Have you taken Lortab and are worried about not passing a drug test as a result? Can taking Lortab cause you to fail a drug test? Yes! Since it’s an opioid, Lortab will show up on almost all drug test results if you took it recently. So how long does Lortab stay in your system? What’s the Lortab half life? What can you do if you’ve taken Lortab but need to pass a drug test? Keep reading to learn the answers to all these questions and more.
What Is Lortab?
Lortab is a brand name mixture of acetaminophen and hydrocodone. Hydrocodone is an opioid pain medication while acetaminophen (the active ingredient in Tylenol) is another pain medication that increases hydrocodone’s effects.
Lortab is prescribed for short-term pain relief, but it has also begun to be used recreationally since it can get users high. Lortab, like other narcotic pain medications, can be highly addictive, even at regular doses, and the possibility of addiction increases if you use the drug recreationally.
How Long Does Lortab Stay in Your System?
You’ll begin to feel the effects of Lortab about 30 minutes after you first take, and, for most people, the effects of the drug last about four to six hours. How long does a Lortab stay in your system? The Lortab half life is about 3.8 hours, which means after that amount of time, about half the Lortab you originally took will still be in your system.
Exactly how long Lortab stays in your system depends on multiple factors, which we discuss more in the next section. The chart below shows about how long you can expect Lortab to be detected by different types of drug tests.
| Test | How Long Detectable Levels Remain |
| Urine | 6 hours-3 days |
| Blood | 1-3 days |
| Hair | Up to 90 days |
Urine tests are the most common way to test for Lortab. How long does Lortab stay in urine? You can generally expect to pass a urine test about three days after you took Lortab, although it could be as quickly as six hours after taking it. Lortab stays in your bloodstream for about three days as well. Lortab lasts the longest in hair, and it can take up to three months after you last took Lortab for you to pass a hair follicle test.
What Affects How Long Lortab Stays in Your System?
There is no way to exactly predict how long Lortab will stay in your system since it depends on many factors. Below are three of the most important.
Your History of Narcotic Use
The biggest factor that affects how long Lortab stays in your system is if you have a history of using narcotics/opioids. People who have used narcotics heavily or for a long time, regardless of whether they were prescribed the drugs or used them recreationally, will have Lortab and other narcotics stay in their system longer. In the cases of particularly heavy users, it can take a few weeks after last taking a narcotic before they pass a urine or blood test. This is because your body’s tolerance to narcotics increases the more you take them and they will remain in your body longer.
Your Age and Weight
Younger people typically have a faster metabolism than older people, which means their bodies will process and remove Lortab from their systems faster. Also, the more Lortab you take compared to your BMI (body mass index), the slower it’ll be removed from your system, and the longer it’ll take for you to pass a drug test. This means Lortab typically stays at detectable levels in smaller people longer than people who weigh more.
How Much Lortab You Take
The amount of Lortab you take will also affect how long it stays in your system. If you take a large dose of Lortab, it will remain in your body longer than a smaller dose since your body has to metabolize and remove more of the drug from your body, and this can only happen so fast.
How Can You Get Lortab Out of Your System Faster?
Since Lortab is an opiate, all major drug test kits will include a test for it and other opioids. If you have a drug test coming up and you’ve recently taken Lortab, is there anything you can do to get it out of your system faster so you’ll pass the test? If you know when you have a drug test coming up, the best option is to avoid Lortab for at least three days beforehand to make sure you pass the test.
You can also try drinking more water than usual to try and flush the Lortab out of your system, but this isn’t guaranteed to work. Don’t start guzzling all the water you can handle, since that can make you feel sick and lead to other issues, but aim to drink 1-2 glasses of water each hour a day or two before the drug test.
There are lots of products marketed as guaranteed ways to get a clean drug test, but you should be extremely skeptical of them. Drug tests have become very sophisticated in the past few decades, so it’s much harder to get a falsely clean test result. Also, these products aren’t regulated, so many of them are useless at best and can cause serious health issues in the worst cases since you have no idea what you’re ingesting to try and get a clean test. Again, the best thing you can do to pass your drug test is avoid Lortab for a few days before the test.