This woman eats eight cigarette butts a day due to rare condition!
If you must have an addiction, at least make it a cool one like cocaine or strippers, or both! But chomping down on fag butts is about as grimy as it gets! 42-year-old mum of two Karen Kaheni, from Barnsley, South Yorkshire, (figures) has a rare condition that gives people an uncontrollable desire to eat non-food items such as soil, sponges or, in her case, used fag butts. Vom
Karen, who is registered blind, claims to eat up to eight cigarette butts a day as well as a few sticks of chalk. Apparently she developed the bizarre craving when she was pregnant with her second child and she just never stopped wanting it. She said:
It's really embarrassing and I have no idea what triggered it. It isn't so much the taste of the cigarette butts or the chalk that I like - it's more the texture and the crunch. Now though, my cravings are so strong that when I run out of chalk or don't have a cigarette at hand, I get quite agitated and my mouth begins to water. It's a real addiction.
When she thinks back to the first time she had this weird craving, Karen says:
Because of my blindness I have to be very careful where I put my fag ends, so I don't burn the house down. I usually put them in a little tin filled with water, so that they immediately extinguish. But, one night while I was watching telly, I just thought, 'Why not give eating one a try?’ Again, it was the texture more than anything I was after. The taste was pretty disgusting - very bitter and salty - but I liked the crunch of them in my mouth. From there, the cravings got worse and I’d smoke between 60 and 80 cigarettes a day
It’s making me retch just thinking about it. I drank faggy water once after my parter put his cigarette out in a half empty bottle of water and I took a swig out of it without realising. I felt sick for hours after. So fuck knows how this woman can stomach actually eating them. Unsurprisingly, after devouring that much nicotine, Karen’s health started to deteriorate and she was left with constant diarrheoa. This forced Karen to cut back on her butt eating but she still gets the urge every now and then. Only recently she found herself craving chalk so she decided to scrape off a bit of her sister brick wall and eat it. However, she does say she only buys organic and imported chalk now, which is apparently a “healthier” option. Ah well that’s ok then!
