Replies to '07/01 A Secret Inside: Extreme Hoarding'

My mother-in-law Reta is the worst type of hoarder collector.   Her house has been piled up with filth and used goods' purchases and dogs for most of her adult life.   The house's stench can be smelled a long way down the road.    She has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on storage rooms and purchases.   She always eats out or has food brought in.   She once had a birthday cake that she piled in a heap on the floor; maggots ran through it.    As she sat and slept in a reclining chair she dropped her food containers, her dirty clothing, newspapers, etc, where she sat, without getting up.   This mingled with general filth of dog hair, dog urine, and odds and ends she had purchased.   I helped clean up this house once.   Every couple of years, one of her sons cleaned the house (it took almost exactly 2 years for her to pile up a two story house to the rafters).   She was like this since her 20s.    In her last years, she even began saving her own fecal matter.

The most amazing thing I noted during the cleanup was this:  nothing had more value than another to Reta.   Her multi-carat diamond ring and gold coins were worth no more to her than molded leftover Chinese food or maggot-filled birthday cake.  

Reta always bought books, collected other people's newspapers, magazines, loose papers.    If someone popped a balloon she would stare at the broken end of the balloon obsessively until she could stuff it in her bag she always carried.    She would go to a buffet lunch and pour entire bins of sausages, etc into that bag.     I have tested her on occasion (to understand her thought processes a little better) by telling her I was going to keep the broken balloon.   As a result, she did not interact with anyone all evening: she just sat and stared at the balloon and tried to steal it away.    She complained obsessively for years to my husband (her son) that I wouldn't let her have the piece of balloon.  I believe she concentrates on hoarding every moment of her life and is domineering to her adult children, or anyone else who allows her to be.  She is sharp-tongued, crude, and very manipulative and intelligent to get her way.  

I believe hoarders this severe are complete sociopaths.  They will do anything they can to get what they want and manipulate their children, abuse them to control them, whatever is necessary to make them assist her or not clean.   My mother-in-law is cruel to waitresses, people on the plane, people in stores, and does not seem to care about the feelings of others.  My husband tips waitresses at Dennys $20 to keep them happy because she disrupts, complains about burned food so they bring her more and then keeps the "burned" food too.   When she leaves a restaurant or a dentist's office, she cleans out the office or area, stealing magazines that aren't hers, etc.    Only one of her four children has retained spouses; she has driven off all the rest because she doesn't want significant others to inhibit her excursions to shop or package her stuff in boxes.     A typical box could have used clothing, molded food, rat droppings, dirty used clothing, urine soaked newspapers.  

She always talks about recycling, but never recycles!

She attended lectures and read newspapers and books and could appear quite intelligent.   It didn't take long to realize the discussions were one-way.    Reta collects facts like she collects junk or spoiled food.   I believe that fact collecting is a symptom of the severe hoarder.   She marked passages in books, put in post-its, wrote little notes incessantly.

I have researched medical treatments for this type of person.  Until recently, nothing existed.   Apparently, Zoloft has some effect on some.    Therapy doesn't help; the inviduals are completely mentally ill.    I read one report that showed there was no brain activity in parts of the cerebral cortex in these individuals, and that schizophrenics and hoarders have in common the same areas of unusual brain activity in the hypothalamus and two other areas of the brain.      This appears to be a systemic defect of the brain and the chemical mediators in the brain (ex dopamine) that mediate pleasure.     

This is one of the worst forms of mental illness and one of the most disruptive for families of these sick people.    Children should be removed from such individuals.