• The Dark Side 💕 Welcome Guest 💕
    Posting Rules Bluelight Rules
    Notable Threads Urgent Hotlines
    Bereavement Mindfulness
    Suicide Support Anger Management
  • TDS Moderators: AlphaMethylPhenyl | paranoid android

How to help my best friend with his OCD-Hoarding

S

sharpmetalmulisha

Bluelighter
Joined
Mar 2, 2015
Messages
53
Location
on a salt flat
My best friend developed Obsessive Compulsive Disorder as a result of our substance abuse and he hoards useless junk constantly. His favorite things seem to be little trinkets (from happy meal toys to miniature dragons that hurt like hell if you step on them) and organizational containers such as totes and crates, which he insists are to be stacked, not to be used for storage. Our whole basement and much of the main floor is filled with useless and often disassembled junk. It requires a lot of patience to live with him and I enjoy his company, he is a really great friend, but I am unsure of how I can effectively help him. Advice? Ideas?
 
He uses both heroin and meth, while I prefer to stay the hell away from the heroin, I too use meth. I don't know why I didn't include that.. My my friend, myself, and my friends father are all meth addicts. I have tried to get him to quit using, for about 3 months before I relapsed and gave his misery some company. His dad... ugh... his parents sent him to rehab and his mom thought his father had stopped using, but instead used every day, so when my friend returned from rehab, guess what happened? His Dad never stopped, he relapsed, we hung out and wham bam boogie i relapsed too.
 
if he uses meth and heroin i kind of think collecting trinkets and storage containers are the least of his problems.
 
Has he tried aversion therapy? Or even better getting to the root of the problem. It could be the substances, but at other times the collecting or hoarding starts young before the substances are found to deal with emotional deprivation from youth
 
Last edited:
He doesn't want to quit. We've talked about it. I just want to figure out some coping mechanisms that we could possibly learn together. I do appreciate the aversion therapy suggestion, its worth bringing up when he visits his psychiatrist. He and I both have meds to help meth addicts recover, but he doesn't take his and he doesn't have any subutex to help the opiate W/D.
I have tried getting him to go to an NA meeting with me, he declines because he is in that state of mind where he thinks he is special apart from every other drug addict "and it isn't humanly possible for him to quit". I am beginning to come to the conclusion that it may be time to stop trying to proactively help him, because he doesn't want to be helped. Not yet anyways. I have always worried that he might find himself locked up for a lengthy amount of time, but maybe that is how he needs to learn? I mean for hell sake, his parents refinanced their house so they could afford rehab for him. What a waste of $35,000. .
 
sharpmetalmulisha said:
I mean for hell sake, his parents refinanced their house so they could afford rehab for him. What a waste of $35,000. .
Click to expand...

Rehabilitation never works. It's because if we wanted to quit, we'd do it ourselves. We honestly don't require others to quit.

And if rehabilitation "worked", where's the proof that it worked? It's still theoretically possible the individual who "quit in rehab" would have actually quit and stayed clean all on their own, and that rehabilitation just happened to coincide with the individual's will returning to wanting to be/stay clean.
 
Agreed. This is why when I had the opportunity for rehab I declined. Every single person I have ever met who went to rehab, relapsed within a year. Rather than fork over a fortune, I opted to go to a halfway house in AZ that was not only cheaper, but required you to work while living in a clean and sober environment. The length of the program was 90 days and it cost $110 weekly, and when you completed the program you could stay if you wanted to. I tried getting my friend to do this, but he doesn't want to have to work.... ugh.

*this was in May 2014 and I relapsed late January/early February 2015.
 
So, the more I read of your history with your friend the more I am wondering if this environment is good for you. You obviously care very much for this person and it is wonderful that you do--sounds like with his family situation he could really use someone that truly cares. But you can't be focusing on your friend's problems to the exclusion of your own. Do you think it is possible for you to get back on the path of sobriety you were on last year while living with these folks? If not, I think you need to start thinking of yourself. Look at it this way--you cannot really help your friend that much if you are not in a good place yourself. It's not selfish to save yourself.<3
 
That's actually an issue that I have been pondering myself, but not quite ready to act on yet. While on the path to sobriety, I learned that whenever I tried to control the outcome of a situation or other event, it almost always turned out badly. While I do not see how this situation can really lead to anything good, I think it would be best to leave it up to God to decide... but I will definitely consider other options. I do have a sort of deadline by which I feel I will be able to make a more informed decision. My friend has a review in district court to turn in the completed conditions of his probation in a few weeks. While he completed most of the terms, he violated the 2 years good behavior when he caught a paraph. Charge for his gear the last time he OD'd, but that is in a city court and often times the city courts do not communicate with district courts.. and even though I feel like a schmuck for feeling this way, I pray that he goes to jail. Not because I wish anything bad on him, but so that he can have a little "time out", so he can detox and have the opportunity to think clearly so that he may commit to wiser choices. Thank you, Herbavore. I always look forward to your responses because you take the time to read my often lengthy posts and offer the best advice you can and this means a lot to me because Bluelight is he only place I can confide in with these circumstances, its nice to get it off my chest.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top