Where to start?

[Wolfgang3]

I was diagnosed with ADHD almost 7 years ago and depression almost 10 years ago. The meds helped get back my ability to focus and made some of my extreme lows more tolerable. But my “spiraling” or “black vortex” thinking episodes started increasing. I don’t have any obvious external rituals, and even though I can “logic” why my thoughts are ridiculous, I can’t seem to be free of them. I used to drink to make those thoughts stop, but that was too risky—and expensive. The only other thing that works seems to be going to sleep and every once in a while, taking a shower seems to “reset” my mood and stop the negativity loop. I don’t know if I have OCD, and I’m scared to find out because what if it’s not ADHD or OCD? What if I am just a little crazy? I don’t know anyone who struggles the way I do, especially not this often.

[Selesnya]

For a lot of people with OCD there are no obvious external rituals or compulsions, so it could easily be OCD that is causing problems for you. I would read some more on the IOCDF web site to see how much OCD might apply to you:

iocdf.org/about-ocd/

Then I'd take an OCD test to see how much it might apply to you. The obsessions should be pretty easy to identify as the distressing, recurring, intrusive thoughts that you're dealing with. The compulsions are probably much harder to pick apart yourself, by could be avoidance behavior, mentally reviewing, thinking thoughts to balance out the bad thoughts, etc.

addictionsandrecovery.org/t...

If you score on the mild side of OCD, you are probably undercounting what qualifies as a compulsion and it would be worth trying to find a therapist to do some more in-depth exploration to see how therapy might be able to help you.