Jack a Bingham - Obsessive-Compulsive Dramatic: My Fight Against Ocd, Borderline Personality Disorder, and Addiction

Table of Contents

Dedication

To Mike Gilroy, the man who got me into reading. To my mother and father, for having to raise such a difficult child. And in the loving memory of Daniel Haze (1999-2016) and Gustav Ahr (1996-2017), youll both be loved and remembered forever.

Preface

My name is Jack Bingham, Im twenty-one and a full-blown mental patient. This is going to be a look into my mindthe way Ive learned to cope with my mental illnesses. I wish I could tell you that my story is going to be chock-full of amazing insight, but a lot of it is learning what not to do. Youll get an idea of what its like to have extreme obsessive-compulsive disorder, borderline personality disorder, and an addiction. When I say extreme OCD, that isnt hyperbole. Im talking about me, a person who had to switch schools as a child because I felt everything and everyone had become contaminated.

There were times in my life that my OCD got so bad it drove me very close to suicide. There were a lot of tears, a lot of screaming, and a lot of pain over the years with this illness. People often misunderstand or underestimate the severity OCD can reach. But believe me, from personal experience, I can tell you it can easily ruin your life. It ruined mine and left me hopeless, trapped in a prison of my own mind.

There is good news, though. On top of already having such a debilitating mental illness, I went out and picked up a few more. I guess my brain didnt think having OCD was enough, so it found some good deals out there and I ended up with borderline personality disorder as well as a wicked drug addiction. In all seriousness, its hard living with the emotional insanity that is borderline personality disorder. The constant, intense mood swings, the impulsivity, and the feelings of extreme hopelessness and chronic emptiness.

But I have found ways to cope. I used alcohol and drugs to cope for a long time and it led me down a painful road. It led me to the gates of hell. There is desperation and despair when realizing youve lost control of your life, that youve become insanely obsessed and dependent on drugs that are going to kill you. And even worse, not caring that what youre doing is a one-way, no lay-overs ticket to an early grave. Die young and leave a good-looking corpse was my motto. I had completely lost my mind to the insanity of drug and alcohol addiction. Actually, I hadnt just lost my mind, I had lost my self. I became a broken person.

If youre wondering how a person with so many apparent issues was able to write a book, youll have to understand that Im shocked as well. I wouldnt have been able to do this without overcoming my addiction and staying clean, as well as regularly attending visits with multiple therapists and a psychiatrist. This book is about me, my illnesses, and what Ive learned and discovered on this unorthodox journey.

Chapter 1

The Severity of OCD

Speaking very broadly, obsessive-compulsive disorder is something that is vastly misunderstood. I used to be bothered by this fact. It would drive me into rage hearing OCD be trivialized or be the subject of a joke. Ive learned to come to terms with the fact that people can joke about, or misunderstand obsessive-compulsive disorder, and thats okay. The only reason they are doing so is because they dont understand the mental anguish it truly is capable of.

When obsessive-compulsive disorder progresses to severe or extreme degrees, it becomes your life. It controls every waking moment and decision. Theres no escape from it; theres no break in the anxiety and fear of impending panic. You end up living in a constant cycle of intrusive thoughts leading to obsession, which inevitably lead to compulsions. The key to understanding obsessive-compulsive disorder if you dont suffer from it, is understanding that we who suffer from OCD are well aware that we are behaving in an irrational manner.

For the benefit of insight, Im going to explain to you what I have to do every time I go to the washroom. Even if its just urinating, what exactly is my routine and ritual?

First off, I can only go to the washroom in my house. I cant go in public. And I cant go at someone elses house. It has to be my house (unless I have access to someone elses shower). I have to sit while I pee, and try and make the stream as light as possible so nothing splashes. I then wash my hands profusely before going into the shower, and yes, I have to shower every time I urinate.

I then spend a ludicrous amount of time in the shower, washing in a certain ritualized order. The first thing I have to do when I enter the shower is brush my teeth. Ideally, I would have a new toothbrush every day, but its usually more like every three days. Then I have to wash my hands two or three times. I use my foot to turn on the shower and close the shower curtain. Even when Im in the showerabout to wash my entire body for upwards of an hour, and at times closer to three hoursI still have the need to avoid contact with faucets and other things in the shower/bath area. I have to intensely rinse my nether regions, and this phase alone can last twenty minutes. After I feel satisfied that my private parts are clean, I have to wash my body in stages. In between each stage, I have to rinse my hands, and then wash them before moving on. For example, I will wash my hair, then rinse my hands, wash them, and then reapply soap before moving on to wash my torso.

When Im in the shower Im constantly paranoid that urine is still leaking out of me. Sometimes I will be completely done showering, and then Ill get a sensation that some urine has dribbled out, and I have to restart the entire process.

As you can imagine, not only is this insanely time-consuming, it is also financially taxing. Not only do I go through copious amounts of soap (something all my friends and relatives point out to me after I stay at their house for a few days), but I also use an absurd amount of water. My mother tells me that when Im at home the water bill doubles or even triples. Of course, this isnt just due to excessive showering and hand-washing, but also the amount of laundry I do. It is not uncommon for me to have to change my shirt two or three times in a given day. And its truly a miracle when I dont have to change my bed sheets every single day.

My OCD is severe, but we have only scratched the surface of what I live with every day. There are other things I do, thoughts that I have, that are so insanely irrational, and that lead to such mental hell, that it will truly boggle your mind.

So, as you can imagine, I cant help but get a little annoyed when people make trite comments like Oh my God, Im so OCD after doing something like evening out the drawstrings on their hoodie. Because the thing I fear people often fail to understand about severely debilitating OCD, is how much I loathe it. I despise every single time I have to wash my hands. When youre washing your hands until they bleed (my hands literally crack and bleed because they are so dried out from all the soap I use), you can only imagine how frustrating and painful it is. There are times when Im stuck in a compulsive cycle, and Ive been doing the same ritual for hours straight without stopping. When this occurs I often plead out loud for this hell to end; I beg to be able to stop, but Im not able to.

I remember when I was in my final year of high school, I ended up failing my first-period class because I could never make it on time. I would wake up hours before school started, but at the time my OCD was so severe, that even when I would enter the washroom at 7:30 a.m., I wasnt able to leave the washroom until noon. I would be in there for four-and-a-half hours, just washing my body over and over again. Changing my clothes over and over again. Sometimes exiting the shower, and then having to re-enter and repeat the long process from the beginning. I didnt want to do this. I wanted to be normal. It wasnt uncommon for me to break down into tears after I entered the second or third hour of ritualistic compulsion. Tears would be streaming down my face as I entered the shower for the third time that morning, or had to change out yet another shirt or pair of pants.