For the first time in US history, we are no longer at replacement level.

Wire fertility and birth rates falling.

It has a lot to do with social and cultural practices.

Doctor Drew Pinsky is my guest.

Are we addicted to our own demise?

Among other things?

It's all ahead on a royal grande.

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In this new year, the US is no longer at replacement level.

We are losing more people than are being born.

Time was, women had two point one children each.

Now that number is plummeted to one point six children in twenty twenty five.

If you think birth rates are something you can ignore, consider what this is going to mean to the economy, social security, maintaining a vibrant, innovative culture a society.

All of Europe, Japan, and the US are all facing demographic winters.

What's driving the collapse of births and fertility.

I'll get into some of the factors with doctor Drew Pinsky in a moment.

Here's a little cultural pro and con that I've observed.

On the positive side, I do see movements of young people who have gotten the memo that having children is an important part of life.

In fact, it may be the most consequential part of life.

I saw this movie, Marty Supreme Over the Break, which is going to win all kinds of awards this season.

Timothy Shallomey plays a weasily, selfish, sneaky, little ping pong wonder kind.

The movie's really well done, but its cultural importance is the way it opens and ends.

It begins with Marty having sex with a woman in the stock room of a shoe story works in The entire opening sequence consists of a microscopic view of the miracle of life, a little swimmer making its way into a waiting egg.

That visual is critical because it underscores not only what matters most, but it overshadows the entire movie as Marty connives and cons his way from one exploit to another.

The movie ends with the character confronting the child we saw created at the opening.

He weeps in awe and contrition as he realizes his purpose in shocking stark relief.

When I saw it I thought this is fantastic cinema because it takes us through the mess and the drama of this kid's life to truth.

Now for the negative side of the cultural alledger, we built an entire pop culture that prizes looks over substance, flash over sacrifice, and imagined fiction's over reality.

Sadly, unlike Marty Supremium, people are picking up on that message too.

Take Clovicular, He's a looks maxing social media influencer.

He's been making the rounds recently hawking his approach to maxing his looks and dominating other guys or whatever that means.

His fitness regime includes injectables, surgeries, and hormone replacement, which strikes me as a little less than masculine, but maybe I'm just old school.

The other little problem he has is one that I would think is important to most guys.

So right now, I am infertile, but I'm not able to have a kid right now.

But if I wanted to, there's a protocol I can put in place that be immediately going to get.

Why are you inferal right now?

So there's just like a negative feedback loop when you're not needing to produce the saucer anymore because your body realizes, okay, we're getting it from an ego.

You're not producing any software nationally.

No, So Clavicular is essentially a vanity.

He's trading his fertility for the appearance of health.

This is like the bro version of the substance.

Remember that movie with Demi Moore from last year.

He's nineteen years old.

You're not going to get much better looking or more healthy than when you're nineteen.

Whatever is protocol, It's neither sustainable nor healthy.

Clavicular.

Let me offer a few words of caution.

This is actor Mickey Rourke, who also used steroids back in the day.

This is him now.

Guess what, He has no biological children either.

He's a fantastic actor now basically unemployable because of his smashed up looks.

As a mentor of mine used to say, nothing lasts forever.

I'm all for people looking their best, but they're better ways of accomplishing that than sacrificing the ability to have children.

And this anti fertility trend bespeaks something more ominous, a lack of faith in your future, hate of self, and the death of a people and a nation.

We're going to get into this extinction, addiction, and a few others with doctor Drew Pinsky.

Of course, doctor Drew is an internist, an addiction medical specialist, and a media maven.

I learned a lot about the good doctor.

I didn't know he was a singer, or that his daughter struggled with addiction.

And did you know that it was doctor Drew who helped popularize the stoics.

Wait until the end of the show for that story.

His doctor Drew Pinsky.

Tell me what's happening to the birth rates we're seeing in this country.

Birth rates are down, fertility is down.

They're collapsing.

But what's driving that, Well, we don't know for sure.

I can tell you I talked to a lot of young people and they are not fraternizing.

We have vilified young males.

This is the opposite problem you say have that's on Loveline all those years that I now present myself to younger people well as a time traveler, and what I tell them is, I've come to you from a past era.

I'm here to deliver some information I was part of having conversations about sexual behavior.

I didn't intend this.

I did not intend us to get right here.

This is not good.

This is not at all what I had in mind.

Wow, And the fact that young people have no skill in dating courtship is a bad word.

Men feel like they're toxic and ashamed, and they don't know how to approach somebody that might be interested in Women are confused.

Where the men?

Why aren't they approaching us?

They were told not to.

Right and literally me too.

Literally men in their mid thirties are really I don't have the skill set necessary to do dating.

So those kinds of things are happening.

And then there's porn, and then there's porn, and then there's video games.

And so if you look at young males sort of functioning in the workplace and socially, when you see it start to go down, you find.

Porning video game.

But porn.

Porn is the crack pipe.

You know, having a phone in your hand is like if you're prone to compulsion around porn, it's like having a crack pipe.

And what I was hearing, I had a show in your mom's house for a while.

I was talking a lot of young people, and what I was hearing was, you know, I don't want to be seen as toxic and women are kind of a lot of work, and I don't know how to, you know, And I'm good with the porn.

I'm fine.

And then I started hearing about prostitutes, which is something I had never heard about in my whole career.

So that was starting to happen.

I don't know if it still is or not, but that sort of shocked me.

Yeah, and we live in a world where you're not allowed to say anything at all concerning about sexual behavior.

Everything must be sex positive.

Yes, and that's a huge mistake.

Yeah, it's such the biggest healthy behavior.

That's such a thing.

Then we got to worry about men's sperm count and you know whether or not, and women waiting too long to have you.

Can't have children?

Why the fertility rates are through the floor.

Where that where the low testosterone and the lower sperm pound?

Where is that coming from?

Is that food additives?

Is that over being overweight?

Is that our lack of who knows well all this contributing.

It's a giant Yeah, the plastics.

It is a giant sort of series of unfortunate events.

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How do we break that?

I mean, you see the porn thing.

Yeah, this is a This is a sleeping giant among young men.

I mean they are they are fully addicted to this and that, and you watch them in social se it's like they're dealing with a foreign life form or an entity that never encountered.

Correct, because their most intimate moments were with themselves and with an image of what a woman is supposed to be, but a human being actually is.

You know, you're absolutely correct, And.

How do you break that addiction?

Well, let's just talk about where it comes from.

One of the big source of the addiction is early porn exposures.

So a lot of these guys have become compulsed men in particular, they've seen it under the age of ten, and that shatters the brain's upper limit of ability to regulate and it becomes sort of traumatic and it becomes a traumatic reenactment and they become compulse surrounded.

Yeah.

Brain does not set up for that.

And so how do you break it?

I mean, there's treatment.

I mean, there's a lot of good treatment out there, and there's a whole twelve step network of people and that's a giant growing community now because a lot of people need it.

Yeah, let's talk about the screens for a moment again, young men.

I pulled the numbers sports gambling drew more than fifty percent are young guys between twenty five and thirty nine.

States have now legalized gambling, so they're doing it on their couches, they're doing it on the way to work.

And now you can micro gamble, which I didn't realize.

You can literally bet on the pitch, not the game.

Oh yeah, this is unbelievable.

It's a lot and gambling, and let's be clear, gambling addiction is a real serious problem.

You've that's very difficult for people.

And again the crack pipe in your hand, if you're a gambling addict, there it is.

But most people are not fully addicted in the sense they need treatment.

It's just impairing their functioning and therefore is of real concern.

I mean generally functional impairment is where we talk about pathology.

I think there's so much just sort of preoccupation with this and normal employment of it, that it's diverting them from more productive endeavors.

Well, I mean I've seen young men, I've seen them.

You know, friends or acquaintances of my children, and the phone is in front of them with everything the way it's unbelievable.

But every down, every pitch, every they're they're on it, and they think they're going to make a killing, and I'm like, where are they getting They're betting five ten dollars, increment's twenty five dollars, but it's hundreds and hundreds of dollars.

Where are they getting the money?

Some of them are blowing student loans.

I heard of a kid who literally burned through his student loans.

I'm betting that makes me sad.

How do you break through this?

Though?

Well, okay, so generally how we break through in any compulsive behavior is two sort of strategies.

One is exposure exposure therapies.

There's not really an exposure therapies for this sort of thing.

It's really about here's what's missing.

Connection?

Okay, so intimate connection.

They don't know how to.

Do that, meaning making it is a does that mean having a purposeful love?

Making?

Meaning having something you want to do and doing it and contribute and then making a difference for other people you know, and then having some listen, having some sort of faith based something something bigger than yourself, and then hope.

These are the basic principles of human servi human human thriving, and they have not changed.

They are not different.

But in particular what's really absent is the meaning making and then some sort of faith or some sort of something you know bigger than yourself, that you raise that.

I read an interview that a Jewish magazine did with you, and you said, I'm not a very good Jew.

I'm Jewish.

What does that mean you of all people, Drew, I'm thinking, if anybody understands the power of belief and faith, these twelve step programs, it's the heart of them.

Yeah yeah, oh no, spirituality, power of it, spirituality per se.

I am a huge supporter of But I get nervous about I get nervous isn't the right word.

I don't feel it my position to push a particular organized religion or another.

I feel like community in church or temple, and these things are really really good, some sort of sense of something after fine, all good for people.

I wasn't.

I was raised with a little bit of it and then sort of abandoned.

And I always have a p This is where my own personal stuff gets in I have a problem with clubs.

I don't like clubs, and anytime.

I don't want to be a member of it is a groucho Marx thing.

But it's also I just anything that that excludes others.

I immediately get uncomfortable.

If there's any kind of special language or special this or special hand j I'm like, it's not for me.

But but in terms of and I would say I've suffered because I don't have a really deep spiritual life.

I'm trying, I really am, Especially because you get older, it's sort of a normal thing to start to think what's after this?

Just in case there is a god?

Yeah, what's after this?

And too, I was raised as a scientist at a time when there was not a lot of religious emphasis on anything.

It was science was just you know, king at the time.

So yeah, and we seem to be moving into an area that permits there might have been a hand behind all this.

Now, at very minimum, our brains can only do so much, okay, And then it is I have so many feelings about this, I almost don't know where to start.

To have some sort of spiritual something for the human beings seems to be critically important and we've gone through a fifty or sixty year period of marginalizing that, yeah, and trivializing it.

And I get it, but it is you see this resurgon of young people coming to you do.

It's funny.

I was talking to some young people the other day and they were talking about sexual health and because I was talking about being a time traveler, is that what I attended?

And they said, we are craving guidance and structure and tell us what to do and how this works and some guidelines, you know.

And I thought, oh, that's good, but we need to help them get that.

Yeah, they need to find it.

Yeah.

I want to talk about your journey, which I was fascinated by.

You tell me why medicine.

I know your father was a physician and your mother, Helene yeah Stanton, Yeah, was an actress and a singer.

Yeah that's right.

So I had both things fighting in my soul.

But my dad was who I always identified with, and I always grew up to think can be a position.

I really was very good at sciences and things, and I went off.

I found hyperachievement in college and excuse me, in high school, and then pursueded to launch into workoholism for the rest of the most of my life at this very moment, not as bad as I used to be, but I was a severe severuce hereial rocolic.

And I'm grateful for it because I had this unbelievable clinical experience where I saw everything I work in psychiatric hospital and ICUs and medical hospital.

I just saw everything for years and I'm very grateful for it.

But my soul suffered.

My family suffered, no doubt because I was not around, and I apologize for that, but I'm not sure I could have done it differently.

But I grew up thinking that would be the case.

Went to college.

Went to Amherst College, which was extremely rigorous and the sciences at the time did well.

But I felt like the competition was just too much like the people who were going to that I was competing with that we're going to go to medical school.

I was not up for that.

That was not me.

I couldn't do it.

I couldn't do this.

You had bouts with anxiety at the time.

Oh well, so.

That was not yet.

So I said, I'm going to be an actor and musician.

I'm gona be all these crazy things.

And I left college for six months and pursue something was singing?

Was that I was doing music?

Was all kinds of crazy stuff.

What kind of music?

Opera?

I was a pretty good opera singer.

What were you study?

Did you study voice at Ambers?

Uh?

Yes, but I had a bad teacher.

I came out here, I had a good teacher.

I actually didn't get a great teacher until I was in medical school.

I was still doing it as an avocation.

Wow, And what did it teach you that you still use?

I mean, aside from breathing technique.

Gosh, that's a great question.

I think it impacted on my public speaking because to be able to get up, put your feet on the ground and give people something that's kind of all public speaking that is Yeah.

And the breath is everything.

Oh, in the voice, having control of your voice.

And I was thinking the other day that they didn't.

You were trained in this discipline and vocal production was a big deal.

It was, and we don't do that anymore.

And the voice is very impactful still.

Well, you notice people today they all talk in the bad.

No addiction, no addiction, and no diagram.

No, there's no sighs to the voices because they don't talk.

They watch screens or talk in your house.

It's not the same.

It's just not the same.

So you tell me about this tangent.

So so I went off and I got very unhappy, very very very unhappy in the arts.

Yeah, And I went to a come on tell it.

I went to a school near here and did a semester and I was like, okay, I don't want to.

I had to write a paper for someone, and I was going to the sort of they have these meetings with graduate students afterwards, and I was writing this paper and he said, okay, I'm gonna give you guys.

I'm gonna call you in and talk about your grades.

And I thought, oh, Christ, here comes, you know.

And he calls me in and he goes, this is the best paper I've ever read from an undergraduate.

And I thought to myself, immediately, I have to get out of here, because I'm a B minus writer at Ambers College and.

This is what I got to get out of here immediately, immediately.

Wow.

And so I thought I got to go back to England.

So I went back to New England, still not knowing, not happy, and not really understanding what I was going to do, and then started thinking one day I started having panic attacks and depression and all kinds of love this stuff, and I was so mismanaged.

You don't have time for that story.

Yeah, it was terrible, but it made me interested in mental health, and in adolescent health in particular, because that's what sort of led to all the radio stuff at the very beginning, because no one was serving adolescent health needs.

It was no such thing.

It were still a medical student.

When they asked you.

It was what asked the surgeon.

Was the name of the show?

What is it?

Eighty four eighty three, eighty three the k Rock, which became the home station.

I lived across the street essentially from it, and because and that station became number one in Los Angeles overnight, so it's the number one radio station run radio market in the country.

All of a sudden, this upstarting merges from nowhere, and people were stunned.

But it was right across the street, and so people I knew were socializing there there.

And finally I got a call from a friend of mine and goes, hey, you know that station.

Now, yeah, we're all aware of it.

And again, radio was so powerful, and people define themselves by what they listened to in the radio station they'd go to their.

Events and things.

And he went on to describe that they had this show in the middle of the night where they were just taking questions and they needed to make it in a community service show.

It was called Loveline, and they want you to do a segment called ask a Surgeon.

It'll be really funny.

And I'm like, what happened?

What is going on here?

But I thought, you know, it sounds interesting, and I went up there and did it with my textbooks in hand and stuff.

But I was like, oh my god, these this is eighteen to twenty four year olds or sixteen to twenty four year olds.

They're calling a radio station in the middle of the night for their most important health issues, and no one is talking to them about AIDS.

No one had heard anything about AIDS.

And I thought, oh my god, I've got to keep coming back.

And so you saw the social importance of this and the importance to get this information out that wasn't gotten anywhere one.

Hundred I just thought we had just been through the sexual Revolution, and nobody adults never contemplated what that revolution would do to adolescents and young adults.

And I knew I was there.

I saw what was happening, and I thought that they got to learn about STDs and there's no reason people shouldn't just talk about it, and then they need to know about this deadly illness coming.

And that was really what pushed me, was the aide.

Wow.

So then I want to go back for a moment because you told me a story earlier that I don't want to lose here.

Okay, during your dalliance with the.

Arts, Yeah, yeah, you go to Stella Adler, who's out here in LA.

He did a workshop.

Well, I studied with it in New York.

Isn't that crazy?

Tell me what that was?

Like?

What did she tell you?

She told me I should be an actor, that I was definitely supposed to be an actor and do that, and somehow she knew I was struggling and said, don't do medicine, be an actor, and I was like, this will be you.

So one of those.

And I think I also told you she Terry Garr was in the group and destroyed her, told her she'd never work and the.

Never be an actress.

And so I'm like, maybe a judgment wasn't his key Sella's.

I think I made the right choice.

I think Terry made the right show.

Yes, I think to Stella's perceptions may have been a little off that did.

But bringing it full circle, you do kind of bring an actor's drama to what you do.

I like, I really what I was left with after all of that, I still sing it, you know.

I sing for the Dodgers and the and the King's I'll do this national anthem stuff like that.

So I still have fun with the voice.

Yeah, but I really love public speaking.

I love love love public speaking.

I don't know why I love it so much.

I love I love informing and moving an audience.

I love doing that.

And radio was that every night, and so I naturally stayed with that, and then TV.

Then you go to TV and TV.

But TV was just like what a TV show?

How do you do that?

I don't know, It's like, tell me what to do?

Where do I show up?

The amazing thing to me is, unlike a lot of these the doctors and I couldn't name, they kind of gave up practicing and became TV shows.

You kept practicing.

It never a period.

It never made sense to me when Loveline on MTV came first of all, when they when the radio show went five nights a week.

I'm like, how am I going to do that?

Because I wasn't getting home till ten at night.

Oh, I was getting up at five and coming home in ten.

That was my day.

Severe workaholism.

But I managed to kind of learn how to dealcate a little bit, take a nap in the afternoon.

No, no, just no sleep for years and years.

Wow, but I could.

I could downsize a little bit of them.

I ended up not doing all the medical services at the psychiatric hospital and doing all the addiction services, so that gave me some flexibility there.

And I was like, all I have is Friday afternoon and Saturday afternoon.

That's it, and maybe Saturday it's maybe a ten.

We could if I could do my nursing home rounds in the morning, I could be there by ten and you could have that day.

And they went fine.

And we would do that and we would do six shows a week in those two days, or maybe eight sometimes, and Adam and I didn't know any better.

We're like, okay, I would change a clothes, do another one, change your clothes, do another one.

And I believe and it was we just just didn't we do But I mean the training you had in addiction, in general medicine, it did bring a heft and a gravitas.

Today, Yes, we need it.

At the time, yes, and and well, and we had a philosophy we were suggesting, which now we have to adjust it a little bit.

At the time we said it's the Gainsburger and the pill.

Now you'd say maybe turkey and pill, because no one knows what a gainsburg say, which was, if you want to give a dog a pill, you got to wrap it in something tasty.

Adams was tasty.

I'm the pill, and so I just kept delivering the information the best I could.

Huh, And I really knew I got what was happening.

I could see it, I thought to him, So how do we learn in medical school?

You learn from cases cases.

Experiential learning is the best.

And so the caller would be the case.

I would explicate it, and the listener viewer would identify with the caller, and I would be able to sort of drop in on the heels of that with some information.

T Mom was the exact same thing, Yeah, I knew would be.

The same.

Shows, Celebrity Rehab and.

Similar these all had similar kinds of which is I'm using an entertaining vehicle to give you information you need?

And is that is that kind of the through line to the Doctor Drew formula.

It is one hundred percent my formula.

To put yourself in the middle of the culture, using people that are important to it.

Boy, that there's a lot loaded into that statement.

To be willing to go places I don't belong, which is what the willingness to do that with comedians or with you know whatever.

And to use the cultural zeite guys to kind of reach people.

Yes, to be the so I can be the pill on the heels of that.

But it's I mean, by my count I may be wrong.

Eight reality shows you.

Were I have never accounted you could.

I think I have this.

I have a very strange history and that I've been involved with several hits.

That's extremely unusual, and I didn't know it until I looked back at a time when hits were important.

That's it's a big dull.

I mean, millions of people meant to hit.

That's true.

That's true.

That's no longer the case.

We are ratings on Loveline every night on MTV.

People don't even know that existed.

Was about the same as what Kimmell gets down.

So no, not even now.

We've probably beat them now, but the same as what Fox gets now.

It's huge, not know, it's huge.

It was huge.

People don't realize.

Tens of millions of people were watched, you know, broadcast television, cable television was getting in the MTV or three million people.

Formerllion people were watching these shows.

Yeah, and it was young people, which everybody was a major domage.

Everybody wanted to do.

It was an incredible time.

It was a fun time, and I do believe we've lost track of fun.

Yeah, and I'm extremely worried about young people right now.

They seem to be suffering and I want to help.

I don't know how I can.

But well, you study anxiety, you study this.

We see the isolation.

Well again the meaning maker and the connection and the intimacy, but also we need to emphasize the need to lean into discomfort.

Look when when Sigmund Freud got to this country.

There's a story that may or may not be apocryphal, that the reporters got to him right on the docs and it's after doctor Ford.

What do you expect to accomplish here in America?

And he said, well, I hope to one day understand the difference between true psychopathology and ordinary misery, and we do not tolerate ordinary misery.

Is good, right, It's what creates strength and resiliency.

And we have to lean into discomfort, not put people in safe space.

Is that makes them sick, and so leaning, encouraging, supporting, you know, explaining what intimacy is so they can give back to it.

Human This is where my optimism comes in.

Human have a huge natural inclination for reality and for connection, and so it comes out, it comes through.

It's interesting to me that you gave advice for so long, but looking at your example, you've been married to the same woman for thirty plus years.

Forty yeah, thirty, I've been together forty wow, three beautiful children, triplets.

Unfortunately, the three beautiful children came at once.

Oh my god, when we have PTS.

We have a granddaughter now, and my wife just just started helling PTSD symptoms being around the baby because it brings us back to that time.

But she was complaining about this a couple of days ago.

She goes, you know, what do I tell people when they say we're the perfect relationship?

We have we have problems and everybody else and I said yes, I said, but here's what I say, And because people do want to know.

Yeah, two things.

One, there was really something there at the beginning, like like if you really are excited to be around that person and if it just just feels right.

And by the way I went, I encountered her twice and had the same weird, intense reaction.

Did you meet?

First we met at a bar and she blew me off, and then we met through radio she was she was yeah, and I didn't know it was the same person, But I had the same reaction where I had.

To talk to her.

Never ever had that before, and I was didn't realize the same person until we've been dating like a year.

It was weird because I found a picture of that night where she blew me off and devastated me.

But but as it pertains to what our advice is, I say, two things, So make sure it's somebody you really really really really really want to be around, and you're really into that person and excited to be around them, because there's a there's a fuel to that passion that can can be there a long time.

And then the other part and my tongue is embedded in my cheek.

But I also mean it.

Lots of mental health services.

They were My kids have all had them.

We've had them.

I've had them.

They're important and and and it's funny therapy.

I was in therapy for years, years and years and it because that work.

All this was so bad and uh and I had PTSC.

One of our kids needed surgery at age one.

It was a crazy, crazy time.

But Florence Henderson's husband was a therapist and he was on Loveline years ago, and he said we were talking about attraction and things that he goes, Oh, yeah, attraction is just the sickest part of one person responding to the sickest part of another person.

I was like, yeah, that's it.

But we need that, we need that.

He said, yes, he goes, it can be extremely intense, passionate glue in a relationship.

But he said, he said this, said you, I'll never forget this guy.

He was a nice guy.

He said, you have to have process mental health services.

You have to have some sort of ongoing to keep you through the the things happen, you know, and and and and by the way, way, if you're inclued together by some pathologies there you better pay attention to those.

How do you find the right therapists?

Though, I know.

Here's the other thing I will tell you.

I'm a therapist skeptic doctor for this reason.

It never ends.

I went for a long time.

It did end, you know, and even a good show or a game it ends, or a good TV show, life ends.

But this goes well, it can.

It depends what the these are.

Really.

It's different things for different circumstances.

But you should go for a targeted reason.

You would say yes, yes, I mean I at first, you know, I had kind of an abusive relationship with my mother early and I had some trauma stuff I had to deal with.

And back then.

This is now, the early nineties, they didn't have as much good trauma therapy.

It took a lot longer back then, and I had great therapy and it worked.

Yeah, yeah, And.

My workolism settled a little bit and I became able to delegate, which I could not do before that point.

Being I was able to get a referral from psychiatric peers.

I was around psychiatrist all the time.

I got a great referral, I got the treatment.

Beyond that, I would just say, make sure pay attention to the letters after somebody's name.

You want you know that you want MD, PhD, SID at least to start, and then then you can go down to a lower level if it's appropriate, right and ask people where they were trained and how they were trained.

People who were really well trained one to tell you about their training and their level of sophistication.

I remember we were on our honeymoon.

We were with a psychoanalyst psychiatry.

He goes, no one ever asked me about my training because I want to tell them, but they never asked about And it should be somebody that don't go to a therapist that people say is so great.

I felt so great afterwards.

You should not feel great after a psychotherap.

You should feel challenged, you should feel stirred, you should feel uncomfortable, and somebody goes, oh, she makes me feel great.

The other way, Aha, how did you get all those celebrities to come on that rehab show?

On Celebrity Rehab?

I always said, how did you?

I didn't do it?

They can producers.

Yeah, they came to me to do that show, and it's a long story there.

But I was like, you can't know.

I know originally you said no, no, like no, no, no.

And they kept at me and I was like, oh, maybe do this.

And then I thought about the facility up in northern Pasadena and the psychiatrist I knew there.

I'd covered for.

Him a bunch, and he was like, yeah, we should do this.

Everybody else thought we should do it, and he was like, Okay, keep going.

And I don't know how they got the original cast, but they what they would do is they'd come to me with the case and go, can you treat this?

I go, yeah, I can treat that.

And the hard part was getting everybody in on one day.

That was hard for me.

It was also kind of like what do you do with people are struggling?

Wait till next week?

And it's hard.

So there was a quote from that time period you said this, I have no social life except for the time I spend with these people on camp.

Did I that at that point?

Yeah?

Yeah, yeah, no social life at that point?

I mean and then I wow, my uh, because you were doing love Line and that Rolling Stone or where I don't know, I might have been Rolling Stone or the New York Times.

I can't remember.

The New York Times but but it wasn't during that.

You don't talk to them.

I don't talk to anybody.

I don't talk to any print anymore.

That I'm surprised you found that drus article because that I did that begrudgingly.

I don't do print.

They destroyed everything else.

Yeah, it's a problem, but I am social life.

I was busy, was doing because I also steal by the way, and just doing the show.

I had other responsibilities.

And still you were still you were still in practice as you are today.

Yeah, yeah, tell me about tell me about the advice you would offer to parents today.

Parents today control the screen, roll the screen.

I have peers that are extremely talented, and they do that with their kids maximum two hours a day carefully, you know, observed and constrained.

You can put timers on and shut down and kids fight, fight, fight, fight, fight, and you still don't know what some scooball is going to show your kid during a school there or whatever.

I would say, try to organize in such way that they get it out of the school too.

I've heard recently young people are resistant to therapy.

They don't hear that too, even if they know there's a problem.

Yeah, of course, well, listen, there's a problem in therapy people.

They are not trusting therapy because it's been captured by a lot of crazy ideas.

And you know, there's all this idea that there's I just did a whole thing with a couple of psychologists.

I couldn't believe what they were telling me about how captured it has become.

Where people are in therapy being total of the problems all out there, which is you're fine, you've been colonialized and disempowered and that's why you're uncomfortable.

Oh man, is that going to make some disturbed people?

I mean, you got that is the opposite of how you help people.

And again, the most dangerous words are you know now we know how to do this, now we figured it out.

No, never the case.

To the kids that need the treatment or are addicted, well, addicts, you're gonna have to be treated.

It's a progressive illness, it's a dangerous illness.

It keeps, it keeps, keep progressing, keeps progressing.

But everyone's always resistant to treatment for addiction.

That's in the nature of the disease.

Not until they feel that they have to that they do it.

I've heard parents have told me we'd love to take him.

We took him to some meetings, but then they start the higher power and he doesn't like that at all.

Yeah.

Well, cognitive behavioral therapies have been showing to be helpful, So get a therapist that does cognitive behavioral therapies, motivational enhancement therapies.

There's a lot of different ways to do this.

People that get well usually end up in some form of twelveth tip that something called smart recovery that has kind of a different philosophy to it.

And look addicts in addicts in their disease will look for any reason not to get treat, not to stop doing drugs.

And then the real problem, though, is this California sober stuff that is dangerous?

What is that?

And I'm still drinking or smoking weed and a little bit at a time extremely dangerous.

What about the legalization?

What has that done?

What have you seen in your practice over the years.

I've seen what I expected, which was the weed now becomes so concentrated and so intense that it's highly addictive.

Now there's no longer any debate about is not addictive, and we're seeing psychotic reactions, which I really debate.

I really doubted happened to you didn't think it would happen.

I didn't think so.

But now it's clear it's happening, very very cleo.

I seen it all around.

And my daughter's two years into recovery from weed.

I mean she has not missed a meeting in two and half ears.

Well, Drew, you walk into a college dorm, you walk into a college campus, it's like an aldur of the hand out now and it's so hot.

This is not your.

Grandpa as well PhD in some cases.

And it's Look, it's not in any chemical you're putting in your brain that's mind altering.

It's not a trivial issue.

It's just not.

And if it's not something that has good science behind it, that it can be monitored by somebody, and even that sometimes goes awry.

I mean absolutely, I've got all kinds of concerns about that.

Wow, what does it do to with the brain?

I know there's some debate about it.

Yeah, Weed, we're talking about now, Weed, what have you seen?

You know there is what I've seen is adolescence.

In adolescent delays development.

It may cause some changes in the anatomy of the brain.

My fundamental belief is that's probably recoverable.

But in terms of development, that's a major issue.

And in terms of I'm seeing all over the place young males not you know, we mentioned porn and video games.

Weed is number three in terms of getting the wind out of their sails.

They just don't seem to be getting things done.

Then they don't see the impact the drug is having on Wow.

I want to talk about a couple of other contemporary things.

Britney Spears just adopted a little girl.

Oh boy, I didn't know that.

Yeah, this happened today.

She just announced it.

Is that for real?

Yeah, they say she's adopted a little girl.

This is something she wanted.

But today she announced the name of the child.

The child has arrived given her dance videos.

Is this somebody who is capable of raising a child at this show?

All I know about Britney Spears, yeah, is that she had bad enough bipolar disorder and maybe some substances in there with that that she was not just put on a three day hold.

She was put on a fourteen day hold and then a conservatorship that almost never happens, that is reserved for the most seriously psychiatrically ill.

Now after years went by and she did well and she wanted to try off it.

I was supportive of that at the ending of the concern because I didn't expect it to go that well, but I thought, she wants to try it.

There you can walk out on the street here and find people that are more deserving a conservatship than she is in the present, even in the present moment.

Okay, so fine, she wanted to try off it.

I don't Is she taking her bipolar meds?

Is she not?

That's a lifelong condition for her.

I can't imagine they would release a child to her without somebody doing some profiling on her mental well being just because she does wacky dance videos.

I would not condemn her.

I'm not ready to do that.

So I've been loosely supportive of all things Brittany.

And she's done pretty well for quite some time since coming out of conservatship.

And you've seen some outbursts and some relationship problems and stuff.

That's all part for the chorus.

For her condition.

The question is is she getting properly managed?

And that means everything she'd taken her meds.

There was a story I came across Ryan Holiday, who writes those stoic books.

There is a story that it was doctor Drew who let him down this path?

Is that true?

One percent?

Tell me that story?

Come on, you didn't read you read the story?

You did?

I heard of it.

So I.

Was I was doing some sort of promotion for somebody where we were doing these little mini lectures for college campus newspapers and editors and sort of leaders thought leaders on campuses.

And as I remember, I was going with a woman.

There's a woman there with me who was I was just trying to raise concerns about the hookup culture and things like that, which again ended up where we are now, and my concerns were justified.

And at the end of this one event in Texas As I recall this kid came up to me and he goes, I don't remember engaging with him that much during the roundtable, but I think we did, and maybe he could tell that story better than I.

And he come up to me, he goes, what are you reading these days?

I want to read what you're reading?

And I go, what's your name?

Ryan?

Okay, Ryan, listen, I read Obscure and Wide and you really don't want to know?

Come on, tell me, tell me, I want to know, and I go, Okay, I'm reading this thing called the n Caridian by a guy named Epictetus, and he's a Stoic philosopher.

And he's like, I go, he's not the best.

And it's not even his words, it's one of his students psychology.

Hearts of it, and he's like, I'm going to read that.

I go, well, I forget the substance of our conversation except to say it's it's an interesting field.

There's a lot of interesting stuff there.

And I think I was reading I've read some other Stoic at the time or something, and we may have been talking about that.

And fast forward fifteen years there's Ryan Holiday and we still respond.

I love that.

I love you to confirm that story.

I love that he's doing what he does.

I think that he is a wonderful well.

In some ways, it's like he's the spawn of doctor Drew.

Doctor Drew takes this psychological and addiction knowledge and medical training and it with the world.

He takes the stoic and forgotten yeah, you know, the philosophers, and he's sharing it with the world and popularizing it.

I mean, he's really opened it up for a whole group of young men who otherwise would not have any knowledge of these people.

Lesson.

Did Ryan also write a book called trust Me I'm lying?

Is said?

No, he wrote a book about manipulating sort of media.

I think he wrote that before I wrote his stoge books, and that one impressed me too, because it was like he predicted all of everything we're saying.

Yeah, wow, Okay, I have an arroyo grande questionnaire.

I ask everybody, okay, this you probably will acquainted with me, and if not, prepared for who is the person you most admire right now?

Yes, aside from your interviewer, there's my interviewer.

He'd be impressed greatly, the gentleman that brought me.

The huge that's right, thank you for that, our cameraman, Lenning, thank you, Lenny.

Let me, I have to think, who do you most admire?

Because I have I have, I have lots of mentors and lots of people I admire.

I'm thinking of this one guy, right I My dad figured very prominently into things.

I admired him.

What type of medicine did he?

Prayer?

Family practice?

Yeah?

He had great judgment.

His judgment was so good, So I saw him make a call about his own coronary disease.

And I was like, dude, don't don't.

No, that's not right, and it's your it's yourself.

You don't do that.

He was on, Wow, yeah, he's got good judgment.

And I've got eighty five percent of it, I say, And I think I'm very very grateful for that.

I have a psychiatrist in mind who I have great respect for, guy I worked in and around for years, who's helped me with cases and family and things.

And I don't know.

I've got I've got as I This is back to what you tell young males again.

Collect mentors don't have one idol.

I'm sure if I sat here and thought for a few minutes, I think of ten more immediately.

But but but they all fed you something that you continue to use, use your daily law around.

You know, keep mentors there.

They're critically important and you can have them in different disciplines and different aspects of my One of my sons is collects mentors.

I watched him doing that.

I didn't never mention it to him.

I thought, oh, yeah, that is that is a really important skill to be able to do.

Yeah, who do you despise.

Aside from your interview, he's one of he's one of my mentor types.

Uh gosh, who do you despise?

You're overthinking this?

True?

You know.

Came right into my head was these these weird little tik toks that Swallwell was doing.

I found those despicable.

Those were despicable to me.

Oh yeah, they were just they were just curses.

Reason, yes, I get I get.

Discussed really easily these days, and it was a disgusting matter.

I don't know if he's a good person or a bad persons Like that is discuss what are you doing?

So so that that my latestable Usually it's Hitler or I mean, that's easy, Okay, what is your best feature?

My best feature is my judgment.

I have a really good job.

And that's what I got from my dad.

I like, I got canceled around COVID and it was my judge that happened.

Another long story.

So I was I saw the pant I saw the press generating the panic, and I was like, hey, this is them trying to get your eyes and get some ratings.

Don't listen to it.

Don't stop just stop it, stop it, stop it.

And I got kind of hyperbolic.

I'm like, you're not gonna just don't worry about it.

Stop it, Let's see what this is.

And then and so somebody put together a video of me saying it's nothing.

It's not saying nothing, and making it look like I had was in complete denial about it, which I was not.

And and but here's the part I actually got wrong, in my opinion, and at the end of I made sure of it as a discipline.

Every single time I said don't worry about it, I would say the following.

I was in the AIDS pandemic, and Anthony Fauci was a wonderful leader during that.

He could be your north star and will get us through this.

Listen to doctor Fauci, and listen to the CDC.

They will get us through this.

And of course they left that out of the compilations.

And that's the actually the only thing I got wrong.

That's actually what I got categorically wrong.

And so that part is lost to the ethers, and all you have is me saying, don't worry about this.

And so I was canceled all over the place.

And I love that you every and we've talked for a while before we started the interview, you're willing to look go back and say, you know what, I was right about this, but I got this wrong.

There are very few people in public life willing to do which is a huge mistake.

You've got to call strikes and balls, and you got it wrong.

Like like Nailmi wolf was came on my show and told me some things about women's mental periods in the vaccine and nanoparticles accumulating the over reason.

I was like, first, Nail me women in their periods.

I've been practicing at times.

Anything any wind blows the wrong with women's periods and the nanoparticles, We'll see if that's really a big deal.

Then the data started coming in, and then I started listening like an idiot to the real experiences of women with these menstrual of regularities and what it meant to them.

And I thought, holy god, I am a sexist, hubristic pig.

This is inexcusable.

I brought Naomi and I said, I am so sorry, it's inexcusable.

I was sexist, I was lubistic.

I minimized something that was important, and I categorically I will keep falling on my sword.

That's not okay, And apologize to her in public every time I see her.

And I've got some other ones coming.

I've got some others that and you know, the COVID one.

I got certain things wrong.

I got some stuff wrong with the vaccine early because I thought this seems like a good plan.

Yeah.

No, favorite book and the last spoke you read.

I'm reading a book on George Marshall right now.

I'm almost done.

Whether it's huge mongus.

I read a book called The Alchemy of Air before that about I read a lot, a lot of you're like, Ryan Holiday, Now I want to read what you're read.

Read.

I read everywhere and everything.

It's about the It's about the engineering and chemistry of ammonia essentially and fertilizer and how.

It figured into the twentieth century.

It's a big story and the Nazis and you know, anyway, and uh, but the Marshall book has been extraordinary to sort of see.

I'm reading a lot about China right now.

It's like, oh god, what a mess.

Yeah, what a mess?

All we got here?

What a mess?

Hey, we must read our history, we must, we must.

I got into reading really when I started having time to read through biographies and I read widely.

Abraham Lincoln became an obsession of mine.

Aaron Burr, Jefferson Hamilton.

I was reading all the stuff and.

I see them on your shelf.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's that's in t r oh.

I loved my favorite amazing president, amazing man.

Yeah, crazy, grandiose.

But narcissistic, bipo manic, right, and one of the best president's, greatest president we've ever had one of them.

What do you know that no one else knows.

God's a lot of things.

And that's why I keep talking.

It's unfortunately people don't understand what death and dying is.

People don't understand the important of faith.

People don't really get what addiction is.

People don't understand what mental health is.

There's just so many things about the human condition.

Let me tell you this.

I'll tell you one thing.

Okay, we are an embedded species, and I mean this in this sense.

Our brain is embedded in a body.

Our body is embedded in relationships, and these relationships are embedded in a sociohistorical moment, and all of it is important.

All of it comes to bear on us, and we should try and do our best to understand all of it.

It's it's it's I mean, I understand it's a lot, but at least have some understanding of the socio economic historical moments we're in and how we got here, and then what relationships are and how to manage some how to do them in a healthy way, and something about our brains and our health and our spiritual condition.

This is all.

This is why I don't get super specific, because I don't know what's going to really appeal to people except to say, we've got to attend to these things, must attend.

How do we fit in the chain of history here?

Where do we fit?

And what do we what's our role in this?

How do you make a difference?

How do you make meaning?

How do you do that?

And if it's to raise your ran kids, then do that?

Who was it i ran?

Somebody was saying just be the best.

It was a zen thing.

Just do the best at what you decide.

You want to do.

Just be good at that head of it.

It's a street sweeper.

Be the best.

Yeah, what would mother Teresa say?

There are things you can do.

I can't do.

Do everything with great love, small things, with great love.

Great grace, great love, great faith, great hope, great intention.

I fear my age.

I start to feel I fear losing my.

Cognitive functioning.

I feel things slipping here and there, and I do not like it.

I fight very hard against it.

What's your biggest regret, oh Man, I regret my workoholism having a negative impact on people I love, And yet it was really important, well for.

Them, for you, for all of us, for your audience.

I had an important experience and I'm sorry that I regret that it affected them.

What's the best piece of advice you ever received?

Hmm, gosh, you know you're making You're making me think about these things.

I told you I'm slowing.

No, no, no, you're not slowing.

Look, I can always edit think about this.

The best the best advice I got was from my dad.

He said, your your most important diagnostic tool is your ear.

Listen and and I have learned through I talked to you a little bit about before the show.

Listening is not just what you hear.

It's the impact on your entire body, what you feel and think and smell, and how you respond and when I'm when people are asking you know what, how do you sustain intimacy or how do you empathize.

It's listen, but listen with your whole body like an antenna, and just pay attention to everything that comes up.

If you have a thought or a smell or something that that it's meaningful, it may have come from the other person, especially if it's not something you recognize as something you would normally experience, like, well, that's something that some part of that person is communicating with you lean into it.

Pay attention what happens when this is over?

My life because I think I'm gonna work right to the end or to mean this interview, I'm gonna leave that.

Everybody asks me when this is over, whether it's the interview, when this is over, When this is over?

Uh.

This is another piece of advice.

People need a simple existence.

I have to go to the DMV inside some papers when this is over.

Humility and simple life and just being a human being, intrude, this is this is all of us.

Just be a be a person.

If I wish for everybody that they have the opportunity to make a difference and to follow their passions and to explore creatively all these things that I've been able to do.

It's it's crazy to me that I've been able to do that and to use aspects all parts of my and try to create things that make a difference for other people.

Mind blowing and I'm so, so so grateful for it.

Cultivate gratitude.

It's another thing I didn't mention.

That's another important thing.

Well, we're grateful for you.

Thank you, and thank you for the time.

This great thank you.

All right, here's the hole to you.

Bro's watching.

There are so many great bits of advice that doctor Drew shared collect mentors, such a great tip one that we often forget, and as far as the fertility deficit, find someone you love and have babies.

Society is a reflection of the people in it.

If you're so self obsessed and in your own head and in your own body that you can't see beyond you, society is over.

Lose the pot, get over the porn, and give yourself a real partner, someone you can build a family and a future with, the only future worth having.

By the way, I hope you'll come back to a royal grande soon.

Why settle for a dry, constricted life when if you fill it with wisdom and knowledge, it can flow into a broad, thriving Arroyo Grande.

I'm raiding Arroyo.

Make sure you subscribe and like this episode.

Thanks for diving in.

We'll see you next time.

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