obsessed!

Anyone been watching the show “Obsessed” on A&E? I think I’ve watched 3 episodes. I'm obsessed with this show! I think perhaps it has a lot to do with the fact that the show depicts such extremes of OCD. It's proof positive, that some people out there have it worse than the rest of us. It also shows how dramatically 12 weeks of therapy can help a person with this disorder, that is if they truly want help. Now I don't know anyone personally with this disorder, but I think I relate to it because it is a form of mental illness and I'm fascinated with anything on the subject of mental illness.

New episodes of the show debut on Mondays. You can watch previous episodes online at “Obsessed”.

This weeks episode features Rick and Nidia.

#1 Rick – Is a mathematician. He exercises obsessively. Sometimes as much as 58 times a week. He runs from gym to gym doing 5-15 minutes of exercise at each. Daily! Then he runs upstairs to his office, where he has weights and obsessively does repetitions between spurts of writing. He also takes an obscene number of vitamins and supplements. All this because he wants to stay healthy so that he can stay alive to see the new technological advances that he knows will be coming in the future. He doesn’t want to miss out. He keeps track of all his workouts and can tell you exactly the last time he’s missed working out. He had notebooks filled with logs of his workouts. He obsessively calculates the numbers on license plates he sees. He also obsessively turns right instead of left. After 12 weeks of therapy Rick estimated he reduced his OCD by 66%.

Doesn't that strike you as odd, the reason that he wants to be healthy so he can live a long life? My Father passed away 19 years ago. Not much he could have done to lengthen his life, due to the type of cancer he had, but, let's say he could have. Would he have wanted to extend his life to see the invention of cordless drills, plasma televisions, ipods and cellular phones that weigh less than 3 ounces? I think not. I think my Father would have wanted to extend his life to be around to meet his grandchildren.

Rick seemed like a bit of a whackadoodle to me. I mean, calculating license plates really isn't OCD, it's probably another form of mental illness.

#2 Nidia – Obsessive compulsive to the max. She washes her hands about a hundred times a day. She won’t eat fruits or vegetables and she eats very little as it is. She fears bowel movements. After eating she obsesses about the bowel movement, cleans & disinfects the toilet, then goes in the shower, gives herself an enema, then uses a toothbrush to clean out, well, you know where. It takes her 2 hours to shower after the enema. She always has to shower after she goes to the bathroom. Twice she has needed blood transfusions. 2 pints of blood because of her brushing ritual. After 12 weeks of therapy she successfully began eating all types of foods and stopped her bathroom ritual.

Amazing. One of the previous episodes I saw was a man who was obsessively clean. So clean he did not have trash receptacles inside his home. Any time he had to throw out trash, he had to walk outside to the trashcan. That man's disorder seemed mild in comparison to Rick's and Nidia's.

Have you seen this show? What did you think?

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