Karen Kacheny, 42, of Barnsley, South Yorkshire, has an inexplicable food cravings for foods that are extremely unpalatable to a normal person.
Life for Karen was not the best way, at the age of 12 she became blind due to meningitis, and a few years later she became addicted to smoking.
Karen started eating cigarette butts last year. At first it was very rare, but now she eats all the butts of the cigarettes she smoked. And seizes them with chalk.
Karen now eats up to eight cigarette butts and a couple of sticks of chalk every day.
Karen does not live well on disability benefits, and her partner, 42-year-old Andrew Simon, is out of work. Therefore, a woman does not have the opportunity to be examined by specialists. However, according to journalists, most likely she has the so-called Perversion of Taste or Picacism.
This anomaly is characterized by an irresistible desire to consume completely inedible things, such as sand, clay, glass, chalk, as well as damp dough or ice. Most often, this disorder occurs in children and women, and especially in poor families.
Karen has two children and began to experience the craving for absorbing chalk during her second pregnancy in 1997. But why she started eating cigarette butts and chalk a year ago, she cannot explain.
According to Karen, her addiction is increasingly reminiscent of drug addiction. She says that now she can no longer just take chalk in her hand and not feel the desire to eat a cigarette at the same time.
The constant consumption of cigarettes and cigarette butts affects Karen's health negatively, causing severe diarrhea. But even that cannot stop her.
Chalk also contains many different chemicals and Karen once feared that she might poison herself. But then she found special edible chalk from Russia on the Internet and now buys it regularly.
Once Karen went to London and during this time the habit disappeared by itself. But when she returned home, everything started anew.