I don’t talk about it much, but I do have this disorder. I suppose it effects me pretty significantly, though I don’t talk about it much. I am dramatically better than I used to be though, I will say that. I’m on meds. You might think that’s weak, but if I go off of those, I will relapse fairly quickly. It’s odd. It will slowly come back over weeks, getting a bit worse every day for 2-3 months. After a few months, I’m not in good shape at all.
I have Pure O obsessional OCD. You can look it up if you don’t understand what that is. As far as beating this thing goes, I must say that this thing has got me beat. I can’t seem to get rid of it. You can get better though, even dramatically better, and that’s what I’ve done. I have credit meds for that.
- Gabapentin 300 mg. twice a day. I take it for another reason, but it also works as an anti-anxiety agent. Alcohol dramatically potentiates the effect, which is why I like to drink on it. I’m not sure if there is a “high” or not. Perhaps there is.
- Hydroxyzine 100 mg. Relief for a short period, maybe an hour or more. I am only supposed to take 50 mg. twice a day, but one time I took them all at once for the Hell of it.
- Hydroxyzine 50 mg. plus 300 mg Neurontin (Gabapentin) plus 40 mg. Lexapro (escitalopram) over a 16 hour period. Relief for possibly 2-3 hours. This one was pretty nice!
- Benadryl (diphenhydramine) 50 mg.. Good relief for an hour or more. Similar effect to #1 above. You are only supposed to take 25 mg. at once, but I took two of them because I forgot I had taken one, so I took another one. This drug actually has an anti-anxiety effect.
My daily med dose is 300 mg. Wellbutrin (Buproprion) plus 20 mg. Lexapro. Wellbutrin isn’t even supposed to work, but I found that at high doses, it worked incredibly well. I’m told that it acts like an SSRI at high doses. It sort of speedy too, which is cool because a lot of these drugs are sedating. I found that 40 mg/day of Lexapro was excellent for depression (really seasonal affective disorder), as I definitely suffer from SAD.
Hydroxyzine is prescribed for anxiety.
There is a report that Benadryl improved symptoms in OCD.
The information on Gabapentin is that it works as an additive to an SSRI in that it allows the SSRI to come on quicker. But I found it has an effect in and of itself.
You would think an anti-anxiety agent would not work at all, but I found that they did. To me, anxiety is like fuel. It’s fuel in your gas tank, and OCD is your car. Anxiety is the fuel that powers OCD along. That’s why OCD’ers can get so much worse under serious stress.
With my clients, in severe cases with extreme anxiety, I felt that no benefit was going to happen until we got the anxiety tamed down because as long as it was raging along, they weren’t going to get better. There was too much fuel in the tank.
Anxiety doesn’t cause the disorder per se, but as I said, it acts as a fueling agent and it “powers it along.” When you decrease anxiety you are depriving the OCD car of fuel. When anxiety goes up, you are putting more fuel in the OCD car’s gas tank. The disorder itself thrives on anxiety.
You will also notice that 1-4 only worked for a short period of time, but with this problem, any relief is like manna from Heaven.
3
20
20
20
