for years, during recovery from addiction, i have gone through cycles of bizarre and obsessive thinking. i've been clean off drugs and alcohol for a little over 7 years, now. i suffer form depression and i am on medication for it. while i am on meds, these symptoms are less frequent, but not completely gone. it seems to cycle 2 or 3 times a year, with some symptoms coming and going, but others are fairly constant, even outside of those cycle periods

i'm in the middle of one of these periods at the moment and this is a typical day for me:

i wake up, and almost immediately random music starts playing in my head. not something i've heard on the radio, recently, not something that i've heard somewhere, but something that i know. and then the intrusive thoughts begin. thoughts about drugs, violence and sex are the most common. they are not "nice" or "pleasant" thoughts, they are truly disturbing and intrusive. and they get stuck in my head. sounds, phrases and images that i encounter will randomly lodge themselves in my conscious thought stream and i cannot get them to go away. inevitably, i begin to obsess about obsessing. sometimes, i can't focus on tasks and i am easily distracted. the music plays non-stop, unless i play music on my computer. even then, it sometimes doesn't stop playing in my head, so there are 2 different tracks playing if my computer is on. oh, and bread has to be buttered on a certain side and i always start ascending or descending stairs with my right foot. it's not the end of the world if i don't, but i really really prefer it that way… oh, and whenever i am stressed out, anxious, nervous, tired or depressed i twist and pull my hair at the back of my head. i don't pull it out, i just sit and twist it round and round and tug at it

it sounds really weird to me, even as i am writing this and i sometimes can't believe that this stuff is going on in my head. i know i need to go and speak to my old therapist about this, because it is not something that i ever brought up with him before (not sure why…)

can anyone who has been diagnosed with OCD relate?