Right off the top let me make clear that I am not a professional in the
medical, psychiatric or social work fields. I am not a doctor or therapist. I'm
just a guy with OCD (Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder).
I have had OCD for 40 years more or less and was diagnosed (finally) about
10 years ago. Which puts me at being 40 something and lets leave it at that.
That, I suppose, makes me something of an expert at living, or surviving,
with OCD. I also know from personal experience a lot about what OCD treatments
are and what they are like. I have an intense and up close knowledge of side
effects for instance. Believe me, I've tried all of the medications, common and
uncommon, CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy), talk therapy, you name it,
everything except surgery, which I have declined.
My OCD is considered refractory, unamenable to treatment-so far. It's also
considered severe to extreme. I usually score in the low 30's on the YBOCS
(Yale Brown Obsessive Compulsive Scale) which is a tool used to determine if
treatment is working-sort of.
This would be the place where I would put some accomplishments and so forth.
And while I have attended college for instance, and done well while there, I
have never finished. OCD has conspired in part or in whole to take away most of
the opportunities I have had in my life. But that story can be found in my
other pages
The long term goal of this site is to put a face to OCD, to make it a
personal site. There are many good sites on the Web for OCD that contain great
information and resources, but not many that try to convey what it is like from
a personal point of view.
Ideally, if someone who knows they have a problem stumbles across this site
and, in reading, sees something of themselves or identifies with what they see
and then seeks help or even learns that they are not alone and that there is
help available - that would be what this site is about.