Qualy #33 - How silent bravado and incessant striving can lead to a functional (and actual) death, and why Paul is critical of the current state of psychiatry

**Peter Attia** (0:05)
Welcome to The Qualys, a subscriber-exclusive podcast. Qualys is just a shorthand slang for a qualification round, which is something you do prior to the race, just a little bit quicker. The Qualys podcast features episodes that are short, and we're hoping for less than 10 minutes each, which highlight the best questions, topics, tactics, et cetera, discussed on previous episodes of The Drive. We recognize many of you as new listeners to the podcast may not have the time to go back and listen to every episode, and those of you who have already listened may have forgotten.
So the new episodes of The Qualys are going to be released Tuesday through Friday, and they're going to be published exclusively on our private subscriber-only podcast feed. Now, occasionally, we're going to release Qualy episodes in the main feed, which is what you're about to hear now. If you enjoy these episodes, and if you're interested in hearing more, as well as receiving all of the other subscriber-exclusive content, which is growing by the month, you can visit us at peterattiamd.com forward slash subscribe. So without further delay, I hope you enjoy today's Qualy.
You're alluding to obviously something I know is very difficult, and we've talked about it a lot. I don't know that we need to necessarily go into great detail here, but in the span of a year, if I recall, you lost your brother and your best friend.

**Paul Conti** (1:18)
Yeah, my brother, my brother died by suicide, and about a year later, one of my closest friends, a close group of friends growing up, sort of like we had in medical school, but there were a group of us, and one of those very, very close friends from childhood also died, and he didn't die by suicide, but there was sort of that same kind of desperate recklessness that I saw this common root in those two deaths, and they confused me and infuriated me, and made me feel very helpless and vulnerable, and wanting to be able to understand better, and to kind of fight against this thing that made it so hard for people to get help and to be vulnerable, and that was really the commonality, is both of the people who died had real and significant needs inside of them that came about naturally, and something one would never criticize a person for having those needs or those struggles, I think we can catch them all. I think we can catch them all. I think we can catch them all. I think we can catch them all. I think we can catch them all.
I think we can catch them all.

**Peter Attia** (2:44)
I think we can catch them all.
I think we can catch them all. I think we can catch them all. I think we can catch them all. I think we can catch them all. I think we can catch them all. I think we can catch them all. I think we can catch them all. I think we can catch them all.

**Paul Conti** (3:12)
I'm sure you can. I'm sure you can. I'm sure you can. I'm sure you can. I'm sure you can. I'm sure you can. Sure you can. I'm sure you can.
I'm sure you can. I'm sure you can. I'm sure you can. I'm sure you can. I'm sure you can. I'm sure you can. I'm sure you can. I'm sure you can.
I'm sure you can. I'm sure you can. I'm sure you can. I'm sure you can.
I'm sure you can. I'm sure you can. I'm sure you can.
I'm sure you can. I'm sure you can. I'm sure you can.
I'm sure you can. I'm sure you can.

**Peter Attia** (4:00)
I'm.

**Paul Conti** (4:01)
In the twenty years, since we went to medical school, how pervasive media is. There's just marker after marker after marker after marker that says that you're not good enough, you don't have enough, you're too vulnerable.
I'm sure you can. I'm sure you can. There could be a terrorist attack anytime, your kids could be killed, we could die. It's one stimulus after another that tells us not to and to really value ourselves by the things that we really value.

**Peter Attia** (4:32)
We get through med school and true to your word, you get a psychiatry residency spot. You decide to stay at Stanford in part because your wife was still, your soon to be wife, you guys weren't married yet, but your girlfriend was a couple years behind us in med school.
And you end up spending half your time at Stanford and then your wife matches at Harvard, so you go and finish your residency at Harvard. So whenever I'm telling patients about you, and I'm probably bastardizing all of my knowledge, which is so limited in this field. But I say, you know, one of the things about Paul that's so unique is he did half of his training at Stanford, which is probably one of the foremost institutions when it comes to understanding the neurobiology and the pharmaconeurobiology and the pharmacology of psychiatry. And then does the other half at Harvard, which is sort of a more old school, but, you know, a place that specializes so much in the, in the psychotherapy.