Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.
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This isn't fun, more wellness, but I am going to abuse the immense power invested in me by virtue of being an admin and post here anyway.
How do I become more independent?
I speak in a very general sense. For an Indian kid, your life is set out on rails by your parents till high school, at which point your intelligence and diligence will determine what career you land, your college further constraining your options, until you end up in a life that proceeds with getting promoted, married, kids, and then dead.
But I am a homebody. It reflects on how deeply I hate the circumstances of my life that I am willing to throw so much away to leave it all behind. My parents, who I couldn't ask more of (other than having gotten my ADHD treated when I had begged them to), my dogs, my comfortable house and ailing grandpa, with whom every year apart is a non-negligible chance I'll never see him again.
But I lack drive. Curiosity? Yes. Intelligence? A quite decent level of it, if not world shattering. But so far my life has been railroaded along, with my only real choices being to either study hard or not, at least till the end of med school. I did take charge once, brushed myself into shape, proved, both to the GMC and to myself that I am a competent doctor. Or at least I did that as the first of many more times to come.
And now I feel adrfit. I can't go the country I wish to dwell in more than my own, that forms the earliest childhood memories of mine (unless I join the other illegal immigrants headed to El Salvador), I am forced to confront a mediocre life in a country that is in visible decline, hoping it beats the comforts of home (and the horrors of postgraduate training here).
I see people doing things out of sheer tenacity and drive, whereas I've mostly done things because I had to, or because I find the default path unbearable.
I don't want to live alone. It seems overwhelming. I don't want a job that saps me of all my energy and interest in doing anything else, let alone doing that while giving yet more exams.
I feel, for the lack of a better word, broken. I was moderately depressed, a feeling kept at bay through overwork and stimulant consumption in the hopes I'd achieve a brighter future, but they're dimming the lights as I speak. Shutting doors ahead of me as soon as I stepped through the ones behind.
If you think the stimulants help with that? A little, I guess. I wouldn't have made it through med school or all the exams since without them. But it doesn't solve the problem I see of being entirely unmoored, and I am not quite ready to resign myself to this life. Ritalin does not make what I've spoken of seem any less daunting. And the anti-depressants didn't work in the first place, and I tried a bunch of them.
I want the energy to explore alternatives. I want a job that pays well and treats me like I'm a skilled professional. I want to run a house without feeling overwhelmed and letting it go to rot. I want to be a father, and a good one, an even better one than my dad was to me, because he sacrificed his life outside medicine to give me the option of choice later.
If anyone has any advice, please share. My tether, while not quite fraying, gets ever tauter. I want executive function god fucking dammit, and nothing has helped. I just want something to look forward to, a route to a world where I can be, if not happy, content.
My suggestion? Choose violence.
There’s almost nothing more empowering than learning how to turn your body into a weapon, pick a martial art and start learning it, join a training gym and get good enough to spar on a regular basis. Nothing fancy, I recommend good old western boxing to start.
“b-but MaximumCuddles, I’m a lover not a fighter / I’m gentle at heart / I don’t like fighting / blah blah blah”
Good news! If you’re an adult man*, you’re almost certainly wrong about yourself. You come from a long line of sex-havers of which some portion had to resort, sometimes multiple times, to extreme violence to live long enough to bust a nut. It’s quite literally in your blood.
So, you want to feel empowered? You can quite directly empower yourself physically, with time and luck the mind will likely follow.
You want to feel driven? Avoidance of pain and the pleasures of adrenaline, physical power and mastery are incredible motivators. It’s very easy to motivate yourself not to get punched in the face.
It’s important to remember that you are, in fact, still a wild animal and that all the guardrails you perceive aren’t actually real. And, more importantly that your body means something, it’s just through the modern way of life that most people have forgotten why they have a body at all. Nothing brings it back into clear focus like violent physical struggle.
I saw somewhere else a suggestion of travel while slumming to drum up that feeling of total freedom, and while it’s not a bad idea, the discipline and pleasure of building a physical skill that strengthens your body far outstrips the quintessential “backpacking through Europe to like, find yourself man”.
That guy who hung around here who is probably dead in the Alaskan wilderness wasn’t wrong, he was dead right about needing physical struggle to have a full life and get laid on the regular. He just went way to far, it’s pretty easy to toughen yourself up, you just need regular access to mock battle with real, but mild consequences.
So what are you waiting for? Chop chop! Blood for the blood god!
*(If you’re adult woman, also good news, you’re probably wrong about yourself as well. It’s just not likely as cut and dried.)
Ps- I say this as someone who has fully diagnosed ADHD out the ass and dropped the stimmies a long time ago, and my life is pretty good! So I feel like we have an overlap of experience.
I have an intuitive sense that this isn't true - that doing BJJ won't make him work harder at being a doctor. Going through a list of people I know and whether or not they do combat sports, those that do combat sports don't seem to be much more 'agentic', 'driven', or 'accomplished' in other areas of life. Obviously there are a bunch of directions the causation could go in and selection effects or confounders, but still.
Well, if you define the success state of simply being a better doctor than this won’t help directly.
But it sounds from the OP that they are suffering from more general spiritual/psychological malaise, and I know from personal experience that strong & consistent physical training in pursuit of a series of difficult yet achievable goals does wonders to keep the mind sharp and the darkness at bay.
Really the point is that I’ve found the greatest counterbalance to depression is feeling goal oriented and physically empowered, and learning and practicing an aggressive combat sport is just one of the most extreme yet mundane examples of that.
Plus with ADHD brain, the sedentary modern world is a double enemy as we’re akin to hunters in a world made for farmers.
A physical discipline that requires full mind-body activation for extended periods of time acts as a powerful tonic to lift the spirits. Doesn’t have to be fighting, it’s just the thing that is the most direct path from A to B.
Downhill skiing, mountain biking, trail running, Olympic wrestling, judo, mountain climbing, are all activities that could possibly scratch the same itch.
There’s a reason it’s a known archetype for high powered businessmen or other such high achievers under a ton of stress to lean into stuff like this (or the yin to the yang, meditation.) It works and really takes the edge off.
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I do technically have a yellow belt in Karate, so I'm something of a martial artist myself 🙏
(What a fucking meme martial art, I don't understand why it was so hyped up in the 90s and early 2000s, even in India)
Then again, I haven't thrown a punch in anger in about 10 years, I'm lucky enough to be a Big Guy (for you, and my BMI, though that has indeed has dropped from stress and bad life decisions), so I haven't needed to.
You know, while not quite the same thing as what you suggested, one of the many reasons I wanted to go to the US was because of gun ownership. As in, let's fucking go, I fucking love guns, let me pimp out an AR-15 please please please. I want a service length silencer that both resembles and exceeds my chode, I want an LPVO with all the cool dials, an EO-Tech if I'm rich, a Holosun if I'm broke, tactical lasers with all the fun pressure pads. NVGs so my 10 year old self can feel good about his life, the list goes on
Punching people in the face is a bit old fashioned for my taste, I'd rather shoot them. All a LARP, of course, I'd very much rather not have to shoot someone unless I absolutely have to (and I'm sure you agree with the same in your hobby). But yes, I do agree with you that I would much rather be a pacifist than harmless, though I would wager I am already not as bad as the latter.
Skulls for the Skull Throne!
Milk for the Khorne Flakes!
Well, I'm sure the neuro surgeons are ticked off that a mere wannabe psychiatrist has anything to say about skulls, but the orthopeds? They're all about the milk baby, let it flow.
If I thought I was an adult woman, there's no "probably" about the there haha. I would disagree that cutting and drying the relevant genitalia would suffice.
Good to hear from someone doing better. I don't think all of my problems arise from just my AHDH, it's likely it, in combination with my depression, that holds me back. I only take my ADHD meds when I need to something as unpleasant as learn medicine, which is a sad necessity for a doctor. But I do get by otherwise.
At any rate, I appreciate the advice! The quality of martial arts educations is crap in India, but I'm sure, if I end up in Britain, there must be something within the limits of acceptability. Or at least lots of bar fights haha.
That has to do with US-Japan relations and immigration laws. Basically Karate movies got some traction in the 70s and a bunch of aikido teachers moved to LA to open schools.
Hollywood has a lot of influence.
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I don't know what the gun laws are in India, but I appreciate your lust for our gun laws. They're pretty cool. That being said, you can own some guns in the UK. I know shotguns are pretty easy to get, and I think you can convince the government to let you have a .22 for target shooting. It's not as bad as a lot of countries that will let you have nothing at all, save for airsoft.
I wish I had some advice for you on your doctor thing. Becoming a doctor is a lot of work and it's extremely hard to justify throwing away so many years after you don't like it/it doesn't get you where you want to go. I would wonder if you could maybe get citizenship in the UK as a doctor for some years and then work on transitioning to something else. Getting citizenship in the US would probably be easier from the UK, as well.
My man, I am the most Patriotic American who is technically not an American.
Just look at some of the things I've written, without a shred of irony:
https://old.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/s/wU84Yxg320
Or if you want the version on the Motte:
https://www.themotte.org/post/565/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/116844?context=8#context
It is indeed easier for a British citizen to become American than and Indian to do directly, but even then it'll take me 6 years to become a Brit, and my ability to become an American citizen is contingent on my ability to find a job that'll hire me.
As I've been moaning about, I cannot legally work as a doctor in the US, or even sit the exams to prove my competency. Not even if I meet the British standards or complete their courses. The problem is at the root. As for switching careers? While I'm not old, I'm approaching 30, certainly wrong side of my 20s. Finding an entirely new career is enormously risky, all the more because I expect every career to start getting the squeeze soon enough.
See, I am an unabashed tacticool milsim LARPer. If it's not a tricked out rifle in 5.56, 7.62x51, or ideally something like 6.8x51, when that's more available, I don't want it. Just a shotgun fit for partridge or a plinker to keep foxes at bay doesn't cut it.
As I told someone else who made a similar suggestion it's like telling someone who is a muscle car fanatic that he should be happy with a Japanese micro car. It's got 4 wheels and takes you from place to place doesn't it? Though I'm sure you understand my objection far better than she ever could.
Yeah, I totally get it. And I like your writeup. I guess I am surprised there exist women in India that hold basically the same views as a progressive American college student. Personally I live in a ban state right now (Illinois's PICA went into effect January 1st) so I'm trying to learn to appreciate the other stuff. No restrictions on (pump) shotguns, bolt actions, SKSes without detachable mags, pistols without threaded barrels or magazine capacity over 15 rounds, etc, etc. I hope you figure something out. I'd help you get here if I could, way better to have someone like you that actually likes the country than the throngs of suburbanites who hate it.
Alternatively, see if you can get into the Czech Republic. I'm sure it has a lot of the same downsides most of Europe has, but at least they share our gun culture.
I appreciate the kind words and well wishes. It does mean a lot to me, that many individuals Americans appreciate my genuine love for their country, and would happily have me there, if it wasn't for minor procedural fuckups and regulations keeping me away.
If this was a Civilization game, America won the Cultural Victory decades back. I hold incredibly American views. So does she, it just happens to be that many Americans hold anti-American views.
What in the absolute fuck. That sound even worse than Cali, and their abominations. I hope it gets repealed, and soon.
Nobody ever suggested that to me, so I'd have to look it up. Gun laws are hardly the only consideration, they'd need to have decent wages and ideally let me work in English. But I appreciate the suggestion and I'll be sure to take a look!
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