LETS TALK LAXATIVE ABUSE
Taking laxatives felt like I was cheating the system; each pill I took, the skinnier I felt and the more in control I thought I was. Each binge could be purged, and all the guilt just went away, and it was magic. My first dance with bulimia started with laxatives and ended with a lot of hard work and, well, every other disorder under the sun….
Laxative abuse is the most unglamorous, destructive and least spoken about eating disorder around, and I suffered with it for many, many years. Unlike anorexia's prestigious and falsely glamourised title, anything that falls under the bulimia umbrella gets overlooked because, as a society, we shame disorders we see as disturbing or misunderstood. I began abusing laxatives at thirteen after I was inundated with skinny tea advertising on my Instagram pages. At the time, bikini bodies and weight loss teas were everywhere, and to be honest, it sounds at times like nothing has changed 13 years later… Like most young girls, I read the skinny tea ingredient list, found the main ingredient, senna ( a laxative) and started buying a pack of 50 laxatives for $5 to get the same results the tea gave me. To give context, this tea was $25 a week or $50 for 2 weeks. As a broke teen, that was not going to work for me, so the over-the-counter drugs were more within my limited budget. Everyone in my grade knew about laxative teas about laxative teas and, worst of all, used laxative teas at some point in time. At thirteen, eating disorder content was going off on Tumblr and well everywhere, and no one could stop it, something at the time I just loved.
I have always had an issue with my weight. Growing up, I was not overweight, but I was chubby and LOVED my food. I loved my food so much that I began to binge eating to comfort my unhappiness and restrictive eating at home. My home was always a healthy home; at parties, I took charcuterie boards to school while everyone else was taking potato chips, and I hated it. Looking back, my mum was just ahead of her time, but to me, she was far too healthy, the last thing I wanted to consume at a party was cucumbers and hummus, but that was mum’s version of party food, healthy and I had to tolerate it. We call these mums almond mums today, but she was not an almond mum; she was just a mum who cared a lot about her children’s nutrition, and as a child, I did not understand why she had to be so healthy.
Because my mum was so healthy, I never had treats at home. My treats were sparkling apple juice at Christmas and potato chips on Friday night; that’s about it. We didn't eat sweets, never had fast food, and rarely ordered pizza. My home didn’t have processed snacks; we had rice cakes and peanut butter as snacks, so anything sugary and bad for me was like crack, and I would binge on it, establishing a fine line between GOOD and BAD food. Something many of us still do today. Because my home had strict guidelines on GOOD and BAD food, I developed bad habits when consuming good and bad food. When I was around bad food, I binge ate, and that binge cycle was the start of my bulimia. Binge, feel guilty, the next step, purge once I was old enough to understand what that actually looked like. The first time I purged food was through laxatives, and this is why I share my experience with laxatives. To share purging isn’t just through self-induced vomiting; it has many more layers to that.
Because my relationship with food started out restrictive, it resulted in overindulgence, which naturally led to bulimic behaviour. My first taste of what skinny felt like was addicting. I felt like I found a magical drug that cured and cleansed my guilt, and I loved it. A couple of pills followed each binge, and then the water weight and everything else went away by morning; in my mind, I tricked the system; in reality, I stuffed up my own internal system without knowing the depths of my own damage. Each year, my addiction became worse and worse, forcing me to consume more and more pills. The more pills I took, the more immune to the pills I became, resulting in more and more and more pills. Towards the end of my addiction, I was popping pills into supplement bottles and praying customs did not confiscate nor question my laxatives while travelling overseas. Each holiday, I would count the maximum amount of laxatives I needed for the trip, pop them into supplement bottles and pray I would get in trouble at the airport. Fortunately for me, I was travelling with laxatives, not opioids, so for some reason, I was in the clear and never got caught.
The thing I want to stress the most about laxative abuse is it starts with one pill, then you become dependent on the pills. The minute you want to quit, your body retains excess water, you have lost any natural function to move your bowels, the muscle in your colon becomes lazy, and you have to retrain the colon muscles, which can take a very long time. I abused laxatives for around 10 years; by the time I stopped, I was taking 50 pills a day (1 whole packet) and, on bad days, 2 full packets total of 100 pills, which, to write out loud, sounds INSANE, but here we are transparent, so I will be honest with you. My usage was beyond out of control, and what a normal dosage would look like for a normal person needed WAY more for the same effect. I was an abuser and overused, and it took me at least one to two years to see progress and be ‘normal’ when it came to using the bathroom. I didn't want to be addicted to laxatives nor understand the consequences of what would happen once I followed that addiction through. My addiction was what I would consider to be bad, but I really have no comparisons to anyone else because this issue is not spoken about at all, and I want to change that.
Unlike most addictions, after the first week, I didn't get a buzz. Instead, I felt like a slave to my bad habits. I didn’t like the nauseous, dehydrated, chronically fatigued feeling the laxatives gave me, yet every time I tried to stop, my body would gain 5 kilos overnight, forcing me to repeat the cycle again and again. I didn't know what I was walking into at thirteen, and in many ways, I wish I didn't, but I also know my mistakes are my mistakes, and they are here to be shared and brought to public awareness despite how unpleasant they may be for me. My journey with laxative abuse was not pretty, but it is my journey, so here is a small insight into what laxative abuse can look like for someone struggling. Like all eating disorders, you might know someone suffering and never truly know how much they are suffering. Eating disorders are varied and look different for everyone; the more we talk about them, the less taboo and hidden they become. Suffering is temporary, so if you are suffering, you are never alone.
Love, Chiara x