World of the Bizarre

Woman has been eating toilet paper every day for 23 years

By T.K. Randall
March 5, 2023

Image: AI-generated (Midjourney) 34-year-old Kesha, whose bizarre paper-eating habit began when she was still in school, hit the headlines after being featured on a segment of the TLC show My Strange Addiction.

Her condition, which sees her get through as many as 75 sheets of toilet roll every day, is known as xylophagia - an eating disorder characterized by an abnormal compulsion to eat paper.

It is a form of pica - which can see sufferers dine on everything from soap to garden soil.

"I think I crave it because I love the way the toilet paper feels on my tongue, how it dissolves when it hits my tongue," she said.

Kesha's family has been left struggling to find a way to help her kick the habit."Every time I'd see Kesha, she'd have tissue in her hand and she'd try to hide it behind her back," said her mother. "If you tried to take it from her she'd get upset."

"I've never been able to understand why she eats tissue, and I never will."

Doctors have warned her that eating such large amounts of paper comes with serious health risks.

"You're putting your body at risk and really playing Russian roulette with your life," psychiatrist Kimm Dennis told her.

"If your intestines rupture inside your abdomen, that could be fatal, and could be fatal pretty quickly."


Source: India Times

Tags: Pica, Toilet Paper