Buzz
Laxatives are hardly a topic one would casually bring up around the campfire or at the dinner table. The mere thought of such a substance, which can send your bowels into overdrive, is enough to turn your stomach, especially when you consider the intense, unpleasant outcome.
However, some historical incidents are not only fascinating but also strangely entertaining, alongside the bizarre mishaps and horrifying situations people have experienced due to laxative use.
10. Ingestion and Aspiration
Swallowing or inhaling dentures is surprisingly more frequent than most people realize. The highest rates of such incidents are found among drug users, alcoholics, and individuals with psychoneurological disorders. Much like removable dentures, fixed ones can become dislodged and swallowed, resulting in a variety of complications such as perforations, blockages, necrosis, and even damage to nearby organs.
This was the situation for a 31-year-old man who accidentally ingested a fixed one-tooth denture while eating. After a series of abdominal X-rays, it was found that the tooth had moved from the stomach to the right iliac fossa, causing a blockage in the ileocecal valve of the intestine.
As one can imagine, this led to considerable discomfort, prompting doctors to prepare the patient for an inevitable colonoscopy to remove the object. However, before the procedure could take place, the patient was given a substantial dose of laxatives. At that point, nearly 48 hours had passed without the obstruction resolving naturally.
What unfolded in the following hours at Vladimir City Clinical Hospital was nothing short of horrific. A massive, explosive wave of feces flooded the room with such intensity that the colonoscopy was no longer necessary. The swallowed denture was expelled along with two days' worth of stool.
Thankfully, after three days of outpatient care, the patient was cleared of any further health concerns. As for the cleaning crew, that's a whole other nightmare.
9. Failure to Administer Laxatives
Laxative dependence due to constipation is strikingly common among the elderly. The proper dosage can be a matter of life or death. For an 84-year-old woman in Tennessee suffering from chronic constipation, her monthly routine required 60 doses of laxatives, which helped her maintain relatively good health.
Tragically, everything changed when she moved into an assisted living facility that failed to provide nearly enough medication to manage her condition. Over two months, she received only 32 doses of laxatives. This insufficiency worsened her constipation, ultimately leading to a fecal obstruction.
After more than a week without a bowel movement, her abdomen began to swell. This finally caught the attention of the nurses, though it came long after her constant cries for help had been ignored.
Despite several unsuccessful attempts to administer enemas, her condition continued to deteriorate. As her abdomen continued to expand, she was rushed to the emergency room, where her colon ultimately ruptured. Sepsis followed shortly thereafter, and she passed away a few days later.
In the end, the family filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the assisted living facility for negligence. The jury awarded the family $5.3 million.
8. Mudslides and Jail Time
During a drug bust in 2002, a Milwaukee County sheriff’s deputy observed a suspicious individual lurking in the shadows. As the deputy approached, he saw Tomas Payano-Roman swallow what seemed to be a plastic bag. Naturally, the deputy suspected the bag contained narcotics, and this was evidence that wouldn’t escape the vigilant officer, who was ready to make an arrest.
What happened next was far from what Payano-Roman anticipated. Instead of spending the night behind bars, the hungry suspect found himself handcuffed to a bed and examined by medical staff, who decided that he should be given a dose of laxative.
After being forcibly made to drink one cup of liquid laxative, the deputy took it upon himself to refill the cup five more times, just to be thorough. What followed was a catastrophic mudslide into a portable toilet from the suspect, who was still strapped to the bed while a few onlookers gagged in the background.
Fortunately, the plastic bag was recovered, leading to Payano-Roman's conviction for heroin possession. However, the Wisconsin Court of Appeals ruled that the forced ingestion of the laxative constituted an unreasonable search under the Fourth Amendment.
Nevertheless, the state supreme court disagreed. They argued that the laxatives not only uncovered evidence of a crime but also prevented any potential danger to Payano-Roman from the bag bursting inside his body.
7. Colossal Flatulence
It’s well known that Adolf Hitler was a drug addict, reliant on a range of narcotics such as barbiturates, morphine, and amphetamines. At the peak of both his power and madness, he was said to have been using up to 80 different drugs.
Particularly, laxatives were a remedy that the madman frequently relied on due to his addiction to opiates and his peculiar diet of watery vegetables, both of which resulted in chronic constipation. Ironically, one might think that laxatives were not the best solution for the fuhrer, given his longstanding issues with stomach cramps, diarrhea, and persistent flatulence.
In fact, Hitler’s inability to control his gas led him to leave the table after each meal to release a repulsive gust of Nazi wind. His loyal physician, Dr. Theodor Morell (also known as the 'Reichsmaster of Injections'), recorded in his medical notes that Hitler’s 'constipation and enormous flatulence were of a scale I have rarely encountered before.'
To ease the worries of the self-conscious tyrant, Morell prescribed small black pills called Dr. Kuster’s Anti-Gas tablets. After being reassured that these pills were 'miracle drugs,' Hitler ended up taking up to 16 of them a day.
Given the constant fluctuations in the state of his bowels, it’s no surprise that laxatives became a vital tool in keeping the lunatic stable. However, the injections of bull semen recommended by Dr. Morell are highly questionable.
6. Epic Backfire
Parents can sometimes be extremely strict about their children's academic performance. One mother, fueled by frustration, decided to turn her discontent into vengeance when her daughter brought home poor grades. After blaming the teacher, Julie Hunt, 43, ordered her daughter and a friend (ages 13 and 14) to bake biscuits infused with laxatives for the teacher.
Rather than simply adding a few pills to the mix, the girls had the idea to use the entire box of laxatives, ensuring a truly catastrophic outcome. Once the bowel-loosening treats were baked, they placed them on the teacher’s desk, leaving behind a note that read: 'We made these cookies just for you. Hope you enjoy them.'
Rather than eating all the cookies herself, the thoughtful teacher shared them with the class, which led to an unforgettable disaster. Four children became severely ill, and many others ended up soiling their shorts. Hunt was arrested and pled guilty to a minor assault charge, while her cunning daughter was suspended from school.
Interestingly, laxative pranks at school are more common than one might think. In 2008, three high school seniors in Brooklyn served a homemade, chocolate-iced, laxative-filled Bundt cake to five teachers, causing two to seek medical treatment. The students, aged 17, were suspended, barred from graduation, and arrested on assault charges.
5. Delusions Of Grandeur
David Smith, a 62-year-old man with an active imagination, lived a life of lies and deception so elaborate it could rival the outlandish stories of “Walter Mitty.” His web of falsehoods even extended into his marriage, where he continuously wove new and bizarre tales for his wife about the mysterious man she had just married.
She came to believe that she had married a widower whose first wife had tragically passed away while pregnant and working as a professional ballerina. Smith's charm grew stronger when he claimed to have been a hero involved in the 1980 SAS raid on the Iranian Embassy. To top it off, he told his 62-year-old bride that he owned a factory producing covert components for the Ministry of Defense.
To add an even darker twist to their honeymoon, Smith started poisoning his wife with laxatives, causing her to become fatigued and bedridden with occasional fainting spells. Her health deteriorated so severely that doctors initially suspected she was suffering from a motor neuron disease.
Fortunately, Smith’s intricate web of falsehoods began to fall apart after he orchestrated a fake break-in at their home. When police uncovered evidence that directly contradicted his fabricated stories, a cascade of hidden truths started to emerge.
Ultimately, Smith pled guilty to charges of culpable and reckless behavior for poisoning his wife with laxatives over a span of three years. In 2017, he was sentenced to 42 months in prison.
4. Get Busy Living Or Get Busy Dying
In 2006, a mentally unstable prisoner managed to escape from Sydney’s Long Bay Jail using an elaborate plan that involved an extraordinary amount of preparation and toilet paper. Robert Cole, 37, a convicted felon, spent three weeks chipping away at the brick wall of his cell with nothing more than a dull butter knife.
Not to evoke too many memories of The Shawshank Redemption, Cole took his preparation even further. Understanding that his 56-kilogram (123 lb) frame would never fit through the 15-centimeter (6 in) gap between the brick wall and steel bars, Cole managed to lose 14 kilograms (31 lb) by using contraband laxatives.
Despite his meticulous planning for the escape, the challenges of surviving on the outside proved far too difficult. After just three days on the run, Cole was apprehended while casually browsing the shops in a busy Sydney mall.
Due to the stinky, elaborate jailbreak, Cole was swiftly transferred to Goulburn jail, where he spent the rest of the winter in a high-security cell. Along with the less-than-luxurious accommodation, Judge Roger Dive sentenced Cole to an additional non-parole period of one year and nine months.
3. The Smell Of Victory
After the Nazi annexation of the Sudetenland in 1938, the severely undermanned Scandinavian Peninsula offered little resistance to the advancing German forces. Within two years, Nazi warships had entered Norwegian harbors while a sky-bound invasion was imminent.
As the Norwegian resistance group (known as the Milorg) grew stronger, their efforts to disrupt the Nazi war machine took on a surprisingly amusing and odorous turn. Along with covert sabotage and intelligence gathering, the resistance coated condoms meant for German soldiers with itching powder, which led to a number of Wehrmacht soldiers flooding hospitals, desperately seeking relief for their inflamed genital areas.
The Milorg's cunning reached new heights when they smuggled the largest shipment of croton oil (known as the 'atomic laxative') into canneries throughout Norway, replacing the vegetable oil in sardine tins. This clever move resulted in thousands of tons of laxative-tainted sardines being sent off to German U-boats without anyone suspecting a thing.
The horrific taste of the toxic purgative oil was masked by the already terrible flavor of the sardines, which led to thousands of German submariners experiencing a simultaneous 'cleansing' of their bowels during their uncertain, long voyages at sea. Meanwhile, the smell of sardines for the Norwegians must have been a sweet symbol of victory.
2. Trail Of Breadcrumbs
In Colonial America, formal medical training was rare among physicians. It might have been just as hazardous to seek a doctor's help as it was to let a sickness run its natural course, given the common use of remedies like sweating, cupping, bleeding, and blistering.
One of the era's most popular miracle cures, laxatives, was thought to purge excess bile or other substances believed to cause illness. Dr. Benjamin Rush, a prominent physician, specifically instructed Lewis and Clark to take his 'Bilious Pills' (also called 'thunderbolts' because of their potency and size) if they showed signs of sickness.
Living off a meat-heavy, low-fiber diet, constipation was a common issue for the explorers. Over time, they exhausted their supply of 1,300 pills, which were largely made from mercury, a toxic substance that doesn’t break down.
Unbeknownst to the explorers and their crew, they were unknowingly depositing the non-decomposable mercury into the earth with every 'purge.' Thanks to modern technology like vapor analysis, scientists can now trace their route, helping historians document their legendary journey in detail.
1. A Devastating Addiction
In 2012, Claudia La Bella told her family she had been diagnosed with terminal ovarian cancer and had just a few years left to live. For the next two years, her husband would accompany her to the hospital for cancer treatments. However, she insisted that he never attend her appointments.
Claudia claimed that part of her treatment involved taking laxative tablets to flush toxins from the chemotherapy out of her system. On June 18, 2014, Claudia was admitted to the hospital, severely underweight, dangerously dehydrated, and suffering from intense abdominal pain, vomiting, and diarrhea.
Eleven days later, at the age of 28, Claudia passed away. She weighed only 35 kilograms (77 lb) due to complications from laxative abuse, taking as many as 800 pills daily. It wasn't until the coroner’s report that Mr. La Bella learned that his wife had never had cancer. Instead, she had been struggling with anorexia and Munchausen syndrome, a disorder in which an individual repeatedly pretends to be ill despite not actually being sick.
Like many other substances, laxatives can become addictive, especially when a person develops a tolerance and needs increasing doses to achieve the desired effect. Laxative abuse, particularly in those with anorexia, is unfortunately not a new issue.
Claudia’s death mirrored that of former gold medal-winning skier Georgia Willson-Pemberton, who tragically passed away at the age of 26 due to 'multiple organ dysfunction caused by laxative abuse.' At the time of her passing, the 178-centimeter-tall (5’10”) Georgia weighed a mere 48 kilograms (105 lbs). After her burial, her heartbroken parents made a devastating discovery of thousands of pills hidden in their daughter’s apartment, which only deepened their sorrow as they realized the signs they had overlooked.
