How long does Xanax stay in your system?

Half life of Xanax (alprazolam) is 6 to 12 hours. It means that 6 - 12 hours after you have taken a dose of Xanax there will be one half of it left in your blood. Another 6 to 12 hours will reduce the amount of Xanax in your blood by another half. So, after a day you will have approximately one forth to one eighth of the taken dose. Results differ as people are different, and each individual metabolizes Xanax at his or her own rate. The amount of Xanax in your system will gradually decrease day after day until it becomes undetectable by test systems.

How long Xanax will stay in your system cannot be predicted for sure. One 0.5mg dose may need 3 to 5 days to be almost eliminated. But the higher Xanax doses you take and the longer period you have been taking Xanax, the longer it will take your system to remove traces of Xanax from itself. Also, your body weight must be taken into account. You may sometimes need up to a month or more to get yourself quite clear of the medication.

Drinking more water and using purifier pills will not help to shorten the period of how long Xanax stays in your system, as half life of Xanax has nothing to do with it. When you take a dose of Xanax, it gets dissolved in the tissues all over your body. And the concentration of the drug tends to be equal in tissue and blood. Blood takes the drug through the kidneys where it is metabolized and then taken out of the body with urine. At the same time, blood washes out some more Xanax out of tissue, and the process goes on. You cannot affect the amount of the drug in the tissues by drinking water. It will always be aproximately equal to its concentration in blood. As for purifying pills, they mostly help to clean your stomach when some dangerous substance is swallowed. Purifiers absorb this substance and prevent it from getting into blood. And we are speaking of the substance that has already got into blood and is absorbed by the tissues.

Is there a difference between how long Xanax and Xanax XR stay in your system?

Xanax XR is an extended release version of the medication. It means that after you ingest the drug, it is released into blood gradually due to some specific features of its formulation. So, the concentration of the drug in blood remains constant for a specified period of time. Usually we may speak of several hours. After all the dose has been released, the concentration of the drug in blood will gradually decrease in the usual way because its half life remains unchanged. Perhaps some difference can be detected when patients treated with Xanax and Xanax XR are tested the next day after they have taken their doses, but generally, elimination of the XR formulation is about the same as Xanax immediate release version.

What kind of tests can show that Xanax is present in your system?

There are three different ways of testing you for Xanax: urine tests, blood tests, and hair follicle tests. Xanax can usually be detected in a patient's urine during a week or two. Urine tests are the cheapest, but blood tests reveal chemicals much longer than urine tests do - up to a month or two. As for hair follicle tests, they are able to detect Xanax even longer, up to six months.


So, in brief, how long does Xanax stay in your system? From 6 days to 6 months, depending on its dosage, period of its usage, your individual features and quality of the test.