In November 2020 I was prescribed Sertraline as I was suicidal. By July 2021 I was losing my hair in handfuls and felt....numb. It was like life was monochrome and I didn't feel anything anymore. No sadness but no joy either, it was horrible. I came off them, and in 2022 was dx with complex PTSD. I spent 4 months in therapy, EMDR, and took up karate. Much better 😂
However I can appreciate your perspective as an OCD sufferer, being ND myself. I've spent large portions of my life with hideous little voices in my head second guessing things, reading into situations and making me feel....less than adequate. How I would have loved to have shut them up. Age, wisdom that comes with it, marriage to a patient, kind lovely man and having two amazing boys eventually quietened those voices.
I watched an interview with Tom Cruise and a very bad interviewer who wouldn't accept what Tom Cruise was saying, which was "if you put a child on drugs to stop them fidgeting in class, these children are becoming addicts and they will end up on the streets most likely because having stronger drugs like Fentanyl will be too enticing to refuse." (I paraphrased)
I’m glad it helps. Your description of intrusive ruminations in OCD is suitably harrowing and, not, I believe, uncommon. The effects are often crippling. People, understandably, tend to become isolated when they suffer from these experiences and often fail to seek help, with, for instance, overwhelming feelings of shame. I hope you’re mentioning your experiences will be of benefit to others. All the best, John.
To be honest, I read that passage as funny. It is absurd. I think the key to OCD is to call out its bullshit. Then it loses its power.
Yes. I stalled at that passage, thinking 'this makes me sound insane.' Of course, it's the opposite. People who 'go crazy' don't know they are going crazy. If you think you're going crazy, it is a good sign that you're not.
Perhaps it will. When I read about Samuel Johnson's OCD, I felt a pang of unity. It could always be worse. Thankfully, I didn't feel compelled to walk into each corner of every room, like Dr. Johnson.
That’s pretty much why I think it’s helpful. And, whilst of course things may have changed since you wrote about it, you didn’t sound insane 😉. It can be extremely problematic for people who experience it and I do feel that others talking about it might help them feel less isolated though. But I’m going round in circles here myself! Anyway I thought it was a good column.
Excellent essay navigating the paradox of medication working despite the theory being wrong. The distinction between chemical relief and cosmic resolution is crucial, something that gets lost when we flatten everything to brain chemistry. I've noticed how the End of History mindset shifted focus from external struggles to internal ones, like human nature itself became the final frontier to optimize. Jung's reframing of neurosis as self-cure attempt feels raelly relevant right now.
My understanding of ocd is extremely limited. I imagine it to be an internal battle against relentlessly awful non stop intrusive thoughts, like being trapped in a kind of roller coaster of extremely vivid and equally terrible intrusive thoughts that feed into each other in a convoluted and never ending infinity loop so that each attempt to thwart the thoughts simply leads into an equally or more terrifying thought.
Maybe something like this: I can't remember if I locked the front door so I probably didn't and when I get home there won't be a home because someone forgot to switch the oven off. Maybe it was me but I haven't cooked anything for weeks but still maybe it was me or if not me maybe it was Charlotte. I haven't seen her for weeks so she might forget to switch it off. The insurance company won't believe that it isn't Arson and I'll not only lose everything I own and not be insured, I'll also end up in prison for fraud because I won't be able to prove that I didnt deliberately set the house on fire. The cats will die, all my hoarded cans of baked beans will be wasted and I'll be homeless.
In the car it'll be more like: I really hope I don't suddenly run those people over. I don't want to but what if I do?
Switching off radio Louis is as impossible as voluntarily forcing my lungs to stop breathing.
If that's anything like ocd then maybe i need some zoloft too.
People don't realize that most of medicine (and especially neuroscience) is empirical; meaning the mechanisms by which certain drugs work are poorly understood and at best hypotheses, but they do work. I learned this directly from the neurologists treating my son's seizure disorder many years ago. So just because Zoloft and similar drugs don't work via the mechanism that was hypothesized doesn't mean they don't work. It just means we don't know how they work.
And there's a thing called Cognitive Behavioral Therapy that actually treats things like depression by giving you tools to actually change your mood. Like, tools for coping. What a concept!
Don't know about the OCD thing but do know about anxiety; hats off to you if you found something that works!
In November 2020 I was prescribed Sertraline as I was suicidal. By July 2021 I was losing my hair in handfuls and felt....numb. It was like life was monochrome and I didn't feel anything anymore. No sadness but no joy either, it was horrible. I came off them, and in 2022 was dx with complex PTSD. I spent 4 months in therapy, EMDR, and took up karate. Much better 😂
However I can appreciate your perspective as an OCD sufferer, being ND myself. I've spent large portions of my life with hideous little voices in my head second guessing things, reading into situations and making me feel....less than adequate. How I would have loved to have shut them up. Age, wisdom that comes with it, marriage to a patient, kind lovely man and having two amazing boys eventually quietened those voices.
I watched an interview with Tom Cruise and a very bad interviewer who wouldn't accept what Tom Cruise was saying, which was "if you put a child on drugs to stop them fidgeting in class, these children are becoming addicts and they will end up on the streets most likely because having stronger drugs like Fentanyl will be too enticing to refuse." (I paraphrased)
I’m glad it helps. Your description of intrusive ruminations in OCD is suitably harrowing and, not, I believe, uncommon. The effects are often crippling. People, understandably, tend to become isolated when they suffer from these experiences and often fail to seek help, with, for instance, overwhelming feelings of shame. I hope you’re mentioning your experiences will be of benefit to others. All the best, John.
Thanks, John.
To be honest, I read that passage as funny. It is absurd. I think the key to OCD is to call out its bullshit. Then it loses its power.
Yes. I stalled at that passage, thinking 'this makes me sound insane.' Of course, it's the opposite. People who 'go crazy' don't know they are going crazy. If you think you're going crazy, it is a good sign that you're not.
Perhaps it will. When I read about Samuel Johnson's OCD, I felt a pang of unity. It could always be worse. Thankfully, I didn't feel compelled to walk into each corner of every room, like Dr. Johnson.
That’s pretty much why I think it’s helpful. And, whilst of course things may have changed since you wrote about it, you didn’t sound insane 😉. It can be extremely problematic for people who experience it and I do feel that others talking about it might help them feel less isolated though. But I’m going round in circles here myself! Anyway I thought it was a good column.
Excellent essay navigating the paradox of medication working despite the theory being wrong. The distinction between chemical relief and cosmic resolution is crucial, something that gets lost when we flatten everything to brain chemistry. I've noticed how the End of History mindset shifted focus from external struggles to internal ones, like human nature itself became the final frontier to optimize. Jung's reframing of neurosis as self-cure attempt feels raelly relevant right now.
My understanding of ocd is extremely limited. I imagine it to be an internal battle against relentlessly awful non stop intrusive thoughts, like being trapped in a kind of roller coaster of extremely vivid and equally terrible intrusive thoughts that feed into each other in a convoluted and never ending infinity loop so that each attempt to thwart the thoughts simply leads into an equally or more terrifying thought.
Maybe something like this: I can't remember if I locked the front door so I probably didn't and when I get home there won't be a home because someone forgot to switch the oven off. Maybe it was me but I haven't cooked anything for weeks but still maybe it was me or if not me maybe it was Charlotte. I haven't seen her for weeks so she might forget to switch it off. The insurance company won't believe that it isn't Arson and I'll not only lose everything I own and not be insured, I'll also end up in prison for fraud because I won't be able to prove that I didnt deliberately set the house on fire. The cats will die, all my hoarded cans of baked beans will be wasted and I'll be homeless.
In the car it'll be more like: I really hope I don't suddenly run those people over. I don't want to but what if I do?
Switching off radio Louis is as impossible as voluntarily forcing my lungs to stop breathing.
If that's anything like ocd then maybe i need some zoloft too.
People don't realize that most of medicine (and especially neuroscience) is empirical; meaning the mechanisms by which certain drugs work are poorly understood and at best hypotheses, but they do work. I learned this directly from the neurologists treating my son's seizure disorder many years ago. So just because Zoloft and similar drugs don't work via the mechanism that was hypothesized doesn't mean they don't work. It just means we don't know how they work.
And there's a thing called Cognitive Behavioral Therapy that actually treats things like depression by giving you tools to actually change your mood. Like, tools for coping. What a concept!
Don't know about the OCD thing but do know about anxiety; hats off to you if you found something that works!