Imagine that you had had your test; you have listed a whole bunch of things you take, and bam! – it comes out positive for something else! It actually happens all the time, but all those false positives that come out because of a pain reliever you have taken a day before are not like a positive in this story.

This test was checking for a certain prescription drug, and this woman was on hydrocodone treatment and had all the documentation from her doctors. However, the test showed a positive result for oxycodone/oxymorphone. Now, your standard drug test – like most pre-employment tests – will not even differentiate between these two opiates derivatives. Nevertheless, this customer fought to get things right. She went back to the pharmacy where she had her prescription filled and inquired why the tables she got last time looked different from the ones she usually gets and if that could have caused the problem she had during the drug test. Apparently, what had happened is that the pharmacist made a dispensing error – prescribed hydrocodone was substituted with Percocet. So the woman was taking the drug in question but had no idea about it! What to do in this kind of situation? How to prove to the lab that this positive test result is a mere mistake? You get a letter from the pharmacy stating that it is them, in fact, who is responsible for this error and that the test result came out positive not because of the customer’s insincerity, but because of their error. This little piece of paper will do you good – in most cases the labs will accept it, unless you are applying for a piloting job.