Medication-related Delusion: TW / Adderall Created Delusional Parasitosis..

TW: mice/rodents; contamination/virus; feeling unsafe in my home Hello, I'm new to the community, and new to OCD at 42 years old. My OCD is about contagion but specifically around mice and a virus some of them carry (hantavirus). For background, my husband and I have been in our house for a little over 10 years, and in all that time, there have been mice coming in and out through what we've discovered are chew-holes in the sill plate where the house frame sits on the foundation. Mice are gross, but we never saw evidence of them in the actual living spaces (only attics and cellar), and I was okay knowing they were there. I was a new mom when COVID hit, and the anxiety over that ratcheted up my general anxiety, which was never awful but definitely had me thinking more about contamination and contagion in a big way. Two years ago, I found mouse poop in the upstairs where the bedrooms are, got some traps, never caught anything, and then ended up actually SEEING a mouse come out from behind the toilet. It went back into the wall before we could catch it. After that, I got steel wool and expanding foam and plugged up EVERY hole in the house--mostly pipe holes for the radiators, toilets, sinks, etc. And I was still OK. Then, two months ago, I was in the cellar doing laundry and I saw a larger-than-usual dropping, bigger than mouse OR rat droppings, I thought, sitting on top of the dryer. I was like...hm, that's strange. I mentioned it to my Discord writing group, most of whom live in the Midwest (this will become relevant), and one of them said "oh, you have to be careful with mice, they carry Hantavirus. My husband had it a couple of years ago and it was really scary." I didn't know what hantavirus is, so I looked it up and found out you can contract it through breathing/contact with mouse poop, urine and saliva. The sickness that results from hantavirus has a 40% mortality rate, which scares the heck out of me b/c that's really high. Further research told me that the CDC started tracking Hantavirus in 1993. Between then and 2022, the latest of their available data, there have been fewer than 900 cases in the entire US; 96% of those cases were west of the Mississippi, and there has been in that time only ONE confirmed case in the state where I live. So, objectively, the risk of me or my family contracting this virus from our local mice is low. And I wouldn't think about it at all, except that there are still mice in the house. We've had a pest company setting and managing traps this whole time; recently they also came to plug the existing holes in the foundation, but they keep finding mice in their traps and they found a new chew hole near one of the cellar windows this week. We're working on a more aggressive solution (1/4" hardware cloth over the places where they're getting in), but it's slow going and in the meantime, there's still the risk of coming into contact with mouse stuff. But my brain has ballooned this into something so much bigger than that. I'm washing my hands so much that they're starting to crack and bleed and the skin feels tight. I'm afraid to go in the cellar to do laundry, because that's where the mice are. My husband has no problem going down in the cellar, which means I'm afraid to touch things around the house because what if he touched something with mouse virus on his hands? And even though I've plugged up all the holes where mice could get into the living spaces, I'm still obsessively afraid of every single surface--what if a mouse touched it? Ran across it? Peed on it? Even though I don't see mouse droppings in any of our living spaces, nor evidence of them chewing anything, I'm still losing my mind with fear. And although I've heard that folks with contamination OCD typically clean a LOT, I'm afraid to clean because what if I move the mess (we both have full time jobs and a 6 year old, so cleaning isn't always top priority) and I find mouse poop under there? This is an absolute nightmare. I hate not feeling safe in my own home. And I'm frustrated because I was FINE for so long...I don't know where this OCD suddenly came from, but it went 0 to 100 almost overnight. My loved ones are concerned and want to be supportive, but they're also not afraid and have never experienced anxiety nor OCD, so their "helpful" advice is usually along the lines of "can't you just decide to be afraid and do it anyway" or "have you tried not feeling this way"? I know this is a weirdly specific OCD but that's my story. I've been working with a therapist now for a few weeks but her breathing techniques, while somewhat helpful, aren't enough, so I need to have a talk with her about what comes next for treatment. Thanks to OCD, my world feels like it keeps getting smaller and smaller. I want to just find a tiny chair where I can sit and not move and not touch anything until all the bad stuff goes away...but I know that's not realistic, nor is is healthy. I'm just...exhausted, and frustrated, and scared, and really hopeful that I can find a way through this.

This is really hard for me to post and put out here, I'm not diagnosed with OCD, I just recently started talk therapy. But when I was a child my mom speculated because I had OCD. Because I would have compulsions from intrusive thoughts that always stemmed around SA. Everything for me gets stuck in a record player and a spiral and I can't stop. This is a really concerning and disturbing one, so I thought I would warn again if the topic seems too much for many people. I just recently learned about false memeory OCD and its the only explanation I can come up with right now. I've never shared an intrusive thought out loud but this one is too much. I have been in a really intense spiral lately, where I keep having these extremely vivid memeories of me sexually assaulting people not in my body like I'm sleep walking. It's extremely disturbing and I've convinced myself I have this sort of alter identity or a sleep disorder that is violent. Ive looked up a bunch of disorders like that. I asked a few people if I sleep walk but they don't remember me ever doing something like that, but what if they somehow surpressed a memeory too? I want to bring this up to my therapist, but I have been afraid to because it is so much and a spiral that has lasted for the course of months now and I have ruined my mental health and relationships because of it. I am extremely paranoid that everyone is lying to me or plotting to hurt me. But not because I think they are bad, but because I believe I deserve it. It got to the point where I now have memories of people trying to tell me I am creepy and that I had done things to SA them, along with memories of people talking while I'm not in the room about it. And I genuinely can't tell if it's real or not because I swear they are actual events that I just never put too much thought into in the past or completely dissociated from. (My main response to anything too much or difficult is to dissociate.) It's actually concerning me and the people around me because if it's true then I don't think I should be around society. I don't eat right, I'm too afraid to sleep without my door locked, I am unemployed with no sense of direction out of highschool because of it. It all stemmed from a surpressed memeory , witch who knows is real now, where my ex calls me and tells me I assaulted him, and that he was going to get me back, and that he had spread explicit photos of me. Now I genuinely feel like there is evidence to back up this because he brings up all my coworkers I had at the time, and I have memories of them making strange comments to me. If I somehow assaulted this guy without having an ounce of social awareness of what I was doing was assault then I feel like I absolutely deserve every ounce of mental spiral that is consuming me and worse. And I don't know how to stop this. And I'm afraid if I tell my therapist she might put me in a hospital and my family just doesn't have the money for that, and neither do I as an individual. The guilt would consume me. But I'm pretty sure I have no choice at this point. Because anouther "memory" resurfaced where I took a nightmare I had a long time ago and somehow turned it into me being Sexually assaulted by my father this time, and now I can't look at him or my family without absolute disgust. And I have "memories" of my family trying to talk to me about it but I completely forgot the event and processed it like a dream. I can't tell if something really creepy is actually happening or not but I'm starting to think it is because the way my brother acts around my family is weird but it could be my paranoia and the fact I have been freaking out everyone around me with my mental health. Either way I need to tell a professional because if I DID hurt my ex seriously, I need to take every ounce of accountability. But I don't wanna confess to a memory I don't even fully understand myself. I thought about contacting him several times and asking him if I have ever caused pain, but he blocked me and I feel like that crosses boundaries he has clearly set. Also I don't want to put this mental crisis on any other people, because my family is already freaked out enough. After writing this all out I'm starting to believe I really should force myself to tell my therapist no matter the consequences, I just feel like I need to admit this to a someone to get over my fear of saying it all out loud. Because everyday and every night I keep being plagued by these unwanted flashes of either me being hurt or me hurting other people In really disturbing and terrible ways. and it feels completely real with like context I've made to back it up. Am I unconsciously creepy? I'm just afraid I've become my worse fear and I was it without knowing my whole life.

I had OCD earlier in life, but it came and gone. For the last 4.5 it's been one thing after another, though. Today I felt especially grossed out by my POCD and I feellike I'm losing last hope that I had. I hate to sound awfully dramatic, but I want to clarify things a little bit and ask for advice. So I've been taking antidepressants up until some point, had a break and then started taking them again. In the beginning of this month, I finally finished that second course. This time it lasted 1.5 years. It's important to note that for the last half year I was pretty proactive in finding solutions to my ocd, finding new methods and reading articles. It probably did help, but mostly in short-term. Today I felt like my symptoms (it's mainly groinal response) were scaringly prominent and it made me really depressed. Do I have to start all over? It never got good enough in the first place, so I'm not even sure if it's possible to cure. I admit I might've not been pushing myself enough to do the scariest possible things, but that doesn't mean I didn't do ERP. Now, to the venting part. I'm not sure if anything really helped: if I'm relaxed it's probably just a matter of good mood. I'm anxious when going outside. I feel like I don't deserve friends because of my "dirty" secret -- I feel incredibly ashamed for groinal sensations. There were times when I'm sure it wasn't a phantom feeling, but a real one I caused. But I can't undo anything, so it has to stay with me. My family really loves me, so of course killing myself was never an option. But I still hate myself. I'm too tired to keep on fighting with OCD and bearing the burden of those very shameful events is too hard. What do I do? Maybe I'm just not adapted to living without antidepressants, so I'm being too emotional and all I should do is continue doing ERP. But my point is that I'm too exhausted. Thank you for reading. I see many here have a similar problem, I hope you're staying strong. I'd love to help you all, but I'm afraid that right now I'm not suit for giving out good life advice