In this episode, Sue and Mike are joined by Dr Ishan Sharma who shares his journey to become an addiction medicine doctor. Ishan talks about his interest in health and wellness from a holistic and integrated framework vs focus on illness and disease. He talks about some of his challenges having to unlearn a lot of what he was taught in medical school and in his residency where the focus is on diagnoses and symptom management which doesn’t work well with mental health and addiction issues. Ishan shares his perspective and experience on how physicians can get caught up in medicating uncomfortable feelings. Feelings are often demonized, labeled good or bad vs giving us information about what is happening in a person’s life. Ishan talks about the importance of listening to the patient versus getting stuck in focusing on diagnostic criteria which was taught in his medical training.