POCD Versus Pedophilia: Dx = Pedophilia

Ever since I wrote an article on people with OCD with the pedophile theme (also called POCD), I have been getting deluged with emails from folks suffering from this particular disorder. Keep in mind that this is all just OCD, but this time with a “pedo” theme. I learned about POCD on OCD forums, where they have come up with some interesting names for different themes. Some of the themes are described in this post.

In every case so far, the dx was Pedophile OCD. People get really upset when I talk about this issue and generally tell me to shut up. Obviously, it’s extremely disturbing to them. Since I know these people are not pedos and instead are just nice people pretty much worrying about nothing and will never commit these acts, I’m not the slightest bit upset about this issue, and I don’t get why it’s so disturbing.

However, in a recent case, I was forced to dx someone with pedophila. I also gave him a dx of OCD, but the OCD was not related to the pedophilia.

The fellow came to me saying, “Pedophilia or POCD?” like they all do. However, he also said, “I am 99.9% sure I am a pedophile, but I am just checking to be sure.” This was an odd statement, but I had to check him out anyway.

He told me about his childhood growing up with the proverbial “weirdo uncle.” The uncle often walked around naked in front of the young boy. In addition, the uncle forced the boy to undress and parade around the house naked. While the boy did this, the uncle laughed at him, mocked him and made comments about how small his dick was. The aunt knew about all this nonsense, but she allowed it to go on.

What’s sad is that the “weirdo uncle” pretty much twisted the boy’s sexual orientation, possibly for good. As a young boy moving into puberty, he was aroused by the idea of young boys having sex with older men, as his uncle had programmed him. In puberty, somehow he found real child porn on a warez site, downloaded some movies and watched them. He really got off on this because he imagined himself being the boy having sex with older men.

As you might have guessed by now, the patient was a gay man. He was ~21 years old when I talked to him. All through adolescence, he continued to be strongly aroused by thoughts of sex with young boys. At age 16-17, he fell in love with another boy at school. This boy looked like he was about 12 years old. At this point, the man realized that he was very turned on by young boys.

The man did not discuss with me what age of boys turned him on, only that young boys indeed turned him on. At the moment, he had been looking at “lolicon” porn (apparently legal) for some years for the purposes of arousal.

I repeatedly questioned him about whether or not adult men turned him on too, and got various answers. He said that in the last few years, he had been looking at adult gay porn, but it was hard because he kept imagining boys instead due to the trauma with his uncle. He often ended up in tears after watching gay porn. He also disliked gay porn because he thought it was gross. He said most of it was gangbangs and cameras shoved all the way up guy’s asses.

Upon further questioning, it turned out that he had a good, strong attraction to adult men. However, it was quite clear that he was also oriented towards young boys in a strong way.

Cautiously, I dx’d him with Pedophilia, Nonpreferential type. He was utterly devastated by the dx and seemed suicidal. I caught onto it and told him that I did not want him committing suicide. I also told him I am not a licensed therapist and that he should go to a real clinician to get a second opinion.

I said he needed to learn to feel good about his pedophile orientation, otherwise he was going to torture himself for the rest of his life. I felt that the pedophile orientation was possibly permanent, and he would not be able to make it go away. But I suggested that he might be able to get rid of it by going to some programs that try to change your “love map.”

The main thing he needed to do though was to get help at some point to make sure he did not act on his orientation. I told him I did not want him acting on his orientation for obvious reasons.

The patient was a good person and was very easy to like. I felt no hatred or disgust for him at all. Instead, it was obvious he could not help his orientation.

The patient felt extreme hatred for pedophiles and felt that they were the scum of the Earth. He was nearly suicidal over the fact that he was now one of the lowest scum on Earth as he put it, and he felt he could not bear to live out the rest of his life. For some reason, this made it a lot easier for me to like him as I felt that he was a good person down inside.

He also had some sort of OCD going on, but it was not related to the pedophilia stuff. I forget what it was about.

Dx: OCD, pedophilia, depression (severe).

This was ultimately a very sad case, and I felt very bad towards for the guy. It was also a heartbreaking dx to make.

A Season in Hell (Round Trip Educational Tour)

Hacienda writes:

I’ve had my nasty moments with my own psyche. One time when I was intensely studying philosophy. I thought I would lose it. Not a nice feeling. I could never study philosophy as intensely or a much as I wanted to after that.

Obviously, as someone with a mental illness, I know what is going on here. But the worst of all was Depression. There was a whole year in my life, back in 1985, when after I would come home from work teaching schoolkids all day, I would get stoned and stay stoned. The dope was salve for the wounds.

And the whole time I was off work, I was thinking of how cool it would be to take a gun and blow my fuckin’ brains out. I was in the worst of mental Hells, and that was the only way I could see out of it to end my pain. Eventually, it went away.

What happened was that I went to what felt like the worst psychological Hell on Earth. Then I left that place because it was just too horrible. That experience has since scarred me so badly that I am terrified of getting that depressed ever again. Before, I was always afraid of ending up suicidal. Now that I know what it’s like, I will do everything possible never to go back to that place.

So in a way, going crazy is educational because it takes away the mystery and magic of mental illness and shows you the sheer Hell of what it really is. And after you have been there, if you have any sense at all, you will do everything in your power to ever keep from going back there.

It’s kind of like traveling to a really terrible country, the worst country on Earth. Before you went there, it sounded sort of mysterious and fun, and you thought you could handle it. You went there, lived in Hades for a while, then you went home. Back home, when people ask you if you are ever going back there, you say, “No way! I’ve been there! I know what it’s like, and I will never go back there again!”

So you see, as long as you purchase a return ticket, Hell can be an educational, if not exactly a pleasant, place to visit for a while. Only by plunging into the worst of darknesses do we learn to truly value the light of our quotidian days. Only by learning the true depths of the cavern do we learn never to set foot in that deadly cave again.

For those who keep going back to Hell over and over until they leave this Earth, I believe that they are either masochists who love pain or there is just something wrong with their brains.

More OCD and Psychosis: Differential DX

Let us look at some more cases from the Internet.

Case 1 here and here.

I’m trying to pin down one of my major symptoms that can and has completely impaired my life. My OCD revolves around harm, such as fears that I will harm someone, violent thoughts of harming someone, and even urges to harm someone. I don’t think I want to hurt anyone, but my OCD tells me differently. Sometimes I will get a violent thought when I am standing near someone, and I will not hurt them, but I will quickly walk away to avoid any chance of ever acting on my thought/urge.

Ok, here’s the weirdest part: Later on, after I have walked far away from people in order to avoid hurting them, I believe that I actually did hurt someone after all, and that my memory of avoiding him/her is a false memory, or I just forgot the true memory of actually harming the person in question. I truly have believed many times that I was a murderer, despite tons of evidence to the contrary.

Looking back, I realized I’ve wasted so much time believing I’d done something terrible and waiting to be locked up forever. However, at the time, my beliefs were unshakable and persisted despite all the evidence that my family/friends/counselor threw at me to try to convince me that I had done nothing wrong.

I think my OCD may involve hallucinations as well. Whenever I think I may have harmed someone I hear police/ambulance sirens. Coincidence? Maybe, I’m not sure. When my OCD started to improve at school I was hearing less sirens.

This is the situation I’m in. It started with me walking beside people on my (very hilly) campus that has a lot of ravines. I got the anxious thought “What if I pushed someone into one of the ravines?” So I’d actually go DOWN into ravines to search for bodies. Crazy huh?

Well, it got crazier. One day, the thought or belief (delusional) came into my mind: I DID push someone into the ravine and kill him/her. I compulsively searched, but I couldn’t search very well because I was embarrassed and scared because I was getting weird looks.

So I dropped out of school. And I believe that there is STILL a body in one of those ravines (even though I called my counselor numerous times asking if there were missing students and she always said no) and I checked the news for five weeks – nothing. No evidence, but I still believe I killed somebody.

I had to drive today as an OCD exposure and I had to drive very close to a bicyclist because he was hogging the road. I drove as far away from him as possible, even onto the curb to avoid him. Of course my senses were heightened and I would have felt a bump even if I sideswiped him, which I don’t think I did.

There was no damage to my car or anything, and when I drove back on the opposite side of the road cars were driving normally and I didn’t see emergency vehicles but I still believe deep down that I hit him. It sucks. And I can’t check the news either – in program we are discouraged from checking and other compulsions.

There is a lot of back and forth about this in various threads for some reason. She also has a dx of schizoaffective disorder, which is never explained. Various people feel that this symptom is a combination of OCD and a psychotic symptom, but I am not so sure about that. The part about searching the ravines is also OCD, though it’s rather extreme in that it made her drop out of school.

I honestly feel that this presentation is simply OCD of the Harm OCD type. The person fears that they will attack others, but they never do it. Apparently it’s all just fear.

Going back and checking over and over to make sure she didn’t kill someone or push someone into the ravine is also very OCD-like. A psychotic person simply says that they killed someone by pushing them into the ravine, and that’s that. There’s no going round and round about it, checking the ravines, calling people, reading the papers. That’s called “checking,” and it’s an OCD thing.

Although these symptoms are very disturbing in that they involve violence, a person with this type of OCD is very unlikely to act on the obsession, and probably will never act it. They are less likely to commit a violent act than anyone else. The presentation is rather strange in that most OCD folks don’t have this degree of certainty in the obsession.

The hallucinations of police sirens are odd. Some clinicians are saying that there can be hallucinations in OCD, but they are generally minor. The whole idea of hallucinations in OCD seems very strange to me, and I don’t know what to make of it. OCD experts claim that there are no hallucinations in OCD.

Case 2 and here

The other night I had a thought about gouging my dog’s eyes out; it was terrifying to me. I could never do that, but the thought alone was enough to keep me obsessing about it for hours. Made me very anxious.

Woke up the other day worried I was going to spontaneously run someone over or grab a knife and stab someone, like it would be a compulsion I couldn’t control. My therapist said that’s classic OCD.

Sometimes I hear music playing, like tonight I was hearing a band playing, but it turned out to be just some noise from the a/c cause i left the room and returned.

Sometimes I hear people saying “hey” or think I heard someone else say something when they didn’t, but that’s really not a big deal, I imagine everyone has thought someone said something once in awhile, but the music thing is pretty real.

It sounded like a parade going on outside my house, until I got up and moved around. Not a big deal, just enough to make me stop what I was doing and listen.

This is classic stuff – Harm OCD. In general, they never act on the thought, even if they are thinking of it 24-7. There is controversy on whether or not there have been cases of people acting on antisocial or violent obsessions. Some say there have been some cases, but I have never heard of any. I do therapy with some people who have this type of “harm OCD,” and I never worry that they will act on it.

Note that this person is also worried that they are going to go psychotic, just as Case 1 is obsessed with whether she is psychotic or not. The worry that one will go psychotic is pretty OCD like right there. People with psychotic disorders don’t generally worry about such things.

The part about the hallucinations is stranger. First of all, they are not hallucinations. He just thinks he is hallucinating. He heard the AC, and it sounded like music because he didn’t realize that it was the AC. We live in a noisy environment, and mechanical objects will often make sounds that sound like auditory hallucinations. Other noises in the environment can also fool you. These are called illusions, not hallucinations.

Case 3

I have thoughts that someone is going to poison me or slip me drugs or somehow do something “bad” to me. When I was a kid there was all the talk about people putting razor blades and drugs in Halloween candy; there was a rash of OTC drug packages that were tampered with that killed someone and had these drugs pulled from the shelf, and there was also a case of someone getting poisoned by their friends. This was all in a relatively short span of time.

I seem to have latched on to all of that in an unhealthy way.

I don’t think people are out to get me. I don’t think there’s a conspiracy to hurt me. What I fear is that there are a lot of nutty homicidal people out there, and they may decide to tamper with food or whatever, and that it would be my luck to be one of the unlucky people that would be the victim.

I’m afraid that people are crazy, unpredictable, and there’s just a lot of random Bad Shit out there that people do. I also worry that somehow food will be contaminated with deadly microbes – botulism is a fun one to worry about.

I know this is insane. I know that the likelihood of something like that happening is very small. Still, it can drive me to panic attacks and anxiety as well as some fun compulsions. If there’s only one of something left at the grocery store, I can’t buy it. I have to take the package of food that’s the second one back, not the first.

I inspect packages. I give my dog food that is “suspect” knowing that if she’s okay, I’ll be okay. I know it’s stupid and silly, but the actions reduce my anxiety so I don’t have a panic attack or start freaking out.

In some ways it feels like a fear of flying. It could happen, even if the chances are low. Very low.

Strange case. The doc said that these were symptoms of “paranoia,” but I don’t agree. I think it’s just OCD. Thing is, your food could be being poisoned at any time. Most of us just assume it is not and go ahead and eat it anyway. That’s all you can do in life really.

Case 4

I have similar thoughts. Whenever I go to the supermarket, I’m always thinking that the food that I’m about to buy has been tampered with. So for example, when I grab a jar of pasta sauce, I start to think that someone injected poison into the the jar.

So I put that jar back and grab the one behind it. But then I become convinced that the person who poisoned the jar would know that someone like me will be expecting the jar in front to be poisoned, so they must have put the poisoned jar in the second row instead. So then I put the second jar back because I get convinced that it may have been poisoned. Then I sit there debating the whole thing in my mind because I don’t know which jar to buy. Ultimately I just say fuck it and take one of them.

I also worry that people will tamper with my food at restaurants and food courts. So lets say I’m eating at a food court by myself and I sit at the table and realize that I forgot to get a straw, when I go back to food place to get a straw, I always make sure that I keep an eye on my food the whole time.

Not sure what to do with this one, but it looks like Case 3. The way he takes jars our and puts them back and stands in front of the shelf debating which jar to take looks awfully OCD like. It’s a Hell of a way to live your life though, I must say.

Case 5

I was at a comprehensive psychiatric clinic/ward recently, and one of the patients there had very bad OCD. He would often ask me for reassurance about things that really didn’t make any sense at all. On the night that his new roommate was moving in, he was terrified that he brought a bomb in his luggage. He asked me if I thought that his roommate brought a bomb, and I obviously told him no.

Later that night (maybe under an hour later), he decides to pull the fire alarm and make a run for it (he wasn’t able to get too far because of the severity of his OCD). I don’t believe that he ever actually thought that there was a bomb with complete certainty. The uncertainty just became so severe that for him to act as if there was actually a bomb became the better option. It was the only way that he could diffuse his anxiety.

As you can see, the illness gets pretty weird, but it’s just OCD. He pulled the fire alarm because he could not be completely sure that this roommate had not brought a bomb into his room in his suitcase.

Case 6

Does anyone else have such poor insight into their OCD that instead of knowing that its irrational, you think its real? For example, I think that I’m a dead person living in a fake world to the point that its considered delusional. I’m also paranoid to the point that I truly believe people are poisoning me because they have something against me.

My doctors are confused as to whether I have OCD with psychosis or just OCD. Multiple doctors have said they can’t tell, but most lean towards OCD. Anyone else experience this?

Also does anyone else hear voices in their head which aren’t their own but instead like a family member or a priest or even someone you don’t know?

Strange case. The responders are all saying that this is psychosis rather than OCD. I am inclined to believe them. He hears voices apparently, and believes that he’s dead and the world is fake. But he says he hears voices in his head. This is crucial? Are they really just inner voices like we all hear (in which case they are not hallucinations) or is he actually hearing them with his ears (in which they are auditory hallucinations). He also thinks people are conspiring to kill him.

Case 7

Ok I have a boyfriend, and he is 30 yrs old, he said he had OCD and phobias, lately after some stress, he came to me crying and asked, “What if no one else but me exists? I feel so lonely like I am alone in the universe and that everything else is fake.”

Then I asked him, “What r u talking about?” And he replied, “I walked out of my office onto the street, and I thought ‘if I see someone I know this thing I am thinking its true.’” He saw one of his colleagues, and now he thinks that this thought of his is true, and he is anxious and crying.

Do you find this normal for a 30 year old? Then he asked, “I thought, What if I am a cat?” He listened to some cats meowing, and he started crying and asked, “What if I am a cat???” Is this normal? He had lots of stress before he starting saying all these things; he was afraid that he had some serious illness but in the end he didn’t, and after that he started this paranoia.

I am afraid that this is just OCD, but it’s pretty serious. He is not psychotic, although the symptoms are strange.

Case 8

Years ago I went through a serious bout of depression. I had fits of rage and crying and purposely avoided friends and places I enjoyed. A doctor put me on Lexapro, an antidepressant. I got better. Years later, I have a new problem. I thought it was the same old depression with a new twist. But it’s not.

My last psychiatrist tried treating me for a problem I had. He diagnosed it as depression and said that I also had OCD. This was because I had a depressed mood and frequently battled thoughts of anxiety.

This doctor tried me on a few different medications. Either they had no effect or they had terrible effects. They made me more depressed, anxious, and at one point suicidal. They were all small doses, but they showed their effects within days. The drugs that had these disastrous effects were Imipramine and Lexapro.

I’m seeing a new doctor now. This one says the root problem is NOT depression or OCD. He says it’s psychosis. His reasons for his diagnosis are this:

The obsessive negative thoughts are a manifestation of the paranoia attribute of psychosis. These thoughts include worrying about getting diseases, worrying about dying tomorrow from something, worrying about aging or getting Alzheimer’s, worrying about thinning on top, worrying about getting diabetes, worrying that I might be schizophrenic, worrying that I got brain damage from the smell of a dry-erase marker, the list goes on and on.

Some of these are too irrational to list. Some days they’re tolerable, other days they make me anxious, even cry, or prevent me from doing my work.

Another symptom that I had described to both doctors was the fact that nearly every task that I start, or even think about starting, causes me stress and anguish as if it were some daunting job having to clean up after a hurricane. This is true for nearly everything I do, including things I enjoy doing. Hanging out with friends, just watching a movie alone, or painting which I love to do will sometimes feel this way and compel me to avoid these things.

The first doctor said that this anxiety over starting things was possibly ADD. He tried me on Ritalin for that with equally disastrous results. Then he tried me on biofeedback treatment. It improved my memory, that I am sure of. The second Doctor said that symptom was also due to psychosis because it shows there are two thoughts fighting each other simultaneously with each of these actions I take. Things do seem much easier for me when decisions are made for me.

Strange case. One thing for sure, this person is not psychotic. I don’t see the OCD. Where is it? The worries about bad things happening could be a variety of things, GAD, OCD or depression. In the context of the Depression that is going on, these could well be what we call depressive ruminations . Feeling like everything is too much is also not ADD, it is instead just a symptom of Depression. The inability to get things done or even start things in the first place is typical of depressives.

Case 9

When I saw my psychiatrist last year, he seemed to think I had OCD because I was having problems with various obsessions including a morbid fear of death or dying young and several compulsions (such as repeating actions and counting in sets of 4 whilst avoiding ‘bad’ numbers etc) to prevent bad things from happening or ward off my obsessive thoughts and images. I would often see images of myself lying dead in bed, and it would freak me out.

However that was a year ago. He wanted me to change to Anafranil at the time, and I freaked out because I have a fear of chemicals I am not familiar with and didn’t return to my next appointment thinking I could deal with it myself. It did lose its intensity after a while but didn’t go away completely. Now I seem to have developed a completely new obsession, if that is even what it is.

I fear that I am suffering from some kind of psychosis because I feel spaced out a lot of the time, as though I’m walking around in a dream state. I am also having problems with chronic daily headaches. I am now spending hours researching psychosis, schizophrenia and headaches on the internet. I am analyzing every single thought I have to check for signs of psychosis, and it is driving me around the bend.

How much research does one person need to do anyway? It’s not like im a Dr. and can diagnose myself? Why cant my brain just drop the subject until I have seen my Dr. about it again?

I have made an appointment to see my psychiatrist again shortly, but I am terrified that he will want me to try the Anafranil again. Not only do I have to contend with my original fear regarding changing medications (which in short is that I will take it, and I will have a bad reaction it and become ill or die) but now I have this awful fear that I will take it, get worse, won’t know what im doing and will hurt my son as a result.

I’m terrified, I couldn’t stand it if I hurt my son, the thought is making me feel sick. I am worried that I may not know what I’m doing and hurt someone or my son at the best of times, especially with feeling spaced out, but I am even more concerned that the Anafranil will make matters worse. It does say on the cautions list not to give it to patients who suffer from psychosis or schizophrenia.

I used to have a fear of hurting myself or my son in my sleep so I’m not sure if this is a variation of that one or not? I do know that my mother suffered with anxiety and depression and during her later years (65 onwards), she became paranoid and delusional. I am terrified that my depression and anxiety will take a similar course.

I also feel like I can’t organize my thoughts as well as I used to be able to. I will try to organize my household chores for the day, my brain will take one look at the washing pile and give up because it doesn’t quite know where to start! I also can’t remember when I took my medication. I’m on painkillers for sciatica and my headaches, and I will often need to debate with myself over when I took my last dose.

I will go to take one and will find myself thinking “Am I sure I haven’t already taken one?” to which I respond “I’m sure I haven’t, but I could have, but I don’t think I have anyway,” to which I respond again, “Am I sure I haven’t taken one? Perhaps I shouldn’t take it in case I have already taken one,” to which I then respond, “I’m sure I haven’t taken one,” and then start trying to retrace my steps over the last 4 hours to check I haven’t in fact already taken one.

I worry I will forget that I have taken one, take another one and overdose by mistake, become ill and then die as a result. I have tried writing down when I take one but then I find myself questioning if I have written it down correctly. I have tried putting out what I need for the day/hour, but then I worry I that I didn’t put them out correctly in first place.

Also I have a nagging feeling that I have forgotten something a lot of the time, and I don’t know what exactly. The last few times I’ve left the house, I’ve had to check I had my keys and purse 4 times before I even shut the door!

I feel like I’m developing early onset Alzheimer’s or something, its seriously doing my head in.

I also tend not to go out very much at the moment because I’m afraid I will forget who I am, where I live, get confused or not know what I’m doing and hurt someone when I’m outside. So I find myself only going out when I absolutely have to in order to avoid the anxiety it creates.

This really looks like OCD. It doesn’t look like anything else. The doubting about whether or not she has taken her meds, the fears of going psychotic, fear of medication, Harm OCD about her son, having to check for her keys over and over, the endless checking to see if she has schizophrenia or not, etc. The spacey feeling is disassociation, which comes from anxiety. Get rid of the anxiety, and the spacey feeling goes away.

OCD Versus Psychosis OCD with Psychotic Features

This is another in a series of articles on psychiatric diagnosis. This one will focus on the interface between OCD and psychosis. Keep in mind that there is a now a dx called “OCD with psychotic features.” Here are five cases of OCD with psychotic features. As you can see, these people believe in some really strange stuff! They are also very, very ill.

Case 1

Z suddenly developed rituals at age 17. While watching television he looked up and saw a man’s face at the glass kitchen door and heard a voice say: “Do the habits and things will go right”. He came to believe in a ‘power’ that could bring him luck if he could retain it within his possession through ritualising.

He bought an electric guitar which he felt contained the ‘power’ and would turn the controls ritualistically. He often saw a ‘black dot’ the size of a fist leave his body and enter some object around him. When experiencing the loss of the ‘black dot’ he felt compelled to ritualise to regain the ‘power’ that he believed was contained in it.

At age 19 he began to believe that a workman possessed a second ‘power’ for evil and began a second set of rituals to ward off this evil power while striving to retain the good one. He believed absolutely in the ‘power’ and feared disastrous consequences for himself and his family should he fail to retain the good and repel the evil power.

Before his admission to hospital, obsessions and compulsions affected every area of his life. Before performing any action he felt compelled to imagine the letter ‘L’ and the phrase ‘X away, power back’ for up to 20 minutes. He felt unable to sit on chairs or walk on grass or leaves, and slept with his feet uncovered for fear of the ‘power’ being transferred to some object from which he might be unable to retrieve it.

On leaving home he constantly retraced his steps to place his foot on a crack in the pavement or a leaf that he felt he had trodden on and so lost some of the ‘power’. If he saw the black dot leave his body (about 20 times a day) he had to touch the object it had entered and superimpose the letter ‘L’ and the phrase ‘X away, power back’ in his mind until he saw the black dot return.

From age 18, Z also had recurrent depression, hopelessness and suicidal urges, with deliberate self-harm (overdoses and wrist-slashing) when he was in a depressed mood. He said he harmed himself to appease the power or as a wish to die “when everything was perfect” after a day of ritualizing.

Case 2

Y developed beliefs about a ‘power’ at age 13. He felt that everyone had a certain ‘quality’ or ‘goodness’ which was stored in the brain as a ‘power’. He believed that other people drained the power from him and replaced it with their own rubbish (feces and urine). The exchange of power was triggered by an image in his mind of a face or object. When it happened he felt distressed, ‘dirty’ and ‘horrible’.

He could only regain the power by doing complex rituals. He imagined the person’s face and that he had detached their head from their body and sucked the power from the major vessels of their neck or from their eyes. He then transferred the power back into himself by banging his palm on a particular spot on his forehead, and breathing out repeatedly. This made him feel relieved and ‘good’, but as the events recurred up to several times a minute the relief was short-lived.

He felt ‘compelled’ at times to get revenge on people who stole his power by drawing with his finger on a wall a deformed and ugly representation. If he touched anything he left a ‘power’ trace behind and so had to touch it repeatedly to get the ‘power’ back. Y’s belief in the experience was absolute. He knew it might seem strange to others but believed that if they experienced it, they would understand.

From age 17 he also had recurrent depression, hopelessness and suicidal urges requiring hospital admission.

Case 3

At the age of 8, X had transient counting rituals associated with fear of harm coming to others. When she was 15, after a relative died, she feared that harm would befall her family and friends unless she completed specific tasks. She thought a supernatural ‘power’ inserted unpleasant thoughts into her mind, e.g. “if you read that book a relative will die”.

She believed unshakably that the power was supernatural, but could not explain it. To appease the ‘power’ and the thoughts, she developed complex counting rituals pervading her daily activities. She also did ritualistic hand-washing and checking. She avoided specific numbers, colours and clothes and counted from 0 to 8 on her fingers and toes throughout the day.

She repeated rhymes, avoided multiple numbers she associated with death or harm, and brushed her hair hundreds of times a day. She felt unable to resist the rituals, as her belief in negative consequences was absolute. Before she was admitted to hospital, rituals took all of her time until she fell asleep.

X had two episodes of moderate depression at age 25 and 34, both associated with worsening of her OCD. She had never harmed herself.

Case 4

At the age of 7, W developed fear of harm coming to relatives. He engaged in hand-washing and touching rituals to prevent this. Gradually he began to believe that ‘spirits’ or an outside force ‘reminded’ him to carry out his rituals lest harm should result. He associated the numbers 13 and 66 with harm and, if he saw them, believed they were placed by an external force to remind him to carry out his rituals.

He defended his belief absolutely but said he could not be 100% sure “because one can never be sure about anything”. He was unable to resist his rituals, as his belief in the negative consequences of not doing so was absolute. His rituals centered around numbers, complex counting, and avoidance of specific numbers. At age 31 he developed fear of contamination associated with many rituals of avoidance and hand-washing.

Prior to admission he was homeless and had thrown away all his ‘contaminated’ possessions, carrying all he owned in two carrier bags.

Case 5

For 20 years V had had a fear of being transported into another world. At age 17 he worried that reflections in mirrors represented another world, and had complex checking rituals involving mirrors. This gradually spread to all reflective surfaces. He believed that turning on electrical switches, using the television remote control or hearing car engines turned on could cause him to be ‘transported’ and constantly checked to make sure this had not happened.

He believed that if he ate while in another world, he would be forced to stay there, and so either avoided eating, or ate with complex rituals, or induced vomiting. Other rituals involved switching electrical switches on and off and wearing particular clothes. The ‘other’ world was tangibly the same as the real one, but ‘felt’ different – he felt that friends and family, although appearing the same, were ‘different’ and might have been replaced by ‘doubles’. The symptoms gradually worsened, occupying all of his time prior to admission to hospital.

When he was 27 he suffered severe depression requiring in-patient care, and again at age 30. He had no history of self-harm.

Rumors of My Death Are Greatly Exaggerated

Savvas Tzionis, one of my favorite commenters, writes in, expressing some concern:

Robert,I thought YOU were dead…. post wise, you were (relatively) quiet! LOL

Boo! I’m here!

Scared you, huh?

Sorry folks, it’s Thanksgiving, I’ve been depressed for some reason, and I’ve been extremely tired.

This is a very bad time of year for me. I tend to get depressed from around Thanksgiving to around Christmas and maybe through January too. This coincides with the two months in which the days are the shortest of the whole year. Not only that, but even when the sun bothers to come out, it might as well not even be there. It gives off little heat and the light it gives off is pitiful. You look up at the sun and think, “Damn, is that all you can do? You’re sorry!” Sometimes the sun is so shitty and dim, I figure the moon might as well come out in the day instead and it’d be a wash.

I think I may have Seasonal Affective Disorder – SAD. This time of year is so damned dreary for me! I used to have it a lot worse, but I’m on Lexapro fulltime now, and ever since then, I don’t have it as long. I used to have it all winter until the start of true spring!

I remember once I was in therapy for OCD and Depression. It was March or so and we were making no progress with the depression. I was apologetic, but when you’re down, you’re down, and there doesn’t seem to be much you can do about it! I had a girlfriend at the time and she was getting pissed too, because she wasn’t really subject to depression.

Finally, Spring came, and I brightened up just like that! Nothing had changed; my life still more or less sucked just as bad as before. Next therapy session, I announced that my depression had lifted. The therapist was joyful and wanted to take credit. I shot him down real quick. It was nothing he had done, it was only that the seasons had changed! He looked a little downcast, but he was still happy that I was better.

Often, it’s Spring, Summer or Fall, and I’m happy as a clam. Every now and then I look around and notice that my life frankly sucks to high heaven, but I’m happy as a pig in shit anyway. Then I look outside, it’s 90 degrees outside, and it’s like no matter what’s going on, how could you possibly be depressed in this?

I’m told that most humans in non-tropical climates get happier and more active in hotter weather and longer days and gloomier and less active in the depths of the dark and cold days, but it’s only clinical depression in a minority. I’ve also heard of folks in Minnesota or places like that who had bad Winter Depression moving to tropical places like the Philippines and suddenly they were happy year-round. By the way, there are high suicide, depression and alcoholism rates in Siberia, Russia, Scandinavia, Canada and Alaska. Obviously, it’s related to latitude and little else.

I wonder if any of my readers have the same experiences?

The 50 Craziest Rock Stars Ever

Here.

This article is pretty damn funny.

A lot of rockers are or were seriously nuts!

I’m having a hard time figuring out dx’s for a lot of these people. It seems to be something towards the more extroverted end. I suspect a lot of them are acting this way on purpose, sort of like a lot of artists act “deliberately insane.”

I only see a few who were obviously psychotic: Syd Barrett, Peter Green, Roky Erikson, Brian Wilson, Jim Gordon and Skip Spence for starters. I’m familiar with all these cases. They all had schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder. It’s commonly said that they are all drug burnouts, but I doubt it.

For one thing, LSD does not appear to cause permanent psychosis. I’ve known too many completely normal folks who have taken it 100-300 times. It’s not even proven to damage your brain. The worst that can be said about it is that very heavy users sometimes do go psychotic and have to be hospitalized. Typically, they get better, but they often go back to heavy LSD use and become mentally ill again. No one has any idea how LSD even makes you temporarily insane.

All of these people simply developed schizophrenia. LSD can trigger schizophrenia, but no one knows how that works either. LSD-induced schizophrenia looks just like the rest of schizophrenia and it responds to the same drugs too. Since acid doesn’t damage your brain, I can’t see how it could cause schizophrenia. There are good reasons not to do acid, but fear of being permanently mentally ill is not one of them.

For the rest of them, dx’s are difficult. Some seem to have issues with narcissism and borderline personality disorder. Some were just seriously whacked out on booze and dope, often cocaine and/or heroin.

Ike Turner used cocaine for some 45 years until it killed him at age 76.

Sly Stone spent years on cocaine, even living on the streets smoking a crack pipe. No one quite knows what is up with Sly these days. He shows up at occasional performance, acts very strange, walks off stage in mid-show, gets on his motorcycle and rides away.

Rick James spent a good 15 years on a crack pipe.

Whitney Houston is ruined and is heavy into cocaine.

David Bowie went nuts on coke in the 1970′s, became full-blown psychotic and embraced Nazism.

Ol’ Dirty Bastard is on crack.

John Frusciante almost killed himself on heroin and coke.

Ozzy Osborne, Jerry Lee Lewis and Liza Minnelli were alcoholics.

Keith Moon was a drunk and a pillhead who liked to blow up toilets with dynamite for fun.

Elvis was a hardcore pillhead who apparently went insane from all the tablets.

Arthur Lee of Love spent 20 years abusing drugs heavily, became homeless, set buildings on fire and shot up his neighbor’s house.

Carlos Santana used acid heavily, then 20 years ago met up with an angel named Metatron who looks like Santa Claus who has been guiding his life ever since. He communicates with Miles Davis, a dead person, on a regular basis.

Miles Davis (while he was alive and not talking to Santana) spent years shooting heroin, beating his wife and just acting weird.

Little Richard spent years binging on cocaine, having sex orgies and sucking cocks in men’s restrooms.

James Taylor was a depressive and a heroin addict.

Some were suicidal.

Wendy O Williams sawed instruments in half with a chainsaw, then retired and blew her brains out.

Ian Curtis recorded some of the most depressing music ever made, then hung himself on the night of his US tour.

Adam Ant is a depressive.

Mariah Carey assaulted staff and reporters and slit her wrists.

Some like Courtney Love and Britney Spears simply cannot seem to function as adults.

Sinéad O’Connor is just a kook.

Lou Reed’s main problem is that he’s a terminal asshole.

R. Keely is just a weirdo with a taste for underage girls.

Sid Vicious assaulted fans, carved up his chest onstage, murdered his girlfriend, then OD’d on heroin as a grand finale.

Jaz Coleman, George Clinton, Captain Beefheart and Julian Cope are unclassifiable.

No one knows what’s up with Sun Ra.

GG Allin was just nuts, dx’d as narcissistic, Borderline PD and masochistic.

Michael Jackson was one of the weirdest of all. No one seems to know what was wrong with him. He seems to have been a homosexual pedophile. I’m familiar with most of his weird antics, but I never knew that he said he had fathered 2 “Aryan” babes named Prince 1 and Prince 2. Weird!

Just because you aren’t psychotic (and most of these folks are not) doesn’t mean you’re not nuts. You can be plenty nuts without being psychotic, plenty.

You Can’t Get Sad, and You Can’t Get Mad

A Black commenter notes that either Blacks are more emotional than Whites, or Whites are taught to keep their feelings under control:

Either we are more emotional and excitable as a people or other cultures teach the need to keep said emotions under control. One of these has to be true I think.

I will tell you, it’s been drummed into my head in the most major way, not just in childhood but certainly in adulthood, that one must keep one’s emotions in check.

In fact, it is so bad, that I am now something like a rock. Which is not really good at all, but at least people won’t call me crazy for having feelings. For a long time in adulthood, it seemed that whenever I felt or displayed strong feelings, people would start calling me crazy. I really hate being called crazy! So now I’m afraid that if I show feelings, I’m going to get called crazy. I’d rather be a rock than be called crazy.

The two things in adult White male society are:

1. You can’t get mad.
2. You can’t get sad.

The last one is especially tough. A girlfriend died some years ago, and I was sad for quite some time, about a year actually, but it was all OK, but that was a normal and appropriate and real response. It actually felt good because I finally had a feeling, and it was beautiful in a way to have such a wonderful sad feeling. Because when someone dies, you ought to feel sad. Well, within I think a few days or maybe a week, White people were already angrily ordering me to snap out of it. A couple of them ended friendships with me because I would not snap out of it soon enough.

After she died, I cried maybe 15 times over a year or so. I went into this place called The Feeling World where I felt like I was on acid all the time for like 6-8 weeks. It was horrible, but it was wonderful too because it was real.

Fatal Attraction

Idiots meet at Date to Die Club, go on first and last date. Two less idiots in the world. Oh well.

Here.

I suppose I ought to be sympathetic to the suicidal, since we’ve had experience with a suicide attempt in our family, but in this case I’m not. If you’re so nuts and suicidal that you are hanging out in suicide chatrooms and going on suicide dates, screw you.

I spent some time in a chatroom once with a 30 year old woman who suffered from chronic depression and chronic suicidality. She was quite nonchalant about the fact that she really did not want to be alive, and she looked forward to death. I found her very hard to deal with and ended up having no sympathy for her. In fact, her whole attitude really pissed me off.

OTOH, people should not be encouraged to kill themselves, especially if they aren’t suicidal. About 28 years ago, I was going through some heavy stuff emotionally, mostly a lot of anxiety. I suppose there was some depression going on. Frankly, it was just hardcore OCD. One friend of mine at one point said, “Why don’t you just kill yourself!” That was the wrong thing to say, you know. And I wasn’t suicidal anyway.

Three years later, I spent an entire year feeling suicidal. It was really still OCD, and it had gotten way worse over 3 years. I didn’t really know what was going on in my head at all. I just thought I was going through some tumultuous stuff. I had no idea there was a name for it.

I kept thinking of taking a gun to my head and blowing my brains out. It seemed like a really good idea! OTOH, I was too terrified to do it, never made plans, and never told anyone about it. I certainly wasn’t nonchalant about it. I was just in tremendous emotional pain and was fantasizing about an out. Yet I was quite aware that I was fucked in the head.

On the other hand, I was very active, working full-time, taking classes, having lots of friends, partying all the time, somehow dating countless women, going to an endless whirlwind of parties, shows and nightclubs all the time. I was also taking quite a few drugs – mostly pot and coke – and I was drinking fairly heavily. The booze and dope weren’t making me worse. They were just keeping me going. That was actually the fun part!

So the depressed can be quite active, as you can see. They don’t necessarily sit and home and stew. They can be working full-time, socializing like crazy, dating like musical chairs, hanging out like social butterflies, going to never-ending rounds of parties, shows and nightclubs, and the whole time, they feel like blowing their brains out.

Isn’t that strange? People are funny.

I’m normally a happy person, and going through that Hell was so horrible that there is no way I am going to experience that again. In the 25 years since then, I haven’t suffered much depression, so maybe it was a good experience after all.

Lots of New Sick and Evil Videos Up on the Old Site

We have pretty much removed the sicko flicks from here because WordPress doesn’t want them, but we are continuing to post them over at the old site.

Traffic really plunged there. At the peak, it was up to 68,000 hits/day. Now it’s down to 3,500/day over there and 4,000/day here, for a combined total of 7,500/day for both sites. Traffic collapsed when the South Korean government banned my website! Everyone in South Korea has to go through some government server to get on the Net, so the government is able to ban sites pretty easily.

Anyway, for your twisted freaks on here:

Eating a Cooked Fish While Alive: The sickos in China think it’s cool to keep a fish alive until you cook it, then cook it in some weird way so it’s still alive, then consume the poor thing while it’s still alive! To be eaten alive! Good God, what a horrible punishment.

You know, the tribes of the SE US, from around Louisiana and the coast of Texas such as the extinct Karankawa, used to do this, . They would capture enemy warriors, tie them to a pole, then surround them with braves who would charge up to the poor sod with knives and slice off bits of his flesh, then eat them in front of him, just to freak him out even more. I assume at some point, they’ve eaten so much of the poor guy that he expires, but it’s sure a Helluva way to go. Gimme a heart attack any day. Hell, gimme cancer. Just not that.

Nick Berg Beheading Video: The original Iraqi Al Qaeda beheading video, released in 2003, with the poor, innocent but foolish Nick Berg meeting his end. The first time I watched this, I was shaking for hours afterward, and I was seriously freaked for a week or two. I watched it again and it was a little better, but not much. I’ve never watched it again – twice was enough! But it’s a classic as far as this shit goes. Includes a thorough writeup on the whole sad story behind the crime.

Man Electrocuted on Train in India: At a crowded train station in India, some idiot somehow finds himself on top of a train. He tries to get down several times, and people reach up to try to help him. Then he walks away and starts strolling down the roof of the train. Like a dumbass, at one point, he reaches up and touches a live electric wire. He is instantly electrocuted and killed. His body quickly catches fire, and he’s gone in a ball of flames in an instant. Electricity is a powerful motherfucker all right. I didn’t feel much sympathy while watching this because the guy’s such an idiot.

12 Year Old Pakistani Boy Beheads a Man: This has got to be about as evil is it gets. The Taliban bastards in North Waziristan capture a US spy, probably an ISI agent in the area, tie him up, and give the knife to a young kid so he can kill him. There are some other kids watching and holding the poor guy down, and maybe some girls watching too. It’s hard to tell. He takes forever to saw the guy’s head off, and reminds you of a butcher carving up an animal carcass. This is child abuse in its worst form. Don’t do this to kids.

Woman Electrocuted in China: Another idiot video. A middle aged woman, apparently mentally disturbed, climbs a utility pole in the middle of some seriously crowded Chinese city and won’t come down. The sheer mass of humanity below is breathtaking in itself. Rescuers are trying to get to her, but she’s just up there crying and won’t come down on the ladders.

There are power lines near her, and a few times, like a dumbass, she reaches up and grabs them, and of course gets electrocuted each time. But for some reason, possibly poor grounding, she gets off pretty easy. I’m told that she survived the ordeal with minimal injuries.

Worst Ankle Twist Ever: A soccer game is being performed, possibly somewhere in the Mediterranean or in the Southern Cone of South America – the players look like Med Whites of some sort. Anyway, soon some poor guy sustains a horrible injury to his ankle. People rush out, put him on a stretcher, and as he is being carried off, you see, incredibly, that his ankle appears to be twisted a full 90 degrees! I don’t know how that’s possible, or if there’s any way to fix it.

Arab Woman Stabs Guard at Israeli Checkpoint: A 21 year old Palestinian woman is getting ready to be searched before going through the Kalandia Checkpoint in Jerusalem. I do not understand the layout of this checkpoint, why it’s necessary, or where it goes to or from. Anyhow, the guards turn away from her, she reaches into her belt, pulls out a huge knife, rushes one of the male Israeli guards, and stabs him! Damn! He goes down, and other guards quickly pile on her and disarm her. The guard sustained minor injuries in the attack and survived.

Convicted Killer Tries to Grab Cop’s Gun in Court: A Black guy is on trial for the murder of his White wife and their son. Her family is in court. At some point, he rushes the bailiff and tries to grab his gun. Other cops, attorneys, all sorts of people, pile on the guy and handcuff him. Then they lead him out of court while the family of the dead woman he killed scream at him.

John Graziano Head Wound: Hulk Hogan’s son, age 17, borrows his Dad’s car and goes for a ride with his friend, Graziano. Possibly he’s drunk. At some point, he totals the car and nearly kills Graziano. Hogan’s son survives. The video shows this poor guy, Graziano, in the hospital afterwards. He seems to have lost a good part of the front of his forehead, that is, his brain! Somehow he’s still alive, but he’s a total vegetable. A lot of people were mad at the Hogans about this incident, and it’s apparently the source of a major lawsuit now. Really disturbing.

Photo of James Vance, Failed Shotgun Suicide: One of the really bad things about trying to kill yourself is that you might fail and actually survive afterward, but be so fucked up you wish you were dead. This is what happened to James Vance, a teenage boy from the US who was depressed and using drugs when he went to a playground and shot himself in the head. That night, he had been using drugs and listening to Judas Priest.

The case resulted in a lawsuit against the band for supposedly making this idiot try to kill himself, but the suit failed. There is a photo of Vance, plus a video interview with him. Even after much reconstructive surgery, he has one of the most fucked up faces on Earth. A few years after, he could not take it anymore, got some pills, and killed himself for good. I don’t blame him; I would have done the same if I looked like that.

Idiot Jumps Off Roof and Breaks His Leg: Stupid American teenagers are engaging in some weird sport called roof jumping, where you jump off a roof onto the lawn below. Something goes wrong, the kid lands wrong, and he breaks his leg. You can actually hear the bone snap on the video. Stupidity can be painful!

Nighttime Mobs Attack Cars in Oakland: This is the latest fad in some US Black ghettos. Crowds of young people gather on major street late at night, around 10 or 11 PM, on a weekend nite. Then they start attacking random cars as they drive by. Sometimes they try to pull the doors open to rob or assault drivers. Drivers fight back, hit them, try to run them over, etc. A good time is had by all, or many, or at least the attackers.

Mostly young Oakland Blacks here, but strangely, there are some young White girls there hanging out with the Blacks and attacking cars themselves.

If these fuckers did that to my car, I might try to hit them with my vehicle! I’ve already done so in a similar situation, and the dude went flying after I nailed him with my accelerating car! Don’t ever try this with me, punks!

Man Assaulted in New York Deli: A older White guy is ordering a meal in a New York deli with some young Black guy standing next him. Suddenly, at one point, the Black turns around and cold cocks the White guy, knocking him to the floor! Then he runs out of the building. No further info on where or why this happened, details on the crime, fate of the victim or results of the investigation.

Also lots of older stuff in foreign languages, but most of you won’t be interested in that.

Have fun, sickos!

Just How Many Poets Are NOT Queer, Anyway?

I’m going back through a lot of poetry these days for some reason, mostly native English language stuff. I find it annoying that so many of these guys were queer! It seems like just about all of my favorite poets were a bunch of queers, or often bisexuals. I mean, I still love these guys and all, but it’s sort of deflating to my image of these dudes.

It’s rather distressing because I like poetry. I went back reading the poets of centuries past and this same fagginess seems to creep up yet, even though back in those days this was a definite no-no. Novelists seem to be less queer, but there’s a fair amount of fagginess there too. Being a novelist is definitely a straighter occupation.

I don’t even want to go into playrights. When I was living in Los Angeles in the early 1980′s, I got into the theater scene a bit, and it was gay as Hell. The guys of course, but quite a few of the women too. You can actually do all right in these scenes if you’re a good-looking, masculine straight guy. The women are a bunch of frustrated fag hag types, often sort of bi, but you know how women are, they say they hate macho guys, but they just can’t resist the bad boy in the scruffed up leather jacket even though they sort of hate him, macho pig that he is.

Anyway, in these scenes, and in Hollywood and places like that in general, you can clean up in you have good game, good looks, or some combination. There are all sorts of single women there who are pretty frustrated. Most of the guys are either married or queer, and there aren’t many single guys to go around. You’re hot property, if you don’t mind being surrounded by hungry queers and bi guys (these latter are everywhere in those gay neighborhoods) lusting after you all the time. Actually, that is pretty annoying right there!

Anyway, brings me back to my original question. What is it about literary writing that turns guys queer, or seems fit mostly for queers? One could argue that writing poems is a pretty faggy thing to do, and that makes sense. It’s not exactly tackle football. But that begs the question of why so many of these literary women, especially the poets, are a bunch of lesbians! I mean, if poetry is feminizing, why aren’t female poets these swaying, coquettish Southern belle types afraid to get their hands dirty?

Either that or just being a poet attracts weirdos and misfits in general, sexual and otherwise. That’s about the only sense I could make of it.

Another thing I noticed is that most all of these guys are depressed. Many were manic-depressive, and alcoholism seems to be epidemic among poets in the last century anyway. Pretty similar with novelists. Lots of depressives, lots of boozers. Many were suicides in one way or another. It’s starting to make me depressed just reading about all these guys.

Why? Is writing depressing? Is depression good for the creative spirit? How could it be, as it’s so enfeebling?

One reason I got into journalism is that journalists are fairly sane types. They had a reputation, at least at city papers, for being squares. Some were sort of eccentrics, but they worked hard, often all night. They drank, but they also worked. They were sort of these hard-bitten types. They were either family men or straight bachelors, but city room journalism isn’t a very faggy job. It’s kind of macho, actually. Check out any old Hollywood movie where they show the newsroom guys.

I still don’t see why you practically have to be queer to be a poet. Poetry is kind of cool. Anyway, it’s a good way to get chicks, cuz a lot of women are romantic, and a lot of them love writers and even poets. At least that’s been my experience anyway. C’mon guys! Crank out those poems! Chicks dig em!