My patient was a 37-year-old executive assistant at a movie studio, and though I had known her for a long time, this was the first time she’d ever mentioned that she liked to eat paper. The craving, she told me, had been with her for years. Regarding it as an odd but harmless quirk, she hadn’t really shared her desire for paper with anyone before.
“Well, how much paper do you eat?” I asked. I didn’t want to embarrass her by suggesting some large amount, so I grabbed a scratch pad that I keep handy in my exam room, tore off a corner of a page, and held it up. “Like this much?”
She laughed. “Are you kidding? I could eat two or three of those pages at lunch. There’s a pad on my desk in my office, and I nibble all day long. And you know what else? I love the smell of cement, especially wet cement.”
