The 10 Most Bizarre Eating Disorder News Stories By Ivana Wynn  [12 more lists]

TLC did a recent series on people with bizarre eating disorders for the show "My Strange Addiction." Tempestt, who is a college student, goes to the laundry room every morning when she wakes up to stick her fingers in the laundry detergent box and lick off the powder. It tastes salty, sweet and bitter all at the same time but she can't resist it. "It feels so right," she says.



When she was younger, Tempestt would only smell laundry detergent to calm her down but six months before appearing on the show she started actually eating it.

Dr. John Zajecka, a psychiatrist who appears on the show, says this habit can produce ulcerations in the mouth, esophagus and stomach.

Tempestt also eats soap when she washes her hand, takes a shower or even when she's sitting on her bed. Eating these two different types of cleaners she says makes her feel refreshed.

Bianca, who appeared on TLC's "My Strange Addiction," eats pottery for up to 150 hours a month. She keeps a stash in her bra. The pottery isn't always gritty enough for her though and four years ago she started eating cigarette ashes.

She likes the gritty feeling of them and the way they dissolve on her tongue. Weirdly enough, she doesn't smoke but her sister does so she's always waiting around for her ashtray to eat up her favorite snack.



Bianca's sister Amika is put in an awkward position. She's disgusted with her sister's habit and tries to discourage it but hiding them or grabbing them from her while trying to maintain a close relationship with her.

Lanieka, who appeared on "The Tyra Banks Show," started eating toilet paper around age 12 when her mom wouldn't let her and her brothers get a drink of water. They would go into the bathroom and put water on toilet paper and then suck out the water. Lanieka became addicted to the toilet paper itself and now eats half a roll a day.



She likes the way it dissolves on her tongue and blocks her airway before she swallows it. She eats toilet paper while she's sitting on the toilet. She sits there for twenty minutes eating the toilet paper. "My legs get numb," she says.

Her roommate Latoya was also on the show to report that Lanieka hadn't gone number two for a month. The toilet paper in Lanieka's body was stopping her intestines but luckily, Tyra got her some help.

A 27-year-old stand-up comedian from Wooster, Ohio, recently appeared on TLC's "My Strange Addiction" because he eats glass. While you'll have to take his word for it, he says it gives him a *warm and tingly* feeling. Watch him bite into champagne glasses and break lightbulbs:



Josh says there isn't much of a taste to the glass but he enjoys the gritty texture of it, even if the sounds his chewing makes sounds awful in his head.

He's been eating glass for four years and has already consumed 250 light bulbs and 100 glasses. His fiance thought he was joking when he first did it because he is a comedian after all but Josh says glass-eating is not a part of his routine.

Get this: He came across glass eating in a book he was reading and then decided to try it. It was scary at first, he says, but once he was sure it wasn't doing any damage to his body, it got easier. Josh clearly doesn't get the concept of "don't try this at home."

His fiance is worried about him. She says people worry about cholesterol while he eats glass and people don't know they're going to have a heart attack before they do.

The truth is that Josh's addiction is a double-edged sword -- he loves the attention he gets when he eats glass in front of people at parties and crowds and rarely does it when he's alone.

Kirsten uses her teacher prep period to eat the chalk dust that accumulates by her black board.

Kirsten told Tyra Banks on her show that she had gotten cravings for corn starch and baby powder when she was pregnant with her first baby in 2004. She would put it on her hand and lick it off.



Kirsten hasn't told her husband or family and doesn't do it in front of her students because she is really ashamed of her habit (which is most likely why she went onto national television.

She has also experimented with the powdered bathroom cleaner Comet while pregnant but luckily she didn't like the taste of it. She drank a bunch of water afterward. She compares the craving to walking past a bakery and smelling the bread.