The separation of the basic drug lidocaine and six of its metabolites has been investigated both by using volatile aqueous electrolyte system, at low pH and by employing non-aqueous electrolyte systems. In aqueous systems, the best separation of the compounds under the investigated conditions was achieved by using the electrolyte 60 mM trifluoroacetic acid (TFA)/triethylamine (TEA) at pH 2.5 containing 15% methanol. With this electrolyte, all seven compounds were well separated with high efficiency and migration time repeatability. The separations with bare fused-silica capillaries and polyacrylamide-coated capillaries were compared with higher separation efficiency with the latter. On the other hand, near baseline separation of all the seven compounds was also obtained by employing the non-aqueous electrolyte, 40 mM ammonium acetate in methanol and TFA (99:1, v/v), with comparable migration time repeatability but lower separation efficiency relative to the aqueous system.