It’s ironic not to care about your own life yet to be forced to care about every single thing you touch or think you touched. I used to wonder if I’d go to hell and I realize I’ve been in hell for the last 18 years. First it came as obsessive cleanliness and order. And then came the tapping, counting, breathing, gesturing, blinking, chanting. I escaped this prison only to fall into the pit of contamination. If I touch contamination (or imagine I touched it), I will get it on surfaces I touch in the future and contamination will spread around me forever. Contamination isn’t specifically biological but it can be. It’s beyond that. Living things can be killed but contamination can linger. Clorox Wipes, hand sanitizer and soap can kill the biological component but only rituals can kill the contamination. How stupid, I know, I think about it all the time. Three years of therapy and a decade of different medications. Therapy helped with coping mechanisms but I don’t think any of the four major SSRIs have done a single thing for my OCD. Coping exercises, techniques and anxiety management are becoming exhausting. I can workout for 6-8 hours per day but dealing with OCD can take far, far longer deep into the night and forever. I am just so tired, I always want to sleep to escape. Sleep is the greatest gift. Every moment of my day is spent “managing” my OCD. It’s like drowning most of the time, coming up for a breath of air, occasionally. I am surrounded by landmines and simply touching one could leave me damaged for weeks or months at a time. Weed occasionally helps with the anxiety and helps me forget my obsessions. Getting really drunk makes them disappear as well. A little psilocybin does wonders. But none of these things are sustainable nor things I do or can do consistently. I don’t believe drugs are the solution unless you think about things like ketamine and Ibogaine. Good luck being able to afford the “quick fix” at $1200 a dose with no guarantees. I know, without a doubt that I will never live a normal life. Even at best, my mind will be robbed by the illness. Letting go has such appeal when you think of 30-40 more years of continuous doubt, anxiety, rage, bewilderment, depression, depersonalization. And that’s just the OCD. I am on a medication soup for my bipolar 1 and ADHD as well. Sometimes I imagine a normal life, sometimes I take lots of benzos and drink alcohol to forget. I’d love to forget… I have only been OCD in my dreams 4-5 times in my life. If I could lucid dream, I’d sleep forever. Sometimes it gets better but I have to remind myself it will always get bad again. After much hard work and progress, it get bad again. I have lost so many things to my OCD and years of my life. I regret so many decisions and opportunities I had that OCD hindered. OCD wrecked my chance at normalcy in college. I had the intelligence and charisma. I just always flaked on people because I had to “clean” or “organize”. What meaning do those things have if they destroy your life and sacrifice your friendships? Who decides how much time you have left? You? Your loved ones? I can easily make my own decisions but when I have people I love, I can’t make these same decisions. How much do you sacrifice for someone you love? How much pain is worth it? How many years of pain are required to become normal? How should you live knowing you will likely never be normal even with the best treatment money could buy? Besides obligations to our loved ones, why should we want to live so terribly? If drugs and therapy don’t help, when do you hang up the phone if you even can? Why am I even typing this, I have a therapist?