My Strange Addiction Finale: Ashes to Ashes to Addiction
Bianca's addiction started in an unusual, but not completely unheard of way. Like many children with an iron deficiency, Bianca ate dirt when she was younger. Unfortunately, the dirt transformed into whole pieces of pottery and cigarette ashes.
Bianca is now 20, and eating pottery around 20 times a day. For all you numbers people out there, that's 7000 times a year. Her taste buds also make the occasional detour for her sister's discarded cigarette ashes. It's the gritty texture of the ashes and the pottery that Bianca craves. The taste, she says, makes her feel "fresh inside…they smell like freshly fallen rain."
This, I believe, is what we call irony. According to Bianca, the pottery tastes like water but fulfills her in a way that water just can't. Her mother, ever the observant detective, asks why she doesn't just drink water if the two taste so similar. Then comes the shocker: in addition to consuming pottery on an average of 150 hours a month, Bianca has not had a full glass of water for just as long. The most water she has consumed in a month is the little she swallows when brushing her teeth. Something is up with BB's senses, no?
After seeing a doctor, Bianca cuts down to two pieces of pottery a day and completely removes the ashes from her diet. She's making progress. That and a Smart Water, and this girl will be right as, well, rain.