It’s disgusting, funny and sad all at once, what 53-year-old Carrie from Colorado Springs goes through. She has been addicted to drinking her own urine for over four years now. Her urine intake amounts to about 80 ounces a day, and since she began she has consumed over 900 gallons. “I drink almost all the urine that comes out of my body. It tastes like water for me,” she says.

What makes Carrie’s condition all the more weird is that she doesn’t just drink urine from a glass. I watched this video of a program about her on the TLC channel, where she gathers up the courage to confess her habit to her friend Denise. During the confession, she describes in detail exactly what  she does with the urine. Some of it goes in the regular way, through a glass. But then she puts some of it in a Neti pot and drinks it nasally. And some, she actually drinks through her eyes using an eye cup. She even brushes her teeth with it, and saves some so that she can rub aged urine all over her skin. Carrie says that it’s the nasal drinking that hurts the most. “The pain is different than any pain you’ve experienced.”

Reading about Carrie, the first question that comes to mind is, “Why?” Why would anyone want to do such a thing to themselves. Doctors and psychiatrists do have a few theories as to what is happening to Carrie. Some say that it could be a type of Pica disorder, where people are obsessed with eating things that aren’t food. Others say that Carrie displays the exact symptoms of Obsessive Compulsive disorder, spending a good deal of time obsessing over her urine. According to psychiatrist Dr. Keith Albow, drinking urine probably allows Carrie to forget about stressful things. He says that Carries condition shows a “real failure between what represents you as an individual and what represents waste products to be discarded. She probably has guilt over ridding herself of her bodily functions.” Counseling and therapy should be able to help Carrie. We sure hope it does.