How Long Does Lorazepam Stay In Your Urine?

Belinda asked

How long does lorazepam stay in your urine?

Answer

Hi Belinda and thank you for your question.

Every person metabolizes lorazepam at a slightly different rate due to things like genetics, age, kidney function, liver function, etc. For most adults, I’ve found that it has a half-life of 10-20 hours, or the time it takes your body to metabolize half of the dose.

For example, if you took a 1mg dose of lorazepam and you were a slow metabolizer (it has a half-life of about 20 hours), after 20 hours, 0.5mg would still be in your body. After another 20 hours, 0.25mg would be in your body. We usually consider a drug to be entirely metabolized after 5-6 half-lives. Now, lorazepam isn’t entirely eliminated during this timeframe. It’s metabolized into an inactive form called lorazepam-glucuronide which seems to have a half-life of about 18 hours.

All that being said, it depends on the sensitivity of the test itself which is going to be determined by the lab. If a test is looking specifically for lorazepam and lorazepam-glucuronide, it would be detectable for a while, especially if it’s a medication that’s taken routinely. I’ve found cases where it’s detectable for up to 9 days. If the lab is using a less specific and less sensitive test, you only take your lorazepam rarely and as needed; I imagine that a urine drug screen would show negative after just a few days.