According to his wife, (the one with the hole in her leg) Osama Bin Laden never left the third floor of his cinder-block shit-house for six years. He never went out and he never talked to people and he lived his entire life online. He traveled around with a doctor who treated him for an imaginary kidney ailment.
Sound familiar? Well, if you are a person who suffers from Generalized Anxiety Disorder and/or Panic Disorder and agoraphobia, you pretty much have a picture of Osama Bin Laden already in your head.
“It can start with hypochondria or an obsession with death an illness,” said Dr. Benjamin Switchy. “This obsession then leads to increased anxiety to the point where the person exhibits varying degrees of psychosis, anti-social behaviour, hypochondria and eventually it can progress to Generalised Anxiety Disorder (GAD) and then onto Panic Disorder with agoraphobia — or a fear of leaving one’s home or what one considers to be a safe area.
“Certainly Bin Laden had reason to fear being caught and captured or killed, but to never leave the upper floors of the home is a sure-fire sign that he was suffering from agoraphobia and it’s the rare patient in whom agoraphobia is the sole psychological problem. Rather, agoraphobia almost always is a condition that is brought about by severe anxiety issues. The sufferer usually starts out with anxiety issues but if treatment (medications or psychological counseling) either fails or is not administered, the person gradually stops leaving the home for fear that they will have a panic attack in an unsafe place — any place which is not home is an unsafe place to almost all agoraphobics.”
Obviously some people will argue that Bin Laden was afraid for his life because he was the most wanted criminal in the world, so of course he would not leave his house, but this does not explain why he would never leave the the top floor. Only a true agoraphobe would take it to that extreme.
So, with all his bravado and fist pumping and heinous acts, in the end, Bin Laden was just a guy who developed a severe anxiety disorder — just like Howard Hughes.
