even seems in people of any age these days.
No matter if it is a youngster or an elder, they are prone to any pain. There are different types of pain. It can be either headaches or joint pains etc. The severity of the pain is also different for every individual.
To fight the pain caused by different aspects there are a lot of medications available in the market. One of them is hydrocodone.
How Long Does Hydrocodone Stay In System?
There are multiple medicines available in the market that can work as a painkiller for different severity of pain. Some are OTC that is Over The Counter medication. OTC medicines can be available without any prescription from a doctor. Then, there are medicines that a doctor prescribes upon diagnosis of a disease.
Hydrocodone on its own is a prescription opioid to treat pain. It comes to use when no other medications can provide relief from pain. Hydrocodone can provide relief for moderate to severe pain. It gets prescribed to treat pain caused due to an injury or for pain relating to cancer treatments.
When hydrocodone gets ingested, it activates the mu opiate in the body. Hence, it blocks out the feeling of pain. Many brands use hydrocodone in composition with other formulas like ibuprofen. The market name for such medicines is as follows:
- Lorcet
- Norca
- Vicodin
It is a fact that whenever something gets ingested into the human body, it takes time to leave the system. It is the same with medication as well. When any medicine that gets consumed, the traces are there in the body longer than the effect. Different medication takes different duration to leave the body. Leaving the body means that there are no traces left when the multiple tests get done.
Hydrocodone will stay in the body for a maximum of ninety days. If a hair follicle test gets done, there will not be any trace of hydrocodone that will be present.
| Test Administered | Traces To Be Found After The Last Dose |
| Saliva | Up to 36 hours |
| Urine | Up to 4 days |
| Hair | Up to 90 days |
Why Does Hydrocodone Stay In The System For That Long?
Medication that gets ingested into a human body stays in the system for some time. It is so that the cause gets treated. After that, it takes some more time to leave the system because of the mechanism of the human body.
Other than the mechanism of the human body, the composition of the medicine determines how long it will stay in the body and after what time there will be no traces that can get found. That is the reason why some medicines have remnants that takes much longer to leave.
Apart from the composition, the metabolism rate of an individual also plays a vital role in determining why hydrocodone stays that long in the human system. The reason is every individual has a different body that metabolites medicines in different periods. The higher the metabolism rate, the shorter the duration for which hydrocodone will be in the system and vice-versa.
The other factor is the dosage of hydrocodone that is getting ingested into the body. The higher the dosage, the more time it will take for hydrocodone to get flushed out of the body. Other aspects too can come into the picture, like the weight of an individual. Or if any other medication is getting used along with hydrocodone. Addiction to alcohol is another reason that might cause the hydrocodone to be in the system for long.
Conclusion
Medicines have become an imminent part of human life. There are a number of other reasons due to which opioids get ingested in the human body. Once administered, it works within the body.
Since it’s how a body works, after some time, the medicine gets eliminated from the body. The elimination is forever unless it gets consumed again. It will take longer for the hydrocodone to leave the body because of the condition of the liver too.
References
- https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Edward-Cone-2/publication/23104652_Comparative_metabolism_of_hydrocodone_in_man_rat_guinea_pig_rabbit_and_dog/links/551328640cf2eda0df2f094a/Comparative-metabolism-of-hydrocodone-in-man-rat-guinea-pig-rabbit-and-dog.pdf
- https://academic.oup.com/jat/article/37/8/486/777447?login=true