I have OCD as well (though not as bad as the author — no long routines for me), and I tend to believe that it has more or less rewritten the way I think. I no longer think in complete sentences; any concrete idea that shows up in my head is a potential target for the OCD monkey. Instead, I tend to think in word clouds, sort of, as well as more impressionistic images. I have to always focus on keeping my mind blank; there's simply no room for meandering thoughts. In a strange way, I don't mind it; I think it's actually boosted my creativity quite a bit, even if it's at the expense of more linear, rational thought.

The "psyche hack" rings so, so true. One of mine is, oddly enough, the buzzsaws from Half-Life 2. (Probably because I started to defend myself psychologically against OCD around the time when that game came out.) Whenever a I get an obsession/compulsion, I imagine a stack of those buzzsaws falling to one side of my body and taking the "weight" of the compulsion with them. I can add more buzzsaws to the stack to speed up this process. However, if the compulsion turns out to be too strong, the buzzsaws can turn into a obsession/compulsion in and of themselves, and then I have to spend a few minutes or seconds "grabbing hold" of them in my head. Fortunately, I have not yet had a need to create a new psyche hack to counteract this; it seems the buck stops at the saws.

80% of the time my OCD does not bother me, but I think that's because I've basically internalized a whole bunch of "psyche hacks" and unconsiously use them continuously throughout the day. Sometimes I wonder if I can train my mind to avoid the obsession/compulsions altogether; depending on the day, and especially if I've gotten a lot of rest, I can clear my mind and be free for a little bit. But it doesn't really last. (On the other hand, when my mind is completely immersed in another task — when I don't have time to think — I rarely go into OCD mode. It also doesn't happen in my dreams.)

I'd really like to write an article like this one at some point, because I think OCD can really illuminate the way we think — particularly in regards to the way we form connections between ideas. In OCD, this mechanism is a bit out of control and tries to grab onto anything it can find. The strange, insane, recursive leaps of logic that result from this have a terrifying poetic beauty to them. It's a very visceral disease; I imagine that few people can describe their specific thought processes as easily and vividly as those who have OCD.

What a weird disorder.