Muscle Dysmorphia Is Ruining My Life

www.facebook.com/TheyCallMeManhattan Please feel free to add me if you find refuge in any of my writing or you’d like to talk to a critical thinker. Today went pretty badly, as I was overly concerned with my physique yet again. I have a condition called Muscle Dysmorphia; a specific term from a broader term known as Body Dysmorphic Disorder (BDD). Muscle Dysmorphia (MD) is commonly referred to as Bigorexia because as the name implies, it is an obsession with the physique, only with the opposite desires of an anorexic. I wish to be bigger and weigh more. I cannot stress enough how much this means to be. At the very least, I must maintain my current weight and not drop any weight for any reason. I am bound by this illness. I cannot perform normally on a day-to-day basis for several reasons and I am saddened by it everyday. My day-to-day activities are sanction because I must make sure that I consume adequate amounts of food and water and that I don’t take part in any activities that are especially rapid that may cause me to burn calories. I also must spend a few hours 5 to 6 times per week in the gym. I am upset if I am tired during my workout and unable to lift heavy weight as I normally do. I’m not concerned with my strength, but lifting heavy weight is what causes muscle growth. I am upset if I am not sore the next day after working out a particular muscle group. I always like to be “pumped” somewhere on my body; preferrably, everywhere. If I feel that I’ve “moved around” too much during the day, despite how much I’ve eaten, I will refuse to partake in social events for the evening. I cannot go to a social even until my workout is complete. If I haven’t consumed enough food for the day (as far as I’m concerned), I will not leave the house. These are just the major noticable actions that I must take or refrain from on a daily basis. Psychologically, it kills me. I tell you, when I feel pumped and “BIG” I feel like I’m on top of the world. I feel so good. I feel so happy. I feel ready for anything that awaits; especially when the scale reads relative to how I feel. I feel alive when I feel big and I feel like I must be big as a basis for establishing any kind of life. I am not happy when I feel small. I just feel as though it’s a flaw in me, as a person. I feel that when you take away my mass, you take away my soul, so to speak. I thrive off of how I feel I look. It isn’t about vanity, though. It’s an obsession and my condition is categorized as obsessive-compulive. I read on wikipedia and a few other sites that my condition is roughly 16 times more likely to make someone commit suidide than someone with depression, and 3 times more likely to make someone commit suicide than someone with bipolar disorder. These aren’t very promising odds… I have lost several jobs in the past due to this condition. I have had to leave work, I perform a lousy job, etc. when my mind is preoccupied with how I feel about how I look. I fear that that may happen again because of how I performed at work today. I’m assistant manager at a railroad, but I’ve been assigned a special project that involves me doing minor maintenance outside. I’ve been sweating a lot and getting paranoid about it. I felt very skinny today and it just overtook me. Nothing means anything to be when I feel upset like that. Not my family, my friends, my job, my car, my house; nothing. What the hell can I do to get rid of this condition? By being alive at all, I’m managing it. Needless to say, my social life suffers greatly due to this condition, yet I still seem to maintain a fairly-decent one. It’s come to the point where I feel that unless I can somehow magically not feel this way anymore, it will either be steroids or suicide. Of those two, which one is more practical? For the record, I’m 20 years old, 6’2″ 210lbs.