The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
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Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
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Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.
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Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
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Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
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My “medical cannabis” prescription was approved. I’m not a huge stoner but I don’t like feeling like a criminal and, while the penalties for possession in the UK are very low (as far as I understand it you just get a warning and the cops confiscate it) I think it’s embarrassing to buy drugs like a sixteen year old when you’re approaching thirty. I also want to avoid smoking if I can avoid it but the vapes available on the UK illicit market are pretty much all dangerous synthetic cannabinoids where you have no idea what’s in them; the only way to get safe vape oil is legally.
The process was very straightforward. You have to have tried treatment for whatever condition (anxiety, ADHD, back pain, Long Covid, whatever) before, so I said I needed it for ADHD because the medication had not satisfactorily resolved my symptoms. This was indeed true. They checked my medical history (I think this is to detect schizophrenics who can’t have it), had one consultation and then approved it.
Interestingly, while my ADHD diagnosis consultation to get lisdexamfetamine cost £900 or something like it and took an hour, the medical weed one only cost £200 and took like ten minutes. After this you order what you want from an online store and it gets delivered to your house.
One interesting thing I’ve found is how few people in Britain even know that legal weed is a thing here at all. On the subreddit it’s common to see stories of police raiding people’s houses or even of people being fired before those involved are informed of the person’s prescription. It’s been legal since 2018 but is only available privately, not on the NHS.
I think weed is particularly dangerous for young people because it kills motivation. That said, as a gainfully employed adult, I find it strictly preferable to alcohol for most occasions because of the lack of hangover and lack of calories. Booze is more fun, almost always, but I’ve been more alert, have found waking up easier and have done more in the morning since replacing drinking at dinner with it (on perhaps 4/7 nights a week).
Huh. I didn't know this either..
To be fair, I never had any issues grabbing some, given how little the cops gave a shit and how unabashedly I've seen people smoke it in popular public spaces in London.
Guess I can try that if I really want to, but I'm not the biggest fan of the devil's lettuce though I did discover that CBD vapes, which are not supposed to be psychoactive, still get you high if you do enough of it.* I don't know why, but I suspect that even the small amount of THC they contain adds up when you're really puffing.
Well, as a psych trainee, I expect I'd have even fewer issues grabbing a hold of some, though the UK doesn't seem to have the same degree of medical fraternity or sense of professional courtesy that compels most doctors here to either waive or discount their fees for another doctor.
*However, CBD vapes taste awful.
UK doctors are banned or at least very strongly discouraged from writing prescriptions for family members iirc, something unusual even in many other Western countries.
It's not banned, but it's something that's frowned upon by the GMC, I can't really speak as to the degree of enforcement, but my impression is that they usually don't cause a ruckus unless you hand them narcotics or benzos and so on.
I think it's retarded myself, in India everyone accepts one of the perks of being a doctor (or having one in the family), is the massive benefit it gives you someone that is on call for you, invested in your welfare, and willing to take your issues even more seriously than is the norm. I have never seen it cause any conflict of interest or other things the GMC wrings their hands about. Thankfully I don't have all that much in the way of very close family left in the UK, so it's largely moot.
But UK doctors are only now pushing back against how hard they've been cucked, maybe they'll get around to this eventually. After all, I doubt lawyers get in trouble for representing family in court do they? (Never checked)
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