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Comment by Tade0 | Hacker News Reader

I do this to fight my OCD of checking repeatedly that I locked the doors.

To an extent it helps.

As a side note I noticed that after I stopped drinking coffee entirely my memory improved, but at the same time my OCD returned to heights I haven't seen since the first time I tried this beverage.

I wonder how this works?

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One of the most common treatments for ADHD is essentially just amphetamines. Not a doctor, but it seems like CNS stimulants generally have this affect on some people with attention disorders.

I self-medicate ADD with nicotine and it does help. It's fairly addictive though, so, I wouldn't exactly recommend it.

Yeah, stopping is the problem for me. I can deal with the cravings for more... but damn if I don't get pissed off, cranky and depressed without it. It was way easier to quit Adderall.

I wouldn't call it full-blown OCD, but I also sometimes have the tendency of wondering if I have really closed all the windows, turned off the lights, locked the doors etc. etc. when I'm away from home. Maybe I'll start doing this too...

Yeah, I need to point at the stove and say "stove off" when I turn it off. A few times I have started driving away from my house and suddenly been hit by a sense of dread that I might have left the stove on after cooking breakfast.

Specifically for making sure I locked the doors at night, I read about a technique of singing a song while I do the first check. So later, in the haze of "did I or didn't I" lock the doors, I can remember that I sang the song and that satisfies my anxiety about needing to check the doors again. Of course, it needs to be a different song each night, but it works for me.

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