Ok, my son thought this up:
What would happen if you took:
Immodium AD
AND
you took a laxative AT THE SAME TIME?
Hemmoroids.
I imagine you’d feel crappy, in some sense of the word. 
You’d be shitting bricks.
The pharmaceutical industry would thank you.
All of the above!
Right On.
I’ll predict intestinal cramping. Basically, when the immodium is working, your intestinal contactions are slowed down. When a laxative is working, it is sped up. Since it is very unlikely they will off set perfectly, expect boughts iof cramps and then the runs.
I think the ugliest part would be a period of time without a bowel movement followed by the runs.
The answer: It varies, depending on one’s own personal physiology and the doses taken.
As has been noted, laxatives speed up bowel motility. Imodium slows it down, but also affects electrolyte movement thru the bowel wall, which also influences water movement.
In short; A bad idea.
Wow – Thank Og we have an M.D. on the boards.
I kid!
Though chemical laxatives and Imodium is a bad idea, Imodium and high fiber diet can be prescribed for IBS.
TMI…
High fiber diet would pass through me too quickly and be a problem without also taking Imodium to slow things down a bit.
Doesn’t Imodium share the same bind sites with a lot of the laxatives? I am not sure; but if this is the case, the result would be competitive inhibition.
Nope. Loperamide (imodium) binds to the opiate receptors in the bowel. The mechanisms of such laxatives as phenolphthalein is unknown. It has been thought to increase peristalsis by a direct effect on the smooth intestinal musculature by stimulation of intramural nerve plexi. No opiate receptor affinity has been found for such compounds.
Well, I know Immodium AD is loperamide, which basically has the typical effect that opioids have on your intestines, relaxing the smooth muscle of the bowel and (hopefully) allowing your large intestine to absorb more of the water in your stool, “curing” your diarrhea. (And loperamide does not cross the blood-brain barrier, so despite being an opioid, it is useless as a pain reliever, but great for diarrhea.)
As for taking it AND a laxative, well, I’m not sure, but I’ll tell you what happens The laxative that seems to work best for many of the methadone patients I know is milk of magnesia (hereafter MoM), which works by drawing water back into the stool and softening it up. As long as they take a swig of MoM after every meal, it appears that the water-drawing-in action cancels out the slowed-downness of the bowel, and regularity is restored. I assume it would work the same with Immodium.
The trick, apparently, is getting the right amount of MoM for the amount you have eaten. Too much and you get diarrhea; too little and you get constipation that just isn’t quite as bad as it otherwise would be. Most of the people I have discussed it with seem to err on the “too much” side, for caution’s sake, and spend most of their time with diarrhea.
Warning: the TMI part is coming up.
I think it’s a good risk – diarrhea is a lot easier to deal with than terrible constipation, in my experience. I once had to help a friend of mine who had become addicted to oxycodone, without realizing that she needed to worry about constipation. Essentially, I had to grease up her anus with a local anesthetic, dilate it carefully, and then dig … material … out of her bowel with a rubber-coated baby spoon until the mass was small enough to be passed. It was incredibly hard and dry, for poop; when I wrote about it, I chronicled it as the “fecal boulder” incident.
Ah, memories. Maybe someday they’ll combine methylnaltrexone with all opioids, and people won’t have to worry about constipation with their painkillers. Until then, I know a lot of people who are grateful for laxatives.
(On preview, I see Qadgop has already posted some good info about Immodium AD. Ah well, I’ll send mine anyway.)
I guess now would be the perfect time for me to ask another question I’ve been wondering about – if you took – theoretically of course – some high quality Spanish seed, would the fiber in the seeds counteract the morphine?
What about plain old McCormick’s rather than import seed (yes, I know opium is not usually extracted from the seed.) Or is poppy seed itself not a significant source of dietary fiber when consumed in mass quantities?
I have interviewed many people who claim to have made tea out of commercially-available poppy seeds, just by soaking them in hot water, as a source of opioids. Reportedly, some brands work better than others, and it takes a pound or two to make it work, but as Cecil says, it does happen. A friend of mine even tried it himself when he had a migraine headache and had run out of Imitrex – he just bought a few bottles of poppy seeds at the grocery store and tried it out. He said it got rid of his migraine straight away and allowed him to sleep for 12 hours.
Two of the addicts I talked to who said they had resorted to doing this, though, reported getting regular kidney stones while they were doing it, which stopped recurring after they stopped. Could have just been a coincidence, but better safe than sorry.
In any case, I’m not sure about the seeds themselves as a source of dietary fiber. Many of my interviewees have reported that fiber-based laxatives did not work very well for their opioid-induced constipation, so it might not work well even if the poppy seeds are a good source of dietary fiber.