A mum-of-two has a rare condition which sees her unable to resist eating cigarette butts and chalk. And you thought your diet was bad on the run-up to Christmas, eh?
Forty-two-year old Karen Kaheni, from Barnsley, South Yorkshire, has pica - a condition that gives people an uncontrollable desire to eat non-food items such as soil, sponges or, in this case, used cigarette butts. Delicious.
Karen, who is registered blind, now chomps her ways through up to eight cigarette stumps a night as well as around 250g of chalk a week.
She first began craving chalk in 1997 when she was pregnant with her second child, but says she has no idea what kicked it all off.
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"It's really embarrassing and I have no idea what triggered it," Karen said.
"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."
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Karen, who has two grown up daughters - 23-year-old Danielle and Sara, 21 - says she initially didn't act on the cravings.
She explained: "I had quite a late pregnancy and towards the last few weeks, I remember getting this massive urge to grind my teeth on something hard and chalky. I'd find myself fantasising about the old blackboard chalk that we had at school."
And it didn't stop there - in 2017, 'out of nowhere', Karen began to crave ciggie stumps.
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Thinking back to the first time she gave into the bizarre urge, Karen recalled: "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."
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From there, the cravings got worse and, with Karen smoking between 60 and 80 cigarettes a day, there was plenty of opportunity for her to indulge in her favourite snack.
However, as a result of the nicotine-heavy diet, Karen's digestive system began to protest and she was left with 'constant diarrheoa', which was enough to prompt her to cut back.
Karen, who kept her cravings from her partner Andrew, eventually came clean and told him.
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"He looked at me and thought I was a complete weirdo," she said. "And I don't really blame him.
"But he couldn't help me and I was too embarrassed to go to a doctor about it, so I just kept suffering. "
Unable to curb her craving for cigarette butts, Karen's longing to eat chalk also made a reappearance in 2018.
She explained: "I was outside in my sister's garden one night smoking, when a desire to have a nibble on the brick wall just struck me.
"I scraped a bit off with my nail and ate it. It was so satisfying - just the texture and feeling that I had been longing for."
But Karen was aware that eating chalk would do no favours to her already-troubled digestive system, as it contains elements of nickel and arsenic. So she went online and found a website that flogs natural chalk imported from Russia, at a rate of £17 for 250g, meaning she could eat as much as she fancied without worrying about getting sick.
Thanks to the chalk, Karen was able to pull back on the amount of cigarette stumps she was eating and says she only consumes around two or three a day.
"I don't really want to tell people about it, especially not doctors, so now only my close family and a few friends know," she confessed.
"I did recently discover a Facebook page for people with Pica and that has been really useful for me.
"It's nice to know that it isn't just me and there are other people out there with the same problem.
"It makes me feel like less of a weirdo - less like I'm going mad."
Featured Image Credit: PA / PA Real Life
Topics: UK News, Interesting