Pica (Eating Inedible Things)

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I still have pica, and oddly it never started until I was 19, likely in response to some stressful life events
It's not chronic like on "My Strange Addiction", and I will do it in private as a way to concentrate and focus.
I eat one very particular inedible thing (which I'm choosing not to reveal) which is not very harmful and has not caused me any problems (so far).

I remember my mom and dad being concerned because I would eat dirt as a young child. They took me to the doctor and he said that I was iron deficient. That actually made sense, so it didn't trigger further concern. I distinctly remember being finicky about the dirt I ate. It had to be from one certain area of the yard where no one had access, so I felt as though the dirt was clean so it seemed safe. I found that funny even as a child..."clean dirt". My older sister teased me by telling other kids that I would eat mud pies, but I found the thought of mud pies to be utterly disgusting. Almost as funny as "clean dirt".

I also chewed on the wooden arms of our couch, as well as the wooden coffee table. I remember that the feeling of the wood on my teeth was very comforting to me. I did this without too much thought while watching TV. I just discussed this with my sister and mom about two weeks ago. It was comical, because they always thought that the teeth marks were from the dog. We then imagined how the dog was probably cursing at me all those years for making her look bad.

This is the first time I've heard about Pica, but now I can make some sense out of these strange things.

I get cravings for wood occasionally. I dunno what it is about wood, but it just smells so delicious and the texture isn't that bad.

oh goodness, sawdust.

I remember that tasting a terminal on a nine volt battery resulted in an interesting tangy electric-y taste. I don't do that anymore.

I used to eat paper, and gnaw on pencils, pens and chew rubber. I also ate the stems of 3 leaf clovers.

I would never swallow stuff but I would chew on the weirdest things.

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I used to ask my mom to play with bread dough, go outside, play with it, but also eat some of that. I also would eat raw cookie dough whenever I made cookies with my mom. Actually a fun memory.

I used to put my dogs' food in the water and eat that, and also eat it dry. I think I put it in the water to make it easier to chew.

Where do I start?

Wood varnish at three, solem-and-seal (an inedible black berry) by five, cat food, dog food, rhubarb leaves (they had a tangy flavor that I liked),
raw ground beef, raw cookie dough (but who doesn't?), red ants and a ladybug. I've been told I used to eat plastic beads, though I can't remember. I also used to suck on a plastic ruler and small iron screws.

Most of the time, I only tasted, never swallowed, though there were a few exceptions.

Nowadays it's only raw kitchen ingredients: salt, cream of tartar, lemon juice, and yes, spray mace. NEVER put that in chili!

No, I never did that. Thankfully.

I remember when I was a child, this was a funny random memory. I was maybe 6 at the time. My great aunt had this rotten calendar on her basement wall from 1955 (the year was 1990 or even 1991), and the rubbery ink letters were dangling off of the barely held together paper. I started pulling off numbers and eating them. I don't know what compelled me to do it, and man did she hate me for it. If she cared about how the calendar looked, she would have taken care of it better than letting it deteriorate to the mess it was. Kinda like how my GRANDMA'S VIOLIN she kept when it wasn't hers, and hung on a wall exposed to the elements as a "decoration" when my great grandfather made the thing and she didn't ever play it. Aka, this lady was kinda a b*tch anyway and later slipped up through hearsay that since I was pregnant at 20 unmarried that I was going to hell according to her (like it even mattered). I just remember sitting there eating numbers as a child and her screaming at me on the basement steps with her hair curlers, and handbag toting her ankle-biter Pomeranian dog on her arm.

I was also a dirt eater, and I liked chewing on (silver) maple sticks from the back yard, as well as sucking on rocks. Truth be told, I was probably deficient in a whole bunch of minerals because my family didn't have a lot of high quality food growing up.

I don't know if I ever "ate" anything inedible, but for some reason I liked tasting Pay - Doh when I was a little kid. I also liked chewing on my plastic toys, especially if they were PVC and were painted....I liked feel of the painted plastic between my teeth. I still have some of the toys I chewed on as a kid (kept them around for sentimental reasons) and they still have patches where the paint was chewed off.

I sometimes wonder if I accidentally ingested some of the paint from the toys and that contributed to my current issues. Oh well.