Trapped In A Basement

Overwhelmed by obsessions, Ed Zine spent nearly two years trapped in his basement, compulsively repeating movements over and over.

Dr. Michael Jenike first saw Ed Zine in May 1996. "His suffering was transparent. You could almost feel his suffering," Dr. Jenike recalled.

Here's how Zine described his ritual: "If part of my hands touched, that's a ritual within a ritual within walking," he said.

"And then if I accidentally bumped into the fish tank and touched that, then I'd have to touch that and do the compulsions," Zine continued.

"I'd have to undo that, because everything is reversed, undo that to undo this, to just get back to walking," Zine explained.

To walk from one spot in the room to another took him seven and half to 10 hours, he recalled.

Dr. Jenike described how the counting worked for Zine: "The obsession produces anxiety. And the counting is a way to lessen the anxiety. And to keep a person safe...in a way, it's like mental Valium.

"It's your body creating this, to survive," Zine said.

Dr. Jenike prescribed anti-obsessional drugs for Zine but he stopped taking them.

Then one day out of the blue, Zine left the basement. "I worked and understood my mind; I broke it down," he said.

Today Zine still struggles with OCD but he's married, has a new baby and is trying hard to live a normal life. He's now writing a book about his illness.

"If you look at where he was, with persistent suffering, that was all his life was, to where he is now,...I think that he really is a major success," Dr. Jenike said.

How did Zine get out of the basement?

"He can't tell me. He really can't tell me. If he could tell me, then I could apply that to other patients. And maybe we could short-circuit things with David and other people," said Dr. Jenike.