Girl addicted to eating soap

You may have heard about 19-year-old Floridian Tempestt Henderson, the young woman known for eating soap. In the past few weeks, she’s appeared on TLC’s My Strange Addiction, and she’s also been featured on the Daily Mail.
IT’S the toxic compulsion that doctors claim could kill her. But this 19-year-old girl claims she is hopelessly addicted… to eating soap.
A rare medical condition has left Tempestt Henderson, from Florida, eating up to five bars of soap a week – and washing powder too. ‘I remember the first time I dipped my fingers into the washing powder,’ she said. ‘I dabbed the powder onto my tongue and it tasted so sweet, and salty…it just felt so right. I was hooked straight away.’
The nursing student says she knew eating soap was dangerous, but ignored the warning labels on the box in favour of licking the deadly powder daily, from the minute she woke up in the morning.
Soon she had moved onto licking the bubbles of soap in the shower, too, a habit that was getting her through up to five bars of soap a week.
‘In the shower, I like to lather up a green bar of soap, and lick the bubbles. And as the soap disintegrates, I pop a tiny amount of the soap into my mouth and suck it. It’s heavenly. ‘I love the clean feeling it gives me. Eating soap feels so much cleaner than just washing with it.’
After six months of eating soap, unhappy Tempestt decided to be brave and seek medical advice. She was diagnosed with a rare disorder called PICA, which doctors told her is characterised by an appetite for substances that are largely non-nutritive. Image