Cyber OCD

There is perhaps another issue regarding social networking sites.  Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.

This disorder is perhaps the worst of all.  It is horrific for the person that has it and for those people that surround them.

I first came across this disorder whilst chatting to a friend.  I was cooking a BBQ and placed my beer bottle on the wheely bin.  My friend was startled and asked me to remove it immediately.  I couldn't quite follow.  The chances of a deadly disease travelling up my beer bottle from the bin was highly unlikely.

I talked to him further.  He said that the bin was a 'dirty place'.  Eventually, I discovered that the only 'safe' place' for my friend was his bed.  The world expanded from there.

When departing for school as a child, my friend would be in agony.  Departing the bedroom was difficult.  This involved washing his hands and then using tissues to open the door to his bedroom.  If he touched the door handle, then the whole process began again.  Catching the train involved wedging himself between two poles and not touching anything. 

Everything in the outside world apart from the bed was a 'dirty space'.

Comparing this to the internet and cyber addiction is an interesting nexus.  The OCD works in reverse to the example that I have given.  A person must log on to the internet to satisfy the compulsion. 

Looking at how the brain works, there is within the frontal lobe an area that is known as the 'feel good' zone.  This is tracked from a part of the brain that runs along the top left hand side of the skull along the face.

Facebook appears to have introduced a new part of its social networking site.  I call it 'where am I". 

I have a Facebook page and a limited friend list (indeed only 21).  The average is 120.  I am now being swamped with emails from Facebook from some of the friends which state 'X is now at the Zoo' or 'Y is now at Z restaurant'. 

I have diverted all of these emails into Junk and my Internet security will eventually automatically delete them.

It is intriguing that a person would engage in this behaviour.  If one had say 1,000 friends, the barrage of emails must be extraordinary.  This development is due to the advances made in Smart Phones.

One of the questions that must be answered is whether or not the person actually knows that the phone is continually sending out messages of where they are or if they are personally entering the information.

With the development of GPS, eventually the phone will simply send out the message automatically.

If the person is entering the information (and in some cases it might be morning, noon and night), then is this a form of developing OCD?

Everyone has habits and these form a part of daily rituals.  It is only when one particular habit becomes essential that it starts to form a problem.

There are certain drugs that are used to try and block receptors in the brain such that the habit does not satisfy the 'feel good' part of the brain and therefore it becomes useless.

One such drug is Anafranil.  From the drug company's website, this drug is used for a variety of purposes, one of which is OCD and phobias in adults.  Strangely, there is a warning that grapefruit, grapefruit juice or cranberry juice can interfere with the drug's capability. 

Perhaps part of the internet is a form of OCD after all. 

Finally, as an example of my own personal experience with gaming, there was developed in the late 80's a game called Super Mario Brothers.  This game was the first of its type in that it could remember and hold your position wherever you were.  The game had 8 stages and was complicated.

I was studying law at the time and also addicted to this game.  It came to the morning of my Tax exam.  The exam was at 2pm.  Rather than study, I played the game as I was within hours of beating the whole thing.

I finally did at 11:20am.  As soon as I won, I realised that I could never play a game like that again.

Stephen Wilcox
Australian Lawyer