Read our sample translation of I Compulse
About the book
From the age of twelve to twenty-two, Erwin Roebroeks finds himself in the grip of obsessions and compulsions. He spends eight hours a day in the shower, drinks soap suds while wearing a surgeon’s scrubs, and cuts his skin open to clean it from the inside.
The medical world initially writes him off: he will never get rid of his severe obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD). And yet, after long-term clinical treatment with the most extreme of therapies, he succeeds in doing what virtually no one does: he is freed from his OCD. He leaves the clinic as if reborn; however, outside he is confronted with the years that he missed. What does the wide world mean for someone who has seen the darkest depths within himself in an isolated clinic? What do friendship and love hold for someone who has known great loneliness?
In I Compulse: Cured of OCD Roebroeks investigates how he could be cured, and what it means to be freed from an affliction that controlled him for so long.