Obsessive Compulsive Disorder

[Anonymous]

I thought I would start a new topic as I would like to hear if other people had Straight-induced OCD, in a recent thread a couple of people mentioned it.

The first few years after I got out I had some OCD problems: checking locks (just like someone else mentioned in the other thread), hand washing, afraid to go on long drives. This must have been precipitated by Straight as I did not have these problems before Straight.

(Before Straight I was reckless, dirty, and fearless.)

Actually it was more than the first few years out. A lot more.

[whiterabbit]

I've not struggled with OCD but dissociation is a coping skill I learned in Straight. The first time was sometime in my first few weeks there. I had a medical exam. I was terrified already and well, it was just too much. I studied the pimples on the blank wall. I lost several days after that... Then again standing up for homes rap the first time. Being forced to urinate on the floor, sit in it, get confronted about it then clean it up with my hands. Big checkout again. I'm not sure I checked out when they read my diary to the group. I started to laugh hysterically. I mean I was doubled over with it but I didn't find it funny and I was crying at the same time. I'm not sure what that was....

I've continued to check out like that throughout my life. In fact it became so habitual to check out under stress that I didn't even realize it was not normal. I thought I had low blood sugar or something. When I started therapy I checked out every few sessions or so. I was not aware of it until later, like the next day. We began working on making me more aware of what I was doing. About two months ago we were discussing a difficult subject matter when my heart started pounding I got really alarmed. Then everything started to go sort of soft and fuzzy. I felt so sleepy suddenly like I'd been up all night. I realized what was happening and told my therapist. He tried to  calm me switch gears & change the subject to something less threatening but I could not come back from it. I don't remember the rest of our session. I went home that afternoon and went to bed. The next day I read the journal entry I tried to write the night before. It made no sense. The whole thing was so scary. It felt so out of control.

I've done better since that incident. I can feel it coming on sometimes and kind of side step it or talk myself out of it. I'm learning to manage it or rather my emotions differently.Of course it's costing me thousands in therapy to sort out some of the fine skills I learned at Straight.

The cure was so much worse than the "disease"

Nothing is denied to well-directed labor, and nothing is ever to be
attained without it.
--Joshua Reynolds (1723-1792)

[beth1222]

That's funny that I am reading this now after I just got done checking all my doors and windows along w/closets and making sure both of my kids are still breathing (they are sleeping).  I also have excessive handwashing...and I don't really go on very many short drives much less long ones.  I posted in a prev. thread about how I also can't eat or drink anything that I left in a room unattended by me without having to throw it out.  Um, that's all I can think of now...but I know there's more.  I was not like this before "treatment" so I'm not sure if that was the cause.  I can't take medication (another "issue") so I just learn to live with it.

[85 Day Jerk]

I was in the program in the early more primative stages.  What you call 'checking out' whiterabbit, was called "getting into your head" in my program.  I outta know, I was a master at it.  I could space out during lunch some days, and not even snap out of it until my oldcomer put his hand on my shoulder and told me it was time to go home.  There was so much bad shit going on, that I simply would shut down completely.  It was a talent that I got from a severely abusive childhood.  God help us all, if I spoke about that in group, so I did'nt and therefore it was more and more befuddling to staff and the assholes just what the hell my problem was.  I spent countless days staring up at the flourescents, seriously thinking of ways to construct a working Light Saber like the ones in Star Wars.  I think finally 'snapping' out of the self induced depressed state and gaining 2nd phase is what allowed my mania to turn on like immersing the rods of plutonium will start the process to generate nuclear energy.

I'm really glad to hear that people are finding constructive ways to get over the self imposed damage we did to ourselves in order to get through the Straight Experience.  It takes alot more courage to find a good therapist and really strive to make progress than to take the pussy ass stoner's way out and just keep on suppressing.
In the 3 or so years that I have been affiliated with all this stuff all I have seen of the stoner's TBPITW and all that other crap are people going backwards or just jogging in place and I know this makes me a bad person for saying so.  Holy Shit Batman!!!!  I think I just harshed someones buzz!!!  We better break out the Nuclear Powered Bat Bong before it's too late!!!!! ::bigsmilebounce::  ::rocker::  ::rocker::  ::rocker::

[Withdraw]

Hi, welcome to my world , nice to know I am not alone in here.

[shady grove]

This thread is awesome! Thanks so much for bringing it up. Thanks Day jerk for your post.

OCD was a huge casualty for me b/c of straight. I remember the first day it started. I was on "consequences" for getting honest about something. So I realized these rules were important. To survive, i needed to be good at the rules. Surviving means make it through the day without humiliation or feeling terribly separated from the group. There began "headgaming" in straight out of it became handwashing, lock checking, funny-breathing-to-avoid-smells, checking-money-for-blood-by-pressing-it-to-credit-receipts (worked in a gas station booth, afraid of aids)and general obsessiing about everything in my life. When they first tried to put me on meds, the OCD got so much worse b/c it was tied-in to my fear of drugs. I got through that on my own, somehow, and now do take zoloft for OCD and depression. And it is keeping the suicidals away, thankfully.

I am sure that the straight life was a prime place for activating this shit. I can't say it's the total cause, b/c my wife and step sis who went through don't do this, and frankly can't understand it. But it effected everyone differently. Definately putting me in a place where survival depended on hypervigilance was not a good combo for me.

Trying to work through it has been hard, simply b/c no one understands it. I would bring these credit card receipts to my therapist. He wouldn't know what to say. Forget about trying to find someone in NA that got any of it. But my sponsor knew at least how to help me off a spaz. It's alot better now, but still working on it.

Thanks again all.

[ehm]

Ahhh, yes. The head games. To this day, it's the pesky little things that can send me into an OCD frenzy. I am a total perfectionist also. I'm not proud of this characteristic, yet am somewhat of a slave to it at the same time.

LUV YA, STRAIGHT, INC.  :roll:

T'is an ill wind that blows no minds.
--Syadasti

[Antigen]

I have no clue what I might have been w/o the Program. I sort of remember being confident, hopeful, trusting my own insights. But it was a long, long time ago and I was very young.

I remember being 8 years old and haggling w/ good humor and great success w/ a junk dealer over a used bike. I can't do that anymore. I remember being around 13 or 14 and really enjoying being on stage in school and civic plays and such. No way in hell I could do that now. Anybody remember the 2000 conference in Bathesda? I'm told I did a very good job of presenting my story. Of course, I heard that from friends, who may have been just being nice. I can't tell you, I don't remember. I'm also very, very good at blanking out.

But the Program was a heavy, dark cloud over my existance since I was around 6 years old. It's hard to say what part of my personality is Program influence and what part is not.

First management had plans and then strategic plans. Now we have vision, and we're only one small step from hallucination.
-- Ansley Throckmorton upon assuming the presidency of Bangor Theological Seminary in Bangor, Main per Information World 8-4-`97

_________________
Ginger Warbis ~ Antigen
Seed sibling `71 - `80
Straight South (Sarasota, FL)
   10/80 - 10/82
Anonymity Anonymous
Some days, it's just not worth chewing through the leather straps.

[Dr. Miller Newton]

On 2004-10-16 09:58:00, Antigen wrote:

"I have no clue what I might have been w/o the Program.

You would be DEAD, INSANE, or IN JAIL!

It's hard to say what part of my personality is Program influence and what part is not.

The good parts of your personality were from the Program.  The rest of you is comprised of your druggie will.  Love ya!

[Anonymous]

yeah yeah yeah, the head games, I had forgotten. I learned (somehow???) to do that too. I was always thinking and thinking inside my head, turning things over and over to see if I "had a doubt about it". I do believe that I could not think normally after that. Even my English papers, when I went back to school were VERY DIFFERENT. I could not bring up my own creativity, or enoy being creative or artistic...

Also recall the "get out of your head" thing. It started with this one oldcomer. If I did not LOOK ALERT, she would snap her fingers at me and say "you're in your head." I was looking at the kitchen floor at the time, thinking, like ordinary people do. Perhaps spaced-out a little, perhaps in a reverie, but that as well is quite normal and human. But she let me know that I had to look alert at all times or she would SNAP me out of it.

Several years later, a yoga teacher noticed that I, out of a class of twenty or thirty, had a distinct difficulty with really relaxing (for example at the end of class when we put our legs straight up the wall and closed our eyes). Vigilance.

Another thing is the tension in my face, I don't know if this is a Straight thing, but if I have something to smile about or laugh about and I am walking down the street I will yet keep my expression still. I feel that I cannot let other people see how I feel. This causes me some facial tension so I am trying to relax.

Don't feel bad about the blood on credit card receipts thing. I once thought I might be getting a brain tumor because of a vague rash on my skin. Huh? But I am telling you, my mind had problems. Things are not as bad lately and yet I am still working through things like social anxiety and the facial tension.

[shady grove]

I had a doctor about 6 months out of straight tell me my face had "low affect". Meaning expressionless. It's a diagnosis! I think I make alot of people uncomfortable b/c they can't tell if I'm kidding, angry, sad etc when I say things. ::

[ehm]

OMG!! I get that from people too... Sheesh, I learn something new that that place screwed up in me every single day it seems.

"One commentator pointed out that when the mafia commits violence, no
one suggests we bomb Sicily.  Today it seems we are, in a symbolic way, not only bombing "Sicily," but are thinking about bombing "Athens" (Iraq)."

http://www.house.gov/paul/congrec/congrec2001/cr112901.htm' target='_new'>Ron Paul, 11/29/01 Speech before Congress

[Froderik]

my face had "low affect". Meaning expressionless. It's a diagnosis!

This could really benefit someone who is a standup comic. They would have no trouble being deadpan.

[ehm]

Yeah, I thought the same thing. That's usually the way it's worked for me, in telling jokes or messing with someone.  

A free man must be able to endure it when his fellow men act and live otherwise than he considers proper. He must free himself from the habit, just as soon as something does not please him, of calling for the police.
http://www.mises.org/liberal/ch1sec11.asp' target='_new'>Ludwig Von Mises

[Anonymous]

by the way, for those who have not experienced it, checking locks goes like this:

park the car. get out. lock the door. walk to the building. wonder if you remembered to lock the car. go back, check the locks.

or, you're ready for bed, so you make the rounds, front door, back door, porch door. lock everything. go upstairs, read, etc., start falling asleep and then think "did I lock the doors?" you know you already checked it, but on the other hand, that could have been a different night you are remembering. go back, check it. this happens night after night, so you know it is obsessive, and you know you already checked the locks, so you get mad and try to tell yourself "this is stupid! I'm not going back down!" but you also wonder if you really locked the doors...

When it got really bad, I would have to squint at the lock and try to force myself to put it in my memory that it really was locked. This did not necessarily work.