Do meds help with sticky thoughts and focus?

Which ones? I'm worried about side effects, there's so many bad stories about them

Fluvoxamine has helped me for so many years without much side effects

I'm not doing antipsychotics, hear many bad cases

@Imaan7 I understand the hesitance and truly antipsychotics are not a first line treatment for ocd (unless it’s treatment resistant) but for me they were life saving. The only thing abilify has done that is truly negative so far is increase my appetite and give me constipation which are two things that are already going away as I move into the therapeutic window. It’s not permanent just temporary. If your OCD has bizzare themes and the thoughts “feel real”/you have overvalued ideas thats usually when you’d need antipsychotics. Beyond that, things like anafranil (a non SSRI anti depressive) are said to be highly effective and sometimes the only thing that can shut down Pure O for many people. Maybe look into that.

@anabanana1 I have those symptoms My thoughts have felt very real to the point it felt like I'm feeling doing it. My main symptoms now are just constant anxiety and sticky thoughts that wreck my attention. I have alot of confused thinking as well, just worried meds especially Aps would send me crazier

@Imaan7 Oh no they definitely wouldn’t 😅. Antipsychotics are supposed to do the opposite of making you crazier. If your thoughts included bizarre/delusional themes, then the issue is dopamine, which is what anti psychotics target. Often times you don’t have to do monotherapy with abilify like I do. But they are an add on treatment (with other meds) for sticky thoughts. At just 2mg, abilify made me super calm and made me feel free for the first time in forever. Don’t worry about side effects because they are not forever. And abilify isn’t a traditional anti psychotic you will not feel like you’re in a chemical straight jacket

@anabanana1 What were you thoughts that made you start abilify? How long is the course you are on and what's monotherapy. I can't afford therapy at the moment, I just need something to lower my anxiety and for my attention to not get hijacked so much. I can handle intrusive thoughts nowadays

@Imaan7 I started Abilify because my psychiatrist realized how sick traditional antidepressants were making me. It wasn’t really something that I chose to do, he prescribed it because he realized that I was treatment resistant. We had to move from first line treatments to the “heavier” stuff. I am on day 23 of the sub therapeutic dose before I hopefully move up to the therapeutic range which starts at 5 mg and it goes up to 10 mg for OCD. Higher milligrams are used to treat actual psychotic disorders. So don’t worry, even at low doses this medication is not acting like an antipsychotic traditionally would. And monotherapy basically just means that you are only on one type of medication so for an example if you are only on Prozac that would be monotherapy if you are only on anafranil, that is also monotherapy. And I’m so glad you mentioned anxiety and attention because the Abilify has done just that for me my attention span is much better and my anxiety is much lower.

@anabanana1 Thank you. How long will you have you stay on it? I don't want to stay on any drugs for a long time. Is your psychiatrist just a general psych or versed with pure ocd types? I keep going back to the stories I've read of people getting worse on medications especially Aps.

@Imaan7 I am not sure how long I will have to stay on Abilify. OCD is a chronic illness so I am willing to accept that I will stay on Abilify for a long time maybe forever if it means that I will never again deal with what I dealt with because the OCD I dealt with was bordering on delusion and paranoia. But everyone is different. Some people do not need to take medication at all and find “cure” idoing therapy(ERP) I am not sure what kind of psychiatrist I go to. I believe he is just a general one. I did not look for anyone that was specifically geared to treat OCD. I simply assumed that because he is a psychiatrist he probably had experience dealing with people that had OCD and boy am I happy that I went to him lol. When Zoloft made me so sick, I had to go to the ER. He called me and told me he was gonna put me on Paxil. That was proved that he went back to the drawing board and made a more conscious and well-thought-out choice that took into account that unique to bring chemistry that I had. This happened when a few days later during our official appointment. On the first day of taking it, I felt an “anvil” come down on one of my most bizarre intrusive thoughts all of a sudden I had stopped questioning the things that I was questioning before. I’m on day 23 now and although I occasionally have an annoying thought, it is so easy to dismiss if I don’t feel the physical weight of it. Everyone’s bodies are different. I read so many people giving Zoloft the thumbs up, but it gave me dehydration, paranoia, and sleep deprivation on the first day lol. Prozac gave me these weird false memories that felt so intense. I for a first split second thought that I was going to start hallucinating against my will. When on the flip-side, nobody else was dealing with that when I read their experiences online. You have to hit OCD with everything but the kitchen sink. You do not have to worry about Abilify because it is not a traditional antipsychotic that turns you into a zombie. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe the ones you are scared of would be things like zyprexa or risperdal or seroquel. I am not sure if these three are even prescribed or considered for OCD on sight the way that Abilify is(and even Abilify to some degree is kind of a last resort). What matters is that you stay on a low-dose and you stay the course and accept the side effects as they come because they are seldom permanent. And compared to the relief that it gave me it was worth going through them.

@anabanana1 I can't even imagine not having these thoughts anymore it's been like this for so long, feels like my brain is comprised of just this entirely. Thank you for sharing your experience. How soon was the duration between switching from Zoloft to paxil to abilify? Are you just on abilify now?

@Imaan7 I was on Zoloft for just one day. It made me sick on the first day with extreme dizziness, dehydration, and my body temperature was super low. I had to sleep on two heating pads and a drink Pedialyte. I went to the ER the next day and afterwards my psychiatrist called me and told me he was gonna put me on Paxil. But he never sent a prescription for me to pick up. This was when I assumed maybe he had changed his mind and then a few days later on our official call…he told me he’d put me on abilify. It was a relief. I might also added that although I’ve always had OCD tendencies with the rumination and everything. The actual mental health crisis I had with OCD lasted about 4-7 weeks and it escalated in that duration. I went about 5 days without being medicated between January 12 and 17, the 17th was the first day I took Abilify

@anabanana1 How long have you had ocd? And what kinda of strange thoughts were you having I would like to hear more

@Imaan7 It’s kind of hard to describe it without me cringing because it’s very personal. I’ve contemplated how I’m gonna answer this for about an hour, but the types of intrusive thoughts that I was having were basically delusions that were presenting themselves as what ifs. Anything that you can imagine basically. So sometimes it would be something like “what if you’re dreaming right now and you need to do XYZ to wake up” and it would be accompanied by these feelings of the realization that made the intrusive thought feel just that much real I would get a shot of adrenaline and at some point I would also have really weird intrusive impulses that I really had to hold back against because they were so gnarly. Sometimes it was something like “what if your parents/family was replaced by alternates/clones.” Again these things are not tangible realities, but they felt like it. I genuinely consider the possibility of these things being true. When I was at the ER, my brother actually asked me if I was schizophrenic because I confessed to him that it was getting really hard for me to distinguish between thoughts and realities. Sometimes they were also something like “what if you have to tell everyone XYZ” and it would be a lie about me or something that I care deeply about. Sometimes it was harm OCD. Sometimes it was the type of OCD that made you feel extremely alone. The themes would constantly change back to back to back. It was extremely exhausting. I was starting to lose the ability to speak because all of the time was being spent ruminating to disprove the thought, even though it felt so real it was pointless. I think I got on Abilify at the brink. And at that point I was battling thoughts about alternate realities. And no, I never had hallucinations or anything like that. I never heard voices. I would sometimes have intrusive commands or genuinely intrusive thoughts that felt commanding, but they were not voices outside of my head. If your OCD is as intense as mine, the issue is the dopamine there’s really no other choice, but an antipsychotic.