To drop out or not

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Sorry to hear that you already feel this way before the trash year ahead that is m3. Do you have loans / debt?

I would say at least do the psych clerkship during m3 to see if you could see yourself doing it as a job.

Also make sure to find solid support measures to help with your anxiety during m3 because this year tends to increase in stress level.

Hang in there 🙂
 
I am so sorry you feel this way . This must be so hard on you .
I don’t have any experience in this , and I am sorry if you have already looked at these, but here are some ideas:
themdjourney.com

8 Jobs After Medical School Without Residency - TheMDJourney

Are you looking for jobs after medical school without residency you can consider taking as a medical career? We've listed plenty of them here so read on!
themdjourney.com themdjourney.com
 
Wait you just started your third year???, how could you have hated medicine if you have not rotated through every specialty... Think about it what describes you? What type of person do you want to be when you are done with all this?? then you can possibly figure out what you wanna do.
 
Hey Jake. I'm an MS 2 riding that same boat with ya. Slowly coming to realize that I'm not too interested in becoming a doctor also, pretty much for the same reasons. I'm super interested in psych, but really only the counseling/guidance side of it. I'm in the process of researching ways I can maybe skip residency or do a simple one and bail after.
You also bring up some great points about how psychiatry treatments are very medicine based and not so much therapeutic at all.
In my opinion, being that you are in your third year, I'd say to just finish the M.D. and look into doing a PhD after. Based on what you mentioned in your post, I think that research is where you wanna be and (to my limited knowledge) I don't think residency is necessary. With that being said, I learned that not doing a residency won't make you board certified and you'll just be chillin with an M.D.
I think that's a question for your advisor at school, about how to get involved with that kinda research and make use of an M.D. degree.
 
I agree with Sleepingdoc.

I also will say this: the art of medicine is still there, especially here. And drugs or not, psych is really about practicing. Practicing to be the best you can possibly be, in order to make that person feel even just a bit more comfortable. You can push pills yeah. But there's more to it you haven't seen.

Practice being the literal best person for that patient.

An example: on the ambulance, psych patients are just that. Psych. Crazy. Idiotic. Whatever. So they're treated like garbage humans. Why bother? See, it's easy to be a **** provider, which can quite literally ruin someone's life going forward. I've seen psych patients used, abused, and worse, b/c it wasn't a big deal. They can get some pills later, w/e, was the thought. "They're just crazy anyway".

It's so hard to put in the practice to be an awesome provider.

It's so hard, but moving forward, learning what, when, and how to say something, there comes a swagger, a confidence later on. There's compassion. There's the ability to literally walk away, eventually, from an encounter saying, "wow, talk about feedback. I think that was done as perfectly as possible." And that really can make someone's life, in a worst case scenario, not worse. Perhaps even better.
 
Well, I'm just starting third year myself.

But all the anxiety I ever get interviewing a patient comes from the fact I don't have a lot of experience and am terrified of messing up. Ultimately as you get used to talking to real people every day its going to get easier, especially once you get a better sense of how to handle yourself and what to do.

PhD is a VERY difficult road full of lots of uncertainty. What if your PI loses funding? What if your PI is mean? What if you just can't break into that field you like and your PI makes you do something else? Seen a lot of burnout among PhDs and a lot of unfinished degrees. Maybe there is a way to leverage your interests into clinical research as an MD?

Maybe look into practicing psychotherapy as a psychiatrist? I don't think you NEED to be a clinical psychologist to do so.

Depends on your health and finances. I would dread the prospect of starting over.
 
Have you thought about Addiction Psych? Reading the recent research over the last 5 years or so, I think in the next 10 years or so there will be a huge leap in effectiveness in Medically Assisted Treatment and accessibility to it, you won't be just "drugging people" there. I don't think it's a good idea to drop out right now, there might be an avenue of psych you haven't heard about yet which you would never get the opportunity to practice once you leave. All the best!
 
Jakethedog95 said:
Hello strangers. Long story short, I’m a rising ms3 and hate medical school and can’t see myself being a doctor. I’m debating whether dropping out or finish the MD and find a job. Are there careers for MDs without a residency?

Just a little background, I’m interested in biological/molecular psych, psychopharm, etc... i pretty much came to med school only interested in psych, really don’t have any interest in learning about anything else of medicine. However I see the current state of psych as a real crisis. It’s just a merry go round of crappy drugs that just chemically lobotomize people, and even if they do “work” For a short while you just eventually develop tolerance to it, leading to treatment resistance, horrid withdrawals, and iatrogenic problems. I firmly support Whitaker and his stance that psych meds are turning short term issues into long term chronic intractable problems.

I thought I wanted to be a psychiatrist, but turns out I don’t like interacting with people and all the treatments are garbage. I also have a lot of social anxiety issues myself, and I dread OSCEs, patient interviews, etc...

I’ve always thought it’d be really cool to try and research discover new psychiatric therapeutics.Hence, I guess I could drop out to pursue a PhD? Either that or stick it out and finish the MD then somehow get into the research side of things from there?

thanks
Click to expand...
I think you need to try your psych clerkship before you declare that clinical psychiatry is garbage. You might still have the same stance afterward, but after going through the trouble of applying and getting into med school, completing your first 2 years and completing step 1, it seems silly to cut bait without actually doing your psych clerkship. If possible, you should also look into electives for some of the other fields that don't have direct patient contact (rads, path).

I'll link you to @azna123 's thread as well, which has some good advice: I Don't Want To Do a Residency... . Basically, even if long-term you don't want to practice clinical psychiatry, having an MD and being board-certified will be of great value to you. And if your alternative is to pursue a PhD, then continuing your current path (2 years of med school, 4 years psych residency, +/- 1 year practicing independently while you take your boards) and then switching to pharma or some other non-clinical role will probably take about as long but make you way more marketable, result in a higher salary, and give you a solid backup in clinical psych in case it turns out none of the other options appeal to you either.
 
I would wait until at least after third year to drop, personally.

There are also specialties with less patient contact than psych, and at least seeing/doing electives in those could help you make a decision for sure if any branch of medicine is for you or not. I am planning on pursuing lower contact specialties myself. If you have a bunch of loans, there aren’t many other careers where you’re actually going to be able to pay the loans off later without spending the rest of your life in debt.

There’s a reason medicine is a “golden handcuffs” profession.

FWIW, I had a high patient contact job before with some social anxiety/aversion to other humans, and I did just fine after a couple years of experience and came to really enjoy my job (minus a few things, which is why I’m here). Familiarity bred comfort for me, so hating something when you first start out does not necessarily translate to hating something long term. When you have a routine and handle the situations the same way every time, you come up with a formula for dealing with people that makes patient/family contact much easier because it’s detachable from you personally. I got great evals and great patient and family thank you letters (comments about compassion, warmth, and kindness among others) so absolutely none of my patients/family members suspected I didn’t actually enjoy working with people.
 
Putting the efficacy of psychiatric and general medicine medication into perspective: review of meta-analyses | The British Journal of Psychiatry | Cambridge Core

Medicine is not perfect, no branch of medicine is. Psychiatric drugs are about as efficacious as other drugs we have for stuff like afib.


1. I dont buy your premise that all psych is trash, there are real tangible improvements that some patients may obtain. Look at the systematic review above.
2. You have a romanticized notion of the work you would be doing as a PHD, you could be some lab scut monkey for your entire career and not contribute to any real drug development or breakthrough.
3. Having an MD actually lets you run clinical trials and further science.
4. Even if you dont want to be a psychiatrist anymore there are many fields in medcine where there is a little to no patient interaction, rads, path, and you can limit your interaction with patients as a surgeon. .
5. Not all decrease in suffering is second to curative treatments.
 
Jakethedog95 said:
Hello strangers. Long story short, I’m a rising ms3 and hate medical school and can’t see myself being a doctor. I’m debating whether dropping out or finish the MD and find a job. Are there careers for MDs without a residency?

Just a little background, I’m interested in biological/molecular psych, psychopharm, etc... i pretty much came to med school only interested in psych, really don’t have any interest in learning about anything else of medicine. However I see the current state of psych as a real crisis. It’s just a merry go round of crappy drugs that just chemically lobotomize people, and even if they do “work” For a short while you just eventually develop tolerance to it, leading to treatment resistance, horrid withdrawals, and iatrogenic problems. I firmly support Whitaker and his stance that psych meds are turning short term issues into long term chronic intractable problems.

I thought I wanted to be a psychiatrist, but turns out I don’t like interacting with people and all the treatments are garbage. I also have a lot of social anxiety issues myself, and I dread OSCEs, patient interviews, etc...

I’ve always thought it’d be really cool to try and research discover new psychiatric therapeutics.Hence, I guess I could drop out to pursue a PhD? Either that or stick it out and finish the MD then somehow get into the research side of things from there?

thanks
Click to expand...
Suggest taking an LOA and fix what's broken.
 
Like others have said, research is a good option. An MD without residency is not useless, but there are obviously less things to do with it.

It is very easy to get disillusioned with medicine. You may find that many, if not most, people around you have questionable motives (i.e., money, prestige) to pursue medicine as a career. You may find stressed out attendings treating patients like garbage. The American healthcare system is profit-driven rather than patient-driven.

With that said, if you find the realities of medicine to be unsavory, why not stick with it and try to reform it from within?
 
Who is Whitaker?
Jakethedog95 said:
I firmly support Whitaker and his stance that psych meds are turning short term issues into long term chronic intractable problems.
Click to expand...

Who is Whitaker? Also psych meds are hugely helpful and successful. Lithium for BPD and SSRIs with wellbutrin....where are you getting your info?!?!?
 
Jakethedog95 said:
Hello strangers. Long story short, I’m a rising ms3 and hate medical school and can’t see myself being a doctor. I’m debating whether dropping out or finish the MD and find a job. Are there careers for MDs without a residency?

Just a little background, I’m interested in biological/molecular psych, psychopharm, etc... i pretty much came to med school only interested in psych, really don’t have any interest in learning about anything else of medicine. However I see the current state of psych as a real crisis. It’s just a merry go round of crappy drugs that just chemically lobotomize people, and even if they do “work” For a short while you just eventually develop tolerance to it, leading to treatment resistance, horrid withdrawals, and iatrogenic problems. I firmly support Whitaker and his stance that psych meds are turning short term issues into long term chronic intractable problems.

I thought I wanted to be a psychiatrist, but turns out I don’t like interacting with people and all the treatments are garbage. I also have a lot of social anxiety issues myself, and I dread OSCEs, patient interviews, etc...

I’ve always thought it’d be really cool to try and research discover new psychiatric therapeutics.Hence, I guess I could drop out to pursue a PhD? Either that or stick it out and finish the MD then somehow get into the research side of things from there?

thanks
Click to expand...

You are halfway done through medical school, and you have studied a bunch of material you may never see again for two years. Stick it out through medical school and finish up clerkships before you come up with an opinion.

Truth is that grass is always greener on the other side. An MD does not limit you to clinical practice. You have the opportunity to do a postdoc after your MD if that is financially feasible if you are committed towards leading a basic science lab. Otherwise, you can partner with industry or other academic labs and then bring their results into clinical trials. The world is your oyster.

If you drop out right now, you have no degree other than your bachelor's. You may start your PhD and then realize that you hate working there. What will you do then? You can't go back to medicine once you drop out. It's better to finish this chapter up.
 
Jakethedog95 said:
I worked as a psych tech at a psych hospital during my gap year, and I’ve been a patient of psych since I was 15. I think I know a little something about it thank you very much. And I don’t mean to say the entire field is bull****. Everyone makes a great point that there’s value in just being there for people, providing support and hope. I’m saying a lot of the current pharmacological options are just crap and there needs to be some serious innovation.

I think your condescending tone is very unprecedented. You have no idea my background or what I’ve gone through. Just because I didn’t suffer through the same steps you did doesn’t mean I don’t know as much as you. Get off your high horse and be respectful of others experience.
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That is a dumb stance. There are plenty of specialties where the current treatments aren't curative (or even "great"). That doesn't mean the field's purpose is to "chemically lobotomize" (to use your words).

Is the field of neurology unworthy since they cannot cure the degenerative diseases? How about nephrology since ESRD patients cannot be cured? Drop out of medical school if you want to, you dont preach about the ineffectiveness of modern medicine to justify the decision.
 
Jakethedog95 said:
Hello strangers. Long story short, I’m a rising ms3 and hate medical school and can’t see myself being a doctor. I’m debating whether dropping out or finish the MD and find a job. Are there careers for MDs without a residency?

Just a little background, I’m interested in biological/molecular psych, psychopharm, etc... i pretty much came to med school only interested in psych, really don’t have any interest in learning about anything else of medicine. However I see the current state of psych as a real crisis. It’s just a merry go round of crappy drugs that just chemically lobotomize people, and even if they do “work” For a short while you just eventually develop tolerance to it, leading to treatment resistance, horrid withdrawals, and iatrogenic problems. I firmly support Whitaker and his stance that psych meds are turning short term issues into long term chronic intractable problems.

I thought I wanted to be a psychiatrist, but turns out I don’t like interacting with people and all the treatments are garbage. I also have a lot of social anxiety issues myself, and I dread OSCEs, patient interviews, etc...

I’ve always thought it’d be really cool to try and research discover new psychiatric therapeutics.Hence, I guess I could drop out to pursue a PhD? Either that or stick it out and finish the MD then somehow get into the research side of things from there?

thanks
Click to expand...

Continue medical school, try to get an academic psych residency where you do research on things you're interested in to advance what you clearly think is lacking in psychiatry. Also seems you had bad experiences, so you should try to focus on your imperfections (the social anxiety etc) and try to help other psychiatric patients. It seems silly to me to drop out of medical school because "you don't like interacting with people" lmao. That can be fixed. Just don't be a weirdo.
 
LunaOri said:
Finishing your degree will give you opportunities in the pharma industry that you would not have without the MD. And they will hire you without a residency.
Click to expand...
Just to reiterate what I've said before, I think trying to jump straight from med school to pharma is a terrible idea. I have no doubt you could find some tiny start-up that would be willing to hire you, but then you're totally at the mercy of whether their one asset pans out or not, and nobody will be around to teach you what you're doing. Starting at a bigger, more established company is much safer because they have experience training physicians who want to enter industry and they're not dependent on any one asset working out--you'll need residency training, but again it's much safer.
Jakethedog95 said:
Thank you for all the very insightful responses. I did work as a psych tech during my gap year and I actually did enjoy it, and found it pretty fulfilling. Granted it was insanely stressful and challenging given my anxiety issues. It was sort of a foreshadow to come- it revealed my weaknesses interacting with people.
with regards to the PhD, I did bench research in college and honestly hated that too LOL, but it wasn’t in a field I was particularly interested in whatsoever. So idk.
I’m on a leave of absence until April, so I have a little while to figure things out.

People always seem to respect my knowledge and even come to me for advice regarding their medications and I must say it does feel very fulfilling being of use to them... and idk I could probably see myself in a low key psych practice out of my home managing their meds. The process to get to that point is just horrible and particularly so if you’re not interested in general medicine!
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I'm trying to say this as respectfully as I can--while you have experience that a random person who hasn't been a psych patient or tech might have, that's not the same as being a psychiatrist. Based on what you've said thus far, I get the sense that you don't know what you don't know, and that's a very dangerous place to be giving people medical advice.

Again, I get that you feel burnt out, and if you can't continue med school any further for your own health then you do what you have to do. But the quickest path to you doing something fulfilling is to complete med school followed by a residency in SOMETHING, and then pivot to something else. 5-6 years seems like a long time, but realistically it'll take you about that long to pivot to a completely different field anyways, and you likely would find yourself with a more restricted job outlook without the MD.
 
What is the overall mortality rate for cancer patients undergoing chemo or radiation? Are oncology treatments "garbage"?

I find it interesting that people like to love to talk about the ineffectiveness of psychiatric meds but don't realize most patients on other common "non-psych" meds (i.e., statins) will not receive any benefit. The number needed to treat for a lot of "medical" drugs is quite higher than many "psychiatric" drugs. Even a single lowly SSRI without talk therapy will have a 2/3 response rate against depression.

Psych meds are pretty damn effective. Antipsychotics, ECT, mood stabilizers. Lithium is literally just a salt that will change a patient from running in the street tazed by police, naked and manic, to normal and productive. How can you have worked as a psych tech without seeing some of the amazing turnaround in manic and psychotic patients?
 
Candidate2017 said:
What is the overall mortality rate for cancer patients undergoing chemo or radiation? Are oncology treatments "garbage"?

I find it interesting that people like to love to talk about the ineffectiveness of psychiatric meds but don't realize most patients on other common "non-psych" meds (i.e., statins) will not receive any benefit. The number needed to treat for a lot of "medical" drugs is quite higher than many "psychiatric" drugs. Even a single lowly SSRI without talk therapy will have a 2/3 response rate against depression.

Psych meds are pretty damn effective. Antipsychotics, ECT, mood stabilizers. Lithium is literally just a salt that will change a patient from running in the street tazed by police, naked and manic, to normal and productive. How can you have worked as a psych tech without seeing some of the amazing turnaround in manic and psychotic patients?
Click to expand...

Exactly. Thats the other thing I don't understand about this guy. I have seen people who are in *severe* schizophrenic breaks have fantastic responses to the atypicals.
 
Jakethedog95 said:
I worked as a psych tech at a psych hospital during my gap year, and I’ve been a patient of psych since I was 15. I think I know a little something about it thank you very much. And I don’t mean to say the entire field is bull****. Everyone makes a great point that there’s value in just being there for people, providing support and hope. I’m saying a lot of the current pharmacological options are just crap and there needs to be some serious innovation.
Click to expand...

I'm sorry if your experience as a psych patient may not have been as you would have hoped. At the same time, there is not a pill for every ill. The outpatient management of psychiatric conditions is like any other outpatient condition -- outpatient HTN and DM meds aren't very effective if the patient does not make massive behavioral and cognitive changes. I tell my patients the heavy lifting is up to them.

I personally do not like child psychiatry, as my opinion is that unless it is severe mental illness or ADHD, outpatient parents are usually looking for a magical pill to "fix" their child, when in reality the adults are usually a big part of the child's problem. The parents drive the agenda, and ultimately the child distrusts psychiatrists as there is no true physician-patient relationship, and the psychiatrist is just an instrument inflicted upon the child by the parents. But that's just my opinion.
 
Jakethedog95 said:
I’m saying a lot of the current pharmacological options are just crap and there needs to be some serious innovation.
Click to expand...
Just wanted to give you the perspective of a new psych PGY1...the need for innovation and some of the innovative research happening in the field is why I was drawn to psych. The potential to be a part of a field that is still developing where everything isn’t already a cut and dry perfect algorithm was part of what excited me. Look at the history of improvements in medicine. Radical change starts with “this is just crap”, but it dies with “so I’ll just quit”.

Your outlook is your outlook, so don’t do something that is going to make you unhappy. Maybe you want to go into a field that has things a little more figured out, and that’s ok too.
 
Jakethedog95 said:
Hello strangers. Long story short, I’m a rising ms3 and hate medical school and can’t see myself being a doctor. I’m debating whether dropping out or finish the MD and find a job. Are there careers for MDs without a residency?

Just a little background, I’m interested in biological/molecular psych, psychopharm, etc... i pretty much came to med school only interested in psych, really don’t have any interest in learning about anything else of medicine. However I see the current state of psych as a real crisis. It’s just a merry go round of crappy drugs that just chemically lobotomize people, and even if they do “work” For a short while you just eventually develop tolerance to it, leading to treatment resistance, horrid withdrawals, and iatrogenic problems. I firmly support Whitaker and his stance that psych meds are turning short term issues into long term chronic intractable problems.

I thought I wanted to be a psychiatrist, but turns out I don’t like interacting with people and all the treatments are garbage. I also have a lot of social anxiety issues myself, and I dread OSCEs, patient interviews, etc...

I’ve always thought it’d be really cool to try and research discover new psychiatric therapeutics.Hence, I guess I could drop out to pursue a PhD? Either that or stick it out and finish the MD then somehow get into the research side of things from there?

thanks
Click to expand...
So sorry that you feel that way, but I do want to encourage you to think outside the box when it comes to practicing medicine. Yes the conventional approach to psych (and honestly all of medicine) is through meds and often not actually improving any chronic conditions. Before going into med school I new this and I HATED this. But that is precicsly why I went into this field. There is a huge rise in preventative and holistic medicine and the amazing thing with being a physician is that you really have a lot of freedom within your practice in terms of how you treat patients, what types of patients you see, etc. So you may need to do a bit of additional education on things like mindfulness (if you are looking into psych) or other more sustainable healthcare practices, but you can also utilize them and help change the industry of medicine. You can help change medical school curriculums, you can help educate the community, you can help contribute to research, etc. Try to find physicians that aren't doing the conventional thing and shadow them. Yes, it may require sitting through a lot of things you don't like during med school/residency (I was well aware of this before entering but I also made sure to focus on the things I could do and the impacts I could have), but in the end it will be even more fulfilling because you will be making a HUGE difference, and one that wouldn't happen without the few pioneers that are turning in this direction now. Feel free to DM me if you want more advice but don't let go so soon! Even if you don't want to practice you can still teach or go towards public health, etc, and really help change things instead of running away from the field because its such a mess.

Edit: While I'm planning on doing family medicine I have debated fam med-psych or other continuing education in psych, its something I 100% want in my career, BUT I do not want to prescribe medications for psychiatric illnesses unless absoluetely necessary. And there are a lot of people doing this, its just not the mainstream but more and more people are having the same realization as you. ALSO you could try doing residency in california and may have more exposure to alternative/preventative approaches!
 
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I would consider what someone else said about loans but also know all hope is not lost if you don't go through with residency. I currently work in research with an MD who decided not to go through with residency because becoming board-certified was not what they wanted. Although they are not the PI, they are still pretty high up as far as their title. You have options without having to go through the grueling task of getting an PhD unless you absolutely want to.

With only my MPH I have been able to write grants. Just utilize relationships around you to get a PI to sign on so you have access to the larger grant funds to pursue if that is what you want. There are multiple avenues for you to make an impact and if the threat of student loans is not a hindrance for you, I think that you know what's best for you. Definitely talk to your support system and your school's student affairs to see if they have resources that may help you no matter what decision you make. Good luck!
 
I am currently a 4th year psychiatry resident. Trust me, I felt exactly the same way you felt as a third year. I wanted to quit badly and was comteplating my escape every day. I personally love psychiatry and didn't even consider it until the end of my 3rd year. My advice is just wait till the end of the third. Right now your a prisoner of your own reality. All you know and have been thinking about is medicine (Step 1 also) and surrounded by med students and people in the hospital. Have goals outside of medicine like traveling. It wasn't until I started traveling overseas during 3rd year during my spare time that I really enjoyed life and was truly happy (you will have to wait for COVID to blow over).
 
Personally, I would finish med school and do at least 1-yr of residency so I can get an unrestricted license in these 33-34 US states where one can get a license after 1 yr post grad training. A medical license can open many doors that wouldn't have been otherwise open.
 
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danielblank313 said:
Just a rising OMS-I here so I don't have any personal wisdom to give you, but what from what I understood from your post, it's shockingly similar to one of the ER docs I got to know the past year. He did a lot of psych research in undergrad, really only went to medical school because he wanted to become a psychiatrist. After he finished his third year, he had no desire to go into residency and just wanted to finish out his last year for the MD to hopefully find some kind of job. He figured an MD would be better than without one.

One of his closer friends really just pushed him to try out other specialties even though he really only wanted to do psych. Ended up trying out emergency medicine and he liked it. Granted, he wasn't thrilled about it like he was with psych before he started med school, but it gave him what he wanted in life. It was a nice job, he ended up becoming a travel doc, and he lives up pretty much every day he's off from work. He seems to believe that should he have not gone into EM residency and graduated, his life would have been way worse. YMMV.
Click to expand...

Do you know if he explored EM in his 3rd year or his 4th year? It seems harder to revamp a match application for a specialty that you grow to like in 4th year instead of 3rd year, so I'm wondering about the timeline he had. Thanks for the anecdote.
 
OP, just go into M3 with an open mind. You might end up liking a different specialty.

I noticed you stated you were a psych pt since you were 15, have you wondered if what you're going through is depression? Take some time to figure yourself out. And if needed take a LOA as Goro recommended.
 
Jakethedog95 said:
And this conversation is so irrelevant because it’s not even the debate about psych meds that’s making me question whether or not I want to continue (sorry again, I guess I was unclear in the original post). I guess it’s more having to go through all of medicine first before becoming a psychiatrist is bumming me out, because it just doesn’t interest me! And that coupled with all the social anxiety and other psychiatric issues I Deal with make me question my capacity to even be a psychiatrist anyway. I actually loved working as a psych tech, I felt at home, it was just so challenging for me and anxiety provoking. Like idk what to say to people when they’re coming at me with all their issues, or if they’re in a frenzy throwing **** and punching walls like idk how to talk to people. I can be in the corner prescribing their Thorazine and adjusting their antipsychotic regimen but I just don’t know how to talk to people and it makes me very uncomfortable. Looks like this turned into a therapy session for me LOL.
Click to expand...
And that makes complete sense. You have to 'know thyself' and all that jazz.

I know I'm not good at tolerating high stress so I'm avoiding all stressful surgical specialties, specialties with high mortality in IM, and psych.

You might not be able to handle psych, and that's OKAY. Medicine is a very large field with endless opportunity and so many specialties you can choose from. Just keep your eyes open, your perspective fresh, and be willing to change.

And if you need that LOA there really is no shame in it. Your happiness and life is more important than grinding through something that you can't enjoy in the moment.
 
Jakethedog95 said:
yes I’m on a LOA right now. I don’t really mind sharing any of this since it’s all anonymous but ive had severe anxiety issues since my early teens. Got dependent on benzos, developed other addictions, went to rehab and inpatient. Sober in recovery ever since. Have been on multiple antidepressants anxiolytics over the years but none of them work anymore. So yes I’m experiencing a pretty deep depression and anxiety and all that. I’ve already been on the medication merry go round so I don’t know what other options are left. My current plan is to get off all the garbage I’m on and try Nardil and hope that can renew my spark and get me back on track. Either that or just accept this path isn’t for me and find some menial low stress job I can hack. Idk.
Click to expand...
Considering you're on a LOA already I'll leave the advice to those more educated. But remember, there is no shame in choosing your health. You matter.
 
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