A synopsis of OCD minus any form of medication.

Circa a few months ago, 3 or 4 maybe, I stopped taking my medication. I don’t recommend the way I did it by just abruptly stopping but I believed in my gut feeling that it was time to detox and live my natural course of life. Where medications can be positively life altering I’ve always seemed to have adverse reactions to medicine.

The last medicine I was on was called Luvox and it made me terribly sleepy. I couldn’t go the course of a day with out taking a nap. The inconvenience of the lethargy that usually hit in the middle of the day and at other incredibly inconvenient times was enough to motivate me to stop taking medications. I knew I could handle things like a job and responsibilities but because of how tired I always was I wasn’t living up to my potential and the people close to me stopped believing in my abilities.

For someone as driven (and stubborn) as I am that is such a slap in the face. It was a combination of people not remembering all that I could do and one other thing. I finally took a step back and realized how long I have been living taking medicines. I’m 18! I’m young and otherwise healthy and I’m living from one pill to the next? I don’t want to be dependent on a prescription! I don’t want something that acts as a crutch for my bad emotions and anxiety.

Upon taking a step back I realized that I was ready to stop anesthetizing my life. I felt that my highs became mediums and my lows became just neutral. Where nothing was really bringing me down, this medicine wasn’t allowing me to really be brought up either. Not allowing me to be my best, not allowing other to know me and believe in me at my best….. That’s not me. This life is about the highs and lows and even the in betweens.

Though my mind feels less… “Foggy” lets say, being off the medication isn’t easy. I now experience very high highs and occasional lows (I’m not a very depressed person by nature.) When I’m angry I’m REALLLLLY angry. There’s at least once a day that something really sets my OCD off. It might be a comment or talk of planning something that stresses me out. It could be someone just standing in the way of my OCD rituals and routines. It could be the smallest of infractions that I know really shouldn’t ruffle me but it does my OCD and there for rials me up.

I know when I get this upset I am miserable to be around. Seriously! I don’t even want to be with myself, but one thing that really helps diffuse the anger is working out. Part of what medication does is chemically even out the lack of serotonin in my brain and with exercise and working out it naturally stimulates my brain to boost serotonin.

OCD isn’t me but it’s a big part of my life. Medication or not I’m going to have to get up the courage one day to face it again. To sum things up I am living with obsessive compulsive disorder Rx free! I’m doing it! Doing it one small experience at a time…. But doing it. I feel a sense of freedom knowing I’m no longer altered by an unnatural substance and this works for me right now.

Note: This is reflective of me and my personal experiences only. This is not a recommendation to stop or quit taking any form of medication without consulting a doctor. Me quitting cold turkey probably wasn’t the safest or best way of expediting my goal. (Do what I say, not what I do)

  In less than one week of starting this blog, “OCD isn’t me,” I have gotten the word out about the disorder and reached, if only a small population, of people with my words and my simple action of trying to make a difference! Words cannot describe how I feel about this movement. I’m bursting just waiting and watching it grow and morph into something more. 

  This is a tribute and a thank you to all of my earliest followers. All of you ‘following’ this blog and the 300 of you twitter fans out there following along as well! Words cannot explain how flattered I am that you all have taken an interest in not only myself and my own personal struggles but have taken an interest in the greater good of spreading awareness about OCD. 

 Thank you, thank you, thank you! Love, support and blessings to you all<3 

OCD isn’t easy, but it isn’t me! That’s an epiphany which has led me to finally wanting to share about life with the disorder.

  Feeling grateful for an afternoon spent with a long-lost-life-long-friend who also suffers from OCD. It’s always refreshing to keep in touch and share our stories and our lives with each other because we have such a great appreciation for what the other is going through. I’m so blessed to have a friend like that. 

 With OCD especially you can feel a depressing sense of being alone at times. A loneliness greater than being an only child, or not fitting in with a certain crowd because it’s a scenario in life that is irreversible and unchangeable. It really makes us very different from other human beings~ in good ways and bad, but sharing the commonality of having obsessive compulsive disorder with someone else is such a reminder that I’m not alone in anything in this life.  

  This friend of mine shared this story with me: 

 She had been going to see her psychiatrist often for medication changes because everything she prescribed was seeming to make her sick.

(Side note: We’re both currently off of all medication for our OCD and are kicking it’s butt and fighting back on our own in a more natural way! Go us! Medication is incredibly helpful for some patients but what we’ve both come to discover is that our scrawny bodies have a low tolerance for medications and we typically experience serious side effects such as bad nausea, loss of appetite, mood imbalances, fatigue, etc.

All in all medication, hasn’t been too positive of a solution for either of us.)

These doctor visits, coupled with these changes in her medication were making her extremely fatigued causing her to be late to school for a series of mornings. As a result of her tardiness her teacher gave her a detention (despite it being senior year and nearly graduation). In the teachers defense she was unaware of this girls medical issues at the time. 

Later my friends mother called into the school to dispute the detention to explain and attest for her daughters tardiness being in account of her OCD and her medication changes and informing them she would be happy to send doctors notes in to the school as further proof.

The following day my friend was called into an administrators office to be informed that her teacher had been notified about her OCD disorder, the psychiatrist visits and medication changes along with her mothers phone call and was refusing to drop the detention. After that the administrator of this high school told her this: “You are the one creating stress in your life and that’s the reason you’re on medication and can’t come to school.” 

  Now I can’t speak for anyone else but when I heard this was I so out raged by the statement! The awareness for OCD is so minimal that even people serving in the public school system can’t understand or sympathize with their students who are suffering. 

  In this instance it was complete ignorance on this administrators part and so absolutely rude to this student that I can’t begin to describe how furious I am. 

  I can only hope to start creating more awareness and understanding for OCD. I wish I could educate the world on it’s affects so that no other student, no other person would have to go along being ridiculed for it.

Ignorance about OCD needs to be abolished!