Personal Column

 An Unusual Type of Substance Abuse

Q News

By Cassandra Mischak

When you hear someone mention the phrase substance abuse, what comes straight to your mind?

I think it is safe to say that I can speak for the general population. When hearing the word substance, in reference to abuse, most people's brains automatically think of alcohol, tobacco, stimulant drugs, marijuana or even certain hallucinogens. 

In complete retrospect, my brain goes straight to a looked over substance that practically ruined my life.

Laxatives.

Laxative abuse is one of the most life-threatening eating disorders, and unfortunately, it is often ignored. 

It is also a common misconception that there are only three types of eating disorders you can suffer from. 

A triggering phrase that lives rent free in my head that I constantly heard from all my peers is, “you don’t have an eating disorder if it’s not anorexia, bulimia or binge-eating.”

I decided to innocently swallow my first laxative during my freshman year of college, first semester, because I was unable to go to the bathroom naturally. 

At the time, I thought this was a normal thing to do because I always heard about people taking a laxative when they are constipated. 

However, I was blindsided.

It turns out that they can be dangerously addictive. 

I didn’t decide to take laxatives, initially, to lose weight or anything of the sorts. I truly can admit I struggled going to the bathroom because of the stress and environment change while transitioning into the college lifestyle. 

The similar type of anxiety that a lot of university freshmen feel while adapting.

I was completely blind to the addictive threat that popping those pills were about to take on my entire life as a young woman. 

I started out by taking two pills each night, for about three weeks, before I went to bed. They did, in fact, help regulate my bowel movement and nausea tremendously.

So, instead of doing the medically correct thing by weaning off taking them each night, I uneducatedly started taking two more in the morning, on top of consuming two at night. 

Therefore, I was ingesting a total of four laxatives each day.

I had a deep, gut-wrenching feeling that this wasn’t healthy, but did not take the initiative to make an adjustment.

I continued taking those four pills each day for two months, until I started to realize they weren’t working anymore. 

The terrifying concept was that my body was becoming so reliant on the pills, that taking four wasn’t strong enough to continue regulating my bowel movements.

The biggest regret of my entire life was made that day when I realized this.

I started to take five pills in the morning and five pills at night, resulting in taking 10 laxatives every day.

I started to experience pains that I can’t even describe. I felt like I was being stabbed in the gut at random moments throughout my days. I had the urge that I was going to throw up every time I stood up from my bed. I would faint at least three times a day from the dehydration it was causing inside my body to the point that I could barely make it to classes towards the end of that first semester. 

I lost over 25 pounds.

My closest friends and family were disgusted by how my entire physical appearance looked. I could've passed as a human ghost or even a walking skeleton. 

Two weeks later, after laying unconscious from fainting, I was urgently admitted to the emergency room.

Quite honestly, I didn’t think I was going to make it out.

My parents, not knowing that I was self-destructing my own body, were in both complete shock and disbelief. My mom went a week without sleeping a single hour letting all the possible worst-case scenarios consume her thoughts and my dad couldn’t even process his emotions.  

Mercifully, I was released within two long weeks. It took me about a full month to get back on my feet functioning somewhat normally. 

Today, four years later, I am still not fully recovered. My excruciating painful bowel movements and constipation will never be completely fixed. I still have moments from time to time where I wish I could take a single laxative to relieve my discomfort.

I have to continuously remind myself that ingesting one, penny-sized blue pill could put me right back on that hospital bed where I almost saw my life flash before my eyes. 

Every day, I scold myself that it is not worth it.

It is unbelievably important that you don’t look past this abnormal type of substance abuse.

Just because it isn’t as stereotypically labeled as other fatal addictions, it can be just as deadly as any other drug can be.