Alcohol and OCD: A cruel mistress! Hi all. I wanted to share my thoughts and potentially start a discussion about the role of alcohol in OCD. Certainly in my case I think it is a fundamental contributor to my suffering, and I'm not surprised about the statistics related to how many OCD sufferers also suffer from problematic drinking. My current obsessive themes are Real Event/guilt OCD and are often related to situations and events where I was incredibly drunk with fuzzy and missing memories, or my drunkenness contributed to certain actions that I now obsessively regret. Whilst this was in the past, alcohol is still contributing to my suffering, and I'm starting to wonder whether I would be much happier without it. I find that after sometimes months of feeling fine, most if not all of my major relapses have occurred directly after a night of heavy drinking, and that spark has sent me spiralling for days and sometimes weeks. I then became obsessed about limiting my drinking in certain situations, I had a fear that if I was drunk I would end up committing some horrible crime or cheating on my partner. Now though I'm finding that I'm drinking moderate amounts of alcohol on a very regular basis, just to take my mind off my obsessions, which is very unhealthy. When I have a drink, even just one, it feels like my thoughts just almost vanish in importance, it's like a beautiful break from all the suffering. This feeling scares me a little and I now worry that I might be verging on some form of dependency on alcohol. I'm not looking for any reassurance here, just wanted to share my experience and chat with others who might also be struggling in this way.

Looking back, I realize I’ve had OCD since I was 7. though I wasn’t diagnosed until I was 30. As a kid, I was consumed by fears I couldn’t explain: "What if God isn’t real? What happens when we die? How do I know I’m real?" These existential thoughts terrified me, and while everyone has them from time to time, I felt like they were consuming my life. By 12, I was having daily panic attacks about death and war, feeling untethered from reality as depersonalization and derealization set in. At 15, I turned to drinking, spending the next 15 years drunk, trying to escape my mind. I hated myself, struggled with my body, and my intrusive thoughts. Sobriety forced me to face it all head-on. In May 2022, I finally learned I had OCD. I remember the exact date: May 10th. Reading about it, I thought, "Oh my God, this is it. This explains everything." My main themes were existential OCD and self-harm intrusive thoughts. The self-harm fears were the hardest: "What if I kill myself? What if I lose control?" These thoughts terrified me because I didn’t want to die. ERP changed everything. At first, I thought, "You want me to confront my worst fears? Are you kidding me?" But ERP is gradual and done at your pace. My therapist taught me to lean into uncertainty instead of fighting it. She’d say, "Maybe you’ll kill yourself—who knows?" At first, it felt scary, but for OCD, it was freeing. Slowly, I realized my thoughts were just thoughts. ERP gave me my life back. I’m working again, I’m sober, and for the first time, I can imagine a future. If you’re scared to try ERP, I get it. But if you’re already living in fear, why not try a set of tools that can give you hope?

It’s been 4 years. 4 years since I spiralled into a world controlled by rituals of 4, it started as 2, then 3, then 4 - my safe number. The amount of times I wash my hands after touching something dirty and how many repeats it takes until I feel ‘clean’, the amount of taps I make when closing doors to make sure I don’t ‘die’, the amount of times I rinse cutlery and plates before eating off them, the amount of times I disinfect things. My OCD subtype is contamination and I know 2020 lockdowns and the pandemic caused it to spiral but what started as a small ritual quickly became bigger until I no longer remembered what my life was like without the obsessive thoughts of germs and contamination. Could that person be ill? What if I go outside to the shops and someone makes me sick? You can’t answer the door to get that package from the delivery driver because he might make you sick, oh you can’t put the shopping away without disinfecting it first - what if someone has coughed on it? ‘I’ve got to wear gloves to do that’ I can’t, I can’t, I can’t. For 4 years I’ve lived like this, the ‘I don’t want to touch that’ or ‘I can’t go to this place because I don’t want to get ill and die’ ‘can you go do that for me as I don’t think I can right now’ - I know my OCD is irrational, I know the likelihood of those things actually happening are slim to none and I know my OCD stems from a need of control in my life because for so many years I felt like everything in my life was out of my control. But no matter how much I know of how many books I read, how many mindful practices I do the panic I feel after being ‘exposed’ or before exposing myself to a trigger is horrible. I’ve avoided and avoided and avoided to the point where something small now seems and feels like an impossible mountain to climb. It often feels like there isn’t light at the end of the tunnel on the dark days, when I know there is, it’s just going to take some time. Despite this on the outside to those not in my circle my life is a whole picture perfect painting. I run my own business, have a nice car, a nice house, a happy relationship and the of best friends and I’m so grateful for all those things but the reality is much different - behind closed doors and hidden in the closest is the OCD monster. I’ve decided now, after 4 years it’s time to change. I’m breaking the cycle and starting anew. The irony that 4 is my safe number too and it’s been 4 years since things started to get dark. I’m ready to lose control and find myself again. Why am I writing this? Honestly, I really don’t know. I found this app recently and hope it can be a help for my ERP practices I’ve been practicing on my own and it’s actually the first time I’ve ever openly posted or spoken about my OCD to date. For years I have lived with a huge amount of shame and embarrassment, hiding my issues from everyone - even my closest friends have no idea how much it impacts my day to day. I’ve felt shame as I can’t control my own mind despite knowing the thoughts are irrational and the rituals only provide temporary relief but each day again and again the safety blanket of the rituals wraps me up and takes over. The only person who truly knows how much it affects me is my partner, who has been by my side through it all, he’s burnt out and has seen first hand the impact it has had on me, my life and my happiness. I’ve sheltered him as much as I can, but I’m sure those who are in relationships with OCD can relate to the burnout their partner feels day in day out. So that’s my story, I hope those going through similar can take comfort in this and know they aren’t alone in it all as my OCD has made me feel so incredibly lonely, isolated and empty for 4 years too long. It feels freeing to finally share my monster and I hope I can connect with others who are on a similar journey to me. The biggest thing I want to be able to do again? I want to be able to hug my loved ones without feeling triggered, I want to go outside and enjoy life without worry, I want to live again. This app has made me feel seen for the first time in a long time and reading your stories, your experiences and how you’re coping is comforting, encouraging and makes me feel less alone ❤️ thank you for reading x

So, I know my capacity to get fixated on things. And it's normally something that's relatively remote but, my latest issue is really getting to me and I was wondering if people have any advice. I'm avoiding getting too into specifics, as I don't want this to get reassurance-y but, in essence.. I came to the realisation recently that people who I'd been "friends" (feels like the wrong term now) when I was younger were not very nice people, and normalized a lot of very unpleasant behaviour towards other members of the group. They really normalized it, sold themselves as figures of authority, as older and more responsible and grown-up than others, and looking back, they acted horribly. And coming to this realisation, that I'd been manipulated into just accepting their behaviour has just... broken me. My OCD has latched onto it and I can't stop feeling irreversibly tainted by it. I've talked to others about it, and they've reassured me, told me it's not a big deal and that I hold myself to too high a standard, but none of that sticks. I feel better for a bit, then think 'Maybe when you told them you were skewing it to make yourself look better' or 'Did you leave out a crucial detail'. I keep ruminating over and over, trying to remember exactly how everything played out, trying to figure out if I fed into the behaviour, if I did something bad myself (because y'know, I feel like I was accepting of it at the time, so what does it say about my own values?). I know I need to stop doing all this if I want to improve, but then some part of me keeps saying 'So, you're just going to let yourself off the hook then?' Normally, I can rationalize my own fears to some degree, assure myself something won't happen, but the realness of the situation, and the fact I only came to understand the reality of it because the thought had been bothering me means it feels so much more all-encompassing. I know confessing in itself is a compulsion, but I keep feeling that if I'm not I'm somehow concealing what I 'really am' from others around me, and any positive interactions are me deceiving them in some way. I feel like I can't enjoy anything in life right now, and a good part of me feels I should not enjoy it ever again. If anybody has any advice on it, I'm all ears. Or even hearing if you relate to these feelings, I might appreciate the solidarity at least.