Dr. Drew Pinsky: Talking openly about the hard stuff

This week, S.E. sits down with one of the original TV doctors, Dr. Drew Pinsky. Dr. Drew talks about going from a late-night radio show to MTV with the 90s hit, Loveline with Adam Carolla. He also takes S.E. behind the scenes of the making of Celebrity Rehab. S.E. and Dr. Drew gets personal, too, with Dr. Drew sharing the traumas of his childhood and, later, his extreme anxiety. S.E. shares her experience and Dr. Drew offers some real-time care. It’s an intimate conversation that wraps with a TV doctor’s version of Marry, F, Kill. Find more of Dr. Drew, Chief Patient Officer at The Wellness Company, at DrDrew.TV.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
I feel like I want to reach out to you
and say how courageous it is. And I know I
get how profound.

Speaker 2 (00:08):
Not everyone.

Speaker 3 (00:08):
It's really hard.

Speaker 2 (00:10):
I get it, totally get it.

Speaker 4 (00:14):
Welcome to off the Cup, my personal anti anxiety antidote.
The TV news and talk formats are funny. There are
a number of ways in. You can come in as
a celebrity. You can come in as a journalist, you
can come in as a specialist. I came into TV
news as a journalist, first working in print, then online

(00:35):
that I wrote a book and I had to promote
it on TV, which started my very unexpected to me
television career. But if you think about shows like The
View or the late night shows, most of those people
come in as celebrities, comedians, etc. Now.

Speaker 3 (00:48):
I was happy to come in as a journalist because.

Speaker 4 (00:50):
That's what I did, but I always envied the specialists.
I remember during the Somali pirate news cycle. Remember that
I was at Fox at the time and we were
scrambling for an expert on pirates and I happened to
know a maritime law expert from college, so I brought
him in and for a while he was our pirate guy.

(01:11):
That was his specialty, and specialists get to live in
one domain. It's the domain they know the best. So
you got your terrorism expert, you got a chef.

Speaker 3 (01:20):
You got an athlete.

Speaker 4 (01:22):
For me, as a journalist and a generalist, I didn't
just have to weigh in on politics, but everything from Snookie
to Tiger Woods to the royals.

Speaker 3 (01:30):
And it's a lot to keep up with.

Speaker 4 (01:31):
My next guest has had the supreme ultimate specialist career,
and man did he capitalize on it, unlike the pirate
guy who probably doesn't have much of a TV career anymore.
Doctor Drew Pinsky is a doctor who became a radio star,
who became a TV star, and now he talked about
anything he wants with his medical background as the foundation

(01:56):
from Loveline to celebrity rehab with Doctor Drew. He's been
all over media for like forty years, and that is
quite a feat to stick around that long in this
career because this career is brutal and it's still going.

Speaker 3 (02:11):
It's still going for him.

Speaker 4 (02:13):
Welcome to off the cup, Doctor Drew Pinsky.

Speaker 1 (02:15):
Such a privilege to be here. But man, you made
me feel old who for forty years?

Speaker 2 (02:20):
Wow?

Speaker 1 (02:21):
Yeah, But I do think about that. Sometimes I'm like,
what the hell forty years this? And as a result,
you know, and I've also all alongside of that, been
a workaholic physician. I've been practicing medicine in multiple different arenas,
and I now just want.

Speaker 2 (02:37):
To give it all back.

Speaker 1 (02:39):
I want to just use everything out of plus. Physicians
now don't get to see what I saw in the
sense that everything is so silent and ultra specialized.

Speaker 2 (02:47):
And I was such a workaholic.

Speaker 1 (02:49):
And I taught medicine, I taught psychiatry, I did intensive
care medicine, I did hospital medicine, I did outpitch medicine.
He did addiction medicine in a psychiatric hospital. I did
medical services in a psychiatric So I got to see
the spectrum of the human experience so broadly, and I
just want to try to share it. And so I've
had this great good fortune of just trying to do
good in media this whole time, trying to use media

(03:12):
to do something worthwhile.

Speaker 3 (03:13):
I know, but here's the thing.

Speaker 4 (03:15):
I've been on TV a long time too, and you know,
so we get to know, like your TV doctor, right, Yeah,
they don't go on to have this explosive media career
outside of a hit a month, you know, when you're
coming in to talk about some celebrity who died or
health crisis you have. Really, I mean, people who want
a career in media need to study your trajectory because

(03:38):
the thing that you've managed to do is remain impressively
present and relevant. And that's the trick. I did an
effort to be on TV. Like I said, I wrote
a book and had to promote it. But it helped
me promote my writing. So I did it, and I
found if I could stay relevant through the news cycles,
not just be a one trick pony, well then they

(03:59):
keep having me. But it's hard to stay relevant. It's
hard to stay relevant to people.

Speaker 1 (04:05):
Well, it's a great point. By the way, there's no
blueprint for anything I've done. I did not expect to
be doing any of this. It happened by an accident.
All of a sudden. I was doing radio in nineteen
eighty three, and I thought it was I thought I
was doing community service. I didn't think of myself as
a broadcast or anything. Yeah, and then all of a
sudden that went to five nights a week, and then
all of a sudden, some TV guys showed up. But

(04:27):
in terms of relevment, it's kind of interesting. Because I've
been in media that has kind of a continuous connection
with the public at large. I get a sense of
what's important in the moment.

Speaker 2 (04:40):
Really.

Speaker 1 (04:40):
So I came to radio really because of something. We
just stopped calling grids and started calling aids like that
was where that happened. Yeah, and nobody was talking about it,
and particularly nobody was talking about it to young people.

Speaker 2 (04:55):
I was considered.

Speaker 1 (04:56):
Bizarre to talk about venereal diseases to an eighteen year
old because why would they need to know that that
was nineteen eighty three. Condoms were behind the counter. You'd
have to get the pharmacist to bring the condoms to
the cash resire. It was crazy, Yeah, And so I thought, Wow,
I just got to keep doing this. And as I
listened to those audiences, the next thing I started hearing
about was the consequences of childhood trauma, sexual abuse, physical abuse, topanament, neglect.

(05:20):
All that was being played out then in the psych
hospital where I was working every day, I saw the
shift in personality to all cluster b personalities and the
importance of the addiction and how addiction was sweeping across
the country. Yes, so I started working in that and
then I got good at that, and then it then
that became celebrity rehab eventually again not my idea, just

(05:40):
some guys that showed up and said we want to
do this. I thought, well, I'd really live to show
how we treat addiction. But you can't do that. It's
just yeahm possible, And we figured out how to do it. Yes,
And then you know COVID and there there's always something
that's sort of relevant to people in the moment.

Speaker 2 (05:54):
It really is.

Speaker 4 (05:55):
You started appearing on Ask a Surgeon on k Rock
as like a med student, right, Yeah.

Speaker 1 (06:01):
It was just fourth year medical students, and I brought
up my Kyindecology Infectious Disease textbook and I was like,
oh my god, these are the most important health issues
for fourteen to twenty four year olds and they're bringing
it at midnight to FM disc jockeys.

Speaker 2 (06:16):
That was blew my mind.

Speaker 1 (06:17):
Yeah, and I thought, and I thought, wow, this thing,
the sex, drug and rock and roll that radio has
perpetrated on young people has had such a powerful negative
medical influence on them and psychiatric influence.

Speaker 2 (06:28):
Certainly there should be a way to make it good.

Speaker 1 (06:30):
If I crawled into this thing, it sort of became
a part of it, or just became, like you know,
it became a philosophy that Corolla and I used it
called the you may not be old enough for this,
but at the time we call it the Gainsburger and
the pill philosophy, which is that if you want a
dog to take a pill, you have to roll it
in something. Back in the day, it was something called gainsburger,
and then they'd eat the pill. I'm the pill. I'm
the pill. I would just slip into these environments and

(06:52):
give information wouldn't otherwise be heard by the people I
wanted to reach, and I would just trust the people
that created media that reached them to do so. And
it was sometimes very very uncomfortable for me, very uncomfortable.

Speaker 3 (07:03):
In the news business, we call that the meat and
the potatoes. So we want it. They're there for the meat,
so we give it to them, but we also want
to give them some vegetables.

Speaker 1 (07:12):
But you know what's interesting about something you said in
that intro, which was You're like, I'm sorry, I'm not
a pirate expert, but we can talk about it anyway.
But The experts that we get on television are not
the typically not the biggest or most colored or decorated
experts on the topic.

Speaker 2 (07:34):
Across the land.

Speaker 1 (07:35):
Right there, people who talk right, are available, are reasonably
versed in what they talk about, and can show up
and we'll do it for nothing.

Speaker 2 (07:44):
It will show up and be on TV because news.

Speaker 3 (07:46):
Is no pet Yes, but mainly are intelligenic.

Speaker 2 (07:49):
Mainly yeah, can you communicate something?

Speaker 1 (07:52):
Yes? And people think when somebody's on TV that is
the expert. No, it is not always. The experts are
almost always boring, and they'll show up for one appearance
and that's it because the ratings drop as soon as
they hit it. Hit this strain, and that's it. And
you can't do that again and again. And if it
is an expert that does get attention, he or she

(08:12):
sometimes has an agenda. Yes, right, People don't understand how
news works. It's just it's very different than they imagine.

Speaker 4 (08:18):
That's so true. And I want to get into I
want to talk about your career. I also really want
to talk to you about mental health because that's important
to me. But first I want to ask about your childhood.
What kind of kid were you?

Speaker 1 (08:31):
I was so I grew up sort of middle upper
middle class, became certainly upper middle by time I was
a teenager. My dad was depression ey kid. He was
severely traumat you know, I'm a He was a first
generation you know, from the Ukrainian diaspora, runn away from
the holodomo and all this stuff. He and his family
got here just in time for the depression, and that

(08:52):
traumatized him like crazy. So he he was a great guy.
He was a physician. He was ad exquisite judgment. Thank
god I got some of his medical judgment. But he
was sort of traumatizing about you know, tomorrow's the end
of the world. Tomorrow's end of the world, tomorrow the world.
My mother was an opera singer who became a screen

(09:13):
actress who was severely emotionally abusive, severely.

Speaker 3 (09:17):
Alm abusive or abused, abusive, abusive.

Speaker 1 (09:21):
She ran away. I found out when I was fifty.
Listen to this, this is awesome. I was doing the
book on narcissism, and I was doing with a professor
from USC He's a behavioral economist, and he did he goes,
and he goes, Oh, I'm such a fan of film noir.
I guess your mom was in a film noir. So
he goes online and looks and he goes, hey, here's
your mom, And I look at it and I go, huh.

(09:43):
They describe her the fifth wife of this silent film star.
At the age of eighteen, came to Los Angeles. I'm like,
what she was?

Speaker 2 (09:51):
She had a previous and I had a previous step son, and.

Speaker 3 (09:55):
Whole life that you didn't know.

Speaker 1 (09:57):
Married married to a very famous Western silent film star.
She was like eighty years old at the time I
found out, and my sister kind of freaked out about it.
I was like, I said, look, if this is something
she wants to take to her grave, she's made it
this far.

Speaker 2 (10:09):
I want to, I want to respect. Let's let it.
I don't want to. I'm gonna let her take it
to grade.

Speaker 3 (10:13):
So you didn't bring it up.

Speaker 2 (10:14):
Did not bring it up, but I called her steps.
I called it called the steps.

Speaker 1 (10:17):
Yeah who was who was a retired dentist from northern
California and uh And he was like, oh, yeah, I was.
You know, was like having had a sister. You know,
she was eighteen, my dad was sixty and uh. And
one day she just left and I thought, oh, yeah,
that's perfect, that's her.

Speaker 3 (10:34):
God, that's wild.

Speaker 1 (10:35):
And yeah, so yeah, she had a mixed personality disorder,
I would say, very odd stuff going a lot of
unregulated hostilities.

Speaker 3 (10:42):
So what kind of kid did all of that make you?

Speaker 1 (10:44):
So it made me very anxious and a little bit
rebellious quiet.

Speaker 2 (10:50):
I think it's funny.

Speaker 1 (10:51):
I found some of my grade school report cards after
my parents died. I was going through it, and my
second grade teacher, which I thought I was a star
student in second grade, me as disruptive, and I thought, oh,
that's interesting.

Speaker 2 (11:03):
It really was.

Speaker 4 (11:04):
So most people in media are described that way, and
it probably was the trauma.

Speaker 1 (11:09):
Right when you're a traumatized kid, you're you know. And
by the time I was high school, I was I
was quite depressed. By the time I hit like adolescents
and stuff, I was severely depressed. I was having trouble
navigating socially, and I was in a small, you know,
liberal arts prep school kind of thing by high school.
And I found sports in uh like high school, and

(11:31):
football kind of saved me. And I had some overcoming
adversity experiences in football that were deeply meaningful for me. Yeah,
and then around eleventh grade, I found overachieving.

Speaker 3 (11:43):
That's a drug, right, Oh yeah, yeah, same.

Speaker 1 (11:46):
And so now it's a theater, it's student government and
sports and academics and bla bla bla b and uh
and and then by senior year, I'm like the student
body president and all these things, and you know, I
and that was a drug for sure. Hit college and
I didn't have any of that at my disposal. So
guess what got depressed again? Yeah, and thought I was

(12:09):
going to be a physician. But I was like, I can't.
I can't do this. I'm not up for it, and
I think my brain wasn't developed enough to do it.
So I just drifted around for about a year and
a half. I left college for a while, and when
I came back, I was like, maybe maybe that science
stuff is what I meant to do.

Speaker 2 (12:23):
And yeah, I came back with full full force of God.

Speaker 1 (12:27):
Yeah, and had a wonderful experience under amazing science training
and and killed myself for years to get into medical
school and was so so so grateful to get there,
and thought I had the most important job in the world.
I remember just thinking this is so important we're doing Yeah,
so important. Yeah, I think the younger folks have lost
track of that a little bit. Yeah, it doesn't feel

(12:49):
that way to me anymore. We really, I mean we
were I was deep in the AIDS pandemic and we
thought this was this was I mean it was dark,
like so dark. We only those of us that were
there taking care of these men are here to tell
you about it. Yeah, it was so sad and so dark.
But we were from mind and we never ever worried

(13:12):
about exposing ourselves or contagions or anything.

Speaker 2 (13:16):
We just did our work.

Speaker 1 (13:17):
Yeah, And so anyway, does that kind of capture my
story a little bit?

Speaker 4 (13:21):
It does, and it resonates so much because I had
not a similar upbringing, but I was a similar.

Speaker 3 (13:26):
Kid, and overachieving became a drug as well. And then
I got to.

Speaker 4 (13:30):
Journalism, which felt very important, right, Like this was a
very important this was a public service.

Speaker 3 (13:36):
This was like a really fun job. I was on
the front lines. Yeah, it's definitely lost a little of that.

Speaker 1 (13:43):
And by the way, and as it pertains to media,
you'll appreciate this that when you come to media to
make a difference because you want to do something good,
it's a different thing. I'm sure when you look around
and see people in media, yes, name any names who
either a haven't had a day job, haven't really worked,
or be they're there because hey.

Speaker 2 (14:03):
It's me.

Speaker 3 (14:04):
It's me, and it's money and it's fame.

Speaker 1 (14:06):
Yeah, that's not that they are not happy people. They
are not fun people to be around now, and I
wish people wouldn't watch them so much because they don't
necessarily have your interest in mind.

Speaker 3 (14:18):
Yes, and there's a lot of that.

Speaker 4 (14:19):
When I say it's not as it doesn't feel as
important and meaningful anymore, it's because it's a lot of
those people and the project has has changed, Like anyway,
it's not about me, and it is.

Speaker 1 (14:31):
But listen, it's it's a I saw it happen in
real time and I wrote a book about It's the
narcissistic shift. Yes, and we're all guilty of but we
all have some of it. Yeah, some people really have it.
And it's and it's a dangerous thing because they lose empathy,
they act out envy and they project, they're aggressive and
they don't care when they destroy people.

Speaker 2 (14:53):
That's very dangerous to have ropping around these days.

Speaker 4 (14:56):
Well, and it's also it's deeply this affects my mental health.
When I'm in this environment, I care deeply. I'm empathetic
to a fault, and genuinely I've had to work on that.

Speaker 2 (15:08):
I think we were separated at birth.

Speaker 3 (15:09):
I know, seriously.

Speaker 1 (15:11):
Yeah, and so good news. Here's the good news for me.
I'm a fan of yours. I always liked you, so
that's a good thing for both of us.

Speaker 2 (15:19):
I guess I'm a.

Speaker 3 (15:19):
Fan of yours too. That is a good thing. And
I take it personally like when my of course, when.

Speaker 4 (15:25):
People in my profession aren't taking it as seriously or
responsibly as I think they should, I take it personally.

Speaker 3 (15:33):
It really bothers me.

Speaker 2 (15:34):
I say about medicine, same with me. Covid was covid
was mind body?

Speaker 3 (15:39):
Oh, I'm sure it was, just I couldn't.

Speaker 2 (15:41):
I couldn't.

Speaker 1 (15:42):
I still I will never get over it. I'll never
go And I keep saying, I thank god my dad
had died before because it would have killed him again.

Speaker 4 (15:48):
Yeah, right, right, right, So you mentioned Okay, so you
do ask a surgeon as a med student.

Speaker 3 (15:53):
It turns into left line on the radio because.

Speaker 1 (15:55):
The TV shows Ask a Surgeon was a segment. These
guys were doing a show middle of the night midnight
to three am on Sunday night, and they were just
opening the phone lined up and giving advice to their listeners.

Speaker 2 (16:06):
Hey, this is your buddy giving them advice. Well, that
station became.

Speaker 1 (16:10):
Extremely popular overnight and all of a sudden got all
this attention. Their number one radio station, K Rocky was
not no one had ever heard of it five minutes before.

Speaker 2 (16:20):
Okay, And at the same so.

Speaker 1 (16:21):
The program Judger goes, shit, we got to do our
community service hours.

Speaker 2 (16:25):
So you guys are going to be it.

Speaker 1 (16:26):
You got to figure out how to make this community
service show. I lived like across the street, and so
somebody went to piskeys in medical school and he can
come up and sort of do something to make this
all right.

Speaker 2 (16:35):
I know what it'll be.

Speaker 1 (16:35):
Ask a surgeon, it'll be funny. I'm like, I don't
know what you're talking about, but I was convinced to
kind of go in. It was love Line at that point,
it was already love Line.

Speaker 3 (16:44):
Oh okay, okay, and then that becomes the MTV show
that we know with Adam Krolla.

Speaker 1 (16:51):
Welcome a very live version of love Line on Fabulous
New York. I'm Adam Krolla. That is doctor Drew, doctor
cruz Aboard, certified physician and medicine specialized.

Speaker 3 (17:01):
How did you handle having your own big cable TV show?

Speaker 2 (17:07):
Well, I was.

Speaker 1 (17:09):
I would say the headline from that show would have
been leave me alone, because I was doing two or
three simultaneous medical careers at that time. Yeah, And they
came along to do a TV when Loveland went to
five nights a week, I could barely understand how I
would do it.

Speaker 2 (17:28):
And my poor wife, I don't know how she made
it through this.

Speaker 1 (17:30):
Yeah, And when they came along to do a TV show,
I said, well, look, all I can manage is Friday
afternoon after one and Saturday after noon.

Speaker 2 (17:39):
That's it.

Speaker 1 (17:40):
If you can do this show, then well I can
do this. And so we would do six shows a week.

Speaker 2 (17:47):
We would do three. We would do a show.

Speaker 1 (17:48):
We just we just interviewed for an hour and day calls,
change our clothes, do another, do another. And we didn't
know that that was unusual. We just thought, okay, let's
see me. I guess all right, here we go, and
and we did that for like five hundred shows or something.

Speaker 4 (18:03):
Yeah, but how did because now you're famous, and how
do you process that again?

Speaker 1 (18:11):
If you've had a day job, I'm not impressed.

Speaker 2 (18:15):
You know, it was fun.

Speaker 1 (18:17):
I love people, and so to have people. I remember
the first time I was aware something was going on.
Somebody came up to you on the street here and
past seen and went, oh, I always wonder what you
looked like, and it was really great to see you now,
and I thought.

Speaker 2 (18:31):
Oh, I'm being seen. Also good.

Speaker 1 (18:34):
Okay, Well I get to reach more people and do
more things. Yeah, and that's about all I was.

Speaker 2 (18:40):
It was fun. I don't know, it just felt like
it felt like growth.

Speaker 1 (18:44):
To me. It felt like I was doing more things,
more things. It didn't feel like much of anything else.

Speaker 4 (19:00):
Of all of the shows you've done, because you've done
so many, what what felt the most fulfilling, the most rewarding,
the most closest to your the promise you make yourself right?

Speaker 2 (19:11):
Yeah, so so it's hard to answer that.

Speaker 1 (19:14):
But but oh, my goodness, when you when I really
look at all the different things, Yes, the most fun I.

Speaker 2 (19:23):
Had was Leveline.

Speaker 1 (19:24):
Okay, that was really really we we would have loved
it because I it was my you know, I thought,
we have a community here, We're gonna do this forever.

Speaker 2 (19:31):
I did understand TV gonna you.

Speaker 1 (19:32):
Come and go.

Speaker 3 (19:34):
Well exactly, that's the point I'm making about your career.
You do come and go in this business.

Speaker 4 (19:38):
And most of the time you stay, you stay gone,
you keep coming, you keep reinventing.

Speaker 2 (19:42):
Well, but the but the community never reassembles. You know.

Speaker 1 (19:45):
It's all these people you get so close with, you're
working with them, and they just disappear.

Speaker 2 (19:48):
They're out of your life. That's weird.

Speaker 1 (19:51):
And h l N was a great experience. The thing
I did for the c W Life Changers was a
great experience. I love the child challenge of those shows. Yeah,
I love the challenge of trying to make content and
make a difference.

Speaker 2 (20:04):
And you know.

Speaker 3 (20:06):
Addiction, right is that like your heart is an addiction.

Speaker 2 (20:08):
That That's where I was going.

Speaker 1 (20:10):
But really, the show that I felt was the most
extraordinary experience with celebrity we have it was. It was
an extraordinary experience and continues to be and it did
what we wanted it to do, was to bring really awareness.
So do you know how that happened? To? Hey, what happened?

(20:31):
So TV producers showed up and said they want to
do this thing. At the time, I was doing a
lot of like Nancy Grace and CNN trying to raise
awareness about adiction. I could see the homeless thing coming.
I could see what was coming our way, and I
was like, we got a problem. And so these TV
producers picked up.

Speaker 2 (20:48):
On me doing that. I guess they knew that. At
the time I was running.

Speaker 1 (20:50):
I was running a large addiction freestanding program in a
psychiatric facility, a freestanding psychiatric hospital, and we treated a
lot of celebrities.

Speaker 2 (20:59):
I didn't like treating celebrities. I didn't want to treat celebrities.

Speaker 1 (21:03):
It's just we were so circumspect and private and had
such a high quality program. We got us a few
our way and they came to me and they went,
we want to put cameras in what you're doing.

Speaker 2 (21:14):
I said, well, you can't do that. I said that
you can't even bring a camera around.

Speaker 1 (21:18):
The psychiatric hospital. It's just it's just you can't can't
do that. So oh, let us talk to the hospital
administrators and I said, okay, here we go. They laughed
them out of the room, but you gotta be kidding, yeah,
And then they're like asking me to solve the problem.
And I thought, you know, of course you can't do
this in an acute psychiatric hospital. But there's up the hill,

(21:39):
there's a residential program that a friend of mine runs.
I bet we could do it in a residential setting
and just bring my team up there and install my team,
used their policies and procedures and their licensing, and just
do what we do there.

Speaker 2 (21:53):
And that's what we did.

Speaker 1 (21:54):
We did it up there at this residential facility. And
there were many, many, many many other hoops I had
to jump through, like like, for instance, it's not licensed
for me to work inside the facility. So I so
the psychiatrist there, I went, how do you handle this?
He goes, well, I have a trailer in the back
with a semporate address, and that's where I see the patients.

(22:15):
So we had to build a double wide trailer in
the middle of the parking lot and get an address
and a license. All the groups you see and all
the sessions I'm having with the patients that's in a
trailer out in the parking lot. Wow, so your the
cameras are blinded to the patients walking across to the
to the trailer, but you know that's where that all
went down. They lots of things like that, but but

(22:37):
in the here's some of the comedies. So when this started,
I was really concerned. I was really like, oh my god,
this is I really want these people to do well.

Speaker 2 (22:46):
They need help.

Speaker 1 (22:47):
The first group like was like needed help and I
And it was really stressful to bring ten people all
at once into Normally you have people kind of trickling
in and the people that are there can then help
enroll the people that are newcomers and stuff. Everybody all
at once on one day into treatment very challenging and
every day in group you don't see it to this
A lot of stuff you didn't see on TV. A

(23:07):
lot of the treatment you don't see on TV because
it's not TV. It was you know, it was constructed
as a reality show, not a treatment show. Yeah, and
so every group, I'd start out, you are you okay?

Speaker 2 (23:18):
Are you okay?

Speaker 1 (23:18):
At the camera's bothering you? Johnny to transfer it to
the facility. You're right, you're right, You're right right. I
was very anxious about this. And after about two weeks
of that, Mary Carey, who's a porn star, she leans
into group and she goes Drew, I've done just about
everything in front of a camera. I understand what this is.

Speaker 2 (23:35):
Yeah, I thought, oh, okay, that's right. These people do
know what it is to be vulnerable in front of
a camera. Yet they know what that means.

Speaker 1 (23:43):
Right.

Speaker 2 (23:43):
It was the upside.

Speaker 1 (23:44):
And here's the other thing that happened that was stunning
to me. Eighty percent of those people that came in
came in wanting to get paid, wanted to make a
mockery of things, wanted to make fun of us, and
because we were so serious about the treatment. Within a week,
they all shifted to, oh my god, this is real treatment.
Oh my god, I'm getting something out of this. Oh
my god, I want to be an example for other people.

(24:06):
That happened to almost every single patient. I want to
do well in treatment. I want to be an example
because this is important. I'm getting something out of this.
I want other people to understand that they can get
a lot out of this. That was talk about a godsend.
I was like, oh my god, and it happened to
every group. It was really interesting. I started anticipating it
because it kept happening, and that I was very very
grateful for sure, and you know, and so and also

(24:29):
the other thing, because they did want to get paid
and did want to be on TV. I could push
them much harder than I normally do. Normally, if you
push somebody early in treatment, they leave this group. But
I didn't know they want to stay, so I could
really really push and it was great. And people that
followed up did amazing, and people that didn't follow up
and didn't stay with the program did not do so

(24:50):
manch and the ones that passed away, almost without exception,
were killed by my peers. During the prescription drug pandemic,
people don't understand this. I would get people off drugs.
They'd be doing great, they no longer have pain, and
they would go back to their doctors, and their doctors
would say things like, don't listen to these people. They're
brainwashing you. I told you you need to be on

(25:11):
this oxy cont and the rest of your life.

Speaker 2 (25:12):
Take it. Tell that to a drug addict, terrible.

Speaker 1 (25:16):
They'd be gone no time. Mike Starr, the guitarist, he
was a legendary drug audent.

Speaker 2 (25:21):
We had him.

Speaker 1 (25:21):
We worked on him for months after the TV camera
stopped rolling, and he was doing so well. After about
close to a year, he suddenly goes, I'm going to Utah.
We're like, we're like whenever an addict says something like that,
you got to what's going on? Why are you going
to Utah?

Speaker 2 (25:34):
Why?

Speaker 1 (25:35):
Why my band we have to do some stuff. I'm
going to go with my bandmates. We're going to live
in a sober living. I'm gonna be next to Circlage.
He had all these plans that sounded good. Yet I'm
leaving sounded bad. Just that when an addict is making decisions,
it's like, oh.

Speaker 2 (25:49):
Boy, yeah, So he does leave.

Speaker 1 (25:51):
He calls me after about three weeks because I'm having
back pain. I said, Mike, please, dear God, whatever you do,
do not tell a physician that you have back pain.

Speaker 2 (26:00):
Don't do it.

Speaker 1 (26:01):
Goes In dies with OxyContin and soma at his bedside,
gave him the meds that heartbreaks came hard.

Speaker 2 (26:11):
This heartbringing is just beyond. But anyway, that's that. So
we I feel like we elevate.

Speaker 1 (26:16):
We ended up getting and seeing lots of people that
came to treatment because of celebrity rehab, and we wanted
to sort of throw open the mystery behind treatment. U.
Lets you understand, you know the the other thing that happened,
this is really really you remember Bob Forrest, the guy
with the hat and glasses. They were just He was
my lead counselor and I worked with them for years
and years. I actually stole him from that facility that

(26:37):
we were working at for the celebrity rehab and when
they were talking to me about doing this, I thought,
we can't do it. It's just not it's not I
don't know, I'm not comfortable with it. And vh one
showed interest and I was like, oh shit. I just
kind of went into hiding. And while during a three
month period where people are like where are you what
do you want to do, I'm like, I don't know.
Bob Forrest comes in my office one day and he

(26:59):
has no idea this has gone on. He comes to
my office and he goes, you know, I was watching
you know, No, I don't know pres Hilton Today or
TMZ or something. He goes, I'm so tired of how
our patients are being portrayed as so they're using their
addiction as an excuse, or they're on a vacation when
they come to treatment. You know what, we need to
do a TV show where we show how sick they

(27:21):
get and how hard they worked it well. And I
was like, oh, my god, Bob, they somebody has approached
me to do this. And he leaned back and he goes,
we're gonna do it. He smacked his hands in his
knees and he jumped up and left my office and
he goes, that's what we got to do. And I
was like, okay, that's what you think we got to do.
I'll go back to moving in that direction. It felt

(27:41):
very scary to me, very very very scary.

Speaker 4 (27:44):
Yeah we did it, but so important, you know, just
speaking Yeah, personally, So, I struggle with anxiety.

Speaker 3 (27:54):
Shocking huh, severe right.

Speaker 1 (27:57):
Attack when I was depressed in college, and panic text disabling,
panic disabling. I suffered for years with that and I
was mismanaged. It was nineteen seventy eight. No one had
treatment for that stuff for an adolescent. He told me
to take long walks in the woods.

Speaker 4 (28:12):
But you finished your story right, well, right, No, this
is because we've come so far, and yet I still
hear from people that they don't really understand what anxiety is.

Speaker 3 (28:23):
Aren't we all worried? Well, of course, it's not just
being worried.

Speaker 4 (28:26):
My anxiety is irrational and debilitating and crippling and paralyzing.
A sometimes existential, existential, but we don't talk about anxiety
in very graphic and grand other ways. I'm actually writing
a book about my mental health so that I do that,
so that someone younger than me or a parent can
read it and hear, oh, I'm doing that too, And

(28:49):
I don't have to or you know, to get help
before I did, because getting help at forty and unlearning
twenty thirty years of terrible habits really hard.

Speaker 3 (29:01):
And I mean, we'll just get into it.

Speaker 4 (29:03):
Because the addictive part of anxiety, I'm sure you know
studies about people getting addicted to the anxiety that it
functions like an addiction, and I for sure was addicted.
And the way I'm writing about it now is learning
to live without anxiety, because I got very good at
learning to live with it and incorporating it into my

(29:25):
daily life. Of course, the catastrophizing for me was self soothing.
If I thought about the awful thing, it wasn't going
to happen to me. And if I didn't think about
the awful thing and anticipate the crazy awful thing, that
definitely wasn't going to happen. If I didn't anticipate it,
that was inviting it. Yeah, and so this was self
soothing and I didn't realize.

Speaker 2 (29:46):
Like preparing for that thing that's going to happen made
me feel.

Speaker 4 (29:49):
Bad, and my anxiety actually wasn't over the thing. My
anxiety had to do with work and my value attached
to my work. And because I couldn't solve that problem,
my brain would find another problem or invent a problem
to solve it to make me feel better about it.
So this is a kind of addiction. It feels like

(30:10):
a kind of addiction. But if that's the case, what's
the gateway drug? How do we get addicted to this?

Speaker 1 (30:16):
Well, I'm going to push back because because we were
saying this is my own because we were separated at birth,
I know we have the same issues, okay, And anxiety
comes in different flavors.

Speaker 2 (30:31):
We have you and I have the O c D
flavor rituals.

Speaker 1 (30:39):
Right, And so this is not addiction. This is OCD Okay, yep.
And that is and the O c D becomes gratifying. Okay,
it's not addiction because addiction progresses and it takes over
all other priorities. This is this is a repetitive, gratifying

(30:59):
circuit that opens up and we can't get out of it,
and we use it in all kinds of ways to
soothe and to manage into all these things. But it's
all ultimately a relative of OCDEA the anxiety.

Speaker 2 (31:11):
Some people anxiety.

Speaker 1 (31:13):
Alcoholics get anxiety, but it's a very different flavor. People
with depression get anxiety. Can have various flavors to it.

Speaker 3 (31:21):
People are social anxiety.

Speaker 2 (31:22):
That's not what anxiety.

Speaker 1 (31:24):
Well, but it's But again, you're obsessing about how do
I look, how do I feel? All of our hyperachieving
can turn on us too. Yes, it's it's all that
I got it. I'm going to have you interview a
guy I know that's really good at this kind of
unraveling this.

Speaker 2 (31:39):
Stuff and there are great treatments for it now.

Speaker 4 (31:42):
And I'm in therapy and I talk about it all
the time now podcast. So I didn't want to do
a mental health podcast. I wanted to do a podcast
where I talk to interesting people and mental health could
come up naturally, of course, of course, because I want
to normalize talking about it like you would with your friends,
with your family.

Speaker 3 (32:00):
Just talk about therapy. What'd you learn?

Speaker 4 (32:02):
How you feeling? So I'm in therapy and I love
talking about it. I've learned so many things about my
own mind. Do you think that everyone should be in therapy?

Speaker 2 (32:14):
I hate to say things like that. I think.

Speaker 1 (32:18):
You know they're they're serious mental illness. This gets complicated, right,
there's serious mental illness, bipolar disorder or schizophrenia and any
of course. The fact that people don't seek treatment for
these things and or life threatening addictions and things.

Speaker 2 (32:31):
That is insane to me.

Speaker 1 (32:33):
That if you had a heart attack, you'd get treatment, right,
you have a brain disorder, you go to the streets.

Speaker 2 (32:38):
What the right wrong with us?

Speaker 1 (32:41):
Only country in the world that does that, by the way, So, yeah,
we need to get better at treating brain disorders. Roc
DA and anxiety is one of these brain conditions. It's
built on our genetics and then our experiences of trauma
and whatnot, and to the extent that it makes us,
to the extent that it interferes with functioning.

Speaker 2 (33:01):
That's a pretty broad category. Yes, you should be in treatment.

Speaker 1 (33:04):
Yeah, and sometimes people leave out of those functioning sort
of equations interpersonal functioning, you know, sort of. And and
by the way, there is optimal functioning too. Now, if
you're interested in optimal function well, then you should also
be in treatment for there maybe holding you back. And
then there's sort of philosophical territory you can get into it,

(33:26):
you can go into analysis and all these explorations of
the mind. That's a that's more of a pastime, I
would argue. I mean, it's it's it can be useful
on the therapeutic side, but when you're if you're really
sitting on a couch three or five days a week,
I don't know that that's necessary for many people.

Speaker 4 (33:42):
But I think a lot of people think they have
to have suffered a major trauma, no, or have a
disorder or therapy.

Speaker 3 (33:49):
To be helpful.

Speaker 1 (33:51):
No, it's that that is that is in the optimal
functioning zone. I mean, think about athletes. They always seek
out for these kinds of they want to be optimally performed,
and so they always think seek out people that can
help them for that. And so yeah, so to that extent,
we can all benefit from it. And there are things
that come up in our life that we just don't
you know. Listen, So I was in therapy for long, long, long,

(34:12):
long time, and I'm back in therapy again. And what
put me in therapy the first time was my anxiety
disorder and it got so bad my wife called me
one day at work and said, you know, you need
to stay at therapist and I was like, oh, yeah,
I need to because I'm working in these people and
I need better blah blah, and she's like, no, you
need to see someone. The hair stood up in the
back of my neck. I was like, Okay, I'm putting

(34:34):
the phone down and I'm gonna call somebody, And thank
god I did. And I stayed in therapy for a
very very long period of time, and that therapy was
more about my trauma, because I discovered my anxiety was
to a great deal at that time in my life,
was due to the dissociation and disconnection from my primary

(34:55):
feeling states that the trauma had caused me.

Speaker 2 (34:58):
Yes, and so I had to learn how to feel again,
quite literally.

Speaker 1 (35:02):
So sometimes when you don't feel, you're not connected to
your feelings, all you feel is anxiety.

Speaker 2 (35:07):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (35:07):
And it was a great, wonderful experience. I mean, it
really helped me in a billion billion ways, and it
just so enriched what I could do with other people.

Speaker 2 (35:17):
I can tune into other people.

Speaker 1 (35:18):
I have a deep because what goes along with our
OCD or anxiety and our hyperachieving is also codependency.

Speaker 2 (35:25):
So and so the codependency can get away.

Speaker 1 (35:28):
From you unless you can have good boundaries and really
learn to attune to people and hold those boundaries, which
I was not good at when I started therapy, and
I became good at.

Speaker 4 (35:52):
In my work, there are times where I'm covering war genocide.
I also do work with children and who are victims
of war, mainly in Syria, Lebanon now Ukraine and Gaza,
and so I have to see things that are so
graphic they don't make it to air. And I have
to process that both in my work and my philanthropic work.

Speaker 2 (36:15):
And is it with kids? Is graphic stuff with kids?

Speaker 1 (36:18):
Yes?

Speaker 2 (36:19):
It is so hard to manage.

Speaker 4 (36:20):
Which is so hard And at my worst of my anxiety,
I did a lot of transference where this was my kid.
They were all my kid of course of course, and
you right, and so it was very hard for me
to not internalize all of this work, which.

Speaker 3 (36:40):
Would be normal.

Speaker 2 (36:41):
Yeah, it's impossible now, but this is my job.

Speaker 3 (36:43):
This is not for fun, this is something you know,
I have to do, and so it's been a challenge.

Speaker 4 (36:50):
And listen, the political stuff is hard to on my
anxiety but of course when your job this is true
for you too, when your job is something you love deeply,
but it's also a trigger because it's hard and you're
seeing things and doing things as a doctor or a
journalist that are hard to see and do. How do

(37:13):
you create boundaries within your own profession, within your own
your own space.

Speaker 1 (37:19):
Yeah, so it was a couple answers to that. I
feel how profound what this is? This is profound. This
is not something passing. This is profound, right, And on
one hand, I think I would need some sort of
management of that. I would have to do EMDR or something.

(37:42):
So I did not go from a cute trauma to
chronic trauma, because I would get there. So personally, I
would do some sort of trauma management something, I'd have
somebody else. I'd have to upload to somebody else because
I don't think I could handle it. And I'm sorry
you're I feel like I want to reach out to
you and you know, say how courageous it is. And

(38:02):
I know I get how profound.

Speaker 3 (38:04):
Not everyone it's really hard.

Speaker 2 (38:06):
I get it. I totally get it.

Speaker 3 (38:08):
But do you love it?

Speaker 4 (38:10):
And you feel in a way responsible, like if I'm
not doing it? Who's going to do it, and I
have to be the person to do it.

Speaker 1 (38:17):
Yeah, and so this is the other side that I
tell myself. It's like being an ambulance driver, Like you
have a job to do and you do it. Now,
in medicine, we are highly trained to get into situations
that are horrific and do our job.

Speaker 2 (38:33):
And so I've done that a million times and I
made it out. Okay.

Speaker 3 (38:36):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (38:37):
Part of it is the environment for me, Like when
I come upon bad stuff out in the world, it
traumatizes me because I don't have the structure around me
to do what I need to do to help and
all the support and all the people and all the
everything else. So I get very traumatized when I, you know,
come a kind of car accident or something. Well, if

(38:58):
that person rolls into the er, I can make it.

Speaker 2 (39:01):
I can help. I can And you don't want and
you got to get.

Speaker 1 (39:04):
A little I guess the third advice to get a
philosophical You can't let it destroy you because they need you.

Speaker 2 (39:09):
You know, You've got to do a job and and
this this can't destroy you.

Speaker 1 (39:13):
It has to you know, it's it's the aftermath that
you got to worry about and and that's the part
I would need help with. Particularly, I'm very sensitive to
the kids stuff, and most people are most people are
most people need some kind of trauma. I I've I
think he's talked about this publicly, so you wouldn't mind
me saying it. You know, I'm blanking as I'm lead

(39:33):
singer of Korn. Jonathan uh mm hmm or Jonathan's last name.
But he was a mortician before he became a round wow,
and his working on kids as a mortician gave him
horrific PTSD and he had to do all the right right.

Speaker 2 (39:51):
It's like, you get it.

Speaker 3 (39:53):
Oh my god, that's that's yeah, that sounds.

Speaker 1 (39:58):
The good news is you're not doing what I used
to do, which is dissociating from all this. You're actually
feeling the feelings.

Speaker 3 (40:05):
I am, and part of me wishes I could dissociate.

Speaker 2 (40:09):
I know, I.

Speaker 1 (40:12):
Understand, and and I probably would associate a little bit
that I distanced myself from it that way, but it's
not healthy. The chronic, your recurrent association is how you
get into trouble later because the part of yourself that
needs attention goes into hiding, but it doesn't go away.

Speaker 4 (40:29):
Right right right, Well, listen, this is why I'm in
therapy talking about it every week. I'm on medication and
that's all helped good, but there's still like, well.

Speaker 1 (40:39):
I see it, I see it, and I feel it,
I get it, and it feels like I don't know
what's going on in therapy for you, but but you
really need somebody to attune to you, like really tune
into your feelings and be there with you with those feelings. Yes,
and in a weird way, that's what EMDR is. But
you may just need some few hours of people just
being with you because our brain, we can only handle

(41:01):
so much on our own. Our brain hits its capacity totally.
It's totally appreciate.

Speaker 3 (41:07):
Yeah, that's what happened. And it was almost like I
had like a nervous.

Speaker 4 (41:10):
Breakdown one day, very suddenly, and it felt like this
is how I described it, like I owe.

Speaker 3 (41:16):
Deed on anxiety.

Speaker 2 (41:18):
What it's a panic attack?

Speaker 4 (41:20):
Right, it was, But it was like my body told
me that day, I'm not doing this anymore. We can't
keep doing this. You can't the twenty four to seven
and it was twenty four seven catastrophizing, which is just
too much adrenaline you can't. You're not meant to be
in fight or flight all day long. And it's like

(41:40):
my body was saying stop and I, you know, everything stopped.
I could in the wake of that attack. I couldn't
see well, I couldn't read, I couldn't make decisions.

Speaker 3 (41:54):
The good news is it was so severe. I got
help right away, like the next day.

Speaker 2 (41:58):
I had that exact thing and stop it.

Speaker 4 (42:01):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (42:01):
And I didn't know what was going on. I just
laid in bed for a couple of days and it
was so and that's not me. I was like, I
was like, what is going on?

Speaker 2 (42:10):
And God help? But was mismanished for like a year.

Speaker 1 (42:15):
Oh no, And so I went from these disabling panics
to sort of chronic severe anxiety.

Speaker 4 (42:21):
So anyway, well, finding the right treatment is so crucial,
and I've switched therapists a couple of times, but I
really like my therapists now and I.

Speaker 3 (42:31):
Have learned a lot of I wouldn't call them tricks.
And I fucking hate this doctor Drew. I hate the
TikTok people who go out and are like, I've got
a way to hack your anxiety to stop the word.

Speaker 2 (42:47):
There's no hack.

Speaker 1 (42:48):
There's no hack.

Speaker 4 (42:49):
And you haven't met me, you haven't diagnosed me. You
don't know what my anxiety is. You cannot stop it.

Speaker 1 (42:54):
You're gonna hack a cloud, You're going to hack a
river or something. Biology is like a very probable, is
not like a computer. It's very different human experience, very
very different. I don't like the word hack.

Speaker 3 (43:05):
Well, I hate that. And it's not that simple.

Speaker 4 (43:07):
You can't diagnose me from TikTok no, And it gives people,
I think, a false impression of anxiety, like it's just
some mind trick that you can like snap your fingers
and crack the code.

Speaker 3 (43:18):
That's not it.

Speaker 1 (43:19):
And everybody's different that way too. And isn't it interesting
that that TikTok serves that shit up to you? Isn't
that weird?

Speaker 2 (43:25):
And it's again, it keeps serving to me.

Speaker 3 (43:28):
Yeah, that's weird.

Speaker 4 (43:29):
I know.

Speaker 3 (43:30):
But I hate that. And I promised myself i'd never
do that.

Speaker 4 (43:32):
When I share the things that have worked for me
or the things that have not worked for me, I'm
very clear this is what worked for me.

Speaker 3 (43:40):
But you know, I don't give advice.

Speaker 4 (43:43):
I really made a promise to myself that once I,
you know, got into this space, I wouldn't act like
I knew anything about your mental health.

Speaker 3 (43:52):
I barely know anything about my own. That's why I
go see experts, you know.

Speaker 4 (43:56):
So that's really important to me being responsible with the
way we talk about it.

Speaker 1 (44:01):
I'm with you, and I'm just I don't know if
you've had the feedback yet, but when you do talk
about your mental health, people are always like, what you have?

Speaker 4 (44:11):
Yes, yes, everybody like success inoculates you from mental health problems.

Speaker 3 (44:18):
It does not.

Speaker 2 (44:19):
No, In fact, you know, you're a little more likely.

Speaker 1 (44:23):
I say, that's what my research shows, you know, because
whenever you excess of any type, you know, working extra hard,
there's a reason that enginees running. It's usually not healthy. Yeah,
for sure, just because of health.

Speaker 4 (44:36):
My uncle was very wise, would say, but this is
what made you successful. Yeah, and that's that's the loop
you play in your mind. Well, if I weren't like this,
I probably wouldn't have been as ambitious. And you know, but.

Speaker 1 (44:53):
Yeah, right, that's that's I've been told that a few
times too, and I'm like, I've suffered a lot because
but I don't know, but I might have been.

Speaker 2 (45:01):
The same, but maybe not.

Speaker 1 (45:02):
Whatever you you have to own, you have to figure
out ways to own all of it, because you know,
back back, as you work through all this stuff, you
have to be grateful for everything you have, including the
miserable stuff exactly got. And when you find gratitude and humility,
when you find those things and forgiveness, I always know
when people are doing well from mental health standpoint because
they start talking about humility and forgiveness and gratitude those

(45:25):
and when you're grateful, you start like, the fact that
my mother was abusive to me is a neutral thing.

Speaker 2 (45:31):
It's just like it happened. She was not a well person.
How could you It's not okay to do Like, how
could you do that to a kid? That's not okay.
But the fact that she did it to me doesn't
have any big importance. It just is what it was.
And you know, I feel bad for her, right and
I'm grateful for everything I had.

Speaker 4 (45:49):
That's a good place to end the mental health portion
of this conversation.

Speaker 2 (45:55):
Going from here you're scaring me.

Speaker 4 (45:57):
Now we have a fun, fun turn. It's a fun
lightning round, all right.

Speaker 2 (46:17):
Okay, But let me just say something.

Speaker 1 (46:19):
I feel sort of honored to be here with you
while you spoke so openly about your feelings and your
experiences and I and I want to just honor that.
I just want to say thank you so.

Speaker 4 (46:31):
Well right back to you, thank you for creating spaces
like this for so many years where people could talk
openly about the hard stuff because paved the way.

Speaker 1 (46:41):
It's about the best thing you can say to me,
because that's that's what I want to do, is create environments,
create things that make things better, which God knows this
country needs that now totally.

Speaker 3 (46:53):
Okay, ready, lightning round all right, here we go.

Speaker 4 (47:01):
At the top of your wiki bio, it says Drew
Pinsky doctor Drew not to be confused with who.

Speaker 1 (47:08):
Geez, doctor Dre correct because because I get his stuff
on X all the time, and I bet he gets
my stuff and sometimes it's sometimes it's confusing.

Speaker 2 (47:19):
Like what what what are you talking about? Oh Drey?

Speaker 1 (47:22):
Okay, do you think you're And sometimes they'll put my
name in they'll get that right, but clearly.

Speaker 2 (47:26):
It's for Drey.

Speaker 3 (47:28):
So funny. I loved that.

Speaker 4 (47:30):
Okay, you are in a Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen
movie New York Minute classic.

Speaker 3 (47:37):
Who do you play?

Speaker 2 (47:38):
I play their father?

Speaker 3 (47:40):
What's his name? And uh, oh you can go with
doctor blank.

Speaker 2 (47:48):
Doctor Olsen. Nope, I don't have any idea.

Speaker 3 (47:50):
I remember doctor Ryan.

Speaker 2 (47:52):
Oh, doctor Ryan, Yes, that's right.

Speaker 1 (47:53):
You know. Uh and and Sagot and I became good
friends too, and uh yeah, and his wife and I
have been friends ever since.

Speaker 4 (48:00):
Wait, wait a sec. Yeah, we've had Kelly on the
pod because I knew Bob. We did a roast together
and he was so lovely and almost fatherly and you
paternal to me and wonderful, and hearing Kelly talk about
him was really was really wonderful.

Speaker 1 (48:20):
The reason I know Kelly well now because Bob was
always that we got to go to know you got
to meet my life. She's a wonderful woe. Yeah, and
I ran into him. He did a movie anyway, the
long story, but I really got to know her because
her agent had we talked to her about going wherever
they took her to do the what's the name of
the series now called Special Forces?

Speaker 3 (48:43):
Oh right, last year because I was in the Special.

Speaker 1 (48:45):
Forces that was in the desert and I ended up
in the hospital very quickly. Long story, but I still
love the experience. I loved it, loved it, loved it,
and so I convinced Kelly to do it too.

Speaker 3 (48:56):
Oh that's great. Oh I love that. Okay, you have
an asteroid named after you. What's it called?

Speaker 2 (49:04):
It's me and Adam, isn't it now? No, I don't know.
I just saw munch of numbers and letters. I don't know.

Speaker 4 (49:10):
It's asteroid four five three six, Draupinski and Drapinski is
one word.

Speaker 2 (49:15):
Okay.

Speaker 4 (49:16):
So I just know that in like two hundred years,
astronomy students are going to call it Jupinski and someone's
going to tell them that's named after a real person
named Drew Pinsky, and that's going to blow their minds.

Speaker 2 (49:27):
I just hope to god it doesn't come near and
have a near orbits.

Speaker 3 (49:31):
To the aid famous.

Speaker 2 (49:33):
Yeah, no, but it was.

Speaker 1 (49:35):
It was given to me by a astronomy professor at
I went to Amherst College, and this professor was at
UMass Amherst and was a big Love Line fan and
came to visit me in Adam and named asteroids after us.

Speaker 4 (49:49):
I'm a big space nerd, so I actually love stuff
like that. But you know they're just going to think,
what's a Drapinski.

Speaker 2 (49:55):
I know it's not gonna have any meeting like they don't.

Speaker 3 (49:57):
Kids today don't know, well, nobody knows. People don't know
that Taco bell is actually named after its founder, Glenn Bell.

Speaker 2 (50:03):
I did.

Speaker 4 (50:04):
I did not know that Platts is named after Joe Pillotates,
the guy who founded it.

Speaker 2 (50:08):
I did not know that.

Speaker 1 (50:10):
I love it when people's names become an acrony. You know,
just something means something totally different.

Speaker 3 (50:14):
It's gonna be you, You're gonna.

Speaker 2 (50:16):
Be jun something else. The name after me.

Speaker 3 (50:18):
And then what do you and Mike rowe have in common?

Speaker 1 (50:24):
We had a show on Discovery at the same time,
and we used to tour around with that. The upfronts
for those shows. Is that what you're talking about?

Speaker 2 (50:38):
Did we grow up in the same place or something?

Speaker 3 (50:41):
Tell me what it's opera?

Speaker 2 (50:43):
Oh, that's right, he saw, that's right. And I didn't
learn that until much later.

Speaker 3 (50:47):
And and uh, it's a fun fact.

Speaker 1 (50:50):
I know.

Speaker 2 (50:50):
It's a great thing about.

Speaker 3 (50:51):
Both of you.

Speaker 2 (50:52):
Yeah, I know, I know, I know.

Speaker 1 (50:54):
And let me tell you something. As you get older,
the instrument changes. I had a really good instrument when
I was younger. Now I I what I did the
Masked Singer because I was I was I was like,
I should do that I sing and uh. In prep
for that, I found out I have some really serious
chord problems because I was called the passagio.

Speaker 2 (51:14):
It just it just my chords wouldn't come together. I
was like, Oh, something is wrong.

Speaker 3 (51:18):
Is that because the business how much we do in media.

Speaker 2 (51:21):
No, it wasn't that.

Speaker 1 (51:22):
It's I have a varisee on there and it's reflux
and the only way to repair it is with a
with a laser that would require like three to four
weeks of vocal rest.

Speaker 2 (51:30):
What am I going to do that?

Speaker 3 (51:31):
Yeah? Talk right?

Speaker 2 (51:32):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (51:33):
Do you have noes?

Speaker 2 (51:35):
No nodes? Yeah?

Speaker 1 (51:37):
No, no, but this variite And at the time of
the mass Singer, because I was prepping and all of
a sudden, I lost that mid range I had bled
into my chords from one of those core one of
those verises.

Speaker 4 (51:47):
Yeah, it's bad, bad, Okay, this is Mary f Kill,
except I don't like that because it's mean.

Speaker 3 (51:52):
So I'm gonna We're gonna do a different version of
Mary F Kill.

Speaker 4 (51:55):
I'm going to name three TV doctors and you have
to tell me which one you'd want to be in
an emergency, which one you'd want to go to a
ballgame with, and whose medical license you'd take away.

Speaker 2 (52:06):
Don't make me do that, okay, license, ballgame? And what
was the first secon first?

Speaker 3 (52:11):
Who you'd want to be in with an emergency? Okay,
doctor Oz, doctor Phil, doctor Terry Dubrow.

Speaker 1 (52:23):
So there, okay, let me the full disclosure. Then let
me tell you that this that is a really interesting
group to give me because uh, Terry and Mamett, Oz
and I are very good friends. Okay, Okay, so you're
asking me to do it with my friends here, Oz
and Terry. And this is not to diminished Terry at all.
He is a really consummate surgeon. He's a he is

(52:46):
a star. But Oz was the chairman of the Department
of Cardiothoracic Surgery at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital. That is one
of the highest positions in the land. Okay, whom my
med Oz is. So whenever you people diminish him, just go, yes,
he did TV. But he is he is that guy

(53:08):
and and he is brillieving or talk to him.

Speaker 2 (53:11):
He is that brilliant.

Speaker 1 (53:12):
So er is where I'm going with my mad and
ballgame is where I'm going with Terry. You're a little
more friendly than working together, But I would not take
Phil's license away. Okay, and let me tell you something Phil.
Phil I used to be very frustrated with because what
he was doing on TV frustrated me because it wasn't

(53:34):
anything it was. I kept going, this, people are getting
the wrong idea, this confrontation thing.

Speaker 2 (53:38):
This is not what you do to people.

Speaker 3 (53:39):
You don't do that.

Speaker 1 (53:40):
And when you close the door that they just put
up on their force fields and their defenses and stuff.
And I started softening my position and going, oh, he's
just doing a talk. He's doing TV. He is a
really serious talent for doing talk a certain way, and
he uses his knowledge and ability as a psychologists to
do talk. It has still giving people the wrong impression.

(54:02):
I just last three days ago, I was talking to somebody.
I said, No, that's that's not what treatment is. That's
what Phil does. That's not what treatment right, right, And
my esteem and respect to him has ever since I softened.
I really have high high esteem for him. I think
he does amazing work. He's doing a great job. I
fully fully endorse everything he does, and so anything I

(54:23):
I this is something. I'm glad we're having this conversation
because I am looking I look for every opportunity to
apologize now in my life where I've gotten something wrong,
I misjudged somebody, and I wanted I'm doing this for
a couple of reasons.

Speaker 2 (54:36):
One is because we all.

Speaker 1 (54:38):
Need to have truth and reconciliation everything, and so I
want to be a model for that. And so Phil,
my deepest apologies for any negativity I felt or experienced.

Speaker 2 (54:49):
I was wrong.

Speaker 1 (54:50):
You were doing something exceptional. I didn't appreciate it, and
I was absolutely wrong. You know where this started for me?
Do you know who Naomi Wolf is?

Speaker 3 (54:57):
Yes?

Speaker 1 (54:58):
Okay, because become a friend. And she was going on
and on and on about the vaccine and women's menstrual periods.
And I said the following, and I go, I got
NAIOI women's menstrual periods. I mean, come on, they get
affected by everything, the wind blows wrong. Let's let's talk
about something serious. And and and then I started hearing
what that did to women and their fertility and these things.

Speaker 2 (55:21):
And I thought, God, for God's sakes, what an asshole?
What an asshole? What a sexist asshole?

Speaker 1 (55:29):
And I brought, I brought and Naomi into this kind
of Armisionaomi, I want to follow my sword that was sexist,
it was dismissive, it was unforgivable, and I apologize, and
every chance I get, I apologize to her again because
that was that was so wrong. Uh, and it was
so sexist and so disgusting of me. So anyway, that

(55:50):
was that was where I started my apology tour. That
was one of the things that I apologize about.

Speaker 3 (55:54):
So, yeah, I love a good apology tour.

Speaker 2 (55:56):
Yeah, it's it's it's it's empowering. You learn from it,
you learn you won't do it again.

Speaker 3 (56:00):
Yes, do you watch the show Shrinking?

Speaker 2 (56:04):
No, I heard about it. I do not watch it.

Speaker 3 (56:07):
I don't love it because I don't love the way
it portrays therapy.

Speaker 2 (56:11):
Well, the therapy does not lend itself to television period.

Speaker 3 (56:15):
No, it's boring. It's not that boring.

Speaker 2 (56:17):
It's too slow.

Speaker 1 (56:19):
We're talking about rewiring a brain, which takes months to years,
and even when you have a sort of a breakthrough
or a moment or a technique, you've got to go
practice it in the world a million times, and then
you come back in a different context and a different
way of thinking about it.

Speaker 2 (56:34):
It just takes forever.

Speaker 3 (56:35):
That's right.

Speaker 1 (56:36):
That's in fact, what I was talking to somebody about
when when he was he was wanting to put something
on TV, and I go that that's not treatment, that's
not that's what doctor Phil does. And if you want
somebody to do that, go do that it on TV
because that does work. But don't think that's treatment. That
is not treatment.

Speaker 4 (56:49):
Perfect final question, and it's the most important to me
culturally and spiritually.

Speaker 3 (56:56):
When is iced coffee season?

Speaker 2 (56:59):
When is ice coffee season for me or for the
average person? For you? Never?

Speaker 4 (57:06):
Yeah, I knew we were going to break us somewhere.
That's where we break. That's where we break, because the
answer is your round.

Speaker 1 (57:13):
But well, but maybe it's interesting I think how extreme
that break is. But maybe I'll bring it up and
I'll try it in the summer. As an homage to
this conversation.

Speaker 4 (57:24):
Well, this was really fun, helpful, informative all the things,
which is what we aim for here.

Speaker 1 (57:33):
So thank you well, and it is because of you,
and so thank you for that, and thank you for
doing this show, and thank you for having me on.

Speaker 3 (57:40):
Coming up next week on Off the Cup.

Speaker 4 (57:42):
That guy from every TV show and movie you've ever watched,
it's my friend, Spencer Garrett.

Speaker 3 (57:48):
I got recognized the other day for Once upon a
time in Hollywood. I sort of joke that my tombstone
is going to say, here lies that guy from that thing.
I'm that guy from that thing.

Speaker 2 (57:58):
Aren't you that? Aren't you that? Like we got to
high school together? No where do I know you from?
And then they'll finally kind of piece it together.

Speaker 4 (58:07):
Off the Cup is a production of iHeart Podcasts as
part of the Reason Choice Network.

Speaker 3 (58:11):
If you want more, check out the.

Speaker 4 (58:12):
Other Reason Choice podcasts Spolitics with Jamel Hill and Native
Land Pod. For Off the Cup, I am your host,
Si Cup. Editing and sound design by Derek Clements. Our
executive producers are me Se Cup, Lauren Hanson.

Speaker 3 (58:26):
And Lindsay Hoffman.

Speaker 4 (58:27):
Rate and review wherever you get your podcasts, follow or
subscribe for new episodes every Wednesday.