And Now, My Beauties, Something With Poison in it, I Think.

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Chemistry of Morphine, Heroin, and Lemon Poppy Seed Cake

You’ve heard the warnings – don’t eat poppy seeds before taking a drug test. The seeds can trigger a false positive reading for opioids, making your potential employer think you could be a heroin addict. A few years back, Mythbusters reproduced the anecdotes, showing that just two poppy seed bagels was enough to make Jamie test positive for drugs. (Other studies have shown the same thing.)

I like saying that I eat poppy seed bagels for the plausible deniability whenever I’m within earshot of my boss.

4 thoughts on “And Now, My Beauties, Something With Poison in it, I Think.”

  1. Its strange how i somehow knew this 😉

    just blame subway for the huge amount of heroin in your system, never fails 😛

  2. Employers are catching on, though. After my last positive test, my boss says he’s still suspicious, no matter how many poppy seed bagels I told him I smoked.

  3. Anybody being dinged for enjoying poppy seed confections should file a massive civil damages lawsuit. A “positive” test is trivially sourced by quantitating accompanying opium alkaloids (codeine, noscapine, papaverine, thebain…) that are specifically missing from recreactional opiates.

    WARNING! Grapefruit juice is a potent inhibitor (naringenin is claimed; more likely it is the furanocoumarins) of cytochrome P450 CYP3A4. Co-ingestion of poppy seed tea and grapefuit juice can be lethal.

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