I can't believe none of you have had a shitty enough time with this in 3 years to post to this megathread. A 4 week run on this new dope they have nowadays (the dope that must not be named) left me with constipation like every other opioid I've used. Back before the new dope that must not be named, I would simply enjoy not having to deal with taking a shit but once or twice a week. Sometimes the stool would be a bit hard and painful but nothing 10-15 mins of dedicated pushing couldn't comfortably void. I never used any otc anything (preventative or otherwise) and never had much of a problem other than a painful stool to pass.
Fast forward to 5 days ago. I decided 4 weeks of heavy IV use was a good time to call it quits. Deep down inside I knew if I let this go any longer (another month or two would have been a monkey to strong to kick willingly), the withdrawals would be too much and I would need a good 30-90 day jail sentence to force me into that kind of pain. I had only planned to go a week and after 4 flew by I knew I had already made a big mistake and would now have to go through a light withdrawal which nobody enjoys. So 5 days ago I quit cold turkey. The first 48 hours were quite acute and unpleasant, accompanied by intense cold sweats, pain all over, pupil dilation, etc. I was shockingly drenching sheets and clothes all day which I did not expect from such a short habit (I used to go on 3-9 month long runs with old school H that ended in much heavier usage and those withdrawals lasted significantly longer (2-3 weeks) but were only maybe 1.5x intense). For anyone interested I took a dose of 350mg codeine sometime around the 48 hour mark and my withdrawals went away 90% (I expected a few hours of maybe 50% relief) and stayed at 90% better for days. By 96 hours I was feeling pretty much normal. I'm not sure if the Fent (fuck I just named it) withdrawal is just super acute and short and the timing of the codeine was irrelevant, or if the lower activity of the codeine was somehow enough to bring my receptors out of withdrawal but not enough to re-excite them. This is purely hypothetical but I essentially felt like I took the perfect dose of Bup and the effect lasted indefinitely. But unless I'm confused, the half life of codeine is short enough I expected to return to peak withdrawal around 12-24 hours after taking it. Instead I stayed feeling way better and approx 90 hours after the codeine dose I'm feeling 98% recovered from withdrawal. This is a tangent from the topic at hand but in the name of harm reduction and giving people hope, this was my experience and hopefully it'll motivate others who have been using for less than a few months to kick the shit before their receptors get fully down regulated and withdrawal is a multi week nightmare. The fear of an unknown withdrawal is difficult to face but I'm so grateful I sacked up and did it without waiting until I couldn't.
Moving on to the topic of the thread. I didn't notice the constipation much when I was IV'ing all day (go figure, surgery meds that can make you so high you can't feel an amputation on a battlefield can also make you not feel the need to shit or even not feel a massive, dried, hardened stool stuck in your rectum). But 24 hours into withdrawal I felt the need to go, so I did. Or I tried really really hard. I managed to push out like 2 inches of the worst piece of hardened stool I've ever experienced, at which point it got stuck. I tried pushing for another 10 minutes but this thing was stuck. The pain got so incredibly bad I reached down, broke off the 2 inch piece sticking out, and over the course of another 10 minutes relaxed enough for the remaining amount to retreat back into my rectum. To be honest this didn't really phase me that much until 30 minutes later I realized I had a grape sized exterior hemorrhoid next to my anus swollen up so hard it felt like it was going to burst. So much pain and discomfort I literally feel like I got passed around in prison (go figure again: ironically one of the causes of hemorrhoids is anal sex).
Now at this point with a lot of anal pain the last thing I want to do is pass more stool. But after reading and reading I come to realize that my issue isn't constipation which I can still pass and use OTC meds to speed up/softened. People in this thread brought up impacted bowels which is essentially when you have a constipated turd that has sat in your rectum so long it become impassable. Unfortunately it sits an inch so behind your anus in your rectum, so close to the exit that OTC meds don't seem to re hydrate it like they claim (I assume they work farther up in the bowels and intestines).
Other posts have claimed that at this point (impacted bowel) things are very serious and you need to see a doctor. If you have great insurance and you like letting other people deal with the nastiest of your problems, this is certainly a valid option. But upon further research, I noticed that everyone who ended up going to a doctor for this problem we're all given the same treatment. Enemas and manual digital manipulation of the stool. No special tools, no surgery, and frankly not many meds that seemed to help other people with the same issue.
So I essentially had two options. I can either go to a doctor and spend hundreds or thousands of dollars for him to stick his finger in my ass and break apart and pull out passable sized pieces. Or I can take advantage of the fact that quite like a medically licensed MD, I too have fingers. And since I already took it upon myself to learn to perform IV injections with no medical help surely a finger up the bum shouldn't be too hard to figure out right? I bought a box of gloves, lube and an enema and waited to get to work.
Four days after the initial poo incident where I blew up a massive hemorrhoid, I finally feel like I have to shit badly again and figure I can't put this off any longer. I only broke off 2 inches last time and know there has to be several left stuck there. I plug 1/2 of a mineral oil enema bottle, wait 5 minutes, and then shit out the mineral oil with nothing else. But my bowels keep contracting and the impacted stool opens my anus halfway where it gets stuck before anything even comes out. This is the moment I put my doctor gloves on and got to work (no lube needed as the mineral oil already took care of that). The hardened stool is similar to a bunch of marble and grape sized pellets that have the consistency of thick, almost dry clay but there will be lots of them that have all compacted together into one log. The pellets themselves seemed so hard and tough they couldn't be broken up much. However, these pellets are all clumped together in a log that is too big to pass and you can break apart the clumped log back into individual pellets. It's quite unpleasant with a hemorrhoid but otherwise painless. But basically you'll just use your finger to break up the hardened pellets and when you get one free you literally have to use your finger like a gentle hook to scoop it out and remove it. It only took me 5-10 minutes to clear out the full 3-4 inches of reach my finger had, one pellet at a time. The relief was great for an hour or so, but now I feel more has moved into my rectum and soon I will have to repeat this process all over again (I eventually ran out of reach with my finger but could tell there was more hardened stool farther up I couldn't reach), next time with a very irritated hemorrhoid from the procedure I just performed earlier.
The good news is it does seem as you work your way through the pebbles they slowly get softer the deeper in they are. From reading other's experiences with this it sounds like 2-3 times is all that is needed by 90%+ of people to get things moving again without sticking your finger in your ass anymore (assuming you're not still using opioids)
My biggest regret is trying to pass the first impassable without using my finger to break it apart. I have a strong suspicion if I had fully recognized the situation and known about manual digital manipulation performed by nurses at the doctor I'd likely be sitting here without a grape sized hemorrhoid on my asshole. Instead, I decided to try to just give birth to it and ended up with a real childbirth compllication (poor ladies, this is truly awful). Hopefully the hemorhoid will eventually go away on its own but if not, then I'll have to see a specialist to have that removed because I can barely sit or move around it's so painful.
Will update how things go. I'm pretty positive I'll be able to poop again normally in the next 1-3 days once I do one or two more manual removals.
TLDR: Don't wait to digitally manipulate. Breaking things up before you pass them should at least prevent hemorrhoids, anal tears and fissures, etc. Also if you're already constipated badly, an enema seems to help a lot of people without needing anything else. Even if you have to pull things out manually, the mineral oil enema lubricated things A LOT and made the process way easier and less painful than it would have been otherwise.
*NOTE: I'm 29yo and have a bill of health that is squeaky clean. Assuming I didn't AGGRESSIVELY jab into things other than the log of shit and cause internal pain I figure not much could go wrong performing this yourself. However everyone is different and if you don't think doing it yourself is a good idea, you can have a doctor/nurse do it for you in a medically supervised setting.
What have I learned? Well #1 for the future is if I ever need or decide to do opioids again I will take PREVENTATIVE measures to keep from getting backed up in the first place. If I ever end up severely constipated again, I will immediately try and enema and then manually evacuate the contents with a finger if necessary so it doesn't sit there needlessly long and it doesn't cause anal damage on the way out. And lastly, if I ever find myself 3-6 weeks into a accidental run again, I know I can quit and be over the withdrawal in 5-7 days no issue so no need to fear it.
I really hope that everyone who enjoys opioids finds this thread before they need it so when they do they already know what to do. I was lucky enough to find good harm reduction info on IV use years ago when I first started and it was literally so effective I have IV'd for years lazily in my main vein on each arm (on and off) and my arms are still in such great condition I can have blood drawn by a phlebotomist and confidently ask them "can you tell I shot black tar for a few years?" and they think I'm joking. Some even complement how healthy my veins are and how easy it makes their job. Harm reduction works. All that took was a fresh needle every time and using distilled or saline water so you don't build up calcium and other shit in your veins. All this takes is some miralax or other preventative, or a finger up the ass in the worst case. Don't be afraid. A finger is a lot lot smaller than a brick. Don't ruin your asshole like I did.
Cheers everybody,
ClamHammer
