The vocabulary people use for bleach damage is unusually vivid, and unusually accurate. Gummy. Mushy. Fried. Melted. Like chewing gum. The bottom inch popping off.

Those descriptions are all pointing at the same physical event. Bleach works by forcing the cuticle open and oxidising the pigment inside the cortex. It does not put the cuticle back afterwards. What you are left with is hair that is porous — it takes on water fast and swells, which is why over-processed hair goes soft and stretchy when wet and feels almost like it is dissolving. Then it dries brittle and snaps, often right where the bleach was heaviest.

The part nobody enjoys hearing: a rinse-off product does not re-form the covalent bonds that bleach broke. Anybody promising that is overstating it. What a treatment can honestly do is coat and fill — put peptide fragments into the gaps, lay a film along the shaft, get the cuticle sitting flatter, and give the fibre back enough slip and flexibility that it stops snapping every time you brush it.

In practice that is most of what you actually want. You want it to feel like hair again, to comb through without catching, and to stop leaving little broken pieces on your top. You want to not cut it all off.

Be patient with the gummy stage specifically — handle it wet as little as possible, use a wide-tooth comb from the ends up, and give it a proper treatment twice a week rather than daily fussing. It improves. It just does not improve overnight.