Smoke Free, Wheat Free, Alcohol Free and too much Free time...

My OCD has finally reduced me to this, sitting in front of the PC unable to go outside on my own and having to be looked after for a large amount of the time by my wonderful husband.

Don't get me wrong, I really like our flat - it's warm and safe and contains a large amount of fluffy bears - but staying in the flat for pretty much the best part of the last month is not my idea of a good time. I'm not being held here against my will, I could leave any time I wish - except I can't.

My OCD has reached epic proportions and I seemed to have developed some kind of agoraphobia which seems to mean that any time I need to go out, my husband has to come with me for reassurance and seeing as he works full time it's not always practical.

I never thought it would come to this, I'm under the care of my psychiatrist and my hormone/chemical levels are being checked. I have lost almost 2 stone due to stress and anxiety (which, while certainly not a good way to lose weight has made moving around slightly easier for me).

Anyway, I didn't decide to blog today to tell you all about my woes, not at all, I just thought that with the credit crunch, recession etc that I would discuss giving up my vices.

5 years ago I was a relatively heavy smoker, I guess you could say I was binge drinking a fair bit of the time too - although to be fair, my idea of binge drinking was drinking 2 glasses of wine on a saturday night then nothing else for a week. Perhaps you might have called me a sporadic drinker. I ate chocolate, lots of it - sticky, gooey, moreish chocolate. Essentially my diet wasn't exactly what you would call healthy.

Anyways, in 2007 my OCD caused me great distress and I gave up smoking - as terrible as it sounds I didn't give up for my health or because the cost was starting to get galactically high, I gave up smoking as I was so worried that an unextinguished (is that even a word???) cigarette would cause a massive fire and I couldn't cope with the responsibility of that happening. I always stubbed out my cigarettes and got rid of them but you never quite know if there are definitely out. So I stopped smoking, just like that. Well...I say 'Just like that', three little words that do not in any way shape or form convey the sheer torture of giving up smoking. Now, I know what you're thinking, that being a non smoker is a good thing and I should have felt healthier...but I didn't, not at the time anyway. I craved cigarettes, all I wanted was just one, that's all, I could stop anytime I wanted! Except...except that wasn't strictly true was it - I actually started smoking in the first place attempting to show someone how non addictive cigarettes are! What a fool I was!

I had tried a few things in the past but nothing seemed to replace that craving. Now, before I go on, I really do wish to say that I feel 200% better as a non smoker and I would encourage anyone to give up smoking where possible. However, when giving up smoking I had no way prepared myself for the hacking cough and hideous chest infection that I got just after quitting. For me, getting through the first three months was possibly the most unpleasant period of my life health wise - just to reitterate though, definitely worth giving up smoking. It took about 6 months before the cravings really subsided and after that it's been pretty easy.

I gave up caffeine and anything caffeine related about 10 years ago so I was ok there - the next thing I had to give up was alcohol. Aaah, alcohol - a glass of chilled wine with a meal or the riotous tequila slammer - so good and yet so incredibly bad if I have too much! In order to get through my OCD bad patch I had to dispense with the alcohol altogether in order to prevent my condition from worsening - believe me, I held off the giving up of alcohol for as long as I could but when I was scrubbing my hands raw and crying with the fear of contamination and the sheer anxiety of worrying about the door not being locked, I had to concede that the OCD was back big style and my relationship with alcohol had to stop. For the moment anyway.

I gave up chocolate last month, I suppose strictly speaking that was down to the fact that I couldn't go out anywhere alone to get some and I had sort of said to my husband that I was giving up chocolate so he didn't buy any - bless him.

Also, due to the pain I am still suffering in my abdomen (yep, it's been approximately 10 months now and I still don't have a diagnosis for the pain :( ) I was told to see if a wheat free diet would help, just incase it was wheat intolerance.

Now, before I continue, I just want to say to all those people with wheat or gluten allergies or intolerances - I really feel for you. Going on a wheat free diet was the most complicated thing I have done in a long long time. You see, my main diet has always been rich in things such as pasta, bread, biscuits etc so giving up pretty much everything I usually eat and adopting a wheat free diet for a month was incredibly hard. I lost half a stone purely from lack of food as it was just so difficult to find things that were wheat free. The local supermarkets have a range of wheat free foods, some better than others, but it was just so hard to think about anything other than bread! I didn't think that you could become addicted to bread but there you go, I thought that the wheatful loaves in the supermarket were mocking me, saying 'aah, what's that in your basket there? Wheat-free bread? Hmm, going to enjoy that are you?' when all I wanted was a thick slice of buttered toast. The wheat free bread, whilst trying darn hard to satisfy me was just not enough and I started craving illicit sandwiches in the wee small hours oozing with mayonaise and mustard...

Then there was the matter of wheat free pasta. Again, it tried it's best but there is just no substitute for a wheatful lasagne. So every day I ate my wheat free pasta and bread. I didn't eat any rice either as I was told to avoid that too. Essentially I existed on chicken, a few veg (shock horror) and potato - incidentally, when it comes to potato products, there's wheat in some unexpected places.

Like I said, I really feel for anyone on a wheat free diet as my husband and I only kept to the menu for a month before diving straight back into our old ways. Sadly, it didn't help with the abdomen pain but as experiments go, it was fairly eye opening.

Which leads me to the enormous amount of free time I seem to have at the moment. Recently my role at work became redundant and due to the lack of any other suitable roles within the company I find myself consigned to the unemployment queue of life.

Unfortunatley, as my OCD has worsened to terrible levels and my abdomen pain is still there, the chance of finding a job at the moment is bleak. I have a fair amount of therapy to undergo before I can even leave the house, let alone find a job.

I haven't felt well enough to go outside alone, I've found it difficult to talk to people or see my friends or even communicate at all and I worry constantly about contamination from objects in my flat so, as you can imagine, my life at the moment has consisted of hours of TV.

With all of the other things I have given up, my lack of vices, has led me to becoming addicted to Television. My free time is consumed by repeats of Casualty, Doctors, The Jeremy Kyle Show along with the newer additions such as The Inbetweeners, Torchwood, Psychoville, That Mitchell and Webb look etc. Which just goes to show that my brain always has to have something to be addicted to just to keep me going.

With all this free time and mental issues I have started to become peculiar - yesterday I had to admit to my husband that I talk to my teddy bears during the day, I don't have long existential discussions with them I just comment on the TV to them. Surely that's not too strange though, don't judge me :)

Stress and anxiety can do a lot to the body and mind - I find it extremely difficult to have a shower these days without having a panic attack. The only thing that I can successfully do on my own is go to the toilet, everything else seems to have become a team effort or tasks that my husband has had to take over from me. While I know that at some point I will feel better, things are pretty hard at the moment.

Giving up all the things I have given up has certainly been quite a journey - when do I get to be OCD Free?