Evan has a "slimy and wet" addiction for relieving stress that makes him "disgusted".

If there’s one thing I can’t get enough of, it’s interesting addictions.

I’m all about them. Nothing reveals quite how quirky and diverse people are, like discovering there are some who are legitimately addicted to eating ‘drywall’ or snorting baby powder.

I thought I’d heard them all. Oh. But how wrong I was.

This week on Mamamia Out Loud, Jacqueline Lunn shared the strangest addiction she’d ever heard of with her two co-hosts. Post continues below. 

Let me introduce you to 28-year-old Evan, who featured on on TLC‘s ‘My Strange Addiction’ in 2012.

Six years after the death of his father, while he was in college, Evan had an urge he had never felt before; to pull hair out of a shower drain. And sniff it.

He now collects hair from drains up to three times a week.

“It has to be out of a shower drain. I can’t just go to the closest barber shop. I can’t go up to a girl and ask her to pull out some hair…” he says.

“Long brown hair is probably my favourite. It has to be slimy. It has to be wet.” Evan often uses coat hangers, tweezers or toothbrushes to access the hair from the bottom of the drain pipe.

He says, however, that he is sure to, “always throw out the toothbrushes to be respectful. Because that’s gross…”

When he visits someone’s house, Evan is confronted by the impulse to retrieve hair from the drain. He asks to use their bathroom, and then begins to feel “panicky and sweaty”.

“Once I find the hair the stress is gone,” he explains.

“About three to five seconds later I get disgusted. I throw it away. I regret doing it every time.”

Of course, what Evan is suffering from is a pathology, and the show was a platform to ensure he got the help he needed.

But, damn.

I think he’s a clear winner when it comes to the strangest addiction of all time.

You can listen to the full episode of this week’s Mamamia Out Loud, here. 

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