I eat paper and cotton wool so I need help

[Marlen]

Hi everyone, I have a very strange eating disorder: all my life I’ve eaten paper. I’m not anorexic and I’m not trying to lose weight, I just have this disorder and honestly don’t know what to do about it. Since I was little I had this addiction of ripping up notepads and obviously ate them in a very big quantity. After some years when I moved out of my parents house I realized that I started to eat paper more frequently and that this became an obsession. Besides paper I started to eat large quantities of cotton wool. I tried to google this but I found only thousands pages about weight loss and anorexia. I’m not trying to lose weight, I eat normal food like a normal person, but this disorder continues to torture me all the time and I still have this strong desire for cotton wool and paper. I don’t want to admit it to my friends or a doctor because I feel myself ashamed and embarrassed. I’m afraid of not being criticized. Another problem it’s that I have anemia and I have to control it with pills around the time of my period, and I always forget to take them. To be honest I started to feel myself like a freak .It’s started when I began to eat cotton. I never thought about this problem before, I’d eaten paper for years  and I never damaged to myself so I wasn’t worried about that, but eating cotton I think is more serious. I’m really scared because I’ve seen people saying that it can damage my intestine .It’s sound to me very frightening. So, what do I have to do? Does anyone know something about this? Please help me!

 

[Quiroz]

Yes, I understand your situation and belive me you're not alone with this disorder. I've made some reasearch about it and I've found that it is a disorder and it is called PICA. I'm telling you about this because I also have this - I eat sponge and cotton wool for as long as I can remember and happily I can tell you that I never had any harm from it. Lately, I have discovered that a lot of people are suffering from this disorder, really - very and very much people eat all kind of non comestible things but it is very UNKNOWN this fact because very few people actually talk about it! It is very good that you've decided to write about it, it means that you are brave enough to ask for help. I'm telling about this because I was too ashamed to tell anyone about my problem until few years ago until I finally decided to do it. Unfortunately I didn't get YET any help but I'm up to. About your intestine damange: you should remember that as long as the pieces of that cotton wool you're eating are not too big, there is a little chance of intestinal blockage and damage, however, you also should keep in mind that some cotton wool is chemically treated soooo....