Stop Laxative Abuse

Just like painkillers, laxatives are entirely legal medicinal drugs with a clear and necessary purpose. Unfortunately, just like painkillers, laxatives are also frequently purchased and used in a manner far more harmful and potentially even lethal as people suffering from eating disorders, many of them teenage girls, take them in the belief that it will allow them to lose more weight more quickly.

Also unfortunate is the fact that unlike painkillers, there is often no restriction on how many packets of laxatives can be purchased at one time and, since they can so easily be picked up off the shelves, they are easy to acquire without having to go near a pharmacist and thus monitoring usage becomes almost impossible.

We at TG believe that the distress and suffering that comes of laxative abuse is just as important to try to prevent as the abuse of painkillers.

Taking Action

Our survey on Laxative Abuse is still ongoing. If you have not yet completed it, please take the time to do so - it can be found at https://surveymonkey.com/s/YVNDSY2.

If you have filled it in, or even if you feel you personally cannot, please spread the link to as many people as you can - Facebook and Twitter are fantastic tools for this if you have them but even just emailing the link to the people you know would go a long way.

We hope to be able to compile results early in 2016 and the more answers we get, the better picture we can gather of the current situation and how people feel about it.

References

Beat
http://b-eat.co.uk/
https://www.facebook.com/beating.eating.disorders
https://twitter.com/beated

In 2014, Beat appealed for laxatives to be reclassified as Pharmacy-only medications; unfortunately they were not successful but this does highlight that laxative abuse is an important issue to be tackled.

ANRED (Anorexia Nervosa and Related Eating Disorders)
https://www.anred.com/lax.html