Obsessive Compulsive Disorder is an anxiety disorder as classified in the DSM-V (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders). It’s somewhat uncommon, occurring in 1.0% of the population (about 2.2 million people). OCD is categorized by extremely uncomfortable, anxiety-inducing, and uncontrollable thoughts as well as compulsive behaviors. These thoughts span from the classic phobia of germs and hand washing to incestuous thoughts and various destructive and/or time-consuming compulsions to help relieve the resulting anxiety.

There is only one “type” of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. It is said that “Pure O”, supposedly an iteration of OCD that lacks compulsive behavior, but compulsions, avoidance behaviors, and obsessive reassurance is usually found in patients. Schizophrenia, though now considered an umbrella term, had multiple similar sub types that described each types’ effect, such as catatonic schizophrenia, paranoid schizophrenia, and schizoaffective disorder. Bipolar Disorder has two distinct types (among a few others), Type I, which involves periods of severe mood episodes from mania to depression and Type II, similar in that it involves both mania and depression, but concentrates more on severe depression with milder bouts of hypo mania.

Depressive disorder has multiple versions of itself with different intricacies and specificities that can be downright dizzying, and I’m sure that I’m forgetting a few important illnesses. But I want to share with you my personal experience with OCD. How it struck me, how suddenly, what I do remember and what I don’t, what it did to my mind and continues to do, how I dealt with it, and so on.

The reason that I detailed the multitude of breeds that some mental disorders come in is to compare it to the seemingly straightforward diagnosis of OCD. People think of this disease in terms of handwashing so obsessive that skin dries, peels, and bleeds or using so much hand sanitizer the sufferer can’t even drive. But the fact of the matter is that OCD victims suffer through an enormous range of tumultuous thoughts, emotions, and compulsions.

I was diagnosed with OCD at about thirteen years old by a psychiatrist. This was after experiencing the worst bouts of panic attacks I had ever felt. At first, it was simply intrusive thoughts of possible sickness, specifically gastroenteritis (commonly known as the “stomach bug”). I suddenly, as in one moment I did and another I didn’t, had an extreme fear and aversion to its possible presence and display of symptoms in my body. I don’t remember a triggering for these extreme thoughts, in fact, I don’t remember the first time I had them explicitly. But I do know that it was sudden, one second I didn't, the other I did.

After a couple of weeks, the Torture Week began. This was a week of non-stop panic attacks. I stayed home from school that week and, combined with my other absences, led me to receiving a truancy letter from the state warning me not to take any more days off school. That week, to ward off the anxiety-induced nausea, I drank so many water bottles that they filled the empty coffee table in our living room like some nonsensical contemporary art piece. How I didn’t get myself intoxicated by that water I have no idea, perhaps it was the preoccupation with my anxiety and extreme fears that led me on.

My mother took me to a psychiatrist after this, as the psychologist I had had proved himself ineffective. It was there I was diagnosed with what will now plague me for the rest of my life, that which I try to ward off with Sertraline, an SSRI, or Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor, otherwise known as antidepressants.

I was incredibly lucky it worked so well. Within two weeks, my anxiety had tapered off to nearly nothing, I experienced no negative side effects, and it felt like the thoughts that had previously broken through any shoddy mental damn I erected were suddenly plugged up. Not dried, though; I still felt them lingering, and still do sometimes, in the back of my mind, crawling in the recesses, tickling me every now and then to remind me that they are still there, ready to burst forth in a rush of anxiety and frustration, preoccupation and anger.

This Sertraline worked well for a few years, but I then was afraid that taking these SSRI’s for too long were affecting my academic abilities. My grades didn’t lower, but I thought I felt a fog in my head that wouldn’t dissipate. Confident, I weened myself off the pills with the help of my mother. I was fine for about a year and was happy. I was back to my old self. No more pills and no more thoughts. But my good fortune lasted only so long, and, one day while staying over my aunt’s, I was afraid I was a homosexual. Why? I had nothing against gays, my family had no dislike for them, and there was no reason to fear my sexuality, (though it turned out to be a false fear; apparently, I’m straight). But I couldn’t get it out of my head. And then it felt as if random compulsive thoughts were latching on to me, as if they floated invisibly in the air, or fell from the trees like ticks, or jumped from the floors and ceilings like fleas and dug their way into my mind. The old thoughts, perhaps, had taken new shape and noticed the missing plug, the lack of Sertraline, and took advantage. More anxiety attacks, phone calls to my mother for reassurance (another common symptom of OCD is seeking constant reassurance from others that your fear will not come true and is unreasonable), anger, shame, and fear.

I went back to my psychiatrist. I was again prescribed Sertraline and, within a few weeks I was back to normal. If I were looking at this happening to me from someone else’s perspective, someone I knew well, I would say that I would be ashamed at my weakness. That I would hate myself, or feel angry that I was back to “abnormality”. But the only things I felt were relief. Relief and fear. That is, a fear it will come back, that, if I attempted to rid myself of the medication again, that I will have the same experiences again. I do not want this so, since that day, I have missed only a handful of doses.

So, what did it feel like to have this “Pure O”? It felt as if I was losing control of my mind. Not like I was losing it to some entity or someone or something, but it felt, strangely, like I was the one thinking these things, but I simply could not help but think of these things. I can’t and won’t divulge everything I felt and saw in my mind. Terrible things that I still think of sometimes. But, no matter the thoughts, it was a constant barrage that prevented me from sleeping and sometimes even eating. School days were something dreaded (though, bizarrely enough, bedtime, where thoughts reign most in many peoples’ minds, was not).

When the thoughts came, they came like any other thought, just more rapidly. They caused more anxiety than most, though not like the anxiety one would feel before a major test or a speech, something more primal, deep, and wrenching; an anxiety that one feels only in terror. In this case, it was the terror of losing my mind to myself. I remember trying to word to myself, in an attempt to feel better, what it was like to handle these thoughts, especially when trying to sleep. In my years of thinking about it, the best way I can describe it is like a dam.

In bed, I would envision a wooden dam erected between two rocks. This dam was sometimes concrete and thick, much like the Hoover Dam, or sometimes a shoddy wooden dam. Behind this was not water, not at first. I viewed it from the bottom, like a person in a town built near one of these behemoths would and, as I looked in the distance, I saw only the dam, the rocks it was built between, and the black void of my mind. This dam was successful at first, but lasted about half a second before a deluge of water came suddenly and rapidly crashing over and through, cracking and destroying the concrete or launching thick pieces of wood shrapnel in all directions. Then, before I could react, the water would reach me, and I opened my eyes and found the thoughts that broke through running rampant in my brain again.

This wasn’t a dream as I would have to have been sleeping to experience that. I guess it helped to make a more tangible image as to what was happening.

I often think about how, if at all, my OCD, still currently under the reins of medication, is affecting me. So far as I can tell, it has little influence. There are some OCD-like aspects of my personality. Since two summers ago, I’ve become entranced by reading. I always must be in the process of reading a book or I feel as if I’m missing out on information, my true love and passion. Writing is becoming more important to me, especially after joining the Odyssey. Learning Spanish is becoming a new obsession, and I doubt that, in the future, I will not pick up any new topics or actions to do in part due to a love for them but also due to a feeling of “I must, I must”. Sometimes I think that, perhaps, these are just my old thoughts taking new shape. They’re clever like that.