I feel this:
[Warning: One S-bomb]
A lot of this blew out into the open during Covid, when we learned that appointing doctors over our civil liberties is probably the worst idea ever, but this has been a problem for a long time.
MDs are largely focused on what's called allopathic medicine. They know a lot about how the body works, but their knowledge is centered around the use of drugs.
I'll give you two examples from my life:
- I had a panic attack as a newlywed who had just lost his job. I was immediately prescribed an SSRI, Zoloft. I had a bad reaction to this drug (especially when I switched to a variant made in India) and experienced horrible discontinuation symptoms that were horrific beyond any words I can write here. It was literal hell on earth trying to get off them, but I did so with the help of the community over at Surviving Antidepressants. To this day, no doctor has believed what myself and tens of millions of other people have gone through, because the literature says these drugs are Totes McGotes. A psychiatrist actually told me what I needed were more drugs to fix the problem. I have now been free of that poison for years and can't believe they were prescribed to me so quickly.
- I had chronic tight back muscles and my back would go out several times a year. I saw doctors several times for the issue. I was prescribed muscle relaxers. As a young, relatively fit man, I didn't understand what was going on; it took a decade of self-study and powerlifting programs to realize that the issue was tight hamstrings - a feature, I learned, in developed countries where people don't bend at the waist and have differently shaped spines due to sitting all the time. Learning to bend correctly (yes, bend correctly) and squat has eliminated the problem.
Random people on the internet, along with a long-deceased Australian doctor, gave me better knowledge than any of the doctors I saw.
Maybe, and here's a tough pill for Americans to swallow (pun intended), we need to stop seeing doctors as adjacent to God. Understand the limitations of their specialties.
And if you don't want to spend all your money on doctors of a million disciplines, maybe listen to the the common sense of the past that the internet bros have rediscovered through memes!
P.S. Now check out our latest video 👇
