When I was about fourteen years old I thought I was fat. I weighed only 125 pounds at the time. I was a cheer leader, and was popular in my small school. It was the nineteen seventies and looks were becoming a very big issue. Twiggy, and the fashion designers were promoting skinny as the new norm. All of my cheer leader friends had caught on, and the competition to be skinny had begun.

Since sluggish bowel problems ran in our family, we had a lot of laxatives in our medicine cabinet. The addiction began when I would take the laxative occasionally for irregularity. Unlearned about the human anatomy at age fourteen, I began to think that if I took more laxatives I could lose weight. I began to add to the amount of laxatives I was taking gradually, to see if they would help me lose weight. They were very powerful, and I had the results I was looking for very quickly.

I stole laxatives from my grandmother also, and as the years went by I was well on my way to laxative addiction.

By the time I was sixteen, I began eating about one thousand calories a day and exercising vigorously. I was also taking five to six ex-lax tablets a day. I had no idea what kinds of affect this was having on my body. As I look back now, I am sure I was dehydrated most of the time. I probably had anorexia and a form of bulimia back then. These medical terms were not heard of much where I was from.

As I got older, it took more laxatives each day to get the full effect that I was looking for. I really wanted to eat and then get rid of the food with laxatives.

I thought if I ate fewer calories and exercised more and was very thin, I would be more popular.

In this area of my life my parents were totally out of touch. They never asked any questions, and I never offered any information. Constipation was the norm in our family, so it was a known fact that I took laxatives. I believe my parents just thought I looked thin from exercising alot and eating very little.

With all of this exercise and practically starving myself, I weighed about 110 pounds by the time I was sixteen. For my frame that was very skinny. Now I became totally obsessed with exercise and weight loss. Eating only eight hundred calories a day at times. My parents were some what proud that I was thin. Weight problems ran in our family, my mother and her family members were always on a diet of some sort. Honestly I think that is why they just didn't even dream what I was doing to myself.

It wasn't until I graduated from high school and got married that I realized there was something terribly wrong with my taking so many laxatives. I had quit exercising and was eating normally for a change. I began seeing a doctor regularly and I had decided to try to stop taking laxatives. When I told the doctor just how many laxatives that I had been taking per day, he gave me the lecture of a life time! I will never forget it. He told me that I would be lucky to live until I was age fifty. Also that if I did not stop using laxatives, that I would be a good candidate for colon cancer as I grew older. Now, that put the fear of God into me! He began to try to help me to get off the laxatives, and to retrain my bowels.

That was in the mid nineteen seventies. After that doctor" lecture, I began trying every stool softener, fiber, cereal, juices and everything else any doctor would recommend to take. But,I was hopelessly addicted to laxatives. Nothing else would work.

Over the years I have been treated by many various doctors for my bowels. I've had tests upon tests ran on my colon. I have also been given countless medications, of which, have made me feel very ill, most just have not worked.

Now, in 2009 the doctors have finally concluded that my bowels have no motility left to move the stool through the colon. I currently have chronic and life threatening bowel problems. I am facing permanent disability from these chronic bowel problems. I may have to eventually have a total colectomy (entire removal of the large intestine). I also have acquired pelvic floor dysfunction from the pressure on my pelvic floor caused from the years of laxative abuse. The harsh bowel movements over the years have caused this condition.

Laxative addiction can have harmful affects on other organs also, such as the kidneys. Mine have become sluggish from abuse of laxatives. Liver and spleen problems also, besides other problems as well.

Now, I am at the point now of never being able to stop taking the very laxatives that are destroying my colon and other organs. The gastroenterologist that I see has decided that I must stay on laxatives for now. Eventually I will most likely need to have my entire colon completely removed, thus, the colectomy.

Laxative addiction causes the muscles in the colon to quit functioning eventually. There is no cure for this. It causes chronic blockages and severe pain. The colon becomes enlarged and inflamed. I always look like I am about eight months pregnant now, no matter what I eat or drink. This is due to the enlarged colon. It is always a chore to have bowel movements also.



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