Hi all. I was diagnosed with OCD last year. I have had ups and downs with managing my symptoms. I went through rough patches where anxiety was really bad. Now suddenly I feel a bit better so I’m trying to keep up the effort to maintain this slight progress. My question is. How did you make the decision on if you should try medication or not? I am a very indecisive person.

Thank you ModernFemale and Fosse. I appreciate you both giving me your personal experiences with medications. I really feel like medication can help me be the best version of myself so I can once again become more productive. I have been seeing a therapist for some time. I have asked my therapist for his opinion on starting a medication. I truly value his opinion when he would like me to continue on my journey without meds. I just can’t help but wonder what if the meds would drastically improve my symptoms and make life easier to navigate. So I feel like until my family or therapist encourages it then I can’t see myself trying it. I do have close people who use medication to treat to their disorders. They do not have OCD. And they feel like meds could really help me.

It certainly sounds like you have made a lot of progress with your journey! It is nice to see the optimism. I never heard of NAC but I have already started researching it since your reply. I have also heard that indecisiveness can be a symptom of OCD as you mentioned. And I have always been that way. Now that I have OCD I tend to attribute that trait to my OCD. Thank you. Best of luck to you as well!

This August will mark my 5th anniversary on Wellbutrin. It’s an absolute miracle pill for me. I take 450mg daily, the max dose (one 300mg, one 150mg). I was having suicidal ideations. I was obsessing about suicide. I wasn’t having suicidal ideations because of the child sex abuse, or the emotional abuse at home when I was a kid. I was absolutely exhausted that I could not turn my brain off. The obsessive thoughts had gone on for years and I simply could not take it anymore. If it wasn’t for Wellbutrin, I would not be here.

Thank you Pureolife and Fosse. It’s helpful to hear your individual stories because it helps me realize that the medication if I choose to try it can go either way. It’s really a not know until you try it deal. I feel try I can continue to try to stay off of the meds and continue my CBT/ERP therapy. But still the idea of what if it helps my quality of life. And therefore my productivity to increase. Thank you to everyone who responded to my post!

Hey there! Did you know that indecisiveness is a symptom of OCD? Because I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder 1 one year before I was diagnosed with severe OCD, the decision to take medication wasn’t really a decision at all. I just knew it was what I needed to do to get better. Meds, therapy, self care- those are the three things I believe helped me recover. That being said, I am not currently taking any medication prescribed for the treatment of OCD. I have tried almost all of the commonly prescribed meds for OCD and none of them worked; some made it worse. I have been seeing my current psychiatrist for almost 2 years and he’s been great at hearing my concerns. He “prescribed” me a supplement you can buy at vitamin stores called NAC n-acetyl cestine. There are several case studies on its effectiveness in treating OCD. I am on my third month at a 2400 mg/day dose. I started with 600mg. There have been several changes in my life so that could be another contributing factor, but my anxiety has decreased and my obsessions and rituals have been less severe. I am hopeful. I hoped that sort of helped you make your decision. Best of luck!

I tried NAC as an adjunct to my dopamine reuptake inhibitor. I was treated for Major Depressive Disorder with Wellbutrin, and six to eight weeks into treatment my OCD symptoms started to recede. It was then discovered I had OCD and it had been undiagnosed for 35 years. It was such a relief to know I was not to blame! Wellbutrin took my Y-BOCS from 29 to 15. When I read a research paper by a Yale doctor about NAC, I thought I would try it as an adjunct, in the hopes my Y-BOCS would go down further. Well, NAC triggered a major depressive episode, to include suicidal ideations. I know I am an anomaly with my meds (a dopamine reuptake inhibitor instead of a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor), but I am just saying NAC was contraindicated with the Wellbutrin. I emailed the Yale doctor about my psychiatric history and treatment, and informed him of my particular side-effects with NAC.

Fosse- I’m sorry you had such a negative experience with NAC! I was on Wellbutrin for almost a year but realized a little too late that it was a contributing factor to my manic episodes. My new psychiatrist told me that Wellbutrin is normally not prescribed for bipolar patients. It’s interesting that NAC was used as an adjunct to your DRI because it’s just a supplement that has very recently become a popular choice in treating OCD symptoms. I learn something new everyday! It’s interesting to hear someone had a negative experience on NAC; all of the folks I’ve talked with in OCD support groups and read about had life-changing experiences while taking it. loveisall, I would just like to say that I hope each experience will serve as an example that every body and mind is different, just as every diagnosis is different. Don’t let Fosse’s negative experience discourage you from researching and exploring the possibility of NAC with your psychiatrist. But also don’t let my positive experience delude you into thinking that it will definitely work for you. It’s unfortunate, but because of the biological and chemical differences in each of us, it’s really a “try it and see” sort of deal. There are several case studies out there, not just the Yale one Fosse mentioned. I encourage you to educate yourself and ask questions in your psych sessions. You got this!

Modernfemale- I added NAC as an adjunct on my own, after reading about the Yale study. I have had one manic episode on Wellbutrin (I am not bipolar), but outside of that have had no problems tolerating it. I also know the side effects I experienced on NAC were unheard of, which is why I notified Yale. loveisall- modern woman is quite correct when she says every body and mind is different. In my case, I was so fortunate to have been medicated for the depression first, otherwise I would have never been prescribed Wellbutrin. When my thoughts stopped spinning like a hamster on a wheel I was astounded. People with normal brains cannot understand what it is like to have a brain that is abnormal. Everyone had told me for years to stop obsessing and I just could not do it. What a relief to finally, with meds, be able to stop thinking about something I don’t want to think about. You and your therapist need to determine together if you should try meds, and then find the right meds/dosage that works for you.

Meds can help the process, but they will not be as helpful or impactful on your OCD as ERP and CBT. The majority of your recovery will be due to therapy, not medication. That’s been shown time and time again in OCD research. Going on meds is a very personal decision for people because each person reacts differently. My experience is with SSRIs and Benzodiazepines. Both were a mistake for me. I’m no longer taking benzos and getting off of them was a nightmare. Still on the SSRI (at as low of a dose as possible), and I wish I’d never gone on it. Every time I try to come off completely, even with an incredibly long tapering schedule, I get worse and even new symptoms that I didn’t have before going on them. I’ve been stuck on them for years and I’m not sure I’ll ever get off of them now. What I will say is this: lots of studies have shown some effectiveness for SSRIs when used short term. BUT those studies never follow patients long term. That’s not to say they can’t be effective long term, just that we’re still figuring out what those long term effects are. If you want to go with where science is right now: they can be useful, but don’t stay on them for more than a year. I wish I had told myself that when I started.