I watched several episodes of “Hoarders” over the weekend.  Now those are some seriously fucked up people.  They fill their houses with garbage, or as they call it, “collectables”, until their house is no longer habitable.  According to the program, there are more than 3 million hoarders in America.  It really made me glad that I’m normal, though I do have a strong urge to clean out my closet.

Right behind the Hoarders marathon was a show about OCD.  Now those are some seriously fucked up people.  One guy dusts his car while he drives and would prefer to never take it out of the garage, lest it get dirty.  It seems that he never strays too far from a duster.

I did a little checking up on OCD and, according Helpguide.org, there are several categories of OCD.  This list was taken from Helpguide.org:

• Washers are afraid of contamination. They usually have cleaning or hand-washing compulsions.
• Checkers repeatedly check things (oven turned off, door locked, etc.) that they associate with harm or danger.
• Doubters and sinners are afraid that if everything isn’t perfect or done just right something terrible will happen or they will be punished.
• Counters and arrangers are obsessed with order and symmetry. They may have superstitions about certain numbers, colors, or arrangements.
• Hoarders fear that something bad will happen if they throw anything away. They compulsively hoard things that they don’t need or use.

The common element is the fear that something bad will happen if one does not perform their required rituals.  Sounds a little like religion, doesn’t it, this fear that something bad will happen, like burning in hell for all of eternity, if we don’t do or say or believe the right thing?

In 2001, it was reported that 41.7% of all Americans had used illicit drugs at some point in their lives.  I couldn’t find more recent comprehensive statistics.

Of course, our drug of choice in America is alcohol.  According to the Centers for Disease Control, 50% of Americans are regular drinkers with another 14% considering themselves “infrequent” drinkers.

If we add up all the hoarders, throw in all the other kinds of OCD, then mix in the illicit drug users, drinkers and users of prescription drugs, as well as every other type of mental illness, it seems that there is virtually no one left.

Clearly, we need to declare war on all of it.  We’ve had this “war on drugs” going on at least since Reagan.  Perhaps it’s time to expand our little war to include alcohol, OCD, every other type of mental illness and prescription drug use.  Let’s just keep this simple and declare war on “general fuckedupedness”.  You know how we Americans like our wars.

Of course, the hitch is that the war on drugs isn’t going so well so maybe including all that other stuff isn’t such a bright idea.  I mean, we’ve had this war on drugs going on forever and yet our border towns have turned into war zones.  Wait, I’m seeing a connection... war on drugs, war zones...  War begets war?  No, that’s ridiculous.

It’s the brown people causing all that border town war zone stuff.  Maybe we could just declare war on brown people.  Let’s see, war on drugs, illicit and otherwise, OCD and other mental illnesses and alcohol and brown people.

Wow.  This is getting really confusing.  I’m starting to think that maybe there is something fundamentally flawed about this approach.  So we have a nation of drug users, drinkers, washers, checkers, doubters and sinners, counters and arrangers, hoarders and other mentally ill people, folks high on God, bigotry, ignorance and sugar.  Does that about cover it?

Shouldn’t we really be asking ourselves how come virtually everyone needs a drug of some sort to get through the day in modern America?   Looks like we’re all freaks of one sort or another.