Is this OCD? Ever since I was a child I'd had a weird dark obsession with tobacco and cigarettes. I would experience a lot of intrusive imagery of death dying, tumours, lung cancer and the concept of addiction. It terrified me and I would spend hours rumentihg on it. Neither of my parents smokes and I would try to avoid situations where people were smoking as it weirded me out. It was the 90s and they begun playing anti smoking commercials on TV. These would fill me with dread and to the point where I began leaving the room during and breaks incase I saw one. At point I went in a public rest room and saw an anti smoking poster on the back of the door. It sent shivers to my core and from then on I refused to go in any rest room without checking if there was a poster on the back of the door or now. I took up smoking as a teenager as away to gain control over the anxiety and carried on doing it until I was around 21 when I quit. The whole time the obsessive thoughts out if the blue would come and go regularly I would rument even when not around it At 25 I had a partner who smoked and everytime he did it I'd be filled with emense anxiety. After I'd been dating him a few months the anxiety of atchi v him do it became so intense I started doing it again myself. I then became obsessed with figuring ou how muc he was smoking so I could smoke the same amount. If we were in public I couldn't focus on conversations because I would be too busy watching him to figure out if he was going to have a cigarette so I could have one at the same time. Even though I knew it was rediculous I couldn't stop myself from doing it. Even the thought of not performing this compulsive behaviour filled me with anxiety beyond belief. This went on for about a year and a half until he out of the blue quit smoking and I did the same as soon as he did). This happened in exactly the same way with another partner I had a few years later. When it happens it's debilitating and it takes over my life. I have anew partner we've only been togethe r a few months an I had resisted the compulsion to start doing it along side him and he's just quit and I can't stop obsessing over whether he's doing it or not. Last week he had a relaps one day and he came hom Frome work smelling like it. I had a complete meltdown. I felt like it was all over me room a million showers and spent about 2 days unable to leave my house because of anxiety. There are other things that have caused the kind of distressing/obsessive thoughts over the years. At one point I became fixated on the idea that the world was about to end. I would have nights about it. And diialy intrusive thoughts about what if the world is ending. Everytime I heard an aeroplane in the sky I would go outside to check it wasn't a comet. I would spend hours googling super volcanos to make sure non were about to erupt. I knew it was extreme and rediculous but I could t get the thoughts out of my head. I also experimenced a bout of health anxiety where I was convinced I was going to get a tumour or something and would prang out and scan my body at any sign of pain. The latter two obsessions have since subsisted but the smoking one has been there since I was a chil and has as much if not more anxiety now than ever. I'm trying to figure out if this is an obscure form of OCD or something else because I'm trying to find an answer for what to do with the excessive and extremely obsessive thoughts. I have other exampled but for the sake of length I'll leave it at that for now