Speaker 1: I feel like I want to reach out to you
Speaker 1: and say how courageous it is. And I know I
Speaker 1: get how profound.
Speaker 2: Not everyone.
Speaker 3: It's really hard.
Speaker 2: I get it, totally get it.
Speaker 4: Welcome to off the Cup, my personal anti anxiety antidote.
Speaker 4: The TV news and talk formats are funny. There are
Speaker 4: a number of ways in. You can come in as
Speaker 4: a celebrity. You can come in as a journalist, you
Speaker 4: can come in as a specialist. I came into TV
Speaker 4: news as a journalist, first working in print, then online
Speaker 4: that I wrote a book and I had to promote
Speaker 4: it on TV, which started my very unexpected to me
Speaker 4: television career. But if you think about shows like The
Speaker 4: View or the late night shows, most of those people
Speaker 4: come in as celebrities, comedians, etc. Now.
Speaker 3: I was happy to come in as a journalist because.
Speaker 4: That's what I did, but I always envied the specialists.
Speaker 4: I remember during the Somali pirate news cycle. Remember that
Speaker 4: I was at Fox at the time and we were
Speaker 4: scrambling for an expert on pirates and I happened to
Speaker 4: know a maritime law expert from college, so I brought
Speaker 4: him in and for a while he was our pirate guy.
Speaker 4: That was his specialty, and specialists get to live in
Speaker 4: one domain. It's the domain they know the best. So
Speaker 4: you got your terrorism expert, you got a chef.
Speaker 3: You got an athlete.
Speaker 4: For me, as a journalist and a generalist, I didn't
Speaker 4: just have to weigh in on politics, but everything from Snookie
Speaker 4: to Tiger Woods to the royals.
Speaker 3: And it's a lot to keep up with.
Speaker 4: My next guest has had the supreme ultimate specialist career,
Speaker 4: and man did he capitalize on it, unlike the pirate
Speaker 4: guy who probably doesn't have much of a TV career anymore.
Speaker 4: Doctor Drew Pinsky is a doctor who became a radio star,
Speaker 4: who became a TV star, and now he talked about
Speaker 4: anything he wants with his medical background as the foundation
Speaker 4: from Loveline to celebrity rehab with Doctor Drew. He's been
Speaker 4: all over media for like forty years, and that is
Speaker 4: quite a feat to stick around that long in this
Speaker 4: career because this career is brutal and it's still going.
Speaker 3: It's still going for him.
Speaker 4: Welcome to off the cup, Doctor Drew Pinsky.
Speaker 1: Such a privilege to be here. But man, you made
Speaker 1: me feel old who for forty years?
Speaker 2: Wow?
Speaker 1: Yeah, But I do think about that. Sometimes I'm like,
Speaker 1: what the hell forty years this? And as a result,
Speaker 1: you know, and I've also all alongside of that, been
Speaker 1: a workaholic physician. I've been practicing medicine in multiple different arenas,
Speaker 1: and I now just want.
Speaker 2: To give it all back.
Speaker 1: I want to just use everything out of plus. Physicians
Speaker 1: now don't get to see what I saw in the
Speaker 1: sense that everything is so silent and ultra specialized.
Speaker 2: And I was such a workaholic.
Speaker 1: And I taught medicine, I taught psychiatry, I did intensive
Speaker 1: care medicine, I did hospital medicine, I did outpitch medicine.
Speaker 1: He did addiction medicine in a psychiatric hospital. I did
Speaker 1: medical services in a psychiatric So I got to see
Speaker 1: the spectrum of the human experience so broadly, and I
Speaker 1: just want to try to share it. And so I've
Speaker 1: had this great good fortune of just trying to do
Speaker 1: good in media this whole time, trying to use media
Speaker 1: to do something worthwhile.
Speaker 3: I know, but here's the thing.
Speaker 4: I've been on TV a long time too, and you know,
Speaker 4: so we get to know, like your TV doctor, right, Yeah,
Speaker 4: they don't go on to have this explosive media career
Speaker 4: outside of a hit a month, you know, when you're
Speaker 4: coming in to talk about some celebrity who died or
Speaker 4: health crisis you have. Really, I mean, people who want
Speaker 4: a career in media need to study your trajectory because
Speaker 4: the thing that you've managed to do is remain impressively
Speaker 4: present and relevant. And that's the trick. I did an
Speaker 4: effort to be on TV. Like I said, I wrote
Speaker 4: a book and had to promote it. But it helped
Speaker 4: me promote my writing. So I did it, and I
Speaker 4: found if I could stay relevant through the news cycles,
Speaker 4: not just be a one trick pony, well then they
Speaker 4: keep having me. But it's hard to stay relevant. It's
Speaker 4: hard to stay relevant to people.
Speaker 1: Well, it's a great point. By the way, there's no
Speaker 1: blueprint for anything I've done. I did not expect to
Speaker 1: be doing any of this. It happened by an accident.
Speaker 1: All of a sudden. I was doing radio in nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty three, and I thought it was I thought I
Speaker 1: was doing community service. I didn't think of myself as
Speaker 1: a broadcast or anything. Yeah, and then all of a
Speaker 1: sudden that went to five nights a week, and then
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, some TV guys showed up. But
Speaker 1: in terms of relevment, it's kind of interesting. Because I've
Speaker 1: been in media that has kind of a continuous connection
Speaker 1: with the public at large. I get a sense of
Speaker 1: what's important in the moment.
Speaker 2: Really.
Speaker 1: So I came to radio really because of something. We
Speaker 1: just stopped calling grids and started calling aids like that
Speaker 1: was where that happened. Yeah, and nobody was talking about it,
Speaker 1: and particularly nobody was talking about it to young people.
Speaker 2: I was considered.
Speaker 1: Bizarre to talk about venereal diseases to an eighteen year
Speaker 1: old because why would they need to know that that
Speaker 1: was nineteen eighty three. Condoms were behind the counter. You'd
Speaker 1: have to get the pharmacist to bring the condoms to
Speaker 1: the cash resire. It was crazy, Yeah, And so I thought, Wow,
Speaker 1: I just got to keep doing this. And as I
Speaker 1: listened to those audiences, the next thing I started hearing
Speaker 1: about was the consequences of childhood trauma, sexual abuse, physical abuse, topanament, neglect.
Speaker 1: All that was being played out then in the psych
Speaker 1: hospital where I was working every day, I saw the
Speaker 1: shift in personality to all cluster b personalities and the
Speaker 1: importance of the addiction and how addiction was sweeping across
Speaker 1: the country. Yes, so I started working in that and
Speaker 1: then I got good at that, and then it then
Speaker 1: that became celebrity rehab eventually again not my idea, just
Speaker 1: some guys that showed up and said we want to
Speaker 1: do this. I thought, well, I'd really live to show
Speaker 1: how we treat addiction. But you can't do that. It's
Speaker 1: just yeahm possible, And we figured out how to do it. Yes,
Speaker 1: And then you know COVID and there there's always something
Speaker 1: that's sort of relevant to people in the moment.
Speaker 2: It really is.
Speaker 4: You started appearing on Ask a Surgeon on k Rock
Speaker 4: as like a med student, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1: It was just fourth year medical students, and I brought
Speaker 1: up my Kyindecology Infectious Disease textbook and I was like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, these are the most important health issues
Speaker 1: for fourteen to twenty four year olds and they're bringing
Speaker 1: it at midnight to FM disc jockeys.
Speaker 2: That was blew my mind.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I thought, and I thought, wow, this thing,
Speaker 1: the sex, drug and rock and roll that radio has
Speaker 1: perpetrated on young people has had such a powerful negative
Speaker 1: medical influence on them and psychiatric influence.
Speaker 2: Certainly there should be a way to make it good.
Speaker 1: If I crawled into this thing, it sort of became
Speaker 1: a part of it, or just became, like you know,
Speaker 1: it became a philosophy that Corolla and I used it
Speaker 1: called the you may not be old enough for this,
Speaker 1: but at the time we call it the Gainsburger and
Speaker 1: the pill philosophy, which is that if you want a
Speaker 1: dog to take a pill, you have to roll it
Speaker 1: in something. Back in the day, it was something called gainsburger,
Speaker 1: and then they'd eat the pill. I'm the pill. I'm
Speaker 1: the pill. I would just slip into these environments and
Speaker 1: give information wouldn't otherwise be heard by the people I
Speaker 1: wanted to reach, and I would just trust the people
Speaker 1: that created media that reached them to do so. And
Speaker 1: it was sometimes very very uncomfortable for me, very uncomfortable.
Speaker 3: In the news business, we call that the meat and
Speaker 3: the potatoes. So we want it. They're there for the meat,
Speaker 3: so we give it to them, but we also want
Speaker 3: to give them some vegetables.
Speaker 1: But you know what's interesting about something you said in
Speaker 1: that intro, which was You're like, I'm sorry, I'm not
Speaker 1: a pirate expert, but we can talk about it anyway.
Speaker 1: But The experts that we get on television are not
Speaker 1: the typically not the biggest or most colored or decorated
Speaker 1: experts on the topic.
Speaker 2: Across the land.
Speaker 1: Right there, people who talk right, are available, are reasonably
Speaker 1: versed in what they talk about, and can show up
Speaker 1: and we'll do it for nothing.
Speaker 2: It will show up and be on TV because news.
Speaker 3: Is no pet Yes, but mainly are intelligenic.
Speaker 2: Mainly yeah, can you communicate something?
Speaker 1: Yes? And people think when somebody's on TV that is
Speaker 1: the expert. No, it is not always. The experts are
Speaker 1: almost always boring, and they'll show up for one appearance
Speaker 1: and that's it because the ratings drop as soon as
Speaker 1: they hit it. Hit this strain, and that's it. And
Speaker 1: you can't do that again and again. And if it
Speaker 1: is an expert that does get attention, he or she
Speaker 1: sometimes has an agenda. Yes, right, People don't understand how
Speaker 1: news works. It's just it's very different than they imagine.
Speaker 4: That's so true. And I want to get into I
Speaker 4: want to talk about your career. I also really want
Speaker 4: to talk to you about mental health because that's important
Speaker 4: to me. But first I want to ask about your childhood.
Speaker 4: What kind of kid were you?
Speaker 1: I was so I grew up sort of middle upper
Speaker 1: middle class, became certainly upper middle by time I was
Speaker 1: a teenager. My dad was depression ey kid. He was
Speaker 1: severely traumat you know, I'm a He was a first
Speaker 1: generation you know, from the Ukrainian diaspora, runn away from
Speaker 1: the holodomo and all this stuff. He and his family
Speaker 1: got here just in time for the depression, and that
Speaker 1: traumatized him like crazy. So he he was a great guy.
Speaker 1: He was a physician. He was ad exquisite judgment. Thank
Speaker 1: god I got some of his medical judgment. But he
Speaker 1: was sort of traumatizing about you know, tomorrow's the end
Speaker 1: of the world. Tomorrow's end of the world, tomorrow the world.
Speaker 1: My mother was an opera singer who became a screen
Speaker 1: actress who was severely emotionally abusive, severely.
Speaker 3: Alm abusive or abused, abusive, abusive.
Speaker 1: She ran away. I found out when I was fifty.
Speaker 1: Listen to this, this is awesome. I was doing the
Speaker 1: book on narcissism, and I was doing with a professor
Speaker 1: from USC He's a behavioral economist, and he did he goes,
Speaker 1: and he goes, Oh, I'm such a fan of film noir.
Speaker 1: I guess your mom was in a film noir. So
Speaker 1: he goes online and looks and he goes, hey, here's
Speaker 1: your mom, And I look at it and I go, huh.
Speaker 1: They describe her the fifth wife of this silent film star.
Speaker 1: At the age of eighteen, came to Los Angeles. I'm like,
Speaker 1: what she was?
Speaker 2: She had a previous and I had a previous step son, and.
Speaker 3: Whole life that you didn't know.
Speaker 1: Married married to a very famous Western silent film star.
Speaker 1: She was like eighty years old at the time I
Speaker 1: found out, and my sister kind of freaked out about it.
Speaker 1: I was like, I said, look, if this is something
Speaker 1: she wants to take to her grave, she's made it
Speaker 1: this far.
Speaker 2: I want to, I want to respect. Let's let it.
Speaker 2: I don't want to. I'm gonna let her take it
Speaker 2: to grade.
Speaker 3: So you didn't bring it up.
Speaker 2: Did not bring it up, but I called her steps.
Speaker 2: I called it called the steps.
Speaker 1: Yeah who was who was a retired dentist from northern
Speaker 1: California and uh And he was like, oh, yeah, I was.
Speaker 1: You know, was like having had a sister. You know,
Speaker 1: she was eighteen, my dad was sixty and uh. And
Speaker 1: one day she just left and I thought, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's perfect, that's her.
Speaker 3: God, that's wild.
Speaker 1: And yeah, so yeah, she had a mixed personality disorder,
Speaker 1: I would say, very odd stuff going a lot of
Speaker 1: unregulated hostilities.
Speaker 3: So what kind of kid did all of that make you?
Speaker 1: So it made me very anxious and a little bit
Speaker 1: rebellious quiet.
Speaker 2: I think it's funny.
Speaker 1: I found some of my grade school report cards after
Speaker 1: my parents died. I was going through it, and my
Speaker 1: second grade teacher, which I thought I was a star
Speaker 1: student in second grade, me as disruptive, and I thought, oh,
Speaker 1: that's interesting.
Speaker 2: It really was.
Speaker 4: So most people in media are described that way, and
Speaker 4: it probably was the trauma.
Speaker 1: Right when you're a traumatized kid, you're you know. And
Speaker 1: by the time I was high school, I was I
Speaker 1: was quite depressed. By the time I hit like adolescents
Speaker 1: and stuff, I was severely depressed. I was having trouble
Speaker 1: navigating socially, and I was in a small, you know,
Speaker 1: liberal arts prep school kind of thing by high school.
Speaker 1: And I found sports in uh like high school, and
Speaker 1: football kind of saved me. And I had some overcoming
Speaker 1: adversity experiences in football that were deeply meaningful for me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then around eleventh grade, I found overachieving.
Speaker 3: That's a drug, right, Oh yeah, yeah, same.
Speaker 1: And so now it's a theater, it's student government and
Speaker 1: sports and academics and bla bla bla b and uh
Speaker 1: and and then by senior year, I'm like the student
Speaker 1: body president and all these things, and you know, I
Speaker 1: and that was a drug for sure. Hit college and
Speaker 1: I didn't have any of that at my disposal. So
Speaker 1: guess what got depressed again? Yeah, and thought I was
Speaker 1: going to be a physician. But I was like, I can't.
Speaker 1: I can't do this. I'm not up for it, and
Speaker 1: I think my brain wasn't developed enough to do it.
Speaker 1: So I just drifted around for about a year and
Speaker 1: a half. I left college for a while, and when
Speaker 1: I came back, I was like, maybe maybe that science
Speaker 1: stuff is what I meant to do.
Speaker 2: And yeah, I came back with full full force of God.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and had a wonderful experience under amazing science training
Speaker 1: and and killed myself for years to get into medical
Speaker 1: school and was so so so grateful to get there,
Speaker 1: and thought I had the most important job in the world.
Speaker 1: I remember just thinking this is so important we're doing Yeah,
Speaker 1: so important. Yeah, I think the younger folks have lost
Speaker 1: track of that a little bit. Yeah, it doesn't feel
Speaker 1: that way to me anymore. We really, I mean we
Speaker 1: were I was deep in the AIDS pandemic and we
Speaker 1: thought this was this was I mean it was dark,
Speaker 1: like so dark. We only those of us that were
Speaker 1: there taking care of these men are here to tell
Speaker 1: you about it. Yeah, it was so sad and so dark.
Speaker 1: But we were from mind and we never ever worried
Speaker 1: about exposing ourselves or contagions or anything.
Speaker 2: We just did our work.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And so anyway, does that kind of capture my
Speaker 1: story a little bit?
Speaker 4: It does, and it resonates so much because I had
Speaker 4: not a similar upbringing, but I was a similar.
Speaker 3: Kid, and overachieving became a drug as well. And then
Speaker 3: I got to.
Speaker 4: Journalism, which felt very important, right, Like this was a
Speaker 4: very important this was a public service.
Speaker 3: This was like a really fun job. I was on
Speaker 3: the front lines. Yeah, it's definitely lost a little of that.
Speaker 1: And by the way, and as it pertains to media,
Speaker 1: you'll appreciate this that when you come to media to
Speaker 1: make a difference because you want to do something good,
Speaker 1: it's a different thing. I'm sure when you look around
Speaker 1: and see people in media, yes, name any names who
Speaker 1: either a haven't had a day job, haven't really worked,
Speaker 1: or be they're there because hey.
Speaker 2: It's me.
Speaker 3: It's me, and it's money and it's fame.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's not that they are not happy people. They
Speaker 1: are not fun people to be around now, and I
Speaker 1: wish people wouldn't watch them so much because they don't
Speaker 1: necessarily have your interest in mind.
Speaker 3: Yes, and there's a lot of that.
Speaker 4: When I say it's not as it doesn't feel as
Speaker 4: important and meaningful anymore, it's because it's a lot of
Speaker 4: those people and the project has has changed, Like anyway,
Speaker 4: it's not about me, and it is.
Speaker 1: But listen, it's it's a I saw it happen in
Speaker 1: real time and I wrote a book about It's the
Speaker 1: narcissistic shift. Yes, and we're all guilty of but we
Speaker 1: all have some of it. Yeah, some people really have it.
Speaker 1: And it's and it's a dangerous thing because they lose empathy,
Speaker 1: they act out envy and they project, they're aggressive and
Speaker 1: they don't care when they destroy people.
Speaker 2: That's very dangerous to have ropping around these days.
Speaker 4: Well, and it's also it's deeply this affects my mental health.
Speaker 4: When I'm in this environment, I care deeply. I'm empathetic
Speaker 4: to a fault, and genuinely I've had to work on that.
Speaker 2: I think we were separated at birth.
Speaker 3: I know, seriously.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and so good news. Here's the good news for me.
Speaker 1: I'm a fan of yours. I always liked you, so
Speaker 1: that's a good thing for both of us.
Speaker 2: I guess I'm a.
Speaker 3: Fan of yours too. That is a good thing. And
Speaker 3: I take it personally like when my of course, when.
Speaker 4: People in my profession aren't taking it as seriously or
Speaker 4: responsibly as I think they should, I take it personally.
Speaker 3: It really bothers me.
Speaker 2: I say about medicine, same with me. Covid was covid
Speaker 2: was mind body?
Speaker 3: Oh, I'm sure it was, just I couldn't.
Speaker 2: I couldn't.
Speaker 1: I still I will never get over it. I'll never
Speaker 1: go And I keep saying, I thank god my dad
Speaker 1: had died before because it would have killed him again.
Speaker 4: Yeah, right, right, right, So you mentioned Okay, so you
Speaker 4: do ask a surgeon as a med student.
Speaker 3: It turns into left line on the radio because.
Speaker 1: The TV shows Ask a Surgeon was a segment. These
Speaker 1: guys were doing a show middle of the night midnight
Speaker 1: to three am on Sunday night, and they were just
Speaker 1: opening the phone lined up and giving advice to their listeners.
Speaker 2: Hey, this is your buddy giving them advice. Well, that
Speaker 2: station became.
Speaker 1: Extremely popular overnight and all of a sudden got all
Speaker 1: this attention. Their number one radio station, K Rocky was
Speaker 1: not no one had ever heard of it five minutes before.
Speaker 2: Okay, And at the same so.
Speaker 1: The program Judger goes, shit, we got to do our
Speaker 1: community service hours.
Speaker 2: So you guys are going to be it.
Speaker 1: You got to figure out how to make this community
Speaker 1: service show. I lived like across the street, and so
Speaker 1: somebody went to piskeys in medical school and he can
Speaker 1: come up and sort of do something to make this
Speaker 1: all right.
Speaker 2: I know what it'll be.
Speaker 1: Ask a surgeon, it'll be funny. I'm like, I don't
Speaker 1: know what you're talking about, but I was convinced to
Speaker 1: kind of go in. It was love Line at that point,
Speaker 1: it was already love Line.
Speaker 3: Oh okay, okay, and then that becomes the MTV show
Speaker 3: that we know with Adam Krolla.
Speaker 1: Welcome a very live version of love Line on Fabulous
Speaker 1: New York. I'm Adam Krolla. That is doctor Drew, doctor
Speaker 1: cruz Aboard, certified physician and medicine specialized.
Speaker 3: How did you handle having your own big cable TV show?
Speaker 2: Well, I was.
Speaker 1: I would say the headline from that show would have
Speaker 1: been leave me alone, because I was doing two or
Speaker 1: three simultaneous medical careers at that time. Yeah, And they
Speaker 1: came along to do a TV when Loveland went to
Speaker 1: five nights a week, I could barely understand how I
Speaker 1: would do it.
Speaker 2: And my poor wife, I don't know how she made
Speaker 2: it through this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And when they came along to do a TV show,
Speaker 1: I said, well, look, all I can manage is Friday
Speaker 1: afternoon after one and Saturday after noon.
Speaker 2: That's it.
Speaker 1: If you can do this show, then well I can
Speaker 1: do this. And so we would do six shows a week.
Speaker 2: We would do three. We would do a show.
Speaker 1: We just we just interviewed for an hour and day calls,
Speaker 1: change our clothes, do another, do another. And we didn't
Speaker 1: know that that was unusual. We just thought, okay, let's
Speaker 1: see me. I guess all right, here we go, and
Speaker 1: and we did that for like five hundred shows or something.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but how did because now you're famous, and how
Speaker 4: do you process that again?
Speaker 1: If you've had a day job, I'm not impressed.
Speaker 2: You know, it was fun.
Speaker 1: I love people, and so to have people. I remember
Speaker 1: the first time I was aware something was going on.
Speaker 1: Somebody came up to you on the street here and
Speaker 1: past seen and went, oh, I always wonder what you
Speaker 1: looked like, and it was really great to see you now,
Speaker 1: and I thought.
Speaker 2: Oh, I'm being seen. Also good.
Speaker 1: Okay, Well I get to reach more people and do
Speaker 1: more things. Yeah, and that's about all I was.
Speaker 2: It was fun. I don't know, it just felt like
Speaker 2: it felt like growth.
Speaker 1: To me. It felt like I was doing more things,
Speaker 1: more things. It didn't feel like much of anything else.
Speaker 4: Of all of the shows you've done, because you've done
Speaker 4: so many, what what felt the most fulfilling, the most rewarding,
Speaker 4: the most closest to your the promise you make yourself right?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so so it's hard to answer that.
Speaker 1: But but oh, my goodness, when you when I really
Speaker 1: look at all the different things, Yes, the most fun I.
Speaker 2: Had was Leveline.
Speaker 1: Okay, that was really really we we would have loved
Speaker 1: it because I it was my you know, I thought,
Speaker 1: we have a community here, We're gonna do this forever.
Speaker 2: I did understand TV gonna you.
Speaker 1: Come and go.
Speaker 3: Well exactly, that's the point I'm making about your career.
Speaker 3: You do come and go in this business.
Speaker 4: And most of the time you stay, you stay gone,
Speaker 4: you keep coming, you keep reinventing.
Speaker 2: Well, but the but the community never reassembles. You know.
Speaker 1: It's all these people you get so close with, you're
Speaker 1: working with them, and they just disappear.
Speaker 2: They're out of your life. That's weird.
Speaker 1: And h l N was a great experience. The thing
Speaker 1: I did for the c W Life Changers was a
Speaker 1: great experience. I love the child challenge of those shows. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I love the challenge of trying to make content and
Speaker 1: make a difference.
Speaker 2: And you know.
Speaker 3: Addiction, right is that like your heart is an addiction.
Speaker 2: That That's where I was going.
Speaker 1: But really, the show that I felt was the most
Speaker 1: extraordinary experience with celebrity we have it was. It was
Speaker 1: an extraordinary experience and continues to be and it did
Speaker 1: what we wanted it to do, was to bring really awareness.
Speaker 1: So do you know how that happened? To? Hey, what happened?
Speaker 1: So TV producers showed up and said they want to
Speaker 1: do this thing. At the time, I was doing a
Speaker 1: lot of like Nancy Grace and CNN trying to raise
Speaker 1: awareness about adiction. I could see the homeless thing coming.
Speaker 1: I could see what was coming our way, and I
Speaker 1: was like, we got a problem. And so these TV
Speaker 1: producers picked up.
Speaker 2: On me doing that. I guess they knew that. At
Speaker 2: the time I was running.
Speaker 1: I was running a large addiction freestanding program in a
Speaker 1: psychiatric facility, a freestanding psychiatric hospital, and we treated a
Speaker 1: lot of celebrities.
Speaker 2: I didn't like treating celebrities. I didn't want to treat celebrities.
Speaker 1: It's just we were so circumspect and private and had
Speaker 1: such a high quality program. We got us a few
Speaker 1: our way and they came to me and they went,
Speaker 1: we want to put cameras in what you're doing.
Speaker 2: I said, well, you can't do that. I said that
Speaker 2: you can't even bring a camera around.
Speaker 1: The psychiatric hospital. It's just it's just you can't can't
Speaker 1: do that. So oh, let us talk to the hospital
Speaker 1: administrators and I said, okay, here we go. They laughed
Speaker 1: them out of the room, but you gotta be kidding, yeah,
Speaker 1: And then they're like asking me to solve the problem.
Speaker 1: And I thought, you know, of course you can't do
Speaker 1: this in an acute psychiatric hospital. But there's up the hill,
Speaker 1: there's a residential program that a friend of mine runs.
Speaker 1: I bet we could do it in a residential setting
Speaker 1: and just bring my team up there and install my team,
Speaker 1: used their policies and procedures and their licensing, and just
Speaker 1: do what we do there.
Speaker 2: And that's what we did.
Speaker 1: We did it up there at this residential facility. And
Speaker 1: there were many, many, many many other hoops I had
Speaker 1: to jump through, like like, for instance, it's not licensed
Speaker 1: for me to work inside the facility. So I so
Speaker 1: the psychiatrist there, I went, how do you handle this?
Speaker 1: He goes, well, I have a trailer in the back
Speaker 1: with a semporate address, and that's where I see the patients.
Speaker 1: So we had to build a double wide trailer in
Speaker 1: the middle of the parking lot and get an address
Speaker 1: and a license. All the groups you see and all
Speaker 1: the sessions I'm having with the patients that's in a
Speaker 1: trailer out in the parking lot. Wow, so your the
Speaker 1: cameras are blinded to the patients walking across to the
Speaker 1: to the trailer, but you know that's where that all
Speaker 1: went down. They lots of things like that, but but
Speaker 1: in the here's some of the comedies. So when this started,
Speaker 1: I was really concerned. I was really like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: this is I really want these people to do well.
Speaker 2: They need help.
Speaker 1: The first group like was like needed help and I
Speaker 1: And it was really stressful to bring ten people all
Speaker 1: at once into Normally you have people kind of trickling
Speaker 1: in and the people that are there can then help
Speaker 1: enroll the people that are newcomers and stuff. Everybody all
Speaker 1: at once on one day into treatment very challenging and
Speaker 1: every day in group you don't see it to this
Speaker 1: A lot of stuff you didn't see on TV. A
Speaker 1: lot of the treatment you don't see on TV because
Speaker 1: it's not TV. It was you know, it was constructed
Speaker 1: as a reality show, not a treatment show. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: so every group, I'd start out, you are you okay?
Speaker 2: Are you okay?
Speaker 1: At the camera's bothering you? Johnny to transfer it to
Speaker 1: the facility. You're right, you're right, You're right right. I
Speaker 1: was very anxious about this. And after about two weeks
Speaker 1: of that, Mary Carey, who's a porn star, she leans
Speaker 1: into group and she goes Drew, I've done just about
Speaker 1: everything in front of a camera. I understand what this is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I thought, oh, okay, that's right. These people do
Speaker 2: know what it is to be vulnerable in front of
Speaker 2: a camera. Yet they know what that means.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: It was the upside.
Speaker 1: And here's the other thing that happened that was stunning
Speaker 1: to me. Eighty percent of those people that came in
Speaker 1: came in wanting to get paid, wanted to make a
Speaker 1: mockery of things, wanted to make fun of us, and
Speaker 1: because we were so serious about the treatment. Within a week,
Speaker 1: they all shifted to, oh my god, this is real treatment.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, I'm getting something out of this. Oh
Speaker 1: my god, I want to be an example for other people.
Speaker 1: That happened to almost every single patient. I want to
Speaker 1: do well in treatment. I want to be an example
Speaker 1: because this is important. I'm getting something out of this.
Speaker 1: I want other people to understand that they can get
Speaker 1: a lot out of this. That was talk about a godsend.
Speaker 1: I was like, oh my god, and it happened to
Speaker 1: every group. It was really interesting. I started anticipating it
Speaker 1: because it kept happening, and that I was very very
Speaker 1: grateful for sure, and you know, and so and also
Speaker 1: the other thing, because they did want to get paid
Speaker 1: and did want to be on TV. I could push
Speaker 1: them much harder than I normally do. Normally, if you
Speaker 1: push somebody early in treatment, they leave this group. But
Speaker 1: I didn't know they want to stay, so I could
Speaker 1: really really push and it was great. And people that
Speaker 1: followed up did amazing, and people that didn't follow up
Speaker 1: and didn't stay with the program did not do so
Speaker 1: manch and the ones that passed away, almost without exception,
Speaker 1: were killed by my peers. During the prescription drug pandemic,
Speaker 1: people don't understand this. I would get people off drugs.
Speaker 1: They'd be doing great, they no longer have pain, and
Speaker 1: they would go back to their doctors, and their doctors
Speaker 1: would say things like, don't listen to these people. They're
Speaker 1: brainwashing you. I told you you need to be on
Speaker 1: this oxy cont and the rest of your life.
Speaker 2: Take it. Tell that to a drug addict, terrible.
Speaker 1: They'd be gone no time. Mike Starr, the guitarist, he
Speaker 1: was a legendary drug audent.
Speaker 2: We had him.
Speaker 1: We worked on him for months after the TV camera
Speaker 1: stopped rolling, and he was doing so well. After about
Speaker 1: close to a year, he suddenly goes, I'm going to Utah.
Speaker 1: We're like, we're like whenever an addict says something like that,
Speaker 1: you got to what's going on? Why are you going
Speaker 1: to Utah?
Speaker 2: Why?
Speaker 1: Why my band we have to do some stuff. I'm
Speaker 1: going to go with my bandmates. We're going to live
Speaker 1: in a sober living. I'm gonna be next to Circlage.
Speaker 1: He had all these plans that sounded good. Yet I'm
Speaker 1: leaving sounded bad. Just that when an addict is making decisions,
Speaker 1: it's like, oh.
Speaker 2: Boy, yeah, So he does leave.
Speaker 1: He calls me after about three weeks because I'm having
Speaker 1: back pain. I said, Mike, please, dear God, whatever you do,
Speaker 1: do not tell a physician that you have back pain.
Speaker 2: Don't do it.
Speaker 1: Goes In dies with OxyContin and soma at his bedside,
Speaker 1: gave him the meds that heartbreaks came hard.
Speaker 2: This heartbringing is just beyond. But anyway, that's that. So
Speaker 2: we I feel like we elevate.
Speaker 1: We ended up getting and seeing lots of people that
Speaker 1: came to treatment because of celebrity rehab, and we wanted
Speaker 1: to sort of throw open the mystery behind treatment. U.
Speaker 1: Lets you understand, you know the the other thing that happened,
Speaker 1: this is really really you remember Bob Forrest, the guy
Speaker 1: with the hat and glasses. They were just He was
Speaker 1: my lead counselor and I worked with them for years
Speaker 1: and years. I actually stole him from that facility that
Speaker 1: we were working at for the celebrity rehab and when
Speaker 1: they were talking to me about doing this, I thought,
Speaker 1: we can't do it. It's just not it's not I
Speaker 1: don't know, I'm not comfortable with it. And vh one
Speaker 1: showed interest and I was like, oh shit. I just
Speaker 1: kind of went into hiding. And while during a three
Speaker 1: month period where people are like where are you what
Speaker 1: do you want to do, I'm like, I don't know.
Speaker 1: Bob Forrest comes in my office one day and he
Speaker 1: has no idea this has gone on. He comes to
Speaker 1: my office and he goes, you know, I was watching
Speaker 1: you know, No, I don't know pres Hilton Today or
Speaker 1: TMZ or something. He goes, I'm so tired of how
Speaker 1: our patients are being portrayed as so they're using their
Speaker 1: addiction as an excuse, or they're on a vacation when
Speaker 1: they come to treatment. You know what, we need to
Speaker 1: do a TV show where we show how sick they
Speaker 1: get and how hard they worked it well. And I
Speaker 1: was like, oh, my god, Bob, they somebody has approached
Speaker 1: me to do this. And he leaned back and he goes,
Speaker 1: we're gonna do it. He smacked his hands in his
Speaker 1: knees and he jumped up and left my office and
Speaker 1: he goes, that's what we got to do. And I
Speaker 1: was like, okay, that's what you think we got to do.
Speaker 1: I'll go back to moving in that direction. It felt
Speaker 1: very scary to me, very very very scary.
Speaker 4: Yeah we did it, but so important, you know, just
Speaker 4: speaking Yeah, personally, So, I struggle with anxiety.
Speaker 3: Shocking huh, severe right.
Speaker 1: Attack when I was depressed in college, and panic text disabling,
Speaker 1: panic disabling. I suffered for years with that and I
Speaker 1: was mismanaged. It was nineteen seventy eight. No one had
Speaker 1: treatment for that stuff for an adolescent. He told me
Speaker 1: to take long walks in the woods.
Speaker 4: But you finished your story right, well, right, No, this
Speaker 4: is because we've come so far, and yet I still
Speaker 4: hear from people that they don't really understand what anxiety is.
Speaker 3: Aren't we all worried? Well, of course, it's not just
Speaker 3: being worried.
Speaker 4: My anxiety is irrational and debilitating and crippling and paralyzing.
Speaker 4: A sometimes existential, existential, but we don't talk about anxiety
Speaker 4: in very graphic and grand other ways. I'm actually writing
Speaker 4: a book about my mental health so that I do that,
Speaker 4: so that someone younger than me or a parent can
Speaker 4: read it and hear, oh, I'm doing that too, And
Speaker 4: I don't have to or you know, to get help
Speaker 4: before I did, because getting help at forty and unlearning
Speaker 4: twenty thirty years of terrible habits really hard.
Speaker 3: And I mean, we'll just get into it.
Speaker 4: Because the addictive part of anxiety, I'm sure you know
Speaker 4: studies about people getting addicted to the anxiety that it
Speaker 4: functions like an addiction, and I for sure was addicted.
Speaker 4: And the way I'm writing about it now is learning
Speaker 4: to live without anxiety, because I got very good at
Speaker 4: learning to live with it and incorporating it into my
Speaker 4: daily life. Of course, the catastrophizing for me was self soothing.
Speaker 4: If I thought about the awful thing, it wasn't going
Speaker 4: to happen to me. And if I didn't think about
Speaker 4: the awful thing and anticipate the crazy awful thing, that
Speaker 4: definitely wasn't going to happen. If I didn't anticipate it,
Speaker 4: that was inviting it. Yeah, and so this was self
Speaker 4: soothing and I didn't realize.
Speaker 2: Like preparing for that thing that's going to happen made
Speaker 2: me feel.
Speaker 4: Bad, and my anxiety actually wasn't over the thing. My
Speaker 4: anxiety had to do with work and my value attached
Speaker 4: to my work. And because I couldn't solve that problem,
Speaker 4: my brain would find another problem or invent a problem
Speaker 4: to solve it to make me feel better about it.
Speaker 4: So this is a kind of addiction. It feels like
Speaker 4: a kind of addiction. But if that's the case, what's
Speaker 4: the gateway drug? How do we get addicted to this?
Speaker 1: Well, I'm going to push back because because we were
Speaker 1: saying this is my own because we were separated at birth,
Speaker 1: I know we have the same issues, okay, And anxiety
Speaker 1: comes in different flavors.
Speaker 2: We have you and I have the O c D
Speaker 2: flavor rituals.
Speaker 1: Right, And so this is not addiction. This is OCD Okay, yep.
Speaker 1: And that is and the O c D becomes gratifying. Okay,
Speaker 1: it's not addiction because addiction progresses and it takes over
Speaker 1: all other priorities. This is this is a repetitive, gratifying
Speaker 1: circuit that opens up and we can't get out of it,
Speaker 1: and we use it in all kinds of ways to
Speaker 1: soothe and to manage into all these things. But it's
Speaker 1: all ultimately a relative of OCDEA the anxiety.
Speaker 2: Some people anxiety.
Speaker 1: Alcoholics get anxiety, but it's a very different flavor. People
Speaker 1: with depression get anxiety. Can have various flavors to it.
Speaker 3: People are social anxiety.
Speaker 2: That's not what anxiety.
Speaker 1: Well, but it's But again, you're obsessing about how do
Speaker 1: I look, how do I feel? All of our hyperachieving
Speaker 1: can turn on us too. Yes, it's it's all that
Speaker 1: I got it. I'm going to have you interview a
Speaker 1: guy I know that's really good at this kind of
Speaker 1: unraveling this.
Speaker 2: Stuff and there are great treatments for it now.
Speaker 4: And I'm in therapy and I talk about it all
Speaker 4: the time now podcast. So I didn't want to do
Speaker 4: a mental health podcast. I wanted to do a podcast
Speaker 4: where I talk to interesting people and mental health could
Speaker 4: come up naturally, of course, of course, because I want
Speaker 4: to normalize talking about it like you would with your friends,
Speaker 4: with your family.
Speaker 3: Just talk about therapy. What'd you learn?
Speaker 4: How you feeling? So I'm in therapy and I love
Speaker 4: talking about it. I've learned so many things about my
Speaker 4: own mind. Do you think that everyone should be in therapy?
Speaker 2: I hate to say things like that. I think.
Speaker 1: You know they're they're serious mental illness. This gets complicated, right,
Speaker 1: there's serious mental illness, bipolar disorder or schizophrenia and any
Speaker 1: of course. The fact that people don't seek treatment for
Speaker 1: these things and or life threatening addictions and things.
Speaker 2: That is insane to me.
Speaker 1: That if you had a heart attack, you'd get treatment, right,
Speaker 1: you have a brain disorder, you go to the streets.
Speaker 2: What the right wrong with us?
Speaker 1: Only country in the world that does that, by the way, So, yeah,
Speaker 1: we need to get better at treating brain disorders. Roc
Speaker 1: DA and anxiety is one of these brain conditions. It's
Speaker 1: built on our genetics and then our experiences of trauma
Speaker 1: and whatnot, and to the extent that it makes us,
Speaker 1: to the extent that it interferes with functioning.
Speaker 2: That's a pretty broad category. Yes, you should be in treatment.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and sometimes people leave out of those functioning sort
Speaker 1: of equations interpersonal functioning, you know, sort of. And and
Speaker 1: by the way, there is optimal functioning too. Now, if
Speaker 1: you're interested in optimal function well, then you should also
Speaker 1: be in treatment for there maybe holding you back. And
Speaker 1: then there's sort of philosophical territory you can get into it,
Speaker 1: you can go into analysis and all these explorations of
Speaker 1: the mind. That's a that's more of a pastime, I
Speaker 1: would argue. I mean, it's it's it can be useful
Speaker 1: on the therapeutic side, but when you're if you're really
Speaker 1: sitting on a couch three or five days a week,
Speaker 1: I don't know that that's necessary for many people.
Speaker 4: But I think a lot of people think they have
Speaker 4: to have suffered a major trauma, no, or have a
Speaker 4: disorder or therapy.
Speaker 3: To be helpful.
Speaker 1: No, it's that that is that is in the optimal
Speaker 1: functioning zone. I mean, think about athletes. They always seek
Speaker 1: out for these kinds of they want to be optimally performed,
Speaker 1: and so they always think seek out people that can
Speaker 1: help them for that. And so yeah, so to that extent,
Speaker 1: we can all benefit from it. And there are things
Speaker 1: that come up in our life that we just don't
Speaker 1: you know. Listen, So I was in therapy for long, long, long,
Speaker 1: long time, and I'm back in therapy again. And what
Speaker 1: put me in therapy the first time was my anxiety
Speaker 1: disorder and it got so bad my wife called me
Speaker 1: one day at work and said, you know, you need
Speaker 1: to stay at therapist and I was like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: I need to because I'm working in these people and
Speaker 1: I need better blah blah, and she's like, no, you
Speaker 1: need to see someone. The hair stood up in the
Speaker 1: back of my neck. I was like, Okay, I'm putting
Speaker 1: the phone down and I'm gonna call somebody, And thank
Speaker 1: god I did. And I stayed in therapy for a
Speaker 1: very very long period of time, and that therapy was
Speaker 1: more about my trauma, because I discovered my anxiety was
Speaker 1: to a great deal at that time in my life,
Speaker 1: was due to the dissociation and disconnection from my primary
Speaker 1: feeling states that the trauma had caused me.
Speaker 2: Yes, and so I had to learn how to feel again,
Speaker 2: quite literally.
Speaker 1: So sometimes when you don't feel, you're not connected to
Speaker 1: your feelings, all you feel is anxiety.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And it was a great, wonderful experience. I mean, it
Speaker 1: really helped me in a billion billion ways, and it
Speaker 1: just so enriched what I could do with other people.
Speaker 2: I can tune into other people.
Speaker 1: I have a deep because what goes along with our
Speaker 1: OCD or anxiety and our hyperachieving is also codependency.
Speaker 2: So and so the codependency can get away.
Speaker 1: From you unless you can have good boundaries and really
Speaker 1: learn to attune to people and hold those boundaries, which
Speaker 1: I was not good at when I started therapy, and
Speaker 1: I became good at.
Speaker 4: In my work, there are times where I'm covering war genocide.
Speaker 4: I also do work with children and who are victims
Speaker 4: of war, mainly in Syria, Lebanon now Ukraine and Gaza,
Speaker 4: and so I have to see things that are so
Speaker 4: graphic they don't make it to air. And I have
Speaker 4: to process that both in my work and my philanthropic work.
Speaker 2: And is it with kids? Is graphic stuff with kids?
Speaker 1: Yes?
Speaker 2: It is so hard to manage.
Speaker 4: Which is so hard And at my worst of my anxiety,
Speaker 4: I did a lot of transference where this was my kid.
Speaker 4: They were all my kid of course of course, and
Speaker 4: you right, and so it was very hard for me
Speaker 4: to not internalize all of this work, which.
Speaker 3: Would be normal.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's impossible now, but this is my job.
Speaker 3: This is not for fun, this is something you know,
Speaker 3: I have to do, and so it's been a challenge.
Speaker 4: And listen, the political stuff is hard to on my
Speaker 4: anxiety but of course when your job this is true
Speaker 4: for you too, when your job is something you love deeply,
Speaker 4: but it's also a trigger because it's hard and you're
Speaker 4: seeing things and doing things as a doctor or a
Speaker 4: journalist that are hard to see and do. How do
Speaker 4: you create boundaries within your own profession, within your own
Speaker 4: your own space.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so it was a couple answers to that. I
Speaker 1: feel how profound what this is? This is profound. This
Speaker 1: is not something passing. This is profound, right, And on
Speaker 1: one hand, I think I would need some sort of
Speaker 1: management of that. I would have to do EMDR or something.
Speaker 1: So I did not go from a cute trauma to
Speaker 1: chronic trauma, because I would get there. So personally, I
Speaker 1: would do some sort of trauma management something, I'd have
Speaker 1: somebody else. I'd have to upload to somebody else because
Speaker 1: I don't think I could handle it. And I'm sorry
Speaker 1: you're I feel like I want to reach out to
Speaker 1: you and you know, say how courageous it is. And
Speaker 1: I know I get how profound.
Speaker 3: Not everyone it's really hard.
Speaker 2: I get it. I totally get it.
Speaker 3: But do you love it?
Speaker 4: And you feel in a way responsible, like if I'm
Speaker 4: not doing it? Who's going to do it, and I
Speaker 4: have to be the person to do it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and so this is the other side that I
Speaker 1: tell myself. It's like being an ambulance driver, Like you
Speaker 1: have a job to do and you do it. Now,
Speaker 1: in medicine, we are highly trained to get into situations
Speaker 1: that are horrific and do our job.
Speaker 2: And so I've done that a million times and I
Speaker 2: made it out. Okay.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Part of it is the environment for me, Like when
Speaker 1: I come upon bad stuff out in the world, it
Speaker 1: traumatizes me because I don't have the structure around me
Speaker 1: to do what I need to do to help and
Speaker 1: all the support and all the people and all the
Speaker 1: everything else. So I get very traumatized when I, you know,
Speaker 1: come a kind of car accident or something. Well, if
Speaker 1: that person rolls into the er, I can make it.
Speaker 2: I can help. I can And you don't want and
Speaker 2: you got to get.
Speaker 1: A little I guess the third advice to get a
Speaker 1: philosophical You can't let it destroy you because they need you.
Speaker 2: You know, You've got to do a job and and
Speaker 2: this this can't destroy you.
Speaker 1: It has to you know, it's it's the aftermath that
Speaker 1: you got to worry about and and that's the part
Speaker 1: I would need help with. Particularly, I'm very sensitive to
Speaker 1: the kids stuff, and most people are most people are
Speaker 1: most people need some kind of trauma. I I've I
Speaker 1: think he's talked about this publicly, so you wouldn't mind
Speaker 1: me saying it. You know, I'm blanking as I'm lead
Speaker 1: singer of Korn. Jonathan uh mm hmm or Jonathan's last name.
Speaker 1: But he was a mortician before he became a round wow,
Speaker 1: and his working on kids as a mortician gave him
Speaker 1: horrific PTSD and he had to do all the right right.
Speaker 2: It's like, you get it.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, that's that's yeah, that sounds.
Speaker 1: The good news is you're not doing what I used
Speaker 1: to do, which is dissociating from all this. You're actually
Speaker 1: feeling the feelings.
Speaker 3: I am, and part of me wishes I could dissociate.
Speaker 2: I know, I.
Speaker 1: Understand, and and I probably would associate a little bit
Speaker 1: that I distanced myself from it that way, but it's
Speaker 1: not healthy. The chronic, your recurrent association is how you
Speaker 1: get into trouble later because the part of yourself that
Speaker 1: needs attention goes into hiding, but it doesn't go away.
Speaker 4: Right right right, Well, listen, this is why I'm in
Speaker 4: therapy talking about it every week. I'm on medication and
Speaker 4: that's all helped good, but there's still like, well.
Speaker 1: I see it, I see it, and I feel it,
Speaker 1: I get it, and it feels like I don't know
Speaker 1: what's going on in therapy for you, but but you
Speaker 1: really need somebody to attune to you, like really tune
Speaker 1: into your feelings and be there with you with those feelings. Yes,
Speaker 1: and in a weird way, that's what EMDR is. But
Speaker 1: you may just need some few hours of people just
Speaker 1: being with you because our brain, we can only handle
Speaker 1: so much on our own. Our brain hits its capacity totally.
Speaker 1: It's totally appreciate.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's what happened. And it was almost like I
Speaker 3: had like a nervous.
Speaker 4: Breakdown one day, very suddenly, and it felt like this
Speaker 4: is how I described it, like I owe.
Speaker 3: Deed on anxiety.
Speaker 2: What it's a panic attack?
Speaker 4: Right, it was, But it was like my body told
Speaker 4: me that day, I'm not doing this anymore. We can't
Speaker 4: keep doing this. You can't the twenty four to seven
Speaker 4: and it was twenty four seven catastrophizing, which is just
Speaker 4: too much adrenaline you can't. You're not meant to be
Speaker 4: in fight or flight all day long. And it's like
Speaker 4: my body was saying stop and I, you know, everything stopped.
Speaker 4: I could in the wake of that attack. I couldn't
Speaker 4: see well, I couldn't read, I couldn't make decisions.
Speaker 3: The good news is it was so severe. I got
Speaker 3: help right away, like the next day.
Speaker 2: I had that exact thing and stop it.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 1: And I didn't know what was going on. I just
Speaker 1: laid in bed for a couple of days and it
Speaker 1: was so and that's not me. I was like, I
Speaker 1: was like, what is going on?
Speaker 2: And God help? But was mismanished for like a year.
Speaker 1: Oh no, And so I went from these disabling panics
Speaker 1: to sort of chronic severe anxiety.
Speaker 4: So anyway, well, finding the right treatment is so crucial,
Speaker 4: and I've switched therapists a couple of times, but I
Speaker 4: really like my therapists now and I.
Speaker 3: Have learned a lot of I wouldn't call them tricks.
Speaker 3: And I fucking hate this doctor Drew. I hate the
Speaker 3: TikTok people who go out and are like, I've got
Speaker 3: a way to hack your anxiety to stop the word.
Speaker 2: There's no hack.
Speaker 1: There's no hack.
Speaker 4: And you haven't met me, you haven't diagnosed me. You
Speaker 4: don't know what my anxiety is. You cannot stop it.
Speaker 1: You're gonna hack a cloud, You're going to hack a
Speaker 1: river or something. Biology is like a very probable, is
Speaker 1: not like a computer. It's very different human experience, very
Speaker 1: very different. I don't like the word hack.
Speaker 3: Well, I hate that. And it's not that simple.
Speaker 4: You can't diagnose me from TikTok no, And it gives people,
Speaker 4: I think, a false impression of anxiety, like it's just
Speaker 4: some mind trick that you can like snap your fingers
Speaker 4: and crack the code.
Speaker 3: That's not it.
Speaker 1: And everybody's different that way too. And isn't it interesting
Speaker 1: that that TikTok serves that shit up to you? Isn't
Speaker 1: that weird?
Speaker 2: And it's again, it keeps serving to me.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's weird.
Speaker 4: I know.
Speaker 3: But I hate that. And I promised myself i'd never
Speaker 3: do that.
Speaker 4: When I share the things that have worked for me
Speaker 4: or the things that have not worked for me, I'm
Speaker 4: very clear this is what worked for me.
Speaker 3: But you know, I don't give advice.
Speaker 4: I really made a promise to myself that once I,
Speaker 4: you know, got into this space, I wouldn't act like
Speaker 4: I knew anything about your mental health.
Speaker 3: I barely know anything about my own. That's why I
Speaker 3: go see experts, you know.
Speaker 4: So that's really important to me being responsible with the
Speaker 4: way we talk about it.
Speaker 1: I'm with you, and I'm just I don't know if
Speaker 1: you've had the feedback yet, but when you do talk
Speaker 1: about your mental health, people are always like, what you have?
Speaker 4: Yes, yes, everybody like success inoculates you from mental health problems.
Speaker 3: It does not.
Speaker 2: No, In fact, you know, you're a little more likely.
Speaker 1: I say, that's what my research shows, you know, because
Speaker 1: whenever you excess of any type, you know, working extra hard,
Speaker 1: there's a reason that enginees running. It's usually not healthy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: for sure, just because of health.
Speaker 4: My uncle was very wise, would say, but this is
Speaker 4: what made you successful. Yeah, and that's that's the loop
Speaker 4: you play in your mind. Well, if I weren't like this,
Speaker 4: I probably wouldn't have been as ambitious. And you know, but.
Speaker 1: Yeah, right, that's that's I've been told that a few
Speaker 1: times too, and I'm like, I've suffered a lot because
Speaker 1: but I don't know, but I might have been.
Speaker 2: The same, but maybe not.
Speaker 1: Whatever you you have to own, you have to figure
Speaker 1: out ways to own all of it, because you know,
Speaker 1: back back, as you work through all this stuff, you
Speaker 1: have to be grateful for everything you have, including the
Speaker 1: miserable stuff exactly got. And when you find gratitude and humility,
Speaker 1: when you find those things and forgiveness, I always know
Speaker 1: when people are doing well from mental health standpoint because
Speaker 1: they start talking about humility and forgiveness and gratitude those
Speaker 1: and when you're grateful, you start like, the fact that
Speaker 1: my mother was abusive to me is a neutral thing.
Speaker 2: It's just like it happened. She was not a well person.
Speaker 2: How could you It's not okay to do Like, how
Speaker 2: could you do that to a kid? That's not okay.
Speaker 2: But the fact that she did it to me doesn't
Speaker 2: have any big importance. It just is what it was.
Speaker 2: And you know, I feel bad for her, right and
Speaker 2: I'm grateful for everything I had.
Speaker 4: That's a good place to end the mental health portion
Speaker 4: of this conversation.
Speaker 2: Going from here you're scaring me.
Speaker 4: Now we have a fun, fun turn. It's a fun
Speaker 4: lightning round, all right.
Speaker 2: Okay, But let me just say something.
Speaker 1: I feel sort of honored to be here with you
Speaker 1: while you spoke so openly about your feelings and your
Speaker 1: experiences and I and I want to just honor that.
Speaker 1: I just want to say thank you so.
Speaker 4: Well right back to you, thank you for creating spaces
Speaker 4: like this for so many years where people could talk
Speaker 4: openly about the hard stuff because paved the way.
Speaker 1: It's about the best thing you can say to me,
Speaker 1: because that's that's what I want to do, is create environments,
Speaker 1: create things that make things better, which God knows this
Speaker 1: country needs that now totally.
Speaker 3: Okay, ready, lightning round all right, here we go.
Speaker 4: At the top of your wiki bio, it says Drew
Speaker 4: Pinsky doctor Drew not to be confused with who.
Speaker 1: Geez, doctor Dre correct because because I get his stuff
Speaker 1: on X all the time, and I bet he gets
Speaker 1: my stuff and sometimes it's sometimes it's confusing.
Speaker 2: Like what what what are you talking about? Oh Drey?
Speaker 1: Okay, do you think you're And sometimes they'll put my
Speaker 1: name in they'll get that right, but clearly.
Speaker 2: It's for Drey.
Speaker 3: So funny. I loved that.
Speaker 4: Okay, you are in a Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen
Speaker 4: movie New York Minute classic.
Speaker 3: Who do you play?
Speaker 2: I play their father?
Speaker 3: What's his name? And uh, oh you can go with
Speaker 3: doctor blank.
Speaker 2: Doctor Olsen. Nope, I don't have any idea.
Speaker 3: I remember doctor Ryan.
Speaker 2: Oh, doctor Ryan, Yes, that's right.
Speaker 1: You know. Uh and and Sagot and I became good
Speaker 1: friends too, and uh yeah, and his wife and I
Speaker 1: have been friends ever since.
Speaker 4: Wait, wait a sec. Yeah, we've had Kelly on the
Speaker 4: pod because I knew Bob. We did a roast together
Speaker 4: and he was so lovely and almost fatherly and you
Speaker 4: paternal to me and wonderful, and hearing Kelly talk about
Speaker 4: him was really was really wonderful.
Speaker 1: The reason I know Kelly well now because Bob was
Speaker 1: always that we got to go to know you got
Speaker 1: to meet my life. She's a wonderful woe. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: I ran into him. He did a movie anyway, the
Speaker 1: long story, but I really got to know her because
Speaker 1: her agent had we talked to her about going wherever
Speaker 1: they took her to do the what's the name of
Speaker 1: the series now called Special Forces?
Speaker 3: Oh right, last year because I was in the Special.
Speaker 1: Forces that was in the desert and I ended up
Speaker 1: in the hospital very quickly. Long story, but I still
Speaker 1: love the experience. I loved it, loved it, loved it,
Speaker 1: and so I convinced Kelly to do it too.
Speaker 3: Oh that's great. Oh I love that. Okay, you have
Speaker 3: an asteroid named after you. What's it called?
Speaker 2: It's me and Adam, isn't it now? No, I don't know.
Speaker 2: I just saw munch of numbers and letters. I don't know.
Speaker 4: It's asteroid four five three six, Draupinski and Drapinski is
Speaker 4: one word.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 4: So I just know that in like two hundred years,
Speaker 4: astronomy students are going to call it Jupinski and someone's
Speaker 4: going to tell them that's named after a real person
Speaker 4: named Drew Pinsky, and that's going to blow their minds.
Speaker 2: I just hope to god it doesn't come near and
Speaker 2: have a near orbits.
Speaker 3: To the aid famous.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, but it was.
Speaker 1: It was given to me by a astronomy professor at
Speaker 1: I went to Amherst College, and this professor was at
Speaker 1: UMass Amherst and was a big Love Line fan and
Speaker 1: came to visit me in Adam and named asteroids after us.
Speaker 4: I'm a big space nerd, so I actually love stuff
Speaker 4: like that. But you know they're just going to think,
Speaker 4: what's a Drapinski.
Speaker 2: I know it's not gonna have any meeting like they don't.
Speaker 3: Kids today don't know, well, nobody knows. People don't know
Speaker 3: that Taco bell is actually named after its founder, Glenn Bell.
Speaker 2: I did.
Speaker 4: I did not know that Platts is named after Joe Pillotates,
Speaker 4: the guy who founded it.
Speaker 2: I did not know that.
Speaker 1: I love it when people's names become an acrony. You know,
Speaker 1: just something means something totally different.
Speaker 3: It's gonna be you, You're gonna.
Speaker 2: Be jun something else. The name after me.
Speaker 3: And then what do you and Mike rowe have in common?
Speaker 1: We had a show on Discovery at the same time,
Speaker 1: and we used to tour around with that. The upfronts
Speaker 1: for those shows. Is that what you're talking about?
Speaker 2: Did we grow up in the same place or something?
Speaker 3: Tell me what it's opera?
Speaker 2: Oh, that's right, he saw, that's right. And I didn't
Speaker 2: learn that until much later.
Speaker 3: And and uh, it's a fun fact.
Speaker 1: I know.
Speaker 2: It's a great thing about.
Speaker 3: Both of you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I know, I know, I know.
Speaker 1: And let me tell you something. As you get older,
Speaker 1: the instrument changes. I had a really good instrument when
Speaker 1: I was younger. Now I I what I did the
Speaker 1: Masked Singer because I was I was I was like,
Speaker 1: I should do that I sing and uh. In prep
Speaker 1: for that, I found out I have some really serious
Speaker 1: chord problems because I was called the passagio.
Speaker 2: It just it just my chords wouldn't come together. I
Speaker 2: was like, Oh, something is wrong.
Speaker 3: Is that because the business how much we do in media.
Speaker 2: No, it wasn't that.
Speaker 1: It's I have a varisee on there and it's reflux
Speaker 1: and the only way to repair it is with a
Speaker 1: with a laser that would require like three to four
Speaker 1: weeks of vocal rest.
Speaker 2: What am I going to do that?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Talk right?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Do you have noes?
Speaker 2: No nodes? Yeah?
Speaker 1: No, no, but this variite And at the time of
Speaker 1: the mass Singer, because I was prepping and all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, I lost that mid range I had bled
Speaker 1: into my chords from one of those core one of
Speaker 1: those verises.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's bad, bad, Okay, this is Mary f Kill,
Speaker 4: except I don't like that because it's mean.
Speaker 3: So I'm gonna We're gonna do a different version of
Speaker 3: Mary F Kill.
Speaker 4: I'm going to name three TV doctors and you have
Speaker 4: to tell me which one you'd want to be in
Speaker 4: an emergency, which one you'd want to go to a
Speaker 4: ballgame with, and whose medical license you'd take away.
Speaker 2: Don't make me do that, okay, license, ballgame? And what
Speaker 2: was the first secon first?
Speaker 3: Who you'd want to be in with an emergency? Okay,
Speaker 3: doctor Oz, doctor Phil, doctor Terry Dubrow.
Speaker 1: So there, okay, let me the full disclosure. Then let
Speaker 1: me tell you that this that is a really interesting
Speaker 1: group to give me because uh, Terry and Mamett, Oz
Speaker 1: and I are very good friends. Okay, Okay, so you're
Speaker 1: asking me to do it with my friends here, Oz
Speaker 1: and Terry. And this is not to diminished Terry at all.
Speaker 1: He is a really consummate surgeon. He's a he is
Speaker 1: a star. But Oz was the chairman of the Department
Speaker 1: of Cardiothoracic Surgery at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital. That is one
Speaker 1: of the highest positions in the land. Okay, whom my
Speaker 1: med Oz is. So whenever you people diminish him, just go, yes,
Speaker 1: he did TV. But he is he is that guy
Speaker 1: and and he is brillieving or talk to him.
Speaker 2: He is that brilliant.
Speaker 1: So er is where I'm going with my mad and
Speaker 1: ballgame is where I'm going with Terry. You're a little
Speaker 1: more friendly than working together, But I would not take
Speaker 1: Phil's license away. Okay, and let me tell you something Phil.
Speaker 1: Phil I used to be very frustrated with because what
Speaker 1: he was doing on TV frustrated me because it wasn't
Speaker 1: anything it was. I kept going, this, people are getting
Speaker 1: the wrong idea, this confrontation thing.
Speaker 2: This is not what you do to people.
Speaker 3: You don't do that.
Speaker 1: And when you close the door that they just put
Speaker 1: up on their force fields and their defenses and stuff.
Speaker 1: And I started softening my position and going, oh, he's
Speaker 1: just doing a talk. He's doing TV. He is a
Speaker 1: really serious talent for doing talk a certain way, and
Speaker 1: he uses his knowledge and ability as a psychologists to
Speaker 1: do talk. It has still giving people the wrong impression.
Speaker 1: I just last three days ago, I was talking to somebody.
Speaker 1: I said, No, that's that's not what treatment is. That's
Speaker 1: what Phil does. That's not what treatment right, right, And
Speaker 1: my esteem and respect to him has ever since I softened.
Speaker 1: I really have high high esteem for him. I think
Speaker 1: he does amazing work. He's doing a great job. I
Speaker 1: fully fully endorse everything he does, and so anything I
Speaker 1: I this is something. I'm glad we're having this conversation
Speaker 1: because I am looking I look for every opportunity to
Speaker 1: apologize now in my life where I've gotten something wrong,
Speaker 1: I misjudged somebody, and I wanted I'm doing this for
Speaker 1: a couple of reasons.
Speaker 2: One is because we all.
Speaker 1: Need to have truth and reconciliation everything, and so I
Speaker 1: want to be a model for that. And so Phil,
Speaker 1: my deepest apologies for any negativity I felt or experienced.
Speaker 2: I was wrong.
Speaker 1: You were doing something exceptional. I didn't appreciate it, and
Speaker 1: I was absolutely wrong. You know where this started for me?
Speaker 1: Do you know who Naomi Wolf is?
Speaker 3: Yes?
Speaker 1: Okay, because become a friend. And she was going on
Speaker 1: and on and on about the vaccine and women's menstrual periods.
Speaker 1: And I said the following, and I go, I got
Speaker 1: NAIOI women's menstrual periods. I mean, come on, they get
Speaker 1: affected by everything, the wind blows wrong. Let's let's talk
Speaker 1: about something serious. And and and then I started hearing
Speaker 1: what that did to women and their fertility and these things.
Speaker 2: And I thought, God, for God's sakes, what an asshole?
Speaker 2: What an asshole? What a sexist asshole?
Speaker 1: And I brought, I brought and Naomi into this kind
Speaker 1: of Armisionaomi, I want to follow my sword that was sexist,
Speaker 1: it was dismissive, it was unforgivable, and I apologize, and
Speaker 1: every chance I get, I apologize to her again because
Speaker 1: that was that was so wrong. Uh, and it was
Speaker 1: so sexist and so disgusting of me. So anyway, that
Speaker 1: was that was where I started my apology tour. That
Speaker 1: was one of the things that I apologize about.
Speaker 3: So, yeah, I love a good apology tour.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's it's it's it's empowering. You learn from it,
Speaker 2: you learn you won't do it again.
Speaker 3: Yes, do you watch the show Shrinking?
Speaker 2: No, I heard about it. I do not watch it.
Speaker 3: I don't love it because I don't love the way
Speaker 3: it portrays therapy.
Speaker 2: Well, the therapy does not lend itself to television period.
Speaker 3: No, it's boring. It's not that boring.
Speaker 2: It's too slow.
Speaker 1: We're talking about rewiring a brain, which takes months to years,
Speaker 1: and even when you have a sort of a breakthrough
Speaker 1: or a moment or a technique, you've got to go
Speaker 1: practice it in the world a million times, and then
Speaker 1: you come back in a different context and a different
Speaker 1: way of thinking about it.
Speaker 2: It just takes forever.
Speaker 3: That's right.
Speaker 1: That's in fact, what I was talking to somebody about
Speaker 1: when when he was he was wanting to put something
Speaker 1: on TV, and I go that that's not treatment, that's
Speaker 1: not that's what doctor Phil does. And if you want
Speaker 1: somebody to do that, go do that it on TV
Speaker 1: because that does work. But don't think that's treatment. That
Speaker 1: is not treatment.
Speaker 4: Perfect final question, and it's the most important to me
Speaker 4: culturally and spiritually.
Speaker 3: When is iced coffee season?
Speaker 2: When is ice coffee season for me or for the
Speaker 2: average person? For you? Never?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I knew we were going to break us somewhere.
Speaker 4: That's where we break. That's where we break, because the
Speaker 4: answer is your round.
Speaker 1: But well, but maybe it's interesting I think how extreme
Speaker 1: that break is. But maybe I'll bring it up and
Speaker 1: I'll try it in the summer. As an homage to
Speaker 1: this conversation.
Speaker 4: Well, this was really fun, helpful, informative all the things,
Speaker 4: which is what we aim for here.
Speaker 1: So thank you well, and it is because of you,
Speaker 1: and so thank you for that, and thank you for
Speaker 1: doing this show, and thank you for having me on.
Speaker 3: Coming up next week on Off the Cup.
Speaker 4: That guy from every TV show and movie you've ever watched,
Speaker 4: it's my friend, Spencer Garrett.
Speaker 3: I got recognized the other day for Once upon a
Speaker 3: time in Hollywood. I sort of joke that my tombstone
Speaker 3: is going to say, here lies that guy from that thing.
Speaker 3: I'm that guy from that thing.
Speaker 2: Aren't you that? Aren't you that? Like we got to
Speaker 2: high school together? No where do I know you from?
Speaker 2: And then they'll finally kind of piece it together.
Speaker 4: Off the Cup is a production of iHeart Podcasts as
Speaker 4: part of the Reason Choice Network.
Speaker 3: If you want more, check out the.
Speaker 4: Other Reason Choice podcasts Spolitics with Jamel Hill and Native
Speaker 4: Land Pod. For Off the Cup, I am your host,
Speaker 4: Si Cup. Editing and sound design by Derek Clements. Our
Speaker 4: executive producers are me Se Cup, Lauren Hanson.
Speaker 3: And Lindsay Hoffman.
Speaker 4: Rate and review wherever you get your podcasts, follow or
Speaker 4: subscribe for new episodes every Wednesday.