Ampicillin- False Positive - 5 Panel drug screen?

Question

I have been googling for a few hours searching for answers to thise question.  I have been recently taking ampicillin for a throat infection, however I obtained the medication in bulk without a script overseas a while back (I don't see a point in a paying coinsurance for an office visit and then again for the Rx to resolve a minor illness every now and then, when I can solve it for much cheaper myself)

From what I have read, the penicillin family of drugs share a metabolite with cocaine, benzoylecgonine, therefore causing both to render flags for drug use.

I do find it preposterous that with all of today's technology these tests cause false positives. A 2008 study revealed 3/33 false positives using GC-MS. 

Aside from the study, which I was only able to read the abstract ( I am not spending $40 for a journal article), the rest of the stuff out there seems inconclusive since they are often linked to "detox" product websites, whose goal is just to sell their product. 

I guess my only worry is when I go for the test tomorrow, they will ask me to show a filled rx script for ampicillin.  I am quite paranoid over this and went to rite aid and took a 5 panel home drug test and I passed.  However, gc/ms is more accurate.

Can anyone advise?

DancesWithWeasels · Accepted Answer

Well, your theory sounds fine, but it has a couple of flaws in it.  Ampicillin may or may not be effective on the specific organism causing your sore throat.  So, there is the real possibility that taking Ampicillin may be ineffective.  It is always better to have a physician order a throat culture on you when you have a sore throat, so he may determine which specific organism is causing your sore throat.  If it is viral, Ampicillin won't fix it, but it WILL help to grow antibiotic-resistant organisms that are becoming a very serious problem in medicine.  We are encountering bacteria that are 100% resistant to everything in the Pharmacy, and are therefore essentially untreatable, occasionally with fatal consequences.  This is the result of years past when they threw antibiotics at every problem, even when they were not clearly indicated.  

As for the false positives on the drug screen.  Much of the information on that comes from drug users' web sites, and some of the information I've read is 20 years out of date.  Many of the machines and methods used to screen for drugs back then were indeed able to be fooled by many substances, and false positives were an occasional problem.  But today's test methods and machinery is much more sophisticated, and false positives are pretty much a thing of the past.  Metabolites of cocaine are pretty much flushed out of the system within 2-5 days.  If you have taken Ampicillin longer than that in the past, it's very unlikely you will test positive.  If you DO test positive, I would rather simply show them the Ampicillin bottle, even though you don't have a prescription for it, than to take a false hit for Cocaine.  Cocaine is a highly criminalized substance; Ampicillin is not.  If this test is for a job interview, it may cost you the job.  If it is for a probation officer, it could result in revocation of your probation, but your attorney should be able to work around that, unless it's a Federal drug screen, in which case you may be screwed.

parenteau · Answer

Ampicillin Drug

Ampicillin- False Positive - 5 Panel drug screen?

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