I Have Been Taking A Stimulant Laxative Nightly For About

Posted on Tue, 5 Mar 2019

Question: I have been taking a stimulant laxative nightly for about a year, never beyond the recommended dosage. I have recently started trying to wean myself off, but it’s super uncomfortable. I’m wondering how fast i should be reducing the dose and if theres anything I can do to ease the discomfort.

Answered by Dr. Anders Mark Christensen (1 hour later)

Brief Answer:
What are you using?

Detailed Answer:
Hi Jfincher34,

What type of laxative are you using? And what dosage? De-escalation should be very slow but it depends entirely on the type of laxative.

Looking forward to hearing from you again.

Above answer was peer-reviewed by : Dr. Prasad

Follow up: Dr. Anders Mark Christensen (1 hour later)

I have been taking 3 dulcolax tablets nightly. 3 is the XXXXXXX daily dosage, which totals up to 15mg bisacodyl. They’re tough to split so I tried just cutting down to 2 and it’s not fun at all.

Answered by Dr. Anders Mark Christensen (36 hours later)

Brief Answer:
Try bridging with movicole

Detailed Answer:
Hi Jfincher34,

I completely understand it is not fun. What you could do while cutting down on dulcolax is to "bridge" this weaning with movicole/moxalole, so that when you reduce the dosage of dulcolax by one tablet, you increase by one movicole satchet until you are off the dulcolax. Then you slowly cut down on the movicole. Does it make sense?

Also, while doing this, I suggest you avoid white bread and keep carbohydrates altogether at a low and drink lots of fluid.

Best wishes.

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Above answer was peer-reviewed by : Dr. Vaishalee Punj