NiroZ wrote:
But the thing is, even if it has an effect, it's fairly minimal.
As somebody who has thrown out his neck and overcracked his knuckles (which actually resulted in an injury to my wrist rather than my knuckles), I can say the effect is far from minimal.
I'm always hurting myself in one way or another because of OCD. For those who don't know what it's like, it's comparable to breathing. Rest assured, no matter what happens, you will remember to breathe. You can breathe barely giving any thought to it. You can consciously control your breathing, but doing so makes it a lot harder to focus. Just replace "
breathing"
with some unusual thing like "
picking"
or "
eye rolling"
(don't ask) in the above sentences, make the distinction that breathing "
is a necessary function to life"
while a compulsion is just "
satisfying to do,"
and BAM! That's OCD.
Take the Archivist's advice. You don't ever want to start cracking any part of your body. Both of my bone-cracking compulsions ended the same way: One day I would hear a distinct and unusual sound and it would feel like I got pricked with a needle. I would feel fine for the remainder of the day (well, other than the terror I was in about my wrist since I recognized that pinching sensation from the neck incident)...
But then I would wake up in the middle of the night.
The pain is excruciating. It completely dominates your thoughts. And it isn't just your wrist or neck. For the wrist, it's the entire hand and some of the arm. For the neck, it's both shoulders and your upper back. What 12th Archivist said about the pain "
receding"
with pain relievers and time is a good description. Pain relievers will make the pain recede back to the injured area (and increase range of motion), but the center of pain will continue to hurt for a long time.
Something that surprised me: Several years ago, before I experienced this myself, my mom threw out her back. The one thing that worried me when I saw mom like that was that if I ever were to be like that, I might accidentally forget about the pain for a second and do something to make it worse. Like bending over to pick something up. Believe me, you won't. Within 10 minutes of waking up, you are so terrified of moving your muscles that your mind locks out any thought of the kind. It's strange... unless you were forced to think about it (like if somebody asked you if you can reach an object), the thought of moving outside your range of motion for any purpose whatsoever won't enter your mind.
____________________________
Also known as ExpHP everywhere else.
[Last edited by Kwakstur at 04-14-2009 10:32 PM]
Don't do it. 
