A widow has opened up about her troubling addiction to eating her late husband's ashes.
Casie, from Tennessee, lost her husband Sean two years after they first met and became inseparable. Watch below:
Sean sadly died from an asthma attack in 2011, leaving Casie stricken with grief which initially saw her carry his urn around everywhere.
She explained: "I take my husband everywhere, to the grocery store, shopping, to the movies, out to eat, anywhere I go, he goes.
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"Every time I go to the grocery store I buy the food that he likes, when I cook I buy the food that he likes, I don't eat it but I cook for him."
She added: "Some people laugh, they think I'm playing but I'm serious, he's my husband."
However, it was this relatively innocuous comforting practice that saw the widow begin to eat his ashes when some accidentally spilt out of the box.
"I guess with the transfer of his cremains some got into the cardboard box as well and that spilt out on my hands," she said.
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"I didn't want to wipe him off, that's my husband I didn't want to wipe him away so I just licked him off my fingers.
"And here I am today almost two months later and I can't stop, I'm eating my husband."
Casie made the revelation about eating her husband on the TLC programme My Strange Addiction and explained that she wanted help stopping because there would soon be no ashes left.
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At the time of filming, she had already eaten a pound of his remains.
"It tastes like rotten eggs, sand and sandpaper but I've grown to love that taste, it started off as not wanting to get rid of him and it's progressed into eating him," she said.
Casie explained that she gets an adrenaline rush from eating Sean's ashes, but it quickly fades when the reality of what she's doing hits her.
"I've lost 42lbs since my husband passed away basically the only thing I'm eating are his ashes," she said.
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"When I open up the urn I get a sense of happiness, it's like an adrenaline rush for me and the more I eat the more excited I get until I realise there's not a lot left.
"Then a few minutes later I feel horrible because I did it.
"It makes me feel embarrassed, ashamed, disgusted with myself, confused, crazy - you gotta be a really sick person to eat someone's ashes."
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Casie explained that she was ultimately traumatised by her husband's death and that if she eats all of his ashes, it will feel like she's lost him again.
"I don't know if I’ll be able to hold it together," Casie said of the possibility.
"I have to stop eating him, I've lost him once, this time it’ll be my fault that I lose him again."
Topics: Sex and Relationships
Emma Guinness