Could my random UA be a false positive for alcohol from granola bars?

[Distressedinpain]

Last week I was hit with a bomb from my pain clinic doctor who told me that I had a positive UA for alcohol when I dont drink. Several people responded and told me that alcohol was in many other dietary substances. I know that  alcohol can be found in cold medicine, hand sanitizer, and mouth wash all of which I do not use. I thought long and hard about what I ate before my test and realized that I had been camping where the only food that we had to eat for two days was granola bars and salt water taffy. The person that was supposed to bring the real food never showed up. Anyway I looked on the box of the granola bars which I ate at least 6 to 10 and sure enough they each contain 1g of sugar alcohol. This has got to be the trigger for the false positive. I hope that they still have some of my original ua sample left to retest so that I can prove that I am not drinking. This also teaches me a very valuable lesson. I am a bit overweight and I might have prediabetes and if I am eating so much of this unhealthy stuff my health could be at risk. If anyone knows if these sugar alcohols can cause false positive alcohol UA drug tests please let me know. Thanks

[BetterGetBetter]

Good! Glad it helped.

Yes, I am "with you" on how you feel. It ***** when you have to 'convince' someone of something. I really, really believe you about not drinking alcohol. I do not drink at all, haven't for over 2 decades. I would be FREAKED out if I had a test come back saying I drank. And with my OCD, it would be on my mind 24/7 how I'm going to convince the doc I really, really didn't drink...

Just realize that if your doc has "been around the block," he probably can tell who is telling the truth or not (because he's "seen it all."). So, if it's any consolation, he probably really believes you, too.

[Distressedinpain]

Great thanks! I always search with too many words

[BetterGetBetter]

They say, "Google is your friend." When searching on Google, put things in quotes to preclude many unrelated results. So.... I read your post. Here is *exactly* what I typed in google (copy-and-paste it exactly):

"false positive" alcohol "sugar alcohol"

There are a bazillion result (well, 55,600 results), the result at the very top answers your question. I'm not going to tell you what it said, because it was actually interesting reading! And I want you to read it! :-)