I have a UTI (boo. But yay for sex!), so I went to the Planned Parenthood near my apartment. Of course, they have to ask you a lot of questions to assess your risk factors and whatnot. I answered them all quickly and without any hint of shame or embarrassment, but the more questions that were asked, the more I was like, “Uh… this kind of sounds awful.”
Are you sexually active? “Yes.”
At what age did you become sexually active? “Seventeen.”
How many partners have you had in the last year? “Oh, crap. I don’t know. Twenty? Let’s just go with that.”
Men, women, or both? “Both.”
How many partners in the last 60 days? “Ugh, I don’t know!… Six? Seven?”
Are you currently sexually monogamous with anyone? “Clearly not! Haha.”
Have you ever had any problems with drugs or alcohol? “No.”
Do you smoke? “No. I quit 5 years ago.”
Drink? “Yes.”
How many drinks a week? “Um, well 3 nights a week, times 5 drinks a night… 15 drinks a week?”
Have any of your partners been IV drug users? “Yes.”
Current partners? *sigh* “Yeah.”
And how you can suddenly feel really good about yourself:
Do you use condoms never, sometimes, or always? “ALWAYS.”
Last STD screening? “A month and a half ago.”
Promiscuity done right, yo.
I'm Britni, a snarky bitch and generally awesome person. I write about sex, love, and bullshit. If sex-positivity, discussions about BDSM and kink, queer issues, and topics that are completely inappropriate by society's standards make you uncomfortable, then this blog is not for you.
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Yeah, I hate all those questions. I understand they are necessary, but I feel like I’m being judged every time.
It wouldn’t sound awful at all if you truthfully had zero shame or embarrassment for the way you act. I’ve had to answer the same questions recently and had more partners than you but did not think it sounded awful at all because I truly have no shame and couldn’t care less what the PP worker asking me thinks about my promiscuous behavior. Also, why do you lie about your drug use? Good on you for always using condoms. There’s no excuse not to if you’re going to sleep around and I abhor people who refuse to use them or just don’t out of laziness or dislike.
I’m NOT ashamed, but I still know what societal opinions of people like me are.
And I didn’t lie about my drug use. They asked if I’d ever had a *problem* with drugs, not if I’d ever used them. Use, yes. Problem? Not even close.
You do realise that you aren’t the best judge of the whole drugs problem thing, right?
I’m not actually making any judgments, but I know never to completely believe someone when they go “I haven’t got a problem!”, because while half the time, they’re right, the other half (or more) are simply making excuses for their problems so as to not get anything (in drugs’ case; rehab) between them and their activities.
If you have had an actual session with an unbiased, trained professional who takes your lifestyle/finance/etc into consideration, and were totally honest about your drug use, and they say you don’t have a problem? Then you don’t have a problem. Or at least will far more likely get a good idea than your own personal opinion, which is at least a little clouded by your love of drugs.
Of course, you probably know all about this because of your obvious interest in psychology and probably have been completely honest about your drug use before to therapists and if they say you don’t have a problem, then sure. But if they said you do, and you still claim to not have a problem..that is where even bigger problems tend to start.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not judging at all; I have my own vices which probably are objectively a ‘problem’ in my life, and if they weren’t there, my life would be even better. But they simply aren’t a problem to me, since they aren’t causing me to go broke, lose friends or lose health.
I think I know what constitutes a “problem.” I’m a substance abuse counselor at a residential treatment program. I work with people in early recovery.
And my “obvious interest in psychology” is actually a Master’s degree in it.
But that doesn’t mean you are immune to personal bias. That’s all I was saying. No person can objectively say “I don’t have a problem”, because they are tying their own feelings of what they are doing (which are obviously normally positive) into the equation, rather than ignoring that and looking at life objectively.
And when I say “obvious interest”, I mean it goes further than just having a degree in it – it’s a personal interest. I know plenty of people with Masters who couldn’t actually care less about the subject they got it in once they got a job not tying directly into the field.
I wasn’t trying to knock you with my comment – I was just hoping you might be the first to realise you can’t diagnose whether you yourself have a ‘problem’ with something.
The bitch about the “are you suuuuuuuure you don’t have a _____ problem?” Is that there really is no right answer, because if you say no, you’re just in denial. Way to diagnose via blog, ye fresh out o’ Psych 101.
No one here has made a diagnosis. Frida is saying that people don’t have the objectivity to accurately assess themselves, that there is a personal bias inherent in self-diagnosis. And she’s right.
Really, now? I didn’t know you could diagnose people that you don’t actually know via interwebz now!
I guess I just can’t keep up with all this new-fangled technology, these days.
Yes, keep up Ghouldilocks. The folks at http://www.asktheinternettherapist.com make a living doing just that. But, as I said earlier, no one on this thread has made any diagnosis.
Whoops, I missed this because I was only checking for replies to my own comment.
But yes, as HalfPint pointed out, I wasn’t making a diagnosis whatsoever, merely showing surprise that someone with as much interest and background in psychology as Britni could believe she could give herself an accurate self-diagnosis. I have no idea which it is (a problem or not) and never said either way.
I do apologise for coming across as confrontational on almost all of my comments on here to date – I do not have anything against Brit; I’m just one of those people that only tends to reply to things when I disagree with them, so take my bare minimum of posts on this blog as proof that I honestly do enjoy almost every other part of every other post!
I hear that. I always picture Julia Roberts in “Pretty Woman” saying, “I’m a safety girl,” as she waves a rainbow of condoms up for Richard Gere to choose from.
It’s a good thing.
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[...] recently met another heroin addict. He knows what I do for a living, which is why I think he felt safe being so open with me about it. He knew I wouldn’t judge [...]