IMPORTANT Hey, I have a very urgent question regarding my antidepressant, and I know it might just sound like any other OCD spike, or me just being a hypochondriac, but I really need to be made aware if what I'm doing is lowering the effectiveness of my medication, or even worse, causing it to become toxic. I store my antidepressants (which are in a tablet form) inside a small cardboard box, with a lid that doesn't exactly have an air tight seal, and I have found out, that after the 2 years I have just been absentmindedly taking them, there has been a crack in the box, meaning the pills have been exposed to air "constantly." I have heard that there are pills out there way more oxygen-sensitive than antidepressants, but I'm still worried, about whether or not they expire faster, or if the formula even changes. Keep in mind I have kept them away from heat and moisture. But ontop of all of this, I can't really swallow pills, at least not very well, so I've always just let it dissolve in my mouth and then swallowed it. During my research on the whole "longterm air exposure" situation, which I never found a straight answer about, I stumbled across a person saying that you should never crush your pills because they have a stomach acid resistant coating on the outside that allows it to only breakdown and get absorbed into the body at specific rate. Apparently if that exact rate of absorption doesn't occur then I may either feel no effect at all, or all of the effect will happen at once instead of spread over 24 hours. Please help, especially if you are a doctor or a pharmacist who knows a little about this, because I would hate to think that I have been doing something harmful to my body, even if unintentional, and if so, I'll will need to discontinue the way I do things immediately. Thanks!

Contamination OCD

Pbred

Date posted: 4y

I’m glad you have a starting point on getting help and that you are feeling somewhat better. Good luck with your NOCD call whenever that is 😊

Bhappy

Date posted: 4y

Hey there! OCD really sucks… as a person who doesn’t share your fears but have unreasonable ones of my own I can tell you that probably nobody without ocd would worry about what you just wrote. That said- It sounds like you freaked out, did compulsions, freaked out more and are now doing more compulsions like asking for reassurance here. This will not actually help your ocd but make it worse. I suggest you write down your fears and then write down what your wise self tells you is actually true, turn that volume up. Then read it out loud or makecc or make a loop tape and hear yourself. Hope this helps! You are not alone (:

Pbred

Date posted: 4y

In no way trying to be mean but may I ask why your medication isn’t being kept in the pill bottle it came in? Is putting it in this specific box part of a compulsion?

AnimaLover19

Date posted: 4y

It just looks nicer to me in a decorative box

Pbred

Date posted: 4y

@AnimaLover19 Ok. I think it would be smart like suggested before to stop all research on your medication as that is very much sounding like a compulsion. I would keep taking your medicine as instructed as it might be more harmful for you to stop taking it suddenly. Then I would suggest talking to your pharmacist. Rather than ask questions that aim for reassurance like “is it okay that I do this” or “does this make the pill ineffective” etc. I would ask them how they suggest storing it and taking it. If you have concerns, such as like you said not being able to swallow them, they might have recommendations on how to take it or another option for it (I don’t know if that’s plausible for these types of meds but it might be who knows). Otherwise I believe trying to establish some sort of ERP response to what happened or using the suggestion of the above commenter would help. I wish I could be of more help but I don’t have the same contamination fears as you do. Good luck though and I really hope you can start feeling better!

AnimaLover19

Date posted: 4y

@Pbred Well I just booked my free call with nocd, so ya hopefully me and them can get a plan together

AnimaLover19

Date posted: 4y

@Pbred I feel a lot better any way though, because I took a closer look and it does appear as though there is some tape covering that gap there, and I found out that my specific brand of antidepressant can be split or even "crushed," which means that dissolving it must be just as fine, because it's the same sort of idea

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