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Musical Hallucinations


Guest kevtex

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Guest kevtex

Hi, this is my first time reaching out online for help with my OCD. A short introduction of myself: I am currently 18, and I am informing myself more about OCD and its causes and symptoms. Just recently I started noticing that since I was very young I had symptoms of some kind of mental disorder. I would very often get weird, distorted thoughts that made absolutely no sense and gave very weird emotions that are difficult to describe. It's as if completely unrelated thoughts had been combined and completely mixed up to the point where I couldn't make any sense out of them and they just gave me bad vibrations. Later, still at a very young age, I started developing compulsions like repeatedly making sure the door was locked or the windows were closed. Even later when I was 8 to 9 years old, I started compulsively washing my hands to the point where my skin was dry and cracked. Things got so bad that my parents took me to see a psychologist and later a psychiatrist where I began taking medication for my symptoms. I tried many different medications and eventually I got over my compulsions. However, I still had those weird, distorted thoughts that caused a lot of anxiety and distraction. My compulsions have diminished and I may have been growing out of them. However, the mental chaos was always there. At one point, when I was 14, I began taking zoloft and it was a life saver. It made everything so much better and I was able to live a relatively normal life. I still had some compulsions but they were much more controllable. I was very happy with the zoloft, but last year, it just stopped working and I felt very depressed. Since then, I have taught myself to overcome the compulsions and I no longer have them. After the Zoloft stopped working, I began taking Paxil. It helped with the depression, but I still had those distorted incomprehensible thoughts and began having lots of anxiety. I told my psychiatrist that I began having a lot of anxiety and he gave me Buspar, which helped with the anxiety. I am still taking Buspar, but switched to Luvox a few weeks ago, which leads me to the current problem.

Starting about a month ago, I began having an extremely frustrating and distracting problem, from the moment I wake up to the moment I fall asleep. My mind began playing music very vividly. Sometimes they were songs that I had just heard or heard recently, and other times they were songs that I hadn't heard in years. No matter what I did, I could not get them out of my mind. However, I knew very well that these songs were coming from inside my head and that I was replaying them. Since I was not happy with the Paxil because of all the anxiety I had, and little to no improvement with obsessive thoughts, my psychiatrist recommended taking Luvox as he said it is one of the better medications for OCD. It's been a few weeks now and I have not felt any improvement, and now, every single song I finish listening to automatically replays in my head even if it's just one section of it.  The music in my head makes it very difficult to concentrate and gives me a lot of anxiety because I know that people do not normally experience this and that even I didn't experience it before. It also impairs my decision making ability and creativity because I always have some song on my mind and I end up thinking about that than what I'm supposed to be thinking about. On top of that, I have the same weird distorted thoughts that don't make any sense and give me anxiety. The music in my head almost 24/7 is what really bothers me. It's been a few weeks now since starting Luvox and I have not noticed any significant improvement while on it let alone the music going away. What could be the cause of these songs or sounds just repeating themselves and clouding my mind? What other options do I have to take? I heard lithium orotate has helped for some people, yet it has hurt others. So I would like to hear your opinions and what people use for these musical hallucinations to control them.

Thank you so much!

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Hi Kevtex and welcome to the forum.

Your experiences sound like typical OCD to me, starting in childhood and switching from different obsessions, to the current one which is about intrusive music. It is not unheard of for OCD sufferers to have intrusive songs, music or lyrics that causes them distress and I think I might have had that obsession myself fleetingly when I was a child.

You seem to have been on quite a few different medications. Meds are good at controlling the symptoms of OCD as well as relieving anxiety and low mood, but they aren't ever a complete cure really. The only thing that has been shown to really tackle the root cause of OCD is cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), with a focus on exposure and response prevention (ERP). Have you had any of this type of therapy before? If so then it would be worth revisiting the key concepts to help you deal with this new obsession, as it doesn't really matter what the actual theme is with OCD because it is all treated in the same way. If not then I would suggest looking into this type of therapy.

Do you have any self help books? The best one I've come across (and many others on here will agree with me) is "Break Free From OCD". This is a good book to read as it is a really comprehensive CBT and ERP manual.

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Hi kevtex and welcome to the forum.

It's not unheard of for people with OCD to get repetitive songs in their head.

Now you talk a lot about meds but meds alone are not the end all be all if OCD treatment. Very few people recover from OCD on meds alone, if any. What you need is Cognitive Behavioural Therapy or CBT. It is the gold standard treatment for OCD.

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Guest kevtex

Hi! Thanks for the responses! I haven't ever tried CBT or ERP, and I think that would be a great next step. What exactly does one do at therapy? I am going to find a provider near me that does that and try to do this on a regular basis. I have a self help book for stress and anxiety, but I don't have one for OCD. I will look for that and buy it. I have had so many different obsessions and been on many different medications. Some of them helped, most notably Zoloft, but for some reason that stopped working and while I was on it I wasn't completely cured either. I agree that a combination of the two is the best way to go.

I also have another frustrating and embarassing problem. I often think about eating things whenever I see them. I never have an urge to do so, but I just think about it, like imagine myself doing it. It is extremely frustrating because I immediately notice how weird it is to have even thought of that. Does this seem like pica? Thanks again for all the help.

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