Nothing stays in your GI tract for a month. Offhand, I’d bet it’s difficult for anything to stay there for more than about three days, assuming more or less normal intake and poopage.
I suggest your black tar poop had nothing to do with the cleansing ritual or herbs.
Considering I didn’t get or take them, I would say it had nothing to do with the herbs, but what they described was exactly what I experienced, which would indicate to me a almost prophetic happening where the stated benefits of that cleansing I was getting. Yes it’s a spiritual take on it.
As the only value to any “cleansing” is spiritual, I guess that’s correct.
Cleansings are woo based on misinformation and childish misunderstanding about how the body operates.
Friends of mine called their pediatrician in a panic when their infant daughter’s poop was red.
The doc said, “You’re breast feeding right? Has Mommy been eating beets lately?”
What???
I have been repeatedly assured throughout my life that all the gum I regularly eat stays in my belly for 30 years or something. I believe this explains why I weigh 235 pounds.
WOOoooooOOOOooooooo
Ever had the Bad Seed?
I seem to recall this happening to me twice over my nearly 55 years of life, the last being about 4-5 years ago.
Feeling hot, sick, dizzy, all sorts of not happy. Felt like there was an epicenter to this unhappiness in my guts.
Go to the toilet. Can feel this bad seed, this center of illness, this hot little chunk of stool moving through me and out. The minute it was out, I sat there feeling like my body had just gotten rid of something horrible, and I started to recover.
Yes, usually the day after I eat really spicy food.
Once, in Finland, I extruded a seventeen-incher that lurched up and tried to bite me. When I quickly flushed it to oblivion I could hear it screaming “NOoooooooo…” in that “running in a movie in slow motion” voice. It lasted for several moments, as he (?) went down feet first.
Ah, beets! In addition to coloring one’s stools, some people have beeturia. (yes, it’s a real term: Beeturia - Wikipedia)
I discovered this after I ate just two fresh beets a while back. I imagine eating fresh beets and asparagus would be doubly fun for some people!
I have internal hemorrhoids, so I sometime have blood with my stool. That’s not the same thing as having blood in your stool. The former is a relatively minor issue. The latter is usually much more serious. Blood from hemorrhoids is fresh blood, bright red. If you have blood in your shit, your stool with typically be black or reddish brown. It might not be obvious to someone with blood in their stools, because you dont (often) really see any blood.
ETA: what a weird OP.
When I was young I used to hold 'em in for unnecessarily long, few days at a time. Once I went, it was a giant, coiled, anaconda of faeces doing nearly 2 full revolutions of the bowl. Flushing was to no avail, resulting in a smeared mess.
I told my dad, he came in and immediately started yelling at me for it. He was none too happy for sure, but he was growing pot at the time, and used a stripped down main stem to poke the abomination into several pieces, resulting in even more smeared mess. I can distinctly remember the sweetish odour of the pot stem combined with, well the foul rank of shit.
I should bring it up when I visit for easter dinner. 
Another time I got very severe food poisoning, lasted about a week. Being young and hardheaded’ I didn’t seek medical attention at all. On the fifth day I awoke to terrible abdominal pain, and the resulting diarrhea was atrocious, painful, burning, and smelled like absolute death. I can almost swear the stench alone re-liquified the grout between the tiles. I could feel that this was the worst of it, though. It was full of blood, I hadn’t been eating much at all. Immediately I began to feel slightly better, and although quite concerned, I just pounded a jug of water, and went back to sleep.
Over the next few days, things returned to normal. Although it took about three months to get my full appetite/capacity back.
Terrible! :eek: :o
Yes green~It was due to the consumption of rolaids
Slightly off topic but ----- while color is pretty much in the normal ranges, my shit floats like a cork. We’re talking to the point that I usually have to use some additional flushes, water or other tricks to get it down the sewer rather than just floating in the bowl. I don’t know why; the start didn’t coincide with any real changes in my life of medications; but this has been going on now for like 4 years and got old real quick.
I like beets, but if I have more than a cubic inch or so, the effects on my excreta, both #1 and #2, are, ahem, INTERESTING. :o
I also had the green-poop thing happen to me a day or two after I indulged in black jelly beans, which I still like.
Eat a box of crayons and see what colors you get!
My Airedale Terrorizer did that.
:eek:
How old was the child at the time?
I’ve heard more than one story about a toddler producing speckled poop the day after eating crayons.
Green is a normal color for stool, there are many dietary reasons for green poo (and black, red and all shades of brown). Odd colors without explanatory recent dietary reasons, on the other hand, may be cause for concern.
I just don’t want to shake that other hand, thank you.
This is a delightful conversation…
Once when I was a kid (7 or 8?) I was severely backed up, to the point my mom finally took me in for x-rays. I thought I was pregnant, looking at them! Turned out I had developed something called megacolon, so the Metamucil mom had been forcing on me actually made things worse. I had to use suppositories for a bit…after the first one, mom told me to do it myself. 
Other than that, nothing too noteworthy. However, after many years of diaper-changing, I think I’ve seen it all. My favorite (?) is when they abruptly change color mid-turd. (the excreta, not the child!)
So, I don’t know if this counts because it wasn’t me, but when we adopted our first dog, we found out on his first vet appointment that he had worms. Shortly after starting him on the deworming medication, he shat out excrement so full of roundworms that neither my husband nor I was interested in eating noodles of any kind for several months following. I’ve never seen that many worms come out of a tiny little puppy at one time; it was more worm than poop. Absolutely horrifying. :eek: