Not to be pickyunish here, but that's not OCD, that's a phobia. A lot of us with phobias if we have to do the thing we're phobic about do a ton of stuff to prepare, but that isn't the same as OCD rituals. You might indeed have OCD based on all sorts of rituals you aren't mentioning here, but again, you have a phobia and this is how you deal with it. As for what to do, that's a hard one. It depends on what you're done to try to fix your phobia. If you've been in therapy, tried CBT, learned relaxation techniques, and done everything you could for a long time to fix it and it never helped any, then doing what you have to do might be the easiest thing to do. Something else to try is a benzo that you only use when you have to do this so it doesn't lead to the problems of regular benzo usage. If you haven't really committed to trying to fix this problem, then here's the thing about phobias -- the more you avoid the worse they get. The only way to truly get over them is to do what you're phobic about enough times so your brain just learns that nothing bad is going to happen and forgets all about it. That's what CBT tries to teach. If this is your only phobia and the rest of your life is fine, that's also an argument that for this one thing just do what's easiest to get through it as you only have the one phobia, but if it's something that affects other aspects of your life the best thing is fix the problem, not keep avoiding or keep getting so anxious about it. So again, the answer really depends on what road you've been down with this and what you want your life to be like and what you're willing to commit to doing about it. Sometimes anxiety is just not helped by treatment and sometimes treatment fixes it and you don't have to worry about it anymore.