The Hair Dryer Incident (2014)

Well, yes, and this is how it came to be allowed; the harm from the "preventing recreational use" system was so huge (see yesterday's war on drugs post etc) that it made sense to stop trying to make this distinction. The medical system provides a "fig leaf" which allows the remaining pure-puritans to accept it while at the same time the people who need it for medical use can get it, and nobody has to get their life ruined with jail.

(By "Pure-puritans" I mean those people who are against it because it's recreational, not because of alleged harms or externalities like smoke)

I also think there's a huge grey area of people with chronic pain or unhappiness problems that don't quite reach a diagnosis bucket - or they've not yet learned to speak the words that would get them there, or don't meed the social class critera - whose "drug seeking" behavior might most easily be addressed by just letting them have the drugs. As long as they're not opiates.

I will say that after going through CBT and becoming an amature expert on OCD as a sufferer, a therapist would argue that this behavior of checking your photo is a form of compulsion. It works for dam sure but you're never really going to be able to go to sleep without some form of checking when the obsessive thoughts start.

Anyone who has gone through treatment knows the ultimate goal is to weaken the reaction of the obsessive thoughts which is what exposure therapy is all about.

Just a quick story, my laddering technique for achieving peace was to eventually get to a comfort level where I can sleep with the door wide open all night. Well, I didn't get that far but I did sleep with all my doors unlocked for a couple nights.

Lastly, I can safely say that I now check all my doors once these days with the exception when I'm stressed at work. I'll check them once before going to bed and if I brush my teeth between checking the door and actually walking to bed, I might check them once more. But this is a seldom occurrence these days.

Me: You too.

What the other shrinks should have noticed is that this is taking the power of agency away from the object and returning it to the owner. OCD people like me follow a certain thought process:

1. I need to do this [thing] or [something] bad will happen. 2. Nothing bad happened. I'm not wounded or dead. That was because I did [thing]. 3. If I hadn't switched the blender on and off 14 times today before I walked out the house, I might have walked out 30 seconds earlier and been hit by a bus. Therefore even as irrational as it seems, the wasted time on the blender was enough to keep me in the right timeline where I'm still alive and breathing. 4. Therefore whenever I get an irrational impulse to do something that might delay me, I should do it, because that's what keeps me on the timeline where I'm not hit by a bus.

Just because none of this can be cured by someone speaking rationally to you and telling you you're insane, doesn't mean that it can or should be cured by mood-altering chemicals. The only answer for me has been demonstration to myself, i.e., I didn't slam the door six times but I didn't get cancer. etc. However, the biggest motivator was my ex-gf who used to wake up when I was folding my pants over and over, and go, WILL YOU FRIGGIN LAY DOWN?

Last thought here. Drawing connections between what happens and what happened prior is a fine art, and one that's richly rewarded in the right corners of hackerdom. There's no shortage of people who lack the ability to see the most basic cause/effect and are willing to pay you to tease those things out of the data, or out of your ass. I consider OCD to be an asset, not a fault, as long as it can be channeled properly. It may have saved my life. BUT yeah about stupid shit like hair driers, just show people the obvious. Being OCD doesn't mean you're an idiot, and if you swallow the pill that says "I won't die because X" you open more doors to other rational thoughts. OCD is just your brain stuck in an if/then pattern. Several elses may cure a big chunk of it.