On the recent seventh season premiere of My Strange Addiction, the long-running TLC show spotlighting folks who suffer from “strange” (usually life-threatening) “addictions” (usually not quite addictions but compulsive behaviors), 31-year-old Alexandria native Kathryn Andrea prepares an omelet. The meal looks rather yummy, stuffed with fresh spinach and gooey cheese, until Kathryn slides it off of her plate and into a blender. Once it’s been pulsed into a perverse sort of smoothie, she pours it into a glass, pops in a straw, and chirps, “Breakfast is served!” She presses a finger down on her left nostril and sucks the omelet into her nose through her right.
At the time of filming, Andrea had been snorting all of her food and beverages for five straight years. She shares an episode with Wendy, who eats up to two pounds of raw meat every day, and Craig, a bodybuilder who is hooked on “being huge”—which seem like wholesome habits when spliced alongside the visceral footage of Andrea sniffing up gobs of liquified avocado toast. “I think it’s awful and I think it’s, like, primitive,” she says of chewing. She does note that she dropped 30 pounds by ingesting all her food nasally, but maintains that she did not start snorting meals to lose weight.
Kathryn is no stranger to the reality TV circuit—she was sued on an episode of The People’s Court in 2022 for stiffing her friend on a handmade Christmas sweater. (In her defense, she says she did not wear the sweater because it featured raunchy sexual imagery including “phallic elves” and “boob ornaments.”) But her My Strange Addiction appearance has, for obvious reasons, garnered more attention. In a viral clip from the show, Kathryn meets Justin—a man she’s been dating for six months but has somehow never eaten in front of—for lunch at Del Ray’s District Biscuit Company.
She asks the server if the kitchen can purée her order; they do not have a blender, he replies, but he can offer her a plate of runny grits. When her iced latte arrives, she wordlessly jams the straw into her nose and does her thing. A stream of coffee dribbles out of her nostril, and she demurely wipes it away with a napkin. Justin is horrified.
“Kathryn, what the fuck are you doing?” he asks. Andrea is hurt that he does not accept her for who she is, but the confrontation inspires her to visit a primary care doctor, who warns her that food-snorting can lead to choking, lung disease, and a slew of other potentially fatal complications. These risks have never occurred to her, she admits, and she resolves to kick the vice—if not for Justin, then for herself.
When Washingtonian caught up with Andrea via Zoom, she sipped water through her lips, and her lemon-tree-lined background revealed that she has ditched Alexandria for Los Angeles. She says she’s been getting a lot of media attention since her My Strange Addiction episode aired. “I was like, ‘I’m gonna go see what happens if I go to Los Angeles for a little bit,'” she tells us. We talked the mechanics of food-snorting, a recent relapse, where she’s at with Justin today, and how she’s learning to enjoy food that she eats with her mouth.
This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.
You shared in the episode that the first time you snorted food was a “flavored fruit drink,” on a dare.
When I was in community college, I got dared to snort a grape Kool-Aid Jammer, and I don’t know what it did—it just changed something. I think it was just a weird time for my brain development. I started snorting food and drinks more often, and then it snowballed and the next thing you knew, I was doing it exclusively for five years.
Can you walk me through the sensory experience of snorting food?
It’s different, but I’ve been doing it for a long time, man. It kind of hits your nose. Some people compare it—and it’s not really quite how I saw it, but when they said that, it clicked to me—it feels like if you get water in your nose in the swimming pool.
Which most people find really unpleasant.
Yes. But what that does is it also means you control your calories—which I’m not recommending. Do not snort your food or drinks. I tell people that: Don’t do what I did. But overeating? A thing of the past. Issues with my teeth? A thing of the past. All the stuff that can be problematic that comes with food—just gone. And it made me appreciate certain flavors more. It’s a more simple kind of taste, because you can taste it in the back of your throat.
That makes it sound like it wasn’t so much an addiction as it was an eating disorder.
A lot of people have said that. I’d never thought about it when I was doing it like that, because I didn’t mean anything like that. But people have pointed that out, and in hindsight, it’s valid. I’m not gonna argue. I guess it is a unique eating disorder.
Did you ever experience nosebleeds or any kind of pain associated with the snorting?
It was very isolated—once in a while when I started. But the big thing is, I did it for a long time. So it’s like I built up some sort of tolerance or something. The doctor actually pointed that out, because I’d never seen a doctor to talk about it until that episode.
Had it ever occurred to you that it might be risky for your health before you saw that doctor?
It felt kind of far-fetched. And I think the reason why it felt far-fetched that it might be problematic to my health was because I covered it pretty well for the most part, once I started to get the first few weird reactions. But friends and family would basically hit the angle of “that’s weird” first. The initial thing was not, “That’s bad for your health.” It was, “Kathryn, what are you doing?” And then after a while they’re like, “That’s bad for your health.” And it’s like, I’m not taking it too serious at that point, because I feel like they’re just not accepting me.
We saw that on the show when you went out with Justin, and he reacted to seeing you snort your food. Did you feel embarrassed in that moment? Is it ever embarrassing to be in a situation where you’re snorting food, or moments like when you asked the server if the kitchen could blend your meal?
Yeah. So that was easily the most awkward date of my life. It was pretty rough. I’m not gonna lie. I love Justin to death, Justin’s cool, we are friends. But I truly thought it would go better than that, just because he’s very open-minded. He’s a very open, understanding kind of guy. He’s very healthy with how he communicates. He’s got all these green flags, so I didn’t expect him to freak out like he did. It felt more intense to both of us then than what you would have seen.
But I would not go out to eat for the most part. I’d eat at home, prep all my meals at home. I would avoid any any restaurants as much as I could. But if I was in a situation where I had to go to a restaurant or a social event, I’d eat normally—what I always used to call eating “conventionally.” But when I did that I would feel so dirty. The other thing I always tell people is that my family would “forget” to invite me over for Thanksgiving. That was a thing for several years. Just, “Oh, oopsie, didn’t tell you where Thanksgiving is this year.”
I’m sorry. That makes me sad.
Yeah, it was sad. But I do understand it now, in hindsight. I do still sometimes snort my food, but it’s once in a blue moon. I’m taking it day by day, doing doing my best with it. I’m definitely doing a lot better.
How often would you say you do it now?
My slip-up was actually relatively recent. It was probably a week ago or something. But until then, I’d been eating completely normally for two weeks. The thing that I found messed me up was alcohol. I’m not a big drinker. I actually only consume alcohol once, maybe twice a year. It’s a very special-occasion type of thing. So I went and had some wine, I had a shot of Goldschläger. And that self-restraint that gets lost when people drink—it got me. That’s how I ended up snorting some Goldschläger shots.
You wouldn’t be the first person to do something they didn’t mean to do when drinking.
Exactly, and it could be worse. But that’s also the thing that I told myself when I was snorting my food all those years: “Well, I could be snorting drugs.”
Wait, I just processed that you said you snorted a shot. Did that hurt?
You know how it stings in the back of your throat when you drink it normal? Same way in your nose. You’re still gonna make that face, though.
What is the best food to snort?
If I was to snort a food right now, avocado toast or chickpea salad. I don’t know what it is. The kinds that are more basic or more savory tend to go better.
What is the worst food to snort?
I’m gonna say in hindsight—because when I was used to snorting everything, obviously my opinions have changed since I’ve dialed back—eggs. When they’re in the blender, they go really rubbery and they start to smell almost rotten.
If you’re sick, maybe congested, how does snorting your food work?
So snorting food actually helped me with that. If I got really sick, I would snort curry or something really spicy. It would instantly just clear my sinuses, bam, and then I’d also snort DayQuil or whatever with those little cocktail straws and the little cup that [the medicine] comes with.
Have you ever gotten brain freeze from something you’ve snorted?
Yeah, and you feel it a lot harder. Your whole head just kind of feels cold.
Do you have a favorite type of straw or cup to snort things out of?
My very, very favorite was the 30-ounce Stanley. The 40-ounce starts to get kind of on the large slide, but the 30-ounce Stanley straw is perfect. It’s a perfect fit in the nostril.
We leave off the episode with you making the decision to stop snorting your food. And we’ve talked a little bit about how you have been dramatically reducing the snorting. What strategies have you been using to curb those cravings?
Just counting the days. I wish there was a My Strange Addiction pin, like [Narcotics Anonymous] or [Alcoholics Anonymous]. Like, “Oh, I’ve gone seven days without snorting my food.” While that doesn’t seem to be a thing, I want to do more research, because if I would fit in at NA or AA, I’d love to go. I don’t really know too much about it, but bottom line is, I’m trying to take it a day at a time. And I try to be mindful, and I try to go outside more. I am trying to go to more restaurants. There was a restaurant in Los Angeles that asked me to do a food review for them, so I did that, and that helped me. It was a really worthwhile experience, so I actually want to do more of that. It’s helping me discover good food, and I think one of my problems was I wasn’t really loving food.
Is it nice not to have to clean your blender as much?
I had an impulsive moment when the show happened and I threw out my good Hamilton Beach. I actually threw it out when I got done talking to the doctor. I went home once filming wrapped and just chucked it. It was so satisfying, taking that blender and throwing it into a dumpster. But since I’ve cracked a little bit, I did get myself a little cheap one. But I’m not investing in a blender now. It was a freeing moment, even though I did kind of end up snorting my food again a little bit since then. I wanted to make it harder for myself. If I’m using a less good blender and it’s less convenient, I feel like that helps me a little.
