Living & Arts

Trigger part VI: countdown to final crisis

In print | March 19, 2009

Disclaimer: This column is part six of a 10 part series dealing with the author’s experiences with mental illness. As it contains explicit subject matter, sensitive readers may wish to avoid.

“[There exists an] innate and primitive principle of human action, a paradoxical something, which we may call Perverseness … Through its promptings we act, for the reason that we should not. In theory, no reason can be unreasonable: But, in fact, there is none more strong … most ghastly and loathsome of all the ghastly and loathsome of images of death and suffering … for this very reason do we now the most vividly desire it … We perpetuate them merely because we feel that we should not. Beyond or behind this, there is no intelligible principle.”

This passage comes from Edgar Allen Poe. I first encountered it in the book “The Imp of the Mind,” by psychologist Lee Baer, which is considered something of the bible on purely-obsessional OCD. Baer is convinced that such perverse thoughts are not exclusive to obsessive-compulsives; the human mind percolates at a tremendous rate and some of the arbitrary images it conjures are inevitably unpleasant. Yet while a healthy person can recognize these thoughts as a random product of an active mind, the obsessive-compulsive questions their significance. Gazing over Poe’s abyss he wonders, horrified, if he secretly but sincerely desires to jump, and if he might at some point lose his senses and do so.

Desperately, he attempts to convince himself that the thought is meaningless, and so eliminate it. Yet because of the perverse quality of the human mind, any thought that we attempt to suppress will instead recur with greater frequency and strength. Saint John of the Cross, in his writings, identified the paradoxical reinforcement of upsetting thoughts: when a devotee prays, he writes, the Devil may distract him with “fowl and impure thoughts … Those who attribute any importance to such thoughts, therefore, do not even dare look at anything or think about anything lest they thereupon stumble into them … In some who are troubled with this bad humor the trial reaches such a point that they clearly feel that the devil has access to them without their having the freedom to prevent it.”

“The Imp of the Mind” provides several examples of obsessive-compulsives who, in trying to eliminate such unwanted thoughts, are instead consumed by them. “[S]he thinks about how easy it would be to throw her defenseless Jessie against a wall and smash her skull.” “When he was an adolescent — although he was heterosexual — the worst thing Isaac could think was being gay, which could cause relentless teasing … whenever he saw an attractive boy in school or on the street or in the gym, he would find himself scanning his body to try to feel certain he wasn’t sexually aroused.” “Isaac was now a liberal college student … So now, if he saw an African-American walking down the street, the urge would come to shout [racial epithet].” “Just a glance at the wagging tail was enough to start the bad thoughts — he felt compelled to stare at the dog’s anus and his thoughts would start.” Regardless of circumstances, the restless human mind will inevitably stumble upon an undesired thought. This is how the disorder finds purchase.

So. Do me a favor, then. Imagine the worst thing in the world.

Picture it. Paint it, delicately, in your mind. Take all the time you need but be careful not to omit anything; the violence, the language, the fucking, the stabbing, the shit and blood and vomit and piss, endless perversion, utter desecration of anything good. Imagine it happening to you, to people you love. Imagine that you are committing it and that you cannot stop even though you desperately want to; imagine that you are committing it and you cannot stop because you love it. Look around, pick out the most vulnerable-looking person in the room. Imagine it happening to them.
Now forget it. Entirely. Now.

Imagine the worst thing in the world.

I spent the second semester of my sophomore year in a two-room quad in the Palmer dormitory. There are more agreeable places to lose one’s mind. There were pipes that funneled heat to the third floor of the building, and produced so much excess heat I had to sleep in boxers by an open window in February; my roommate adopted a pair of putrid hermaphroditic African frogs, which could render a clean tank foul within 10 minutes; we had a rusty fire escape which, when removed by Workbox, left a hole in my wall large enough to stick your hand through; we had a large closet (thankfully unused) directly below a bathroom, and whenever the toilet overflowed we were greeted by a sudden cascade of fresh sewage. I would have requested to move, but was preoccupied by the fact that I was sort of going insane.

Imagine the worst thing in the world.

I did not understand that which I suffered from. I recognized very quickly that my mind was fixating uncontrollably on things that disturbed me, but I did not know why. I only knew that they were horrible and that they would not stop. My grades began to slip. Even though I was no longer taking medication I began to again indulge in marathon six-hour naps. I ate nothing but grilled cheese sandwiches and fries at Sharples, but I still lost ten pounds. I drank more on weekends, never to excess necessarily; I never blacked out, no one noticed or tried to intervene. But there were nights when, quite deliberately, I would increase my intake of alcohol to quiet the voices in my head.

Imagine the worst thing in the world.

The disorder evidenced itself in the most absurd situations. I performed in a Tom Stoppard play and it was there when I sat backstage, wearing full British military regalia and rehearsing shouted lines about gazebos. I somehow allowed myself to be talked into representing my sketch comedy troupe at the annual “Mr. Swarthmore” competition, and it was there as I marched down the runway to “Hot-Blooded” by Foreigner. I was in a friend’s triple in Willets on a Friday night and we all bounced around and sang along to terrible music together and it was there. I recognize a surreal quality, looking back at that evening; “Numa Numa,” blaring from the speaker, my mind humming with atrocity.

My friends were oblivious. Such was the nature of my condition. As Baer remarks, intrusive thoughts are usually not what “one discusses in polite cocktail-party conversation.” There were moments when they noticed my unhappiness and tried to bring me out of it, and I remain grateful for them. But human contact, especially involving people that I cared about, was a trigger for my symptoms, and there were instances when even basic social interaction became agonizing. I had a friend who delighted in calling me “emo.” When I was being particularly melancholic, she would jokingly press her thumb and forefinger together as if holding something small and sharp, and then move her fingers over her arm in a teasing pantomime of self-mutilation. And I would smile and I’d do it too, and we’d laugh together and the whole time I’d be thinking to myself: ever tried it, babe? It’s not as much fun as it sounds.

Imagine the worst thing in the world.

Again and again I asked my therapist for an explanation of what I was experiencing, but she was content week after week to offer glib reassurances. Despite my obvious unhappiness she neither recognized my symptoms nor, apparently, consulted peers or reference materials that would have allowed her to identify it. I made my initial diagnosis myself, over the Internet, because this is apparently the first place one should go for psychological counsel. I read the Wikipedia entry on OCD, and right there on the first goddamn page were the exact symptoms I was suffering from.

With an explanation, I decided, I had no need for further treatment, and things were quieter. I returned home to work at the bookstore. I carried textbooks back and forth, and I locked myself in the bathroom and imagined my fist through the mirror. I stood by the third floor window and gazed out. I helped customers and itched in strange places. Occasionally I would say enough, I would tell my mother as she drove me to work that I couldn’t manage it that day. She’d argue a bit but eventually relent, and bring me back home to play videogames. She seemed disappointed. I certainly was.

I sought out a new therapist at home. Within an hour he confirmed my diagnosis and recommended I seek treatment. My family was vacationing on Cape Cod that week and I had peace again, for a little while. Here I played videogames on my computer, read illegally downloaded comic books, walked on the beach and scratched viciously at my scalp at odd moments. And if I paused by the kitchen implements, if I glanced at a stranger and my fingers flexed and I suddenly turned away, then no one noticed.

We went home and I went back to work. I lasted about two days. The exact circumstances of my breakdown are both disturbing and deeply personal, and although I have tried to be honest in this column I think it best that I do not describe them explicitly. Understand that I never deliberately hurt myself. But one morning I miscalculated, I pressed myself a little too hard, and it was no longer possible to deny my distress. My mother called my job to say I would need to miss work, due to illness, and brought me to the car. We drove my sister to work, together, without speaking.
Imagine the worst thing in the world.

She clutched my hand and did not let go. We did not speak. We were going to the hospital.

Hamlet is a senior. You can reach him at hamlet.wrenncroft@gmail.com. The next installment of “Trigger” will be published in two weeks.