Psychiatry Vs. Psychology

Sometimes I really wish I was in med school and specializing in psychiatry. I'm sure it's just as political and just as stupid as this field, but there would be greater access to drugs.

Look, it's no small secret that this profession (and really almost any helping profession) attracts three kinds of people:
1. People who are dealing with mental health issues themselves (either personally or with a loved one) and who are trying to work out their shit -- then work it out -- and go on to be insightful and compassionate practitioners or researchers.
2. People who are dealing with mental health issues themselves (either personally of with a loved one) and who *think* they are trying to work out their shit -- but never really make significant headway -- and go on to traumatize their patients, break ethics repeatedly, do harm, and eventually have their lives come crashing down around them in a litigious comeupance that they ultimately deserve for missing the point of therapy entirely.
3. People who are just a little more than the usual amount of power-happy, looking to restore some childhood malignment to their self-esteem by taking up an "expert position" as a clinician, researcher and/or professor and subsequently torturing their clients, participants and/or students with dickish mindgames the likes of which would make Andy Dick curl up into the fetal position and beg for mercy. But this is really just a subset of #2 and one hopes that they will also come to enjoy their end in the Ironic Fate Division of the Afterlife or Retirement.

So yes, although I'm certain that psychiatry has these basic career categories, and although I have been told by many survivors of medical schools that the competition is much more overt and direct (as opposed to the covert, passive-aggressive weird-o type of competition that is glossed over by Stepfordish harmony in the social sciences), I just think that there might be greater access to benzodiazepines, which would allow me to perhaps cope better (see covert, passive-aggressive weird-o type competition above).

Okay, okay, okay, okay, okay! It's not THAT bad. I guess. It's just so fucking WEIRD sometimes. Like, c'mon, we all KNOW that people only take this kind of job because they were initially attracted to the profession to figure something out about themselves or a loved one. Then some people get their answers and change their lives (or don't) and leave and go on to do normal, sometimes healthy jobs, like remove aesbestos from old buildings or work on oil riggs. But others get hooked because they are hardwired to help other people or get addicted to the Ivory Tower bullshit... but my point is that we are all here because either we ARE suffering, or we HAVE suffered GREATLY. In my profession, the idea is to help the client heal through TALKING. Regardless of what specific theoretical framework you are coming from... you form a partnership with a client and help them through it by utilizing your relationship. I don't care if you're using CBT, SFBT, NT, REBT or AVON -- you're TALKING it through.

But psychiatrists, oh psychiatrists get to (have to?)... (are supposed to?) prescribe psychopharmaceuticals. I prefer to call them DRUGS. And dammit, sometimes I wish I had greater access to them. Not because I want to give them to people, but because sometimes the ridiculous tension of not getting to know my funding situation until a week after classes STARTS makes it a bit difficult to sleep. I imagine that the significant bull-ca-ca that pervades daily life in grad school would be not nearly so irritating if I had a dose of adavan at the ready. I would probably feel like punching people less.

It's just this low-grade tension and irritability caused by underlying tension from PA stupidity and an administration system that predates Moses. I keep asking for my funding breakdown so I can know if I can afford to pay my rent in September, but they haven't invented the zero yet.

It doesn't matter. Tension or no tension. I have exactly 11 days left to enjoy before this starts in earnest again. Maybe I'll visit my doctor and ask for one and only one mother's-little-helper I can keep in a pill box like a pendant on a chain around my neck. A talisman against the onslaught of stupidity I am bound to meet.

Eleven days to go...