self_made_human
Kai su, teknon?
I'm a transhumanist doctor. In a better world, I wouldn't need to add that as a qualifier to plain old "doctor". It would be taken as granted for someone in the profession of saving lives.
At any rate, I intend to live forever or die trying. See you at Heat Death!
User ID: 454
self_made_human
Kai su, teknon?
21hr ago
Huh. Is this one of those? Because it doesn't seem that way to me, except when I'm explicitly looking at filtered ones. Good point, maybe I'll raise it with Zorba. Either way, it's a perfectly inoffensive comment, so I'll take it as a prompt to clear the queue while the others are sleeping.
self_made_human
Kai su, teknon?
5d ago
Well, I guess the reduction in salt intake is good for my BP.
How'd it go again "Great minds think alike, and fools seldom differ?".
I don't really care, if people get boob jobs, dye their hair blonde or try to do anything else that improves their lot in life.
"Oh woe is me, you shouldn't put your kid through college, and shouldn't ask for your wife to have at least an undergrad degree, don't you know it's just setting up said degree being mandatory for your kids?"
"Oh you shouldn't expect your kids to study hard in school, don't you know it's a zero sum competition, yada yada?"
Things don't work that way. As long as you don't major in underwater basket weaving, or worse, the arts, college is usually a very net positive return on investment.
So, being better versed in the benefits of height and the risks of HGH, I consider it a net benefit in expectation. I expect to know better in that regard than you do, but it's no skin off my back if you object.
For me, it's the same with puberty blockers and the trans issues; we've only got the long-term usage history for them on kids with medical conditions like premature puberty, so jumping from that to "it's perfectly harmless and reversible and will have no effects" when you're talking about blocking normal puberty and development is disingenuous, to say the least. We don't know yet what the effect on normal puberty children is, and we won't until we get the long-term information from the kids being used as guinea pigs right now.
After all, you are woefully confused if you think HGH, given in barely supraphysiological doses over years, is remotely comparable to dosing up to the gills with hormones mainly produced by the other sex. We know the safety of the former, and as I've mentioned, look at Lionel Messi, who would have been a 5'2" or thereabouts bitter could have been if his doctors weren't more considerate. I know what I'm signing them up for.
I'll shill my own hard scifi novel Ex Nihilo, Nihil Supernum
I assure you it has juicy space combat, and is about as hard scifi as I can write with my theoretical degree in physics. Even my lack of interest in calculating orbital transfers is explained by the fact that in this post-abortive singularity setting, we've got some serious torch ships, so brachistochrone orbits it is baby.
self_made_human
Kai su, teknon?
1d ago
I find the accent endearing, and I understand them well enough, though some scotch makes it even better.
You seem to be good at spotting the dysfunctional ones, and they get extremely dysfunctional
I suppose this is a plus, given that I'm working as a psych trainee there for the next 3 years. It would kinda suck for me to end up somewhere where everyone is sane, though I'd be very happy for them lol.
What concerns me is that a lot of these women hide their issues from a shrink, and only open up to a flirtatious yet good at getting people to talk guy like me. For example, the law student, and another lawyer (we were old acquaintances before running into each other on Bumble, and now I'm an unpaid relationship counselor for her too), disclose maybe 5% of what the fuck is going on to their psychiatrists and therapists.
Now, I'd call myself perceptive, but I'm not a mind reader, so I'm groaning at the notion of teasing these things out from actual patients, especially since flirting with them is off the cards.
Also, Highland Scots drive like particularly suicidal third worlders, so you'll be well-prepared for them
Understandable. If you run into someone on a narrow country lane, there can only be one (someone has to drive in reverse).
self_made_human
Kai su, teknon?
1d ago
Don't stick your dick in crazy, especially not when they can stick theirs back in you.
Way ahead of you fam, but I definitely need that luck.
self_made_human
Kai su, teknon?
1d ago
Not my circus, and I medically discharged her as unfit for dating after that episode, so not my monkey either. I just happen to keep in touch.
I did feel bad for her, so at least I did the gentlemanly thing of consoling her, getting her something to drink and holding her in a nearby park while she cried her heart out. I did my best not to let the date get too awkward while handing her more tissues as she sniffled away. Even consoled her later, though I think she understood that I wasn't in a position to deal with that, given that I had a painful breakup recently myself (not that I ever let it break me down so utterly, I just drink another shot of whiskey, healthy coping mechanisms you see).
She's seeing a therapist herself, though I imagine that gets a bit awkward. But she'll get over it.
Biological experiments? Hardly. It's not like there's a One True Guide To Parenting, so everyone has to figure it out as they go. It's no bigger a deal than getting them glasses, feeding them plenty of leafy greens and so on. It just sounds unusual and strange to you, but you're not a decoupler.
I have their best interests at heart. I wouldn't do anything to them I didn't want done to me.
I wish I could say that every parent wants the best for their kids, but in my case, it's true as far as I can tell.
Blonde women are rated hotter. Hence so many fake blondes. Women with bigger breasts are more attractive, hence boobjobs. Taller guys are the same, and well, at least their height won't be "fake". So it goes for athletics, education and everything else a parent thinks is optimal for their child.
I don't expect my kids will work for a living. I don't expect anyone will. But to the extent that I'm not nearly 100% confident in that hypothesis, well, it's my job as their future dad to do everything I can for them.
self_made_human
Kai su, teknon?
5hr ago
Haha, don't worry, I'm not quite ready to give up on dating yet, be it online or in person. The six women (or 5 and a "woman") I described are just the worst of the lot, though the fashion designer and psychologist seem to me like decent people going through a bad time.
My aunt, PBUH, is trying to look for single med students and doctors, or at least those were the ones she laid on the table when nobody asked. I'd hope that acts as a reasonable filter for IQ or competence. My own IQ, well it's respectable, and my competence has improved by leaps and bounds, yet I'd certainly appreciate a girl who has her shit together better in comparison, though I'm certainly much better than I used to be in that regard. Turns out that a great deal of my depression was from a sense of frustration that my career wasn't going anywhere, and all I had to look forward to was beating my head against the wall of more exams. Fortunately, said wall has crumbled before my cranium did, and I'm feeling much better. Certainly to the degree I'm going around trying to (misguidedly) help people with their issues.
self_made_human
Kai su, teknon?
5hr ago
I definitely have tendencies in that direction, but you have to stretch to get to 5/9
So you have borderline Borderline Personality Disorder?
Look, it's not personal, I'm not one to blame people for their mental disorders or personality problems. Mainly because it doesn't help, or make a difference. But trust me and my far more senior colleague @Throwaway05 that people with BPD can be dangerous. The severity of the symptoms can vary greatly, but even with my proclivities towards waltzing into people's lives with my sleeves rolled up and eager to help, that would be a moth heading right for a naked flame.
When they're good, they're great. When they're not, well, the risk of them ruining your life is frankly unacceptable, and one of them already had a good crack at that from a full degree of separation, didn't even get the crazy good sex bit as compensation.
The more flagrant cases have my profound pity, as do people with certain other mental issues, like my buddy with schizophrenia (as I mentioned elsewhere, it was him who was dating the chick, and I've already mentioned how I had to save him from a suicide attempt not that long ago). I'm more than happy to see people like that in a consultation room, but not in my personal life.
Worst part is that, as far as I'm aware, medical and psychological intervention doesn't make much of a difference. It's largely just the way they are, for factors out of their and my control. All I can do from my end, especially when looking for dates and not patients, is keep them several miles away.
self_made_human
Kai su, teknon?
1d ago
Never, ever, EVER, sleep with someone you can diagnose with BPD easily. You're welcome. cries
Duly noted, good sir, but in my particular case I didn't have to even sleep with them for one to take a very good shot at ruining my life. That one was the ex of my own best friend at the time (and I ended up catching his schizophrenia in med school myself).
Excuse me what the fuck with that head bleed.
23 yo M med student, final year. No comorbidities is a mild exaggeration, since he had borderline hypertension. His dad was a captain in the Merchant Marine, out at sea when this all went down, but just a week prior, had gotten his son a full checkup, including a then highly unnecessary NCCT brain. All squeaky clean.
Kid was slightly obese, we had some issues getting a line in the EJ.
Anyway, he was in between his written exams and OSCEs, when he was at home with his mom and developed a splitting headache. Got taken to a GP, who told him not to think so much about exams or women, and to sleep it off with a paracetamol.
Face started drooping shortly after, was brought to the ER convulsing, immediately sedated and intubated, rolled into the ICU, then SICU, bleed considered too small for neurosurgery at the time.
I counseled his family, or rather his mom, his friends, most of them from non-medical backgrounds barring the girl, who wouldn't know what a pontine hemorrhage was if it hit her in the head
The senior consultant, the rest of the hangers on, none of them could convince his mom who was having a fully justified meltdown to go home. She wanted to spend the entire night shivering on a bench (no separate accomodations for the family of an ICU patient). I spent about two hours coaxing, cajoling, arguing, bribing and finally convincing the poor lady to go home after everyone else failed.
The dude was actually improving for the first week, with spontaneous eye opening, some degree of following of commands. Then he had said rebleed, shunt placement didn't help, his GCS dropped to 2T, I got chewed out by a neurosurgeon for asking if he was brain dead, and said brain death was informally relayed two days later, and formally declared a week later when his dad was airlifted off Taiwan and brought to say goodbye.
Funnily enough, no AVM found on multiple kinds of imaging, including an MR angiogram. No kidney disease either. As far as anyone could tell, it was just bad luck. And as far as I can tell, the stereotypes about neurosurgeon ego are entirely justified and universal.
Social media autism
Autism really is my best guess. Zero interpersonal skills, extremely blunt, genuinely curious about how men think about women and what they consider as red flags or worthy of avoidance, with absolutely no insight into her own behavior. The last bit isn't genuinely bad, just an example of how she really seemed clueless. Sure, she could definitely have asked someone far worse at answering that question, but if you need to ask. Shame Aspergers has been deprecated, it was a useful one. Plus she had the same, nigh inevitable, descent into undifferentiated insanity I've seen in every gyno resident, barring the men, who seem to be rather sane. Is she actually mentally ill? I have no idea, but she was off.
Tell them Tylenol is the absolutely worst way to die and to use Melatonin instead.
Absolutely genius. She's fucked up her sleep cycle enough as is, I can pass it off as a dangerous, controlled sleeping med.
self_made_human
Kai su, teknon?
1d ago
Don't worry, I could tell you were (mostly) joking, heh.
Unfortunately, the fact that the social status and respect for doctors has been grossly devalued in the UK compared to their peers in both India and the US isn't a joke. Let's not even talk about NHS wages.
On online dating in general, the worst at everything are universally men, and more obviously so as well. My point is rather that it seems like "medium-value" guys, while having less matches overall, seem to have a better ratio since mostly serious, normal woman show interest in them. "High-value" guys attract a lot of attention, which will disproportionally be crazy attention. That girls fall in love from like meeting you twice lends credence to this, imo
Possibly, though the only people who really talk the most about online dating are those men for whom it goes very poorly, or very well (I reserve judgement on my situation). I'm certainly not filtering as aggressively for red flags as I could be, given that I sincerely hope my sins and little self_made_humans will be left behind here. That reminds me, I should get my criminal background check at the local police station done with ASAP, before one of the unfixable ones does something in which I could be remotely implicated.
There's likely a large silent majority of decent dudes matching with women who are just their type, after a decent amount of effort.
Sadly it does seem I'm rather lovable, the two steady relationships that ate up the last 7.5 years of my life were rather whirlwind. But I mostly blame the utter lack of common sense and decorum in the Average Indian Male, I've seen even the ones hotter and richer than me get rejected because they almost literally open up with "hey bby wan sum fuk?".
I expect more competition abroad, but I've handled tougher challenges. Hopefully I trick some poor woman I want to fall for me into a long term relationship, my ex was close but no cigar in the end.
I've never used, nor intend to ever use, dating apps myself.
This decision has my full throated approval. Sadly, I'm both very busy right now and will be in the NHS, and so I had little to lose. I'm sure I can meet people in person, through friends of friends and the like, haunt the local pubs and get liver cirrhosis. The good stuff.
On therapies, I've gotten that impression more than once; Though it also seems to be the reason why some people seem to get stuck in therapy perpetually.
Ideally, therapy should be a temporary recourse, with a strict time limit in mind, after which a good therapist will flat out tell you it's not working and that you need to try someone or something else. But my experience so far suggests that some people do need it nigh indefinitely, sadly.
self_made_human
Kai su, teknon?
1d ago
I tried to come up with a cogent counterargument and find I'm coming up short.
Look, they weren't all that bad. The psychologist will presumably recover, once she stops screwing her ex. The fashion designer, well, she's doing better. There were definitely better dates, plenty, though I can't really commit with the whole leaving the country thing ahead. But I make sure they know that, I would despise myself for leading someone on.
There are certainly several more who I can pass off as sane, but there's not much to say about them, barring some flirting and early morning goodbyes. It's the crazies, the damaged ones I remember the most, mostly because they had me feverishly leafing through my textbooks to figure out if I was the one going insane.
Here's hoping that Scottish girls are notably less psychotic on average, but I'll be honest, it feels nice to help people who desperately need it, though as you can tell, even I have my boundaries and soon enough, a justified fear of losing my license, so said boundaries only get tighter. At the very least I know that I am very good at the whole counseling and talking people into doing what's good for them thing, even if I can't prescribe more than SSRIs and benzos (and wouldn't want to, I send them to more qualified psychiatrists most of the time). At worst, I know my voice can lull them to sleep, which is worth something I guess. I'm not kidding when I said one of them was actively suicidal and about to do something awful, but thankfully it seemed to be more of a single isolated episode on a background of severe depression, so yeah, probably saved her.
Whereas the thought of an arranged marriage just makes me depressed. I can't always fix them, but I'm happy to let them make me worse.
self_made_human
Kai su, teknon?
1d ago
I mean, I don't really blame her, if I lost my watch on her nightstand, it was because I was hungover and leaving at 5 am to catch some sleep before I had a shift that morning. I'm more upset by the multiple massive hickeys she left me, in highly visible places. Had to collar up for a while. Had a lovely old lady and her husband giggling like teenswhen I spent a good while both reviewing her for her diabetes and discussing the career of her son, an Indian doctor who had done his psych degree in the UK and fucked off to Singapore, married a Chinese GP, and is living happily ever after. It turned out that I had unbuttoned my collar late at night in the heat, and forgotten about it. Cue a very good poker face while I took her history and pretended to have no clue what they were chuckling about. Coincidentally, that was the night I found out that I did match into psych, I swung by to say hi in the morning and had to profusely apologize for not bring her sweets as is tradition (not the best idea for an uncontrolled diabetic). A coincidence, but a nice one. The watch and hickeys were a small price to pay.
To be fair to the med student, I might have left it at a hotel after a night out with another doctor, I only wear watches on special occasions. She just happened to have a spare apartment lying around, whereas mine is used as a storehouse for several tons of physical copies of medical records. An abominable place, hers, with three live cockroaches feasting off the corpses of their countless deceased brethren, awaiting Springtime when she comes back from her modestly distant med school on weekends to catch up with friends and fuck the odd dude or two, with the leftover takeout and open alcohol bottles sufficient sustenance to last them till next time. Eh, she was very hot, and my stint in a government hospital has made me rather tolerant of roaches.
self_made_human
Kai su, teknon?
2d ago
Bangalore traffic is notorious even for Indians. Like, you can't pay me enough to drive there. Even the largest motorways drive at the pace of an arthritic snail (xe/xer only has the one foot anyway).
Even more aggravating is that the auto-rickshaws literally charge more than an Uber for equivalent distances, the public transport is absolutely fucked.
self_made_human
Kai su, teknon?
2d ago
Oh there are laws, this isn't Mombasa, though the primary concern for those keeping them is the stiff bribes the police demand if they catch you.
It's more that things like proper lane keeping, courteous passing, sensible pedestrian traffic and the like are non-existent. So at the very least my reflexes and my resting heart rate will remain honed. I intend to drive here only long enough to get accustomed to the rote actions of driving while following traffic laws as they nominally exist. Not long enough to develop bad habits like fishing for my wallet when the cops pull me over, or joining in the demolition derby.
self_made_human
Kai su, teknon?
2d ago
And here I am, stuck in the middle.
Honestly, it's a miracle more people don't die, but apparently you can get used to anything. Not that I want to get used to this, it seems to give everyone a terminal case of road rage.
self_made_human
Kai su, teknon?
3d ago
Hold down or slide on the notification to go to the notification controls for that app. There, you should ideally have an itemized list of notification categories and you can switch them or just disable all of them for that app.
You can look for the app in the notification manager of the android settings too.
self_made_human
Kai su, teknon?
5d ago
Hmm.. I do kinda agree with you.
I just spent a while speaking to a suicide survivor. Well, he's hardly out of the woods yet, given that he was in the ICU. But he wasn't my patient in the first place, and I might not be done with psych training, but by god I was the best one I know available at that time, and I walked the dude through a very bad place. And then made sure the cops didn't make things worse, while probably doing better than the poor bastard actually responsible for that particular HDU.
And I talked a suicidal girl I met on a dating app out of it, back to back.
Maybe I do like psychiatry because I see so many psychiatrists doing a fucking terrible job, and I'm confident I can do better. I actually probably can, but perhaps that's only true in India where standards are lower. But I'm heading abroad to learn my shit.
And you're absolutely correct that I wrote my novel because I was pissed at perceived inadequacies and flaws in otherwise decent ones, and thought I could do better.
So, going back to whether adderall causes anxiety--I'm not sure. To me, the anxiety is already there, and adderall just helps me channel it.
I've heard of much worse. If it's not obviously making you anxious, then it's likely a better drug than methylphenidate/Ritalin. And when Scott did a survey on the topic, users ranked it higher, though it's been a long time and I can't remember what the post was.
REDACTED: Just no. REDACTED: antagonistic
Whoever reported this, I'm not sure what you want the mods to do about someone's severe depression and self loathing. Like sure, I'm a psych trainee, but in my remit as a moderator, what the hell are we supposed to do? Warn someone for being mad at themselves? Ban them for uncharitable comments and antagonism towards their own person? Bruh. This isn't Reddit, we don't have a bot directing people to a suicide helpline number, for all the dubious good that does.
To you, well, you might be all of the above but you're far from a single issue posting Eeyore-maxxer like Skookum, so I'm just pointing out my exasperation at people who think this is report worthy.
This one caught a couple reports for "Boo outgroup", but while I think there's slight consensus building and some of the former, I don't see anything worth warning you for.
I only write this mod hat on to point out that while your comment is hardly ideal, a polite reminder and not a formal warning will hopefully suffice.
Edit: I'm afraid I didn't see that this was a top level post in the main thread. We expect more effort and less heat in that context, so consider this a warning to avoid this in the future.
self_made_human
Kai su, teknon?
2d ago
In India, and I didn't expect the trial by fire would be quite so literal, with how abominably hot it is. It's been consistently in the middle 40s in Celsius, and it's only April.
Trust me, you have no idea the depths of depravity traffic can stoop to, I'm modestly grateful that I'll only be here long enough to become semi-competent at the whole not running people over thing, and thus not have the worst habits ingrained in me. If I can navigate a busy road here and not die on the highways, I'll consider the UK to be a paid vacation.
Whether I'll be a menace to the other people on the streets? Too early to tell, but at least I know they're not that keen on sending me to the ER, my ex works there.
self_made_human
Kai su, teknon?
3d ago
My condolences. It sucks to meet someone you really like, and then have circumstances drag you, or them, away.
I find myself in much the same position as she does, in that I'm about to uproot myself from all I've known, loved and hated and fuck moving states, I'm moving States.
That bodes poorly for things with the several really nice women I've encountered while running Bumble and Hinge's unpaid psychiatry services, some of whom I genuinely wouldn't mind getting serious with, were that an option. (The long list of absolute crazies deserve their own post).
But hey, I made it clear I'm here for a good time, not a long one, and make it a point to remind them not to get too close because soon enough I'll be gone; and I doubt that 3 months is nearly enough time for someone else to also decide to drop everything and move for someone they met on a few dates.
But in your cases, all you should feel is mild regret. You didn't do anything wrong, nor did she, and you'll find someone not inclined to wander away sooner or later.
self_made_human
Kai su, teknon?
1d ago
Eh, while Indians are hardly at the top of the totem pole, I hardly do badly (trivia, the bottom of the pole is allegedly more prestigious).
Sure, the salary sucks, and NHS doctors are henpecked and taken for granted by a populace used to not paying for showing up at the ER with sniffles.
But I do fine. If you think the girls on dating apps are crazy, wait till you see the kind of screenshots I've been sent about the guys. The very existence of Indians as Model Minorities and often the highest earners by ethnicity is proof that group differences can be overcome by an individual. I'm not the average Indian, or even the average British Indian.
On a more serious note, I've noticed that men who are having decent success (in terms of lots of matches) on dating apps seem to run into a lot of crazies, and it's unsurprising that psych med students have the worst ratio of all. Having "doctor/psych trainee" in your dating app bio kind of screams "do therapy for free, but you can tip me with sex". Neurotypical women also don't really want to date, they want to have a stable relationship, so they spend as little time as possible on these apps, so you're already oversampling from a biased sample.
When I made my account, post breakup, I had genuinely lost hope I'd match (into psych) at all. I was looking for something more serious, but at least half the nutters came from that short period. At that point, it was just "doctor at [reputable hospital]". And I expected to be here for significantly longer, losing my mind in other ways from the terror of bullshit exams. I was advertising a stable relationship, for the little good that did.
At any rate, I do do therapy for free, and find it an enjoyable reprieve from my own problems, including on this very board, though sadly nobody has offered to pay me back with sex quite yet. Upvotes and sincere praise are enough really. But yeah, people dating online are being sampled from the kind of people who are less likely to make it offline, even if it's become normalized and the predominant way people date. Even more so in the West, so the odds of running into the utterly deranged should be lower from a more representative sampling.
So far, I remain convinced that the primary reason therapy, in all its myriad forms, beats placebo, even for the most retarded forms, is because it's a decent substitute for having a nonjudgemental and perceptive friend, the kind who'll keep your secrets to themselves. I'm pretty good at that, even for women I sincerely would not approach without a syringe loaded full of haloperidol or lorazepam. Instead, I just vent to online strangers with more identifiable information redacted.
Hmm.. I assume my experience here is markedly different primarily because the general level of awareness surrounding mental health in general, and BPD in particular, is so poor that anyone who still manages to get the label is absolutely fucking insane.
And of course, there are plenty of people who keep things under control or are barely worth the diagnosis. And it's the flagrant cases who get signal boosted. Would we know Freddie De Boer was schizo, or Scott had OCD, if they didn't tell us?
That's about as reassuring as the same effect in violent criminals, who do age out of their tendencies. I'd rather not have to wait that long, so I hear BPD, I'm fucking out, at least romantically.
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