OCD can be a debilitating disease - Really glad to hear that he seems to have a handle on it!
For reasons he can’t explain, he started excessively washing his hands.
…
in Knight’s brain clicked, and he began to have thoughts of contracting diseases and getting sick.
These two parts stood out to me.
I have OCD, and I have been through exactly what is described here. It’s terrifying. OCD is not like it is portrayed when joking with your friends about wanting your pencils parallel with the edge of your desk. It is a debilitating disorder that prevents you from living a normal life.
For me, the “click” moment was also when I was in college. As a sidenote, I think the fact that this manifests in college for a lot of people is not a coincidence. I think the high stress of college is a huge contributing factor (Obligatory not a doctor. Just a pattern I have observed.). Anyway, back to the story. So I was taking a piano class in college as a fun, personal-enrichment, filler class. I took the class at night time. It was the last thing I did before driving home and going to bed. The pianos were visibly dirty. Like grime caked on. So I would always just think to myself that I should wash my hands before I go to bed, because I touch my face a lot when I’m in bed. Then one time I touched my phone and I thought, “oh I should.clean my phone before bed, because I touch that in bed and then touch my face.” And then I once touched my elbow to the piano and thought the same thing. And then I started thinking that every time I touched a door handle. Or sat on a chair. Or brushed up against a wall. Suddenly the world was filthy and every time I touched anything, I immediately had to clean myself. Over the next year, I spiraled HARD. It got to the point where I couldn’t open doors. I would get trapped places and need to wait for someone to open the door for me. Eventually I started seeing therapy because that obviously wasn’t a sustainable lifestyle. That helped me soooo much. I can have a normal life now. I still have a few weird quirks, but I can live with those.
Wow, thanks for sharing your experience! Someone I’m very close with has OCD, and she also recently explained it to me in a way that really made me (a non-haver of OCD) understand how she experienced it, and this helped me understand it better, too. Thanks, and hope you’re doing better now!
My OCD started in college as well. My two biggest obsessions are security and food contamination. My click moment was when I had to call off work because I kept worrying my apartment was going to be broken into again. I would lock up the place and then get halfway to work and have to turn around to check on everything.
The food contamination just felt normal because my mom was like that too. To this day I still can’t share drinks or food with anyone without feeling like I’m gonna have a panic attack. Like I can share a pizza, but I can’t take a bite off your plate or vice versa.
Food contamination is still one of my big ones today. I’m happy I don’t have security as one.
How are you doing now, by the way? Has it gotten easier to manage? What steps have you taken to try to improve your quality of life?
I’ve been in therapy for a while - fortunately CBT and learning to deal with anxiety has been useful for me. The security stuff has been eased with minor enhancements to my apartment - cameras and smart smoke detectors that allow me to check in on things when I’m away from home.
The food contamination stuff is pretty easy to avoid by just preparing my food at home and rarely eating out.
And the biggest trick, which is detrimental to my life in a much worse way is being an alcoholic in active addiction. Turns out alcohol is amazing for severe anxiety. I also have complex PTSD. But it’s really bad for the body… so who knows man lol.
Oh, I was going to suggest smart home stuff to help with the security, but it sounds like you already have that covered. I have a smart lock that I can check the status of when I’m away from home, so I can easily check if I locked the door. It’s pretty neat.
I feel you on the alcohol. I don’t drink alcohol too much, but when I do, it’s incredible how my OCD just disappears. Alcohol can obviously be extremely dangerous if used in excess, but I think it proves that there exists a way to medicate OCD.
Good for you on seeing therapy. That was the thing that helped me the most. And I think I got mine early enough that it was somewhat easy to treat with therapy. I think therapy should always be the first thing people should try. I always recommend it.
Yeah my therapist is awesome and has helped me so much in the few years I’ve been seeing her now. Unfortunately I let myself get deep in the bottle before I sought help for the first time since college over a decade ago.
Addiction is a motherfucker, especially when you can’t trust yourself to take the actually effective anxiety meds without doing down the same well. So every time I do detox through a program I end up making it about 2 months max before my anxiety gets to me and I end up drinking to relieve it.
Advice for anyone struggling with alcohol or benzos: detox and withdrawal can actually kill you from only these two drug types. Go to a hospital or program if your symptoms are even moderate.