Good post. Are there any downsides? I use alcohol to excess, a habit I developed in the days when socialising was something I wanted/needed to do but needed help with it.
Let me be clear that I don't use ecstasy to regulate my mood (or, personally, at all) and that I'm not a doctor.
I use marijuana to break out of loops of anxiety and repetitive, intrusive thoughts (blessedly legal where I live), and there are some modest downsides, mostly that it's expensive and only works if used in moderation. It helps snap me out of anxiety attacks and shorten the duration of depressive episodes but it isn't magic, I still have to confront my issues and work towards making my life better.
Virtually everyone I know has struggled with anxiety and/or depression and has had success going to therapy and taking some sort of antidepressant. Many of them had to go through several therapists & medications until they found a therapist they meshed with and a prescription/dosage that worked for them; it's a difficult and frustrating process, but I've seen it really work for people in my life.
Like I said, I'm not a doctor, I can only give the most general advice, but it is my belief that if you want your life to be different, it's a real possibility, it's something worth working towards, and if you feel that you use alcohol in excess, it's worth considering whether a professional can help you to identify a different strategy/medication.
Firstly I'd say that although there are 180 dental practices, there is only one patient, I think a study would need a lot
more than that.
I cannot read the article but at how many practices did this person have x-rays taken? I doubt it was many if any. How did they get out of that, by bringing their own x-rays with them and saying that they were a recent set from their last dentist who'd retired?
If they didn't have x-rays taken and didn't bring any with them then the dentist would be diagnosing blind to a large extent.
In any case diagnosing cavities is not a binary true/false affair and x-rays can mislead also.
There is a lot of human judgement involved.
Some cavities never need filling, others can increase massively in size over a short period.
Two questions that a dentist will typically ask a new patient are, how long since your last attendence at dentist and are you a regular attender or do you just go when you have problems?
If a new patient is a regular attender, a dentist will be happier to keep a cavity they are unsure of, under
observation. Sometimes they may schedule shorter recall periods for review until such time as they are comfortable that the patient does not have active decay.
Generally a cavity does not need to be filled unless it extends into dentine.
Determing if this is the case is not always straightforward.
Generally a filling does not need to be replaced unless it is leaky.
Again this is not always easy to determine and like programmers, dentists tend to be more critical of other dentists'
output than their own.
Recent experience also colours judgement.
If a dentist has had a run of cavities that turned out to be deeper than expected then they are more likely to diagnose a cavity when unsure and vice versa.
Different sub-populations in the aggregate, depending on wealth, diet, dental hygiene and typical frequency of attendence have different dental decay characteristics which can colour a dentist's judgement.
There are crooked and incompetent dentists just like there are in every job. Dentists in general get a bad rap. One reason I've heard is the fear of dental treatment breeds an instinctive, subconscious dislike and mistrust of dentists as persons. Certainly doctors, despite being equally good at extracting money from their patients don't suffer from the same degree of antipathy and suspicion.
`unless` is generally used for guard clauses (eg `return unless authorized?`) or when there’s only one branch. You don’t tend to see `unless` used with multiple branches.
On a tangent. I used to be able play youtube videos on firefox on my old android phone with the screen turned off. It was some setting in firefox that I can't seem to remember or else is no longer there.
It was great because you could listen to a long lecture while walking using up less battery and even more importantly, not inadvertently clicking on something on screen.
Anyone have any ideas if it's still possible?
To be trained as a carpenter while being paid, more likely. Like the coding bootcamps that “graduate” you and then rent you out. If there’s no skilled labour. You have to create your own.
