Laxative Abuse: Facts and Fiction
Disclaimer: I am not a medical professional, and all the information I've gathered is online. A sources list will be posted below. I have some personal experience with laxative abuse, but this was around five years ago. This post applies to all laxatives, but particularly stimulant laxatives (such as dulcolax).
Fact: Laxative abuse can make you severely dehydrated. This is due to water being pulled from your tissue cells and into your colon, which makes you lose a lot of fluid and electrolytes. Chronic dehydration can cause kidney damage, low blood pressure, and seizures (Cleveland Clinic, 2023; NCBI, 2025)
Fiction: Laxative abuse helps you lose meaningful weight. Personally speaking, this misconception is why I started abusing laxatives. In this context, meaningful weight means weight gained by calories, or calorie absorption in general. All calories and fats will be absorbed. Laxatives act on the lower intestine and the lower intestine has little to no involvement with the process of digestion in and of itself. The main 'loss' is water weight, which as previously mentioned, can cause severe dehydration. (NIDDK, n. d.).
Fact: Common symptoms from even minimal laxative abuse include bloating, stomach pains, nausea and vomiting. Continuous use can cause side effects such as low potassium (which can cause heart rhythm problems) as well as intestinal obstructions. (NHS, 2026).
Fiction: Laxative abuse can't cause any long-term issues. Internal organ damage can occur. One example is laxative dependence, where your colon stops working by itself, or 'lazy colon', where your colon muscles become weak. Laxative abuse can cause neuronal damage in the small intestine. Additionally, it could cause metabolic acidosis or metabolic alkalosis — in other words, the pH of blood changes. (Whorwell et al., 2024).
Fact: Laxative abuse is addictive and occurs with more frequency within ED spaces. From my perspective, even with the logical understanding that laxatives do not help weight loss, people become addicted to the feeling of laxatives. (NEDA, n.d.).
Sources:
NCBI (2025): ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK555956/
Cleveland Clinic (2023): my.clevelandclinc.org/health/treatments/25121-laxatives
NIDDK (n. d.): niddk.nih.gov/health-information/digestive-diseases/digestive-system-how-it-works
NHS (2026): www.nhs.uk/medicines/laxatives/
Whorwell et al. (2024): pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11181897/
Neda (n.d.): nationaleatingdisorders.org/laxative-misuse/
Final Thoughts:
This post is meant to inform and dissuade people from abusing laxatives through research and medical information. This isn't intended to guilt or shame or demean someone currently struggling with laxative addiction. I wrote this because it seems like I'm seeing more and more people ask about laxatives and what they do.
I am not a medical professional or expert. All information and sources are included.
If you guys have any questions about the sources I posted, or if any links don't work, just let me know and I will send you them. It's important that misinformation or 'fiction' doesn't cause someone to believe that laxative abuse is the best step for them.
Wishing you all well, 🫶