Margaret, a woman from Kentucky, developed a strange addiction: for years, she deliberately let bees sting her to relieve her pain. She suffered from arthritis and said that after receiving the stings, she could move more easily. What began as an attempt to combat the pain ended up becoming a practice she said she depended on.
When she appeared on TLC’s My Strange Addiction, she said that she had been doing it for about 10 years and had endured more than 50.000 stings. She could give herself up to 15 stings a day, reaching around 100 per week. She even carried bees in her purse and had beehives in her garden so she could get to them whenever she needed them.
A doctor warned her that she could develop a severe, potentially life-threatening allergic reaction. Even so, Margaret said she had no intention of stopping.