I was a grown man before I discovered that I had obsessive compulsive disorder. (Watch everyone cross the street now when they see me coming.)
OCD. You have to say that in big caps, because it’s such a trendy disorder now that it rates big letters as in: NATO, ASCAP, WTO and OCBH. That’s the acronym for “Occupy Beverly Hills.”
That, my Hollywood daughter explains, is a bunch of actors and writers occupying the street in front of Starbucks, because it isn’t open at 2 in the morning.
It was a big eye-opener for me to find out that OCD was a real mental condition that very important medical experts spent decades studying, and made a lot of money from.
For years I thought I was just picky and neat. I thought everyone folded the towels and arranged their shirts this way: Stripes together, pastels together and solids together. Probably a lot of people do that, not realizing that if they don’t do it something really terrible will happen to them. I’m just saying.
OCD was a whispery thing when it was just homeless people avoiding stepping on cracks on the sidewalks, or Lady Macbeth, who kept washing her hands. She was probably OCD, and probably Shakespeare who created her, was as well. But when movie stars and famous people like Steve Jobs were caught with it, it became “The Thing” to have. I know one old-time movie star who washed his hands compulsively after doing sex scenes in his movies. True story. No, I won’t tell you. He’s still alive.
No one yet has officially claimed that the late great Steve Jobs had OCD (it’s easier to write that way), but when I started to read Walter Isaacson’s brilliant new biography of the Apple genius, I saw it right away. OMG. Jobs was worse than I am. He would cry and sulk when he didn’t get his way. I used to do that the first 10 years of our marriage, but after 50 years of being ignored, I gave it up.
When Jobs would dine out, he would often send meals back to the kitchen three or four times. I won’t do that, because my brother Jug told me once that in some restaurants, if you do that, they spit it in or add something undesirable when they return it.
Jobs went to extremes with this, and even on his death bed in the hospital, he ripped off the oxygen mask because he didn’t like the design. He made them bring him five different styles, so he could choose for himself. I feel so much healthier now.
Which brings me back to the beginning. If you want to be healthy, really, truly healthy, get fit, save your heart, lose weight and keep it off, you have to spend a great deal of time at it.
Why do most Americans fail at the task? They are mentally healthy. They are not, look out, wait for it, here it comes: OCD. In order to succeed at this game, you have to be compulsive about it.
I spend untold hours online reading health blogs and articles. I find what I’m looking for on Politico.com, Huffington Post and The Daily Beast. It was here that I discovered things that satisfied my compulsions and worked towards total health.
For example: “The Right Way to Wash Fruits and Vegetables,” by Dr. Beth Ricanati. It stresses keeping the chopping boards clean. Duh! I have six of them. It’s important to scrub both sides, not just the one you chopped the garlic on.
There are so many tips in these articles you can use.
For example: You know those boxed and bagged salads in the market? They say they’re “cold water washed.” The casual user assumes that means you don’t have to wash and rinse them six times like I do. Good luck with that.
A final tip. Don’t be misled by antibacterial soap. It is loaded with toxins, and they create resistant bacteria. Use bottled soap. Bars are crawling with bacteria.
I have to run. I leave you with this. Wash your hands four times after handling this paper. You know how many hands touched this before you?
J.P. Devine is a Waterville writer.
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