I have long, thick, extremely curly hair that's really rather stiff and abrasive (think almost like steel wool growing up out of my scalp). I'm prohibited from cutting it short, so it's about a foot and some long. Recently, my hair keeps randomly getting really really sticky in places, forming hard columns (bigger around than my finger) of sticky-glue-nasty, and tangling up and forming massive dreadlocks around said sticky places.
When I (finally) manage to brush to the center of the dreadlocks, there's this stuff in there that's sticky, and about the color and consistency of peanut butter (it has no odor). There's a lot of it and it's all over the place. It's impossible to brush out the sticky stuff, and brushing out the tangles does no good because the sticky stuff causes the hair to instantaneously tangle back into dreadlocks again.
The dreadlocks themselves are nearly impossible to brush out though, thanks to the stickiness -- I kid you not: my friend was helping me get it all untangled, and it was him pulling on the brush with both hands and his foot lodged in my back as he tried to make it come out. And that was working from the bottom up, a little bit at at time. The dreadlocks and stickiness are literally all the way up to my scalp, so simply cutting them out would leave me with massive bald spots (if not completely bald), and, as stated previously, I'm prohibited from cutting my hair short.
Even just running my hand on (since I can't get it through) my hair leaves this weird sticky residue on my hands, and scratching at my hair (not my scalp) causes the peanut buttery stuff to collect under my fingernails. My hair brush winds up completely coated in this stuff.
I've tried tons of different shampoos and stuff, thinking that that was the problem, but none of the changes help anything. The only thing I've found that will get this stuff out is Dawn Dish soap -- an entire bottle thereof -- and over two hours meticulously scrubbing it out. But here's the thing: I can get this all the way washed out, untangled, and completely free, and my hair will be back to being a tangled, sticky, peanut buttery mess within 12 hours or less.
I've not dyed my hair at all, and I don't particularly have a dandruff problem. How do I make this torment stop?