The definition of having a drinking problem is when you drink more than your doctor.
My doctor is a pretty cool guy and some of the banter during my visits has been fun. If there weren’t potential legal implications (for him) I’d totally be down with grabbing a drink after hours and shooting the shit.
Maybe I could invite the dentist that did my root canal too, he was going into the same industry as me before switching to dentistry and was also pretty savvy.
How many drinks a week?
One! One shelf
On a pamphlet I saw, two glasses of 4oz wine a week meant you were a casual drinker. Three glasses and you’re a addict.
Did it have a cross on the pamphlet anywhere?
This is unironically the relationship I have with my PCP
A gallon?
Do you smoke PCP?
Wait you smoke it and not saltbae it in your food?
No, you drink it by the gallon
I once had a cardiologist suggest whiskey given the high levels of anxiety and the impact it was having on my heart’s biological pacemaker which has always been somewhat finicky.
With that said, he also said don’t tell anyone I said that in a professional setting.
My mom’s doctor suggested mixing her pain medication with sherry. She was on palliative care and wouldn’t live long enough for liver failure, and they couldn’t prescribe any more than they were already giving her, but she was still in serious pain with the max dosages.
It’s ok. This is not a professional setting.
Surely you can’t be serious.
And don’t call me Shirley.
Not something I’d recommend, personally
I prefer brandy
Isn’t there some unspoken multiplier doctors use?
Like if you say “a few times a week” they hear “at least 4x a week likely more”…?
Oh god, I tell my doctor honestly that I drink ~5-6 Doctor Drinks a day so I hope he isn’t applying a multiplier…
Oh god help you have a good relationship with your healthcare provider.
Or… Maybe don’t? That way we don’t have to endure this bullshit any more than absolutely necessary…
Back in the day I told a doctor that I have three beers a day. I wasn’t lying but they were 40s.
They asked how many beers. Not how many fluid ounces.
Unless the person is the kind of person to decline a drink on the grounds that “it’s only Thursday”, “a couple of drinks a week” is likely either more than the person thinks or they (consciously of subconsciously) are downplaying how much it really is.
There’s tons of reasons why their response may be above or below how it seems…
I’m thinking of how a doctor may try to average all that with a variety of patients and how that figures into their diagnosis, hell any differential understanding of symptoms…
I feel like this pattern of people lying to doctors and doctors adjusting things to account for it really messes with rigorously honest people.
A little while back I was reading how when they ask you how much pain you’re in, with 10 being the most pain imaginable, they pretty routinely have people calmly say “12”. So, if you’re actually using the scale where you’ve probably never experienced more than a 9 and would be sobbing at an 8, so you say 7, they automatically assume you’re in basically no pain because you said less than 10.
Kind of wish we could just speak accurately and take each other literally instead of playing games where we try to figure out exactly what lie to tell to convey the truth, but I guess that’s not how most people are wired.
If I’m talking to a doctor at all they should assume something is very wrong.
It’s pretty well accepted that someone who says 7 is in more pain than someone who says 12.
When the farmer says: “I’m here, ain’t I?”…
