Contamination OCD!

Thank you so much for reassuring and motivating me to be more strong during the hard time to starting and continuing ERP. I wish everyone be able overcome the OCD.

Yes, you understood me truely and exactly. Every time I searched about this substance, my fear and anxiety got worse and worse, but as soon as I let go of this loop and my mental condition improved, a seductive feeling from inside forced me to ask for more assurance that this substance is not what you think it is. It is not dangerous, and with just one more search, you will surely reach this certainty and after that you will be completely freed, I would enter this cycle again. Endless searches (you know). When I decided that this was not going to work, I started researching whether there were other mutagenic chemicals that we inevitably come into contact with in our daily lives, and fortunately, other compounds I found like BaP and many others. But these substances became the beginning of a chain of other searches, and finally I came across double standards that there are no strict safety rules for some other substances that are almost as mutagenic as ethidium bromide, an interesting case such as an ointment named triple dye, which was used in past to disinfect superficial wounds and even the umbilical cord of newborn babies, in which the concentration of the two mutagen compounds (proflavine and crystal violet) in the ointment is about 100 to 1000 times higher than the amount that I am scared about ethidium bromide which is warned in the strict regulation of the safety protocols. The regulation is such strict that the department which I am working decided to use other alternative componds for dna staining with less mutagenic effect than ethidium bromide. This double standard about the materials in the same catecory itself became a new obsession for me, and my obsessive mind began to convince me that I must be wrong in this estimation and that these substances are not that dangerous as ethidium bromide it is. Thus the ocd says me I have no choice to enjoy my life and old objects in my life relevant to the past time ehich I worked with ethidium bromide.

I used to be cautious about this material, but never as obsessed and scared as I am now, as I was able to work in the laboratory, but now even from being in the university environment and in the office where I am in contact with people who work in the laboratory. I am not comfortable while I only work with the computer, but sometimes their dirty labcoats of the other colleagues in the office bother me so that I keep my distance while passing by them. I was obsessed when I started back to the new work place after two years of remote working from home during covid pandemic, I had to return to the workplace and work there, my workplace is a large and very famous university in Europe in the field of biomedicine. But I could never have a good and comfortable connection with my work environment, a long corridor with many labs along this corridor, and numerous safety and HSE courses for all new joiners, and strict safety rules for each lab, but due to a space limitation, they managed many chemical cabinets across the corridor with labels which in this department, various mutagenic and carcinogenic substances are used by researchers on a daily basis, but I myself have seen many times that people do not follow the safety rules and touch the door handles of the corridors and elevators with lab gloves, I even reported this to the department once, they thanked me for the reminder, but there was not much difference in practice compared to before. Every day, I feel that I am working in an unsafe and contaminated environment with chemicals that superficially have rigid rules that no one is able to comply with, and the next thing is to pass through many doors along the corridors connected, they are installed for safety in case of fire, which in my opinion are not practical at all in terms of contamination of the handles with chemicals. In addition to this work environment, there are very low-level welfare matters for researchers in the work environment, which I prefer not to use, and the almost formal work environment lacks friendly working relationships, everyone is busy with research all the time. the only thing they have done in terms of safety is to replace ethidium bromide with safer products, which is the beginning of a new obsession for me in relation to my previous work environments. Sorry for writing so long, but I feel I need to be heard.

My favourite "people" on the way: Jenna Overbaugh, Kimberley Quinlan, Reid Wilson, Jon Hershfield, Ethan Smith