Advice for OCD Sufferers

I don't really talk about this condition too much, as this is not an "I Have Mental Illness" blog. I just think of myself as a neurotic anyway, so I don't really think I am mentally ill. I hate discussing symptoms, as they seem humiliating to me, especially out here in public for all to see.

I will admit to one lately though: Am I really getting better? I will seem to be getting much better symptom-wise and start feeling really great. Then I will start wondering if I am really getting better or if it is all an illusion. Another one I sometimes have, "Can I ever get completely well?"

I used to be very much better with this condition to the point where I ran my life extremely well. That is not quite the case nowadays. So the question goes round and round about whether or not I can actually attain that previous state (which I recollect well, as it went on for years, and I can easily more or less sort of plug into it). It feels embarrassing just to write that stuff down.

Also sometimes I worry I might think something bad about a person.

For instance, I was standing in line with this couple to get into a presentation a while back. I started talking to them about all sorts of stuff, and the conversation actually went pretty well for 30 minutes. If one can carry on lengthy conversations like this, one should be congratulated. It is a highly developed skill and there are quite a few who can hardly even do this.

Well, the guy was ugly, it is true, and for 30 minutes I kept worrying that I was going to focus on the guy's ugliness. After 30 minutes, I did start to notice it or think about it or focus on it. Now, I like ugly people just fine, but I prefer not to focus on it.

And it seems that once I start focusing on his ugliness, it seems like the conversation doesn't go quite so well anymore. I'm convinced that that is not an adaptive way to have a conversation. Now, if I could re-frame it and say, "Yeah he's ugly, but so what, he's a great guy", maybe it would work ok, but I just seem to hang up on it.

Plus I get into this thing of trying to get the thought of the guy's ugliness out of head, or I get afraid I'm going to think, "This guy's ugly so I don't like him."

Well, I think you can see where all of this is heading? When I ask around, a lot of people just start laughing, but some act like it is really weird, bizarre and disturbing. A typical reaction I get is, "Why the Hell would anyone worry about something stupid like that?"

Well, anyway, at some point you may start getting a lot better as I have. Time seems to make most people better. I must recommend that most folks who are not getting better long-term go on SSRI's. I have been taking them for 14 years now and there has been no harm done to me whatsoever. In fact, when I go off of them, I'm practically a totally weird and messed-up basket case.

It also seems that the longer you stay on them, the better you get. You will also get much better over time if you confront your fears. If you have situational fears, you must confront them or they can linger for years, even 5, 10, or 20 years.

The way to confront the fear is to go into the situation that causes you the high anxiety. You will have been avoiding this situation and OCD can cause horrible avoidance that can look like social phobia or agoraphobia. You need to jump right into that situation.

Imagine your fear as a swimming pool with an endless bottom. You will dive into this pool over and over and not think about it. If you are afraid, you will just dive in again. The pool is deep and black and you cannot see the bottom.

Just go to that situation and stay there while the obsessive thoughts come, no matter how horrible they are. Even if you feel like killing someone or molesting some kid or whatever, just go into that situation and think about killing the person you are alone with in that house or think about molesting those kids who are all around you at your friends house. You're not gonna kill anyone and you're not going to molest any kids.

Just let the anxiety wash over you. The main thing is don't run away. Just stay there and let the thoughts pound away at your brain and flood all over you. Just let them go out of control and take over. After a while, if you don't run, you will get sick of feeling anxious, and the thoughts will just start to dissipate and actually become boring or stupid.

The principle here is that you cannot run from your fears.

You need to plunge right into your fears.

Sometimes the fears will stay for a while. I have done fear confrontations where the fear stayed for like 6 weeks or so. Main thing is you do not run from it - you just sort of go swimming in it. If closing your door protects you from the fear, you open the door. If one room protects you from the fear, you go to the other room where the fear is.

At some point, you will find your symptoms dramatically lessening. This will mean that you are getting very comfortable in a situation. Stay there and do not analyze it. Say to yourself: "Just go with the flow." Don't analyze your symptoms going away or start to wonder about them. Just accept it and shrug your shoulders. Don't even ask why. Otherwise you can start to go round and round with the "Am I really getting better?" BS.

For older people and for some younger people, cannabis seems to work very well for OCD and other anxiety disorders. For others, cannabis makes them much worse. I have used cannabis recently for OCD and experienced the most dramatic symptom lessening in 25 years. In my case, it needs to be combined with SSRI's, especially about 20mg Lexapro.

I got good results with cannabis using only small doses (1-3 hits off a blunt) even every 5-10 days. I have to admit that larger doses were better, but they are not really necessary. Use seems to be cumulative. As you use it more and more timewise, you need to use it less and less frequency-wise. Small doses of cannabis are not very harmful, and you have a terrible illness anyway. You need to weigh your choices.

Alcohol does not seem to work so well, but it's a lot of fun, and it does tend to reduce anxiety in the short term. I recommend up 3 glasses of red wine per day for males aged 40-60. New studies out of France show 30% reduction in death rate for all causes at this level, but it seems to apply only to red wine. Most other intoxicants are not recommended, although they can supply short-term relief.

You may be on too many drugs. OCD is often assaulted with all sorts of pills. Polypharmacy is the latest rage with psychiatrists. I see OCD patients all the time being treated with wholly inappropriate drugs like Klonipin, older antipsychotics like Haldol, newer atypical antipsychotics, older tricyclic antidepressants and Wellbutrin.

None of these drugs have been shown to work well except the atypicals, and the atypicals are highly dangerous.

The gold standard for OCD is SSRI's. This is the first-line treatment. Others should be tried only after SSRI failure. SSRI's can cause serious problems, but many are able to use them without problems. Truth is, they are much safer than most of the drugs above.

Being on a drug that doesn't make you much better is idiotic. If you are not getting better on a psych drug, for Chrissake, just go off of it! I see so many OCD patients who keep on taking drugs that are doing them no benefit whatsoever. That docs continue to keep patients on these drugs is simply criminal. Most of these drugs are potentially quite nasty, including the SSRI's, and there is no reason to use them if they don't help.

Avoid anxiety-producing syndromes and adopt a laissez-faire attitude about these things. For instance, I worried at one point that I had damaged my brain from using drugs. Well, I have used drugs off and on for 35 years now with few problems, but it's possible I suffered some damage.

I finally concluded that I have probably suffered some damage from using cocaine (though I never used that much) but it was either less than or the same as many others I knew who also used it and are all completely normal, so there was nothing to worry about. I just decided that the other stuff had not done anything to my brain.

It is important to just decide things: right, wrong or indifferent. Just say, "Pot doesn't damage the brain and I'm not damaged," if you worry about it. Just say, "All men are attracted to young girls, even children, a little bit, so it's nothing to worry about." Just decide you are straight and not gay and leave it at that. Just decide you are not going to kill anyone and go ahead and be alone with anyone you want to.

OCD will always want to ask you if you are sure or not, but just say, "I believe what I believe and that is that." So you need to become more closed-minded and just say the Hell with it.

Decide you are the sort of person who can handle anything. Deliberately put yourself into situations (legally and carefully) where you will be upheld to ridicule, shame and gross insults. Let the horrible, anxiety-inducing attacks come and just let them wash over you.

I am on a discussion group right now where some stupid feminists are pretty much calling me a child molester, rapist, misogynist, abuser of women, creep, weirdo, freak, loser, guy who can't get laid, social retard, dangerous, dirty old man, and possible sex criminal against females, especially teenage girls.

They are saying that they have young daughters and they would not let them get anywhere near me. Of course, I am none of the things that they are calling me, and actually the accusations are anxiety-inducing, but I am just seeing myself as a He-man who can be called anything by anyone and he doesn't even care.

In fact, I am deliberately baiting them and trolling them to provoke them into calling me horrible names and the sicker, more awful, more horrible, and more criminal and evil the names they call me, the better.

Now most men would be horrified to be called such things, but I am just enjoying it, as it isn't going away, and none of it is true anyway. Also, if I tell the diabolical feminist bitches from Hell how much it upsets me, they will just do it ten times more to make me feel even worse.

I am calling them diabolical, insane, deranged, maniacs, bigots, chauvinists, promoters of male hate propaganda, silly, idiotic, etc. I am calling Western feminism a cancer and a poison that destroys every civilization and female it infests.

This is being done in order to provoke them into calling me a sex criminal and other horrible things, plus it's also true that they are all of these things. I am trying to provoke them into calling me my worst nightmares in order to get over my anxieties about these things.

For OCD, I also recommend fasting, especially juice fasting. The OCD relief is only temporary, but it works dramatically well. The OCD will start to come back after you start eating again.

As for your thoughts, the less said about them the better. The worse obsessions will start to go away and rarely come back, but they are often replaced with less bad ones.

I recommend shifting attention away from your mind and your OCD. For instance, if you walk into a coffee shop, stop thinking about your thoughts. I also recommend that you stop thinking about the other people in the shop. Instead, just think about whatever you are doing: "Here I am, filling my coffee cup in a coffee shop." Stop the thought-watching.

I also recommend thinking about something else entirely. In a public venue full of people, just think about some abstract intellectual subject or what you are going to do that day, or some joke you overheard. Think about something that has absolutely nothing whatever to do with your own thoughts or with where you are or especially the people around you.

You're in a crowded store and you are thinking of Finno-Ugrian linguistics or some esoteric subject like that.

If there is a choice to think about something in an anxious way or in a non-anxious way, choose the non-anxious way. For instance, now I am on a forum for people suffering from HPPD, a disorder one gets from using hallucinogens.

There are some anxious guys on there going on and on about whether or not they are brain-damaged. It's an obsession.

I am telling them to knock it off. Even if they are, there is nothing to done. If they are not, all the better. In either case, they still have HPPD. So going round and round about whether or not you are damaged is an unproductive thought process that only generates anxiety.

Remember: Go with the flow. Let it happen and don't analyze it. And most important of all, you cannot run from your fears.

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