My name is Uncle Doughboy and I have O.C.D.

My name is Uncle Doughboy and I have OCD

I first realized I was different from other kids when I was in second grade. It was in school one day. The teacher had us line up like usual so we could make our way to the multipurpose room. Walking in line, I noticed that every time I would approach a crack or a line in the concrete, I would step over it purposefully. None of the other kids were doing this weird kind of walking pattern. I'm sure it just looked like I was playing a game of hopscotch by myself or something. But then the cracks got more plentiful. And I noticed that my effort to avoid stepping on the cracks was becoming a much tougher thing to accomplish. And by now I knew that I didn't just look like I was happily playing a game of "lets walk funnily" while all the other kids walk normal. That was the moment I became self-aware. That was when things kind of started making sense to second grade me.

One day in class the teacher asks everyone, "Whats something that you fear." She was making a point, related to science or something. I was the only student that raised my hand and I was called upon for my answer. I said, "My fear is that something terrible will happen to one of my family members." This class of grade schoolers, along with the teacher, let out this collective 'Aww' like I just said something endearing. But really, that was my biggest fear. At that time of my life I had a reoccurring dream that I can still see clearly now. It was my family and I all being walked out onto a platform high above an Olympic sized pool filled with sharks (sounds normal for a second grader, right?). I always woke up after the platform was released from beneath us and we all plunge into the shark infested waters below, my head under water and seeing my family members all struggling. That's some shit for a small kid to dream.

My early childhood OCD was based around that very fear, of something... anything bad happening to someone I loved. And that day in second grade when I realized that other kids don't worry like this, it all came clear to me. I realized that were other things that I did that other kids, and other adults didn't do. I realized that I should be ashamed and hide these weird things I do from others. But trying to hide it, it just made it all the more frustrating. I realized that up that point, all those weird things I was doing was because I was different from everyone else.

I used to try to make sure that I wasn't the last one in my family to go to bed at night. On those occasions that everyone else had gone to bed before me, boy... I was in for a rough night. The insecurity that I felt was crippling to a child of my age. Here's how a night would go if I ended up being the last one awake: Turn off the TV. Turn out the lights in the family room. Walk by all the doors and visually check they were locked. Off to my room to lay in bed and slumber peacefully, right? Wrong. I lay in bed. My mind racing. 'Did I check EVERY door?' 'Maybe I might have missed one. I should get up and go check, you know, I wanna make sure my family is safe.' I get out of bed, go back around to every door, even the one that hadn't been opened for years. Yes, they all appear to be locked. Everyone is safe. Back to bed. Ten minutes later, I'm back out of bed and re-checking all the doors, just to make sure that I didn't miss anything on the first two attempts. Okay, all is well... now I can go back to sleep. Nope. Back up out of bed, and this time I had to hand-check every doorknob to ensure that my eyes weren't just playing a trick on me. Around to every door. Twist the knob. Check the lock. Twist the knob again to make sure that I didn't just unlock it somehow while I was checking to see if it was locked.

Back in bed. Okay, now I should be able to peacefully slumber. I can hear my mother's gigantic snore through the wall. Everyone is at rest and peaceful, no worries. Good job, Randy! You made sure. Now it's your turn to enjoy a nice evening of shut eye. Go ahead buddy, get some rest. You deserve it! Then the thought enters my head. 'Did I check that the stove was off? I mean that would be the worst if the stove was somehow left on and we all burned up in our sleep. And it's my responsibility as the last one awake to make sure this doesn't happen!'

I'm now at the stove. It's clearly off. No burners are on. The dial for the stove couldn't be more dead-centered on the word 'OFF'. Visually, there is no reason for me to believe otherwise. Yet, there's still something. A worry. So I tell myself, "Oven is off. But... if you wanna further check then go ahead, just to be safe!" Then comes the repetition. It starts out seemingly innocent. My hands turns the knob for the stove. The light comes on to indicate the stove is now on. Okay. Now lets turn it off so we can be sure that it was our hand that personally turned it off, no relying on mom and her years of kitchen experience, no! Turn the knob. The light goes off. The stove is no longer on. But I don't believe it. So I repeat. I turn the stove on again. The light comes on for verification. I turn the knob to off. The light disappears. It has to be off now, right?

But something is telling me not to rely on my own senses. Something tells me that I will feel more comfortable if I turn the stove on and off five more times. Something, whatever it is, is promising me. In my head, 'Okay, if I do this five times, then I'll be sure it's off... and I won't have to check again... and then I can go to bed and get a peaceful nights sleep and get up for school tomorrow. Oh, and on my way back to bed, I'll just re-check all the doors again... just to be sure.'

In bed. I try to fight the urge. I try to reason with myself, 'Come on, you checked it five times. It's off!' But that insecurity, that 'What if?'. There were times at night that it got this bad that I would throw the covers off of me with a loud grunt of frustration, so loud I swore I should've woken up the entire house. I would stomp out to the kitchen for the tenth time, literally cursing myself out as to how ridiculous this was. Trying to reason with my own brain and compulsions. "There! You see that! One, two, three, four, five! Are you happy now? It's fucking off!"

Eventually I would end up waking up the next morning. Who knows how much sleep I lost? Who knows how much it affected my ability to concentrate in school? So the only way I knew how to fix it was to make sure I was in bed before everyone else. For some reason, someone else being responsible for making sure all was secure while I was already tucked into my bed, that was my antidote.

And then there was the cracks in the pavement. I believed that stepping on a crack would lead to me getting called out of class one day and invited to the principle's office where they would tell me that something terrible happened. And then all I would be able to think about would be, 'It's all your fault, Randy. You should have followed the instructions you were given. You shouldn't have stepped on that one crack. Now look what you did.'

There were other symptoms. Repeating numbers. Washing my hands constantly. I had all the classic signs. Not like the dipshits of today that think that if they have to have their desk organized a certain way and they get testy if it's not, that they have OCD. No. Our brains are so amazing... all that power and intuition and amazing stuff it can come up with. Imagine your powerful brain working against you. Imagine being a slave to the suggestions that your brain comes up with on a whim. I really feel like I am a very lucky sufferer of OCD, because that day in second grade when I realized that something was off about me, I set out to correct it.

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder had become a very much widely talked about issue in the recent decades. It wasn't like that when I was in second grade. I had to figure it out for myself on the simple basis that I didn't want to look like that weirdo that couldn't step on cracks, and actually made ballaretic type movements in order to avoid doing so. I didn't know what OCD was. I didn't know that there could be something medically wrong with me. But I was smart enough to know that it wasn't right, and that it was causing me strife in my young life. At such a tender age, I find it amazing that I had the competence to self-diagnose. And I watch the TV shows about OCD and see the people, adults, dealing with the same struggles I was dealing with at seven years old. I am still amazed at what I was able to do for myself.

You've seen those TV shows. It's usually patients and their doctors. And the way they try to combat the impulses is by practicing what they call CBT, or Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. This basically means throw the patient right into their fears and tell them they have to ignore their compulsions in the hopes that in the end of the treatment, they will find that nothing bad has happened, and that it's all created in their minds. I remember putting myself through this same kind of therapy. I didn't read any books or consult any doctors, I was seven. I just had an intuition that the only way I would be able to reject these compulsions was by proving to myself that the 'worst case scenarios' that I was capable of imagining, those that drove me to give in, that those scenarios would never happen. That was tough. Just as tough as when you watch the TV shows and seeing the patient freak out because they can't satisfy that one simple compulsion under the doctors orders. Yes, that is real.

Walking up to a crack. Or wanting to recheck the door locks. Even switching my light switch on and off an even number of times so that I could ward off the evil spirits that would call me out on switching the light off and on an odd number of times, and then would do some devastating harm to someone I love that I would have to live with for the rest of my life... all cause I stepped on the crack. The hardest thing to do when you have full blown OCD is to ignore those voices in your head. "Ooh, you stepped on that crack, now your sister is gonna be in the hospital because of a car wreck that you could have prevented." It sounds stupid to you... well, because you don't have OCD.

I look back. I must've been strong to get myself through that. I remember the times where I would just stand at the door knob, telling myself, "You don't have to do it! Nothing bad is going to happen! Why don't you just trust it and wake up tomorrow to see?" And it's that back and forth, like the angel on one shoulder and the devil on the other. One telling me that I'm being silly and to just go to bed, and the other telling me about the awful things that will happen if I don't perform this small meaningless task that will only take five seconds to do, "...so why don't I just do it, you know, just to be on the safe side. Even if nothing's going to happen, wouldn't you prefer to just be on the safe side anyways! Just do it... and then you can go to bed safe in knowing that all is right in the universe because you turned the knob five times... not six! Not four, because then that would be tragedy! But five times... and you're golden! Just do it so we can get out of here!"

I faced fear. Not like the fear those people faced as they had to jump from the top stories of the World Trade Center. And not like the fear that those 300 kidnapped Nigerian school girls are experiencing. A fear that was manufactured in my mind. A fear that had no logical basis in reality. And as time went by, I started proving myself right, time and time again. 'Look! I stepped on that crack earlier and nothing happened!' Or, 'Hey, how about that... I didn't turn the light switch on and off five times in a row, and everyone's still here!' Eventually I cured myself of what I believe to be the absolute worst part of OCD... the fear based compulsions.

But I still suffer. But I'm very happy that I don't suffer like those patients you see on the TV shows, or the stories you read on the Internet, like you're reading mine now. I have never been diagnosed, or even spoken to a doctor about my OCD. Nowadays, my OCD is number based. It is no longer fear based at all. And I have no problem 'shooing' away my OCD and telling it you don't control me anymore. But just like the dinosaurs left the evidence of their existence by the bones we find in the soil, or the oil we burn. Or just like the evidence of the stars existence by the light we see from millions of years ago. There is still evidence of my OCD that had existed, in the minimized OCD I deal with now.

Gone are the days where I felt things were in peril if I didn't succumb to my compulsions. Nowadays, every now and then I feel the evidence, like the light from the stars in the night sky, in the form of repetition, a very common struggle for those with OCD. That could probably account for some of my musical skills, particularly when it comes to keeping time. There will be days when I'm stuck in traffic behind a semi truck. And unconsciously my brain picks up the serial number printed on the rear of the trailer, or maybe a license plate, or even phone numbers to the business plastered all over the car. And I don't notice it at first. But a minute later, it's like a soft voice in the back of my head that just got a little louder, enough to be comprehensible. And it's a serial number, or a license plate number, or a phone number. And it's revolving... repeating, over and over. It's not in the active part of my brain. It's kind of like a tiny piece of malware that has been embedded without my knowing, only for me to discover it once it starts affecting my active brain.

If I'm not driving, and I'm the passenger... sometimes I'll start unconsciously writing the series of numbers with my forefinger onto my thigh, as if I'm writing onto a piece of paper. And I might have been doing this for ten minutes before I actually realize it. Sometimes I wonder if my wife looks over and sees me doing this and wonders, "What the Hell is he doing?" Once I catch myself, it's usually very easy for me to identify that I'm being OCD and to stop myself. And it usually goes away, and I'm happy. And the seven year old me gives me a high-five for not allowing such a stupid thing to once again cripple me.

But... when I am not self-medicating... it gets back to being close to bad. I say self-medicating because I believe that the most powerful drug that can help me keep these compulsions locked away in a place where they can't affect me, well... it's not yet approved by the FDA, and probably never will be. If you look at the drugs they prescribe today to patients with OCD, the biggest side effect is... TAA DAA!!!: Suicidal thoughts. Look... I'm not the smartest person within two feet of myself at all times, but I do know one thing... the last thing you want for someone dealing with those demons in their head is suicidal thoughts. I remember how bad I was at one time... and if I was an adult that had it that bad, or worse, killing myself at times would not feel like such a bad option.

I am a Californian who ever since 1997 has had the benefit of being able to use Cannabis medically to ease my OCD symptoms. When I medicate regularly, it's like OCD never even existed. But now and then, for one reason or another, I have to stop self-medicating. I have had to stop my regimen of self-medicating enough times now to know that usually within four to five days my OCD symptoms return. And they return with a vengeance. It's like they're trying to make up for lost time. I still don't fall victim to the 'being worried' thing anymore, but what I do experience can still be just as debilitating.

I told my wife today, "Imagine you're on an airplane that is sitting on the runway and delayed for takeoff, could be for hours from what the captain has announced. And theres a small child in the row behind you that wants to sing the same song from 'Frozen' over and over again the entire time. At first you tell yourself you can deal with it. An hour in, you're getting tired of it. Two hours in, you wish it would stop. Three hours in you're getting frustrated. Four hours in, you're screaming for it to stop and allow something else to occupy the silence. Seven and half hours in... you're about to break... flip... you're brought to tears wishing it would all stop. You're contemplating calling in a bomb threat just so you can get the plane evacuated so you can get relief."

Like I said... I consider myself lucky because I was able to deal with it at such a young age and on such a mature level of thinking. I am fortunate to be able to understand the rational of my illness and to do the things I can to make myself feel like a normal person. OCD is a constant struggle, where you are pitted against your own mind, and may the best man win! I couldn't imagine dealing with full blown OCD as an adult. I hope that those that really struggle day in and day out may be able to read this and maybe gleam one thing... that it is something that can be managed. This I know from my own personal experience with my Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.

~ Unk Dough