u/Helpful-log3

Hey guys, I’m about toto start residency in a country where I can apply to multiple specialties at once. Psychiatry is my one and only option. In med school, I didn’t get great exposure to psychiatry but I did spend about a month in psychiatry rotations and have worked across many countries and spoken to a bunch of psychiatrists.

Most of these are not exactly my concerns but everytime I tell someone (especially fellow doctors) they seem to discourage me because of the below mentioned reasons

1. How much of the negativity rubs off on you? Do you have days where you’re very troubled because of a case you saw? Or are you detached? Is it possible to detatch and still be empathetic because people associate detachment with being stone cold

2. Are you a happy well balanced person?
   I’m someone who is very relaxed , calm , balanced. I have a great family and friends and I strive to enjoy live and make the most of it. I’m scared of becoming pessimistic and bitter (again, this isnt my concern but most attending doctors make it seem like you’ll become bitter and sad if you’re a psychiatrist)

3. In med school, I really enjoyed the science of medicine. I loved learning patho physiology and internal medicine. But I’m more interested towards psychiatry (for various reasons) over internal medicine but I do worry that I’ll be missing out on being a general physician. How much of psychiatry is an extension on internal medicine. Is it very heavy on theory or is it logical. This might be a very dense and stupid question but please bear with me.

National mock 121 corrects
Gt 18 - 141/200
Gt 19 - 134/180

Losing hope of <10k
Was consistently in the 130-140 range
Feeling devastated

Got 110
Haven’t crossed 120 every after 2 reads and pyqs + Qs
Which marrow GTs to give now. Gt 6 felt very obscure and random. Feels like I’m wasting time by focusing on bouncer type questions and neglecting the big chunk of PYTs and PYQs.

Hey everyone, wanted to share how i managed to get sober after smoking daily for 4+ years and more than 10 failed attempts.

1. Mindset matters

During my 4 year tenure smoking, there were many times I tried quitting. I told myself that I would quit and I shouldn’t be doing this anymore because I get very lazy, anxious, unproductive and unhealthy when I smoke.
Inspite of telling myself this, somewhere deep down I still wanted to smoke. So I would find a way to. After 1 day or even one evening, I would relapse. The problem was, I didn’t truly want to quit. I told myself that I wanted to quit but deep down I didn’t want to. So first convince yourself to want to quit 100%. No second guesses, no half assed
decisions. Quit entirely.

2. Don’t try to wean it off

I used to tell myself that I would smoke on alternate days or once a week and then come to a complete stop. Surprise surprise, that never worked. Go cold turkey. Everytime I would try to wean it off, I would keep it up for about 4-5 days and as soon as I smoked, I would want to do it again. I would sit there high and think about ways to smoke the next day. That would make me go back onto the habit of daily smoking.

3.REMOVE ALL WEED FROM YOUR HOUSE. (MOST IMPORTANT)

If you actually want to quit. Take it all out, the weed, the bong, the paper, the pipe. Everything. You shouldn’t have access to any of it. This was what truly made a difference for me. One day when my stash got over, I decided to throw away everything. My lighter included. No excuses. Make it inaccessible. Everytime I walked past a dispensary, I was tempted. But I told myself that I would come back later and buy it if I wanted to. But I didn’t. It was just something I’d tell myself to walk away. Removing all traces of weed was what made me stick to the resolution. Its hard but rip the bandaid.

4. SOCIAL CIRCLE

For many of us, weed is a form of socialisation. This is what made quitting very hard. I spent 4 years hanging out with my friends after work and all we did was smoke, eat and laugh. It was great fun. This is what made quitting hard. Because I knew that I can’t sit in a room where others are smoking. Not sitting in the room meant I couldn’t hang out with my friends the way I used to. Its a hard pill to swallow but its okay. It felt terrible when I thought about it initially. But once I actually took the decision, Life changed. The way I hung out with my friends changed. Yes I dont meet them as often. We found ways to make it work, they usually smoke at a friends place and head to taco bell. I meet them at taco bell directly so I can hang out with them but I’ve removed the smoking trigger. Honestly it’s not as fun to hang out with 5 stoned people being the only sober one. So I did reduce my hanging out frequency over time and I’m glad I did.

If you want to let go of weed, it also means letting go of the people who smoke it daily (to some extent)

You can’t hang out with people who are smoking when you want to quit (unless you have the self control of a superhuman, in that case I don’t think this post is for you lol). So to be completely honest, you have to prioritise what’s more important. Do you want to quit even at the cost of changing your social life to some extent? Or do you want to continue smoking because it suits your social life? That’s something you have to think about.

I’ve also decided to date people who aren’t daily smokers. Not that daily smokers aren’t good people. Smoking with my ex was great. But it’s definitely not what I want moving forward. I’m making conscious decisions like this which keep me from falling back into old patterns.

5. WHAT TO DO WITH THE FREE TIME?

Once you smoke weed for an extended period of time and then stop, you realise how much of your life just went by in a blur and you did nothing for the most part except random brain rot activities.

I have a very intense job and I used to smoke just before dinner as a way to relax. And I justified it by saying that I deserve to chill after working so much.

But when I stopped, I started watching movies with concentration and without having to scroll Instagram while watching the movie.

Exercise - I used to hate working out. Never did it in my 27 years of existence. But I wanted those endorphins. I tried real hard over the last 6 months to cultivate the habit. But smoking made me lazy and I wasn’t regular to the gym. Even when i did go, it wasn’t fun. It was pretty boring. After I stop smoking, I was more disciplined with things in my life (and exercise). I got my ass up and went to the gym 3x a week. After about 1.5 months of regular gym, I realised that it actually feels great on my mind. Almost like a mild high. Got my hooked. Finally understand what the hype is about.

6. The power of consistency and discipline - Pick an activity and do it consistently.
Weed made us happy but it took away happiness by making us lazy and unproductive.

Chronic weed use made me lose discipline. I wasn’t consistent with literally anything. I couldn’t keep up with something as small as journaling for 5 mins every night.

Weed makes you lazy and unmotivated.
Once you quit, pick up one activity and keep up with it everyday. Start with something very small. Once you do it everyday and it becomes a habit, you feel good. It makes you realise that you did something that you could never do on weed. That’s a great feeling.

Once you start being disciplined in life, whatever it might be, A hobby, journaling, exercise etc, you realise that weed was actually counterproductive. It made you happy but it also took away a lot of happiness. Being consistent and productive is something humans have evolved to enjoy.

Evolutionarily, discipline is what made us survive as a species. We focused consistently to hunt and gather for survival. We had to stay disciplined to build tools consistently (you get my point). So we’ve evolved to feel good when we do something productive. That’s how we have survived for so long. That’s how natural selection has worked in our favour. Weed takes that ability away. So do something productive, build habits, you wouldn’t want to go back to smoking, scrolling and bed rotting.

7. Mental hygiene

When I smoked, either my mind went fully silent or I would have 10,000 thoughts at the same time. By the time I finished one thought, I’d have 10 other thoughts. After I stopped, I realised the importance of mental hygiene.

It’s very important to be able to have a calm composed mind. To be able to watch a movie without getting distracted or read a book is a big task. Now I spend my free time cultivating habits which I wasn’t able to on weed. I love how I don’t feel eternally hungry. I like that I can do less. I don’t feel the need to scroll Instagram, watch a movie, text a friend and pet my dog at the same time.

I do have more insights but I’m not too sure if people want to read a long ass boring post. But if this helps, I would be happy to share what I did the first couple of weeks to not relapse and stay sober!

I recently realized that a family member I grew up with (same age as me) may have been emotionally manipulative for years, and I genuinely don’t know if I’m seeing things clearly or overthinking it. The pattern is usually: she says hurtful/passive aggressive/comparative things (sometimes subtle, sometimes direct), I get triggered and defensive, and then suddenly the entire focus becomes how “dramatic,” “difficult,” “sensitive,” or argumentative I am. I’ve spent years believing maybe I was equally at fault because I did react emotionally, and I’m someone who tries hard to self reflect and see both sides of situations. But recently I started noticing that I mentally prepare before seeing her, overmonitor my words around her, feel relieved when interactions end, and become unlike myself around her. What confuses me is that in almost every other relationship in my life (friends, partner, etc.), people describe me as emotionally mature, grounded, and kind. Has anyone else experienced a dynamic where you only later realized the defensiveness/reactivity may have been a response to the environment rather than proof that you were “the problem”?

Need help, I’m so angry and confused (because she is a very close family member).