I suffer from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), an emotionally crippling disease that I call my personal prison. Petty thoughts, pointless rituals, counting, avoiding, checking, repeating them over and over until I feel I have ’’gotten it right.’’ I consider this a severe illness that I suffer from and am powerless to stop.
My first symptoms of OCD started at the age of 10 I was lying in my parents bed, when all of a sudden I had a sudden urge to go and touch all four corners around the bedroom. I felt such anxiety that I had to force myself to do this just to get a sense of relief. After I did this I went back into bed and started crying hysterically, not knowing what was wrong with me. My Dad came in and comforted me the best he could not knowing what just happened and made me feel so much better, and from then on I kept this affliction hidden for 11 years. I kept my disorder a secret and suffered with it for years because I was to humiliated and did not want to be considered crazy.
Each obsessive thought was accompanied by the fantasy that if I didnt act on it, for example, If I dont touch an object a certain way 20 times until it feels right, something terrible would happen to my parents. I cannot really describe the torturous pain of the anxiety brought on by an Obsessive Compulsive Order attack. The example I just relayed to you used to happen to me often. Between the ages of 13 and 21 (save for one or two brief remissions) this kind of an attack occured every day. Many times it stayed with me all day long and, if it disappeared, a new attack, spawned from the old one, would quickly replace it. The energy and time I would exert toward a hundred aimless acts has me shaking my head in disgust right now.
When I was pregnant and in the hospital, I came accross a book on OCD, and this is when I finally found that there was a name for this condition, and that I was not the only one suffering with this disease. I went into therapy, and over a period of time made some excellent progress. I learned ways to cope and adapt. If there was an emotional source to the illness, the psychiatrist did as much as could be done to eliminate it. Shortly thereafter, I went into remission and was okay for about a month or two. Not perfect, but substantially improved.
After being in therapy, it became clear that normal life stress events seemed to trigger OCD episodes. After the birth of my son, the disease struck again. This time it was worse than ever before. I had to exert so much energy managing the disease day to day that I spent much of the time emotionally and physically exhausted. Everything took me twice or three times as long to do. I had to check everything! I’d check what I just checked and then doubt that I’d adequately checked it. So, I had to go back and re-check it again, and again, and again. It was ludicrous and purposeless. I knew what I was doing made no sense at all. Yet, I had no choice bu to keep checking things. These aimless acts controlled my life until I was put on a drug called Clomipramine. The drug does not seem to work as an antidepressant against OCD, even though it is a very good antidepressant. But it does do something else, it blunts or removes the obsessions or compulsions.
My story does not have a simple happy ending, I need a very high dose of the drug. With a high dose of Clomipramine, I am very drowsy and weak and sometimes even nauseated. I still prefer to have the drug than to be without it, but can only take enough to remove perhaps two-thirds of the problem. We are still far from a good answer to the enigma of OCD.