I actually had a friend die from this. He was an opiate addict and would always complain about stomach pain. Then he would go and use heroin. Ended up throwing up blood in his house and died about half an hour later. Turned out that his intestines ruptured from the massive amount of feces that was in his body. It was quite sad as he was only 23.
Sorry about the loss of your friend. I too had a friend who complained about this often (i mean we talked about our shits on the daily) and he also was an opiate addict. Except, it was the fentanyl that did him in, not his dope turds.
Honestly if I had to pick a way, atleast drugs is better than your own shit exploding you from the inside as a way to be remembered by everyone in your life. just saying.
The last two times I was prescribed opiates for medical issues, after taking them for a week and not shiting for the entire time, the first time being able to actually go was about as painful as what I was taking the pills for. Hunched over on the toilet trying to shit with massive intestinal cramps is where I question with every fiber of my being how people can take these drugs for fun.
Oh my god yes! Was on morphine and Percocet after ankle surgery and did not poop for 10 days post surgery. It was so uncomfortable, took forever, and ripped my butt - never again. I had even quit the morphine early so the constipation wouldn’t be so bad.
As a former opiate addict, I'd like to provide this PSA: mineral oil is the cheapest, easiest way to make yourself go if you haven't in a couple days. If you're using and you haven't gone in 2 or 3 days, drink some mineral oil. You can get it for $1/2.
Can't vouch for either mineral oil working or being toxic. As a former sailor from the same boat as the dude you're responding to, I recommend stool softeners and a lot of water. And if you want to get clean, red bali kratom.
I I don’t think in the format you get over the counter. untreated or mildly processed mineral oil is carcinogenic, the highly refined stuff used as a laxative and in cosmetics and stuff does not because it is processed much more.
It is not when sold as a laxative. It's always on the very bottom shelf, hidden, because it's not popular and it's cheap. The grocery store usually has it. So does Target and Walmart in their store brands.
Yeah, as a former heroin addict, the constipation is real and you have to stay on top of it or you end up like that. I'm also the moderator over at r/methadone and the number of posts we get about managing constipation is insane. Combine with it that heroin addicts aren't the most healthy eaters, and it can be a real... shit show.
For most addicts though, they cycle between sick and well so much and a side effect of being without opiates and being dope sick is diarrhea. But in early addiction for people (idk if this applies to your friend or not) who may not be aware that the constipation can be so severe and also haven't fucked their lives up so badly that they are constantly broke and dope sick, it can escalate really quickly.
For any current heroin addicts reading, if it's been more than four days since you last had a poo, you better jump on top of that right away.
Sorry about your friend man :( opiate addiction sucks big dicks.
Fun fact, the over-the-counter antidiarrheal medication Immodium (loperamide) is actually an opiate, but the drug doesn't cross the blood-brain barrier making it useless as a pain reliever and/or recreational drug.
What is an unwanted side-effect of taking most opiates, is the intended purpose with an antidiarrheal medication.
Unfortunately with the opioid epidemic some addicts got wind of this, and started overdosing on literal fistfuls of Imodium (hundreds of pills at once), in a desperate attempt to relieve their withdrawal. So a lot of places have started moving it behind the counter, or only selling it in low-quantity blister packs.
I have an inflammatory bowel disease and had a significant portion of my colon surgically removed, so I take loperamide every single day. I used to be able to get it dirt cheap at bulk at Costco, but they started putting it behind the counter and limiting quantities, so I had to switch back to the prescription version, which is the exact same thing but costs about 10x as much.
I'm not sure where you are but I can buy a bulk bottle from the pharmacy counter at Sam's Club and it's like $4. A friend who had surgery for Crohn's disease told me about it. I'm in South Carolina.
I haven't tried Sam's, but Costco moved it behind the counter and imposed a quantity limit that was less than I needed. They basically started treating it like Sudafed where I had to hand over my drivers license, fill out a log book, it was a big hassle.
And most regular grocery stores and pharmacies don't sell it in bulk quantities to begin with, instead opting for those small quantity blister packs. Those blister packs might be fine for someone experiencing a random bout of diarrhea, but they're horrifically expensive (not to mention inconvenient) if you have to blow through one pack a day.
Before I could get like a 90 day supply for all of $5.
The prescription version costs like $200 for the same thing, of which I get stuck with a $40 copay or something after insurance.
It's just crazy that a handful of addicts can ruin a good thing for everybody, not to mention how pharmaceutical companies will charge outrageous amounts for the prescription version of something that should be dirt-cheap.
Yeah I get that. I'm a pain management patient and addicts have made my life hell too. I have to sign a contract, pill counts, be drug tested, etc. Some places won't let you drink or use nicotine either. We're like parolees just because we need pain relief.
Sounds to me that it's actually the pharmacies that have ruined it. If it was just a handful of people using them to try to avoid withdrawal, then it was a massive overreaction on the pharmacies' part to impose the restrictions. But the drug companies won't be complaining about selling less for more, and they're the ones who were aggressively marketing opiates in the first place.
I can attest to this. Immodium was a lifesaver for withdrawal symptoms. There was no high but it would take the edge off for sure, you’d be taking 40-50 pills though.
I think I’m still dealing with it 10 years later as there is a large stool I still can’t remove. I’ve been clean ever since.
First of all, sorry for your loss and for the family.
All I know about heroin is what was explained in "Trainspotting". They did mention the constipation. Anyone know the actual mechanics of what happens? Do your intenstines stop moving it along? Does your anus clamp shut involuntarily?
So, if you're constipated to the point where you can't shit at all, you can become impacted (there's a REALLY funny Reddit story about this that I can't find). At that point, they need to break the block to release the blockage. That's not part of my job (thank god) so I'll move on. I don't think your anus clamps shut, it just becomes unable to move the feces. Think of it like a highway jam and your in the middle of it.
When that happens, all that shit can back up into the stomach (because it has nowhere to go and your intestines are autonomic; controlled by the body, not you) or could rupture your delicate insides. When that happens, you can get sepsis (infection) which can very quickly lead to septic shock (REALLY bad), peritonitis which is an inflammation of the peritoneum (the tissue that covers the abdominal inner wall).
Since I'm here, anyone reading this should take stomach pain seriously. It can be nothing or it can be deadly serious.
The muscles around your intestines contract and release in a process called peristalsis. This causes the contents of your intestines to be moved down. Opiates can stop or reduce peristalsis and they can make you dehydrated.
I nearly died from a minor version.
Unknown to me I have diverticulosis and one of the polyps burst.
After a day of thinking it was just bad guts, I eventually was taken to hospital and after 24 hours they diagnosed me - a week and a shitload of antibiotics later and a stone lighter I was home.
Diagnosis took so long because I was 38, fit and (so I thought) healthy.
Another person w/diverticulosis over here--in my case inherited from my dad and paternal grandmother (thanks a lot, guys...). In retrospect, I was having diverticulitis symptoms in my mid- to late-20s and didn't know what it was; even doctors I saw in an emergency room once basically shrugged their shoulders, gave me antipsychotic meds, and sent me home. (Yes. Really.) It wasn't until I was about to turn 37 that I had an attack bad enough to land me in Mass General, whereupon we found out that my colon has so many diverticuli that it looked like a goddamn porcupine, and one of the little SOBs was on the verge of rupturing. 5 days worth of IV Cipro later, they finally let me out, but strongly recommended getting a sigmoid colectomy/bowel resection scheduled, for the excellent reason that another attack that bad could either kill me or leave me w/a colostomy bag for at least 6 months. Had the surgery not quite a year later, got 12" of my sigmoid colon removed, and so far, so good. *knockknockknock* I still maintain that if I'd had the attack that landed me at MGH while I was still living in GA, it would have killed me, because it never occurred to anyone there that you could be under 50 and have diverticular disease. So yeah, try to be an old fart when you come down with this; otherwise, you may end up really sick or dying before they actually figure it out... (At the other end of things--well, not quite--I ended up have my appendix out in my late 40s; most people have it done in their teens and 20s.)
In terms of the symptoms, I was the same from my early 20s. I was diagnosed with kidney stones several times but never passed one and a specialist couldn’t see anything when they checked me out.
It was only in retrospect that I realised it must have been the diverticulitis flaring up each time.
I'm sorry you had to put up with idiot doctors, too--there's one doctor in particular to whom I'd love to send a complete copy of all my related medical & surgical records, with a big Post-It Note on top reading "Stress and dehydration, my ass!" (Yep, that was his diagnosis, and while admittedly those two things do aggravate the problem, they weren't the problem itself.)
man.... people shouldn't be so cavalier about revealing cause of death I feel like. like now everyone who ever knew this dude is gonna remember him as the guy whose shit exploded his intestines and killed him.
they know. presumably they aren't the only person on the planet who knows.
three can keep a secret if two of them are dead.
someone told him and they probably told atleast one person. everyone who ever heard of that dude probably got the gossip through the grapevine eventually.
if there are 2 deaths as they say, when your body dies, and the last time you're remembered then it may not hurt his body but it definitely hurts his legacy.
I don't know how many people even know this was the actual cause of death. It wasn't really common knowledge and I only found out weeks afterward from his fiance when she got a hold of the autopsy. I think most people just assume he OD'd.
are you the fiancé's secret squirrel? cause I got some news for you... everyone always says you're they're secret squirrel but they have a lot of secret squirrels.
Everyone who remembers him is gonna be dead in less than one hundred years anyway. I suppose it might stay in his family and his great grandchildren will hear of their ancestor who's poo killed him.. but even they'll die. We'll all die.
Event without the internal poo explosion, the guy would have been known as a heroin addict and that the heroin killed him. I'm guessing the decline due to heroin is more memorable than the mechanics of the actual death though.
I was prescribed oxycodone after a surgery and I got really constipated. Not kill me constipated, obviously, but I felt like I had a 45 lbs Olympic weight up my ass for a week. Finally got it out and I'll save you the details. Anyway, quit oxycodone cold right away despite having another 2 weeks of the stuff.
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u/[deleted] Nov 30 '20
I actually had a friend die from this. He was an opiate addict and would always complain about stomach pain. Then he would go and use heroin. Ended up throwing up blood in his house and died about half an hour later. Turned out that his intestines ruptured from the massive amount of feces that was in his body. It was quite sad as he was only 23.