When you think anxiety disorder, you might think about cowering in fear, having a physical reaction (like shaking or sweating), or feeling nervous. But it’s not always easy to remember that recurring, obsessive, unwanted thoughts, and the inability to quash or forget about them characterizes an anxiety disorder as well.
Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) is a debilitating anxiety disorder marked by a lack of self-control, absurd fears (often related to religion, sickness, losing family or friends to illness) frequent repetitive behaviors and compulsions (organizing, counting, being drawn toward a different color or number), tics, disruptive thoughts, specific obsessions with colors, numbers and more. When the release of these ritual (and often absurd) behaviors or compulsions provides a release of that anxiety, that is a good indicator of whether these behaviors are related to obsessive-compulsions, or another underlying mental illness.
Since compulsive behavior is a characteristic of addiction as well, someone with OCD who is not diagnosed might have difficulty in overcoming addiction, since they are not being treated for an underlying mental illness. And if they are struggling with OCD as well, it might be difficult to distinguish between one compulsion or the other.
In the same way that indulging in a compulsive behavior like cleaning or counting can bring some sense of temporary relief, so can addiction. By using drugs or alcohol to mask the pain, the individual with OCD learns to “self-medicate,” while they otherwise live with extreme fear of the obsessions that control their thoughts and actions.
For all individuals in medical treatment for OCD, 25 percent of this group will also display the symptoms of a substance use disorder disorder. If those symptoms manifest in childhood or adolescence, that grown adult will have a greater chance of being diagnosed with a substance misuse or abuse disorder later on in life. It is crucial to delve into the types of triggers that prompt an individual with OCD to misuse drugs or alcohol, so that both disorders can be treated at once.
