Day 10: Hairanoia

Hello, my name is Kira and I’m a trichotillomaniac. I’ve been clean now for 10 days. I’ve just been taking it one day at a time, staying strong, working my program and remembering my higher power. It’s been a tough journey, but hopefully I’ve given up my fix for good. They say the more times you try the more likely you are to succeed – so I must be getting nearer to success. There are days when I just want one little hair. Just one, you know, to take the anxiety down a notch. A social hair rip. Everyone else can pull out one hair and not go on a binge. Just one little tug? That’s how it starts. One innocent pluck and suddenly I’ve been in the bathroom for an hour and have a pile of evidence in the trashcan. Honesty is the first step: I’m ashamed to admit I’ve blacked out numerous times while engaging in my addiction and found piles of hair I don’t remember killing. I’ve also pulled while driving and staring into the rearview mirror. My homework time is punctuated by sessions of chasing that high. The more I pull, the more I need to pull to bring me up to normal. It’s a vicious cycle. It’s the final countdown, da da doo doo, da da doo doo doo…sorry, but it’s in the background. Adam got a new Wii game. Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, to change the things I can, and the courage to know the difference.

If anyone is disturbed at this point, there is a previous post called Trichotillomaniac that may explain some of your concerns. Most concerns will probably remain and may be furthered by the next post which may or may not have anything to do with this. Two things I must clarify – this is an analogy, in that ripping hair is analogous to addiction. And by higher power I meant mental power.



12 days ago, my well-intentioned and possibly future brother-in-law (ha, like that Adam? Tack on another year), Matt, decided to try and make me go insane. He enjoys this type of thing, and after reading the blog mentioned above, decided we should see if we could stop our compulsive tendencies at the same time. He does this weird thing where he chews flaps of skin off his fingers while lurking in doorways or staring out of windows. Sometimes he taps his teeth for balance. It’s a little creepy, but so is selecting strands of hair and zipping them into balls. And sometimes, um, licking them or sort of putting them on my lips. Anyway, he kindly came up with this plan to unravel my sanity and I of course joined up two days later for the competition. Well, that’s not exactly true; I was just trying to make it funny. I stopped pulling because I have desperately wanted to for 14 years and I was offered a pretty good checking in system – I wouldn’t feel right lying to Matt. I think this and partially the competitive aspect may be the only thing saving my hair right now. So thanks Matt, you are a good brother. I should say that now, because there have been several trying moments in the past nine days. That’s why this is like a TA meeting (Trichotillomaniacs Anonymous) and I’m sharing my triggers and other problems like a freaking hair junkie. Hence the title of this post.

So in the last 10 days I overcompensated. At home I wore my hair in a hood, a hat, put junk in it so it feels different, brushed it 90 times instead of pulling at it, and I even tried becoming more interested in licking my nails or just moving my thumbnail along my lower lip. That’s kind of nice, but not really comparable. I developed a foot tapping twitch too. It turns out my interest is piqued only by hair. Hair, hair, hair. Mm, mm, mm. But not down into my belly – that’s trichophagia. I hung out at Borders a couple times, drank less caffeine but unfortunately consumed much more sugar, vacuumed my car to remove previous evidence, and played with my sweatshirt drawstrings instead.

None of these things compares to the sheer glory of finding and then popping out the perfect hair, but there was a pesky competition to adhere to. It sucked! I mean, it still sucks. I am sitting here typing away and every so often there is a sneaky suggestion in my head. Here’s one right over here. Yes, here on the left. Just liberate it and go back to typing. No one will miss it. I can physically feel it sticking out now – awesome! And I find myself saying silly things back such as, You know what, brain? No. You can take your hair and go…do something with it. It’s wildly difficult to communicate with my fingers once they’ve found their prey however. And they just find them all on their own! Sometimes I have to physically concentrate on letting go of a hair that is already prepared to be released and rolled into a tiny ball. Especially since one hair doesn’t sound all that bad.

During my first midterm in the past nine days, I caressed my hair constantly and couldn’t concentrate very well. There were a lot of suicidal hairs just waving around all over the place. It was also windy outside on my way to class which didn’t help. Wind makes me smooth obsessively and coincidentally I find hairs that do not want to be calmed but rather ripped. Before I studied for my second midterm and wrote a seven page paper this last week, I purchased some smoothing balm for incentive. It doesn’t so much smooth frizz as create a glowing red halo around my head. Not good. Up it went into a ponytail. Byebye, tempting little victims.

Luckily for me I possess an incredible skill for procrastination. I saved my term paper for Wednesday night and it was due Thursday at 8:30 a.m. Strategically I wrote 3.5 pages starting at 9 p.m. while watching “Lost” with Heidi and Adam. This made it possible to postpone the deaths of several hairs for another day, since I don’t pull in front of others (if they’re looking). I woke up early to finish the paper, and by that time I had so little time to complete it that I barely thought about my hair. I finished on time and with every hair intact. Yay! I’ll take whatever I get on the paper – what I’m doing right now is apparently more of a mental challenge.