One summer while I was at my dad's, I was 17 at the time, I wanted to be thin again in order to feel comfortable wearing a bathing suit to the lake and I discovered that if I took laxatives, it helped me be thinner.
And that is when it all started. From that point on I took laxatives to cancel out the effect of my eating. When I returned to my mom's I had lost quite a bit of weight and got some positive reviews about it, it made me feel so good that I continued to use laxatives to control my weight.
From the age of 17 to the age of 19 I used a moderate amount of laxatives in order to maintain my weight. I didn't have to use so much because I was quite the busy person. When I was 18, I was going to college, had two jobs and had an active social life. I swam two hours every day and was always on the go. When I got pregnant with my daughter at 19, it slowed my life down and I started packing on the pounds. After having given birth, I found that I had gained some weight and was having trouble losing weight so I started to use laxatives again. With their help and with extra activities again I started to loose weight again, getting to an acceptable weight. Even though I was not using as much as I would later I was using laxatives on a regular basis in order to maintain my weight. Back them laxatives contained phenophthalein, which was later banned for having some adverse health effects.
By 1997 I became pregnant with my son. Pregnancy didn't stop me from using laxatives this time. I didn't want to gain too much weight during my pregnancy, I did however lay off them for a bit after my son was born as I had been put on a medication and I didn't want the laxatives to affect their effectiveness.
Lo and behold I started packing on the pounds in a big way. I got to be over 200 pounds and this affected my self esteem greatly.
By the year 2000 I started using laxatives again to lose weight. This time my use of them really took off. There was this pharmacy that sold bottles of 120 pills for a few dollars. As these pills were cheap I would take more and more of them. It came to a point where I would take about 10 pills after every meal. I was also on a restrictive diet at that time and walked a lot. When I started loosing weight again, the people around me were so proud of me, I got so much positive feedback it made me feel great. I became obsessed with loosing weight.
From 2000 to about 2006 I would take 60 to 80 laxative pills a day. I went down to 120\125 pounds. Now that does not seem like very thin however at 5'7" with a large bone structure and a decent amount of muscles, this was in fact too thin. I should never have gone below 135. Oh it's only 10\15 pounds under you say, but it didn't look like only that.
Starting in 2004\2005 I started getting comments about my weight, comments implying that I had gotten maybe too thin. When I looked in the mirror, I didn't see it in the beginning. I still thought I was too fat.
One day in 2006 I saw a picture of myself that I had taken a bit earlier. And then I saw other pictures and all of a sudden I really saw myself. Saw how thin I had really gotten. Something suddenly clicked in my brain and I realized that I had an eating disorder and I needed to do something about it. I started to wean myself off laxatives.
The result was that I started packing on the pounds again. I tried dieting to try to staunch the flow of weight gain to no avail. I relapsed a few times, going back to laxative use, but was determined to stop and eventually I was finally able to completely stop.
In very little time, I gained well over 100 pounds. The self-esteem issues that had caused me to develop an eating disorder that was still there so of course gaining all this weight did not make me feel very good. Depression ensued and has since been my constant companion. I have tried loosing weight in a healthy way since but nothing seems to work.
When I was thin I was exposing myself to all kinds of issues:
- Tremors
- Dehydration
- Weakness
- Nausea
- Water retention
- Colon infection
- Blurry vision
- Severe abdominal pain
- Chronic Diarrhea
- Gas
- Bloating
- Electrolyte Disturbances
- Chronic Constipation
- Bowel tumors
- Irregular heartbeat
- Kidney damage
- Electrolyte imbalance
- Organ damage
- Colon failure
- Death
Now that I am obese, I hate going out of the house. I hate meeting new people and I especially hate seeing people I used to know when I was thin. I often have to endure comments about my "fatness" I assure you these "helpful comments" are anything but.
Sometimes I wonder if my current health issues may not have been caused by my years of laxative abuse. This has been one of my greatest secrets. I know it's something I should discuss with my doctor but I have no idea how to bring it up.
