by David Adam
Please don’t be alarmed by my unwanted obsessive thoughts, these form part of OCD, which are not indicative of any real desire. If you’re concerned about my thoughts, OCD-UK ask that you consult an OCD specialist before taking any action, and refer to the paper ‘Risk Assessment and Management in Obsessive Compulsive Disorder’ by Veale, Freeston, Krebs, Heyman and Salkovskis.
A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR
David Adam is a writer and editor at Nature, the world’s leading scientific journal. Before that he was a specialist correspondent at The Guardian for seven years, writing on science, medicine and the environment. In 2006 his piece on carbon offsets was chosen by the Association of British Science Writers as the year’s best newspaper feature on a science subject. He has reported from Antarctica, the Arctic, China and the depths of the Amazon jungle.
Sarah Crichton Books
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
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Copyright © 2014 by David Adam
All rights reserved
Originally published in 2014 by Picador, an imprint of Pan Macmillan, Great Britain
Published in the United States by Sarah Crichton Books / Farrar, Straus and Giroux
First American edition, 2015
Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to reprint an excerpt from “This Be the Verse” from Collected Poems by Philip Larkin. Copyright © 1988, 2003 by the Estate of Philip Larkin. Reprinted by permission of Faber and Faber Ltd. and Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Adam, David, 1972–
The man who couldn’t stop: OCD and the true story of a life lost in thought / David Adam.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-0-374-22395-3 (hardcover) — ISBN 978-0-374-71051-4 (ebook)
1. Obsessive-compulsive disorder—Anecdotes. I. Title.
RC533 .A273 2014
616.85'227—dc23
2014017387
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* Compulsions were recorded long before psychologists got involved. Folklore from Eastern Europe tells how vampires are compelled to count scattered objects. Frightened people would sprinkle grain and seeds around graveyards to keep the undead busy. The television show Sesame Street features a vampire puppet called Count von Count who likes to, well, you get the idea.
* Both the Australian and UK adverts were on YouTube last time I checked.
* Full disclosure: I used to write these stories.
* We don’t know if the mademoiselle recovered. Esquirol didn’t report what happened to her.
* Paraphilic sexual behaviour is considered deviant – exhibitionism, necrophilia and worse.
* The counsellor, however, did her best.
* See ‘Kevin Keen Goal vs Derby County RRPNG4’ on YouTube. I was behind the goal and thinking how contaminated blood might have got onto my razor before that went in. That’s me in the red and white shirt.
* If you haven’t seen it, search YouTube for ‘Walken in Annie Hall’.
* Search for ‘OCD mailman’ on YouTube.
* Just kidding, Dad.
* Despite the common image of death signalled by the thumbs down, historians think the opposite is true. Thumb down could have indicated mercy.
* Emphasis mine.
* With apologies to Alfred Tennyson.
* Several OCD patients on clomipramine reported delayed or absent orgasms and Beaumont conducted a successful trial of the drug for premature ejaculation. The work was halted in April 1973 when it appeared in the Sunday Mirror newspaper as a wonder drug for people’s sex lives. His boss was furious: ‘We’re not having anything to do with this. Stop it’ (E. Tansey et al., Wellcome Witnesses to Twentieth Century Medicine, vol. 2, Wellcome Trust, 1998, p. 178).
* There are pre- and post-operation interviews with Mr V in videos on the website of the Jaslok centre: www.neurologicalsurgery.in/psychiatry-disorders-surgery/#prettyPhoto.
* Footage on YouTube.
* The Department of Health says it does not instruct NHS trusts to do this.
* A-Team fans – B.A. really is the name used in the case report.
* Pitman last saw him in 2000. ‘He gets by,’ he says.
* You can take the Yale-Brown test online at http://psychology-tools.com/yale-brown-obsessive-compulsive-scale.