A single mother to two children once discussed her addiction to drinking paint on TLC show My Strange Addiction.
Heather, 43, compared drinking paint to “warm milk” and confessed that she drank up to a gallon of paint every year.
“As it’s going down your throat, it feels very nice and warm, almost like a thicker version of warm milk,” she said. “But obviously it’s got that very strong chemical taste to it, which is perfect to me.”
Heather drank paint from markers
At the time of filming the TLC show a few years ago, Heather insisted that she had drunk three gallons of paint. She drank it in the form of markers every day.
“I drink paint from markers because I have looked for other paints, both in quart or gallon form, and haven’t found any to satisfy my desire,” Heather explained.
In a resurfaced clip shared by TLC recently, Heather showed viewers how she went about drinking it from her marker. While unwrapping a new marker, she said: “You need to shake it up obviously, like your standard paint.”
“You can already see that there’s some white paint on the edge, I’ll put that into my mouth and suck the excess off, take that off, and now you have what I drink,” she continued.
Drinking it from the marker, the white paint started to drip out of her mouth and down her face.
Heather’s addiction began after her mum’s death
Heather’s addiction to drinking paint every day began after her mother died. “One day, I brought the tip of the marker to my tongue, it’s been every day since then,” she said.
Well aware of the danger of it, Heather would look for a private place to drink the paint so her two children wouldn’t see her.
She stated that her kids have smelt the paint on her breath and seen it on her teeth.
“If I ever found one of my children trying the paint, I think I would be devastated, in fact, I know I would,” Heather said while getting emotional. “Knowing that I potentially brought that into their lives would devastate me.”
TLC warned viewers that the chemicals can cause “immediate pulmonary bleeding, seizures and even death”. A doctor on the show alarmed Heather that if she “doesn’t stop drinking the paint, she could suffer from respiratory problems, neurological problems, hearing loss, liver damage, kidney damage, and even death”.
Heather discovered that she had “abnormal” kidney function after her medical tests. As a result, she encouraged herself to quit.
Luckily, TLC told viewers that Heather managed to quit drinking paint since filming the show and that her kidney function has “returned to normal”.
Read more: Emma Willis reveals she lives in constant fear Matt will relapse: ‘Addiction is part of who he is’
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