Dr. Drew Pinsky (@drdrew) is a celebrity doctor who has been hosting shows — from radio to television to podcasts — for more than 30 years, most well-known for Loveline from 1984 to 2016. His current hosting duties include The Dr. Drew Podcast and The Adam and Dr. Drew Show among many others.
“Give the world the best you have and you’ll get kicked in the teeth. Give the world the best you have anyway.” -Kent M. Keith
What We Discuss with Dr. Drew:
- How Dr. Drew reaches to the heart of an issue in seconds with his callers by listening with his whole body.
- People who seem to “have it all” are dealing with the same issues as everyone else.
- The difference between how Dr. Drew used to respond to criticism of his work compared to today.
- What experiencing imposter syndrome usually reveals about you.
- How we can spot the behaviors of addiction in others as well as ourselves.
- And much more…
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Over a lifetime of challenges, we all face periods of self-doubt, lack of clarity, and general directionlessness. Sometimes we just want to relax on a chaise lounge and seek the guidance of a licensed professional to set us on the proper path.
Dr. Drew Pinsky is just such a professional, and he takes a break from his usual gigs at The Dr. Drew Podcast and The Adam and Dr. Drew Show to join us for this episode. Listen, learn, and enjoy!
Please Scroll Down for Featured Resources and Transcript!
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More About This Show
Dr. Drew — formerly of Loveline, currently hosting The Dr. Drew Podcast and The Adam and Dr. Drew Show among others — is famous for getting the heart of an issue in seconds with people who call him for advice, and he does this by listening with his whole body — not just his ears. In a matter of seconds, he can easily discern between what’s real and what’s bogus — as demonstrated by the time he identified someone with multiple personality disorder live on the air.
“You’re super focused, you’re listening to the vocal prosody, you’re listening to the affect being communicated by that, you’re listening to the words in the story, and then you’re listening to your body’s reaction to it,” says Dr. Drew. “And I could really tell how my body reacted.”
A Host of Problems
But as good as he is at rooting out the source of problems his callers may have, Dr. Drew has caught flak from some for coming up as anything short of a miracle worker. Over the course of his hosting duties for shows like Celebrity Rehab and Teen Mom, he’s been blamed when cast members have died — sometimes years after their episodes have aired.
“I’m not their doctor,” Dr. Drew clarifies. “I spend a day when I host and use my physician skills a little bit to interview them, but I’m not their doctor. I offer myself as a resource to them; I can’t practice medicine across state lines! They’re not my patients. They all have social workers and doctors that take care of them, [but] I need to fix them.”
It’s a bit like being blamed for someone getting a DUI last night because you happened to be their bartender four years ago.
“I used to be exquisitely sensitive to criticism because I wanted to be perfect and do only good!” says Dr. Drew. “I remember when Adam and I wrote our first book. It was just sort of an advice book years ago. And we just wanted to make a difference. We wanted to help. And I remember it was the beginning of Amazon and you were allowed to have comments from readers in your little book section. I was devastated by some of the things people were saying. And what they were saying then was nothing compared to what goes on these days! I mean nothing. And I was so hurt and so upset and so affronted professionally and my reputation had been harmed.
“As a physician, your identity is tied up in doing that job. And so it hurt as a person. Now…you get used to the pummeling.”
“Do Good Anyway”
As Dr. Drew has learned, people will ascribe all sorts of inappropriate motivations to you if you’re in the public eye no matter how hard you’re always trying to do the right thing.
At the end of Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story, the famed actress and inventor reads a poem by Kent M. Keith that urges us to “do good anyway” even when it seems like the world is against us.
And while Dr. Drew says he’s gotten used to the pummeling, he’s still not immune to it.
“I’m sort of shame-based already,” says Dr. Drew, “and so I always think to myself, ‘What have I done to contribute to this?’ Because I must be doing something to contribute to it. We’re essentially responsible for our reality, and one of the things you can do is look at your own contribution to anything. Sometimes it’s in a very small way; sometimes it’s in a very big way. I just want to make sure I’m not missing something or doing something that I shouldn’t be doing.”
Listen to this episode in its entirety to learn more about what really happens when people are under siege by dissociative disorders, how Dr. Drew keeps from being emotionally deflated by bombastic media backlash and how it differs from the way he used to deal with it, why Dr. Drew still follows his calling to practice medicine in spite of numerous media successes, why self-esteem doesn’t care about success, the difference between mental health and mental wellness, and lots more.
THANKS, DR. DREW!
If you enjoyed this session with Dr. Drew, let him know by clicking on the link below and sending him a quick shout out at Twitter:
Click here to thank Dr. Drew at Twitter!
Click here to let Jordan know about your number one takeaway from this episode!
And if you want us to answer your questions on one of our upcoming weekly Feedback Friday episodes, drop us a line at friday@jordanharbinger.com.
Resources from This Episode:
- Dr. Drew’s Website
- The Dr. Drew Podcast
- The Adam and Dr. Drew Show
- The Mirror Effect: How Celebrity Narcissism Is Endangering Our Families — and How to Save Them by Drew Pinsky and Dr. S. Mark Young
- The Dr. Drew and Adam Book: A Survival Guide To Life and Love by Adam Carolla, Drew Pinsky M.D., and Marshall Fine
- Dr. Drew at Facebook
- Dr. Drew at YouTube
- Dr. Drew at Twitter
- Dr. Drew ‘Tired of’ Blame for Celeb Rehab Deaths, CBS News
- ‘Dr. Drew’ Show Canceled Days after Host’s Negative Speculation about Hillary Clinton’s Health by Fred Barbash, The Washington Post
- Great Quotation at the End of Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story by Robert Oldershaw, Medium
- The Dunning-Kruger Effect Shows Why Some People Think They’re Great Even When Their Work Is Terrible by Mark Murphy, Forbes
- 5 Different Types of Imposter Syndrome (and 5 Ways to Battle Each One) by Melody J. Wilding, The Muse
- Dax Shepard, Dr. Drew Pinsky, and Rob Riggle Join the Prostate Cancer Foundation with an Urgent Plea to ‘Save the Males’ for Prostate Cancer Awareness Month
- “That it is better 100 guilty Persons should escape than that one innocent Person should suffer, is a Maxim that has been long and generally approved.” -Benjamin Franklin
- TJHS 28: James Fallon | How to Spot a Psychopath
Transcript for Dr. Drew Pinsky | Give the World the Best You Have Anyway (Episode 72)
Jordan Harbinger: [00:00:00] Welcome to the show. I'm Jordan Harbinger. As always, I'm here with my producer, Jason DeFillippo. Today, really excited to have Dr. Drew Pinsky on the show. He's been doing radio for, I felt -- sounded like 30 years. I grew up with Loveline, just like many of you. In fact, that's Jason probably where our entire generation kind of learned where things were, what things were happening to our body, well how we're supposed to use them, how we were not supposed to use them, that kind of stuff.
Jason DeFillippo: [00:00:28] Totally.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:00:28] All comes from Dr. Drew. And what's really funny is I don't see him as that much older than me right now. And so when I was 13 listening to Loveline, he was like in his 20s or early 30s, or something like that, which is incredible.
Jason DeFillippo: [00:00:41] Yeah, it's crazy. It's like, I think Dr. Drew is like, you know, a contemporary of mine. I'm 47, and he can't be that much older than me. But I remember sitting in my car in my 20s at like midnight waiting for it to come on. It's just so like my girlfriend and I could listen and really get some good info out of him, but now I'm just like, “Oh, you know, I could just sit down and have a beer with him like he was one of my homies.”
Jordan Harbinger: [00:01:00] Yeah, exactly. And it's fun to hang out with him and Adam Carolla of course. And I just, I love learning to read between the lines of people and that was kind of my intro to all this was how Dr. Drew was able to do that on the show. He just really got to the heart of issues. He's in my number one radio influence, which should come as a surprise to pretty much nobody.
[00:01:20] And today, we'll explore how Dr. Drew reaches to the heart of an issue in seconds with his callers. This is practice of course, but we'll learn how else this develops. And we'll discuss the idea that people who have it all can be dealing with the same stuff as everyone else. And we'll be getting personal here with Dr. Drew. We'll also learn how we can spot addict behavior in others and even in ourselves. This, and much more with one of my favorites here, Dr. Drew. There are worksheets with every episode including this one. If you want to learn how to really hammer this stuff home that we talked about here today. Those worksheets are in the show notes at jordanharbinger.com/podcast. So don't forget to check out Dr. Drew on Adam and Drew on PodcastOne and the PodcastOne App, and his own show, the Dr. Drew Show also on PodcastOne and in the PodcastOne App.
[00:02:07] Now here's Dr. Drew. I grew up with Loveline just to make you feel old.
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:02:11] Old. Done.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:02:13] I grew up with Loveline.
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:02:14] Done and done.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:02:15] And you really do reach to the heart of the issue with the callers. And I thought that -- I always thought that was so interesting. And I remember talking with other FM show hosts that I've met over the years, on Satellite hosts when I was on Satellite. And I was like, how do these people do that? You know, because it's almost like it's -- it's almost like a psychic level of--
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:02:35] Yeah, it has that quality.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:02:36] Reading between the lines. And for a while I thought some of these are probably fake, and there was one that I thought was fake.
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:02:42] Well, I can usually tell fake.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:02:44] You can tell fake?
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:02:45] Yeah, that's pretty easy because you feel that in your gut right away. It just, things don't line up. You're like, “Okay, something's not right.”
Jordan Harbinger: [00:02:50] Oh, I mean, I mean I thought you had people that were calling in and then you would read them. This is a long time ago, I don't think that now obviously, but there was one that I thought like, “How is this, this is too -- it's like a movie script. This person was saying a bunch of crap. Didn't make any sense.” And then you said something along the lines of, “Is there someone else in there I can talk to?” And then they were like, “Sure.”
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [0 0:03:11] Oh, yeah! I could tell it was a multiple. Yeah, that's pretty easy thing for me to tell.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:03:14] Because how do you, how do you do that? That was incredible. It’s a multiple personality disorder.
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:03:14] Yeah. It's been -- so I'm not doing that much of that work on the radio right now. So I'm not as honed as I was, but I remember I would get like this icy feeling and they would be – see, your question was how do you do this? Well, you listen with your whole body? You don't listen with your ears. I mean your ears are part of it. So you're super focused, you're listening to the vocal prosody, the vocal qualities. You're listening to the affect being communicated by that. You're listening to the words and the story, and then you're listening to your body's reaction to it. And I could really tell how my body reacted, it would just tell me, it would just tell me that -- one of these, when it reacted like that, I knew it was one of two things. It was either multiple or bogus, one of the other. And I just had a feeling, I know it's when you're talking about call your time back, because I had this very strong feeling and I thought, “Oh no, this one's multiple, I could just tell.”
Jordan Harbinger: [00:04:10] So are you detecting the switch in personality that the person has or are you getting that this person has this disorder before they switch personalities?
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:04:19] Before they switch.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:04:20] So that’s incredible.
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:04:20] Before the switch. There's something about them -- they tell me about their trauma or something, or they seem dissociated in some way to me, and again, that disconnect I feel like literally in my body, and so that informs me.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:04:32] What is dissociated mean for people who do not know?
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:04:34] Dissociation is what happens in the setting of trauma essentially, when you know, we have these what's called this Jacksonian dissolution, which is our body as we get more and more stressed or distressed, we break down into lower and lower sort of strategies within our evolutionary biology. So we start with fight or flight, if we get about to be attacked, we go fight or flight, and then we go from fight or flight to freeze which is a freeze response, which is sort of a way of conserving energy and anticipating attack when you can't escape, it's apparently a higher level of survival. And then finally, there's psychological sort of survival, which is with dissociating from the situation. People would describe hovering above it or blacking out or all kinds of different ways. And young kids that are severely traumatized, when their body is the source of the misery, it will sort of cut off and dissociate from their body.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:05:31] Interesting.
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:05:31] And then their body becomes all kinds of trouble to us internists later. Not just from the manifestation of medical problems, but they experience everything that comes out of their bodies as overwhelming and disorganized. So they’ll describe it as pain or misery, they can't quite get it. Unfortunately that my profession isn't really taught on this, but I spent a lot of time working with people like this and I just found you have to stop them and go stop, put exactly -- would exact because they'll just go pain, pain, pain, pain, pain. And you go, “Okay, hold on, hold on.” You said pain, but then you described weakness. So let's go here, “What is this?” And you have to really break it down for them because they can't process it, they just overwhelms them. And there's a part of the brain called the insular cortex that probably is the source of all that chaotic misery.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:06:18] Man!
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:06:19] And literally, literally when we dissociate your brain doesn't wire. So trauma therapies are all about getting access to those disconnected parts and bringing them back into the integrated whole.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:06:29] So the fight or flight, that's anxiety. A lot of people have that, right? Among other things, it can be anxiety.
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:06:35] Fight or flight, fight or flight is literally a, it's a autonomic, sympathetic autonomic response. Anxiety includes a sympathetic response.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:06:43] Okay And then the freeze thing, we've heard about that. The Dissociation seems a little more abstract because when I read about trauma or when people describe it, and I think this is one of the problems when people don't talk about trauma for years, and then they do, people don't believe them all the time because they say, “Oh, I'd repress these memories.” And people who don't have that go, “Ah, that's bullshit! You suddenly remembered this?”
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:07:05] It's more than repressed memories. It's a feeling that it doesn't bother me anymore, I need to forget about this. Because they want to push -- your body wants to push it back so it no longer remains – it’s no longer an explicit memory, but it becomes an implicit memory in your body. So your body becomes the source of the memory, and you can develop things like PTSD where it's always remembering it in the body's response.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:07:30] That sounds terrible.
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:07:31] Yeah, it's awful.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:07:32] That's, that’s truly awful. So, okay, so you get practiced reading people like this, of course.
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:07:36] Yes, yes. We didn't talk to a lot of multiple type, and people can go, I know -- and please don't attack me for even using the term dissociative identity or multiple personality. People argue whether that really exists, but you know what I'm talking about. It's severely dissociative individual.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:07:49] Yeah. I misuse the term. You're just doing that for the sake of clarity.
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:07:53] I'm doing that for the sake of not having to deal with the trolls online.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:07:56] I noticed that you deal with a lot of criticism. In fact, what was I watching? Yeah, Celebrity Rehab, and as soon as one of those people, 10 years later passes away. It's your fault.
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:08:08] Right. Correct. A die of heart disease, it's still my fault.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:08:10 ]Right. It's still your fault. Or Teen Mom, you're doing a reunion show.
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:08:14] Hosting, and not their doctor, I'm spent a day when I host and use my physician skills a little bit to interview them, I’m not their doctor. I offer them, -- I offer myself as a resource to them. I can't practice medicine across state lines and they're not my patients. They all have social workers and doctors and things that take care of them, I need to fix them.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:08:35] Right. And if they get a DUI five years after that Celebrity Rehab –
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:08:38] My fault. My fault.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:08:39] Or that Teen Mom, how dare you?
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:08:40] Right.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:08:41] How do you deal, I mean --
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:08:42] It's weird.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:08:43] How do you deal with that?
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:08:44] And I used to be exquisitely sensitive to criticism because I wanted to -- I wanted to be perfect and do only good and only good, only good, only good. And I remember, Adam and I wrote our first book. It was just sort of advice book years ago, and we just wanted to make a difference, we wanted to help. And I remember it was the beginning of Amazon, and there was -- you're allowed to have comments from readers in your little books section.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:09:09] Oh man!
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:09:11] I was devastated by some of the things people were saying. And what they were saying then was nothing compared to what goes on these days. I mean nothing. And I was, I was so hurt and so upset and so affronted professionally, and like my reputation had been harm, and you know as a physician, your identity is tied up in doing that job, and so it hurt as a person. Now I juts, I don't know, I just get used -- you get used to the pummeling.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:09:40] It seems like it would be tough to get used to that. I know one of the things --
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:09:45] And I just, you have to find -- you have to find your compass. You know, you have to always go, you always have to go, “I'm doing what's right. I'm doing what's good, and I have to trust my instincts.” I have to trust what I know to be good and right, and just keep going and what people think about it.” Just like Heddy Lamarr said, “Do it anyway, just keep moving.”
Jordan Harbinger: [00:09:59] I think you said something about a doctor who was treating Hillary Clinton wasn't even about--
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [0:10:03] Oh yeah.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:10:03] It was like about the doctor treating him and it was just like, “Oh, Dr. Drew hates Hillary Clinton.”
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:10:08] Yeah, that's exactly what happened.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:10:09] Let's tear him apart.
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:10:10] That's exactly what happened. And then when they decide -- this is how messed up the presses. So we had decided to stop my HLN show about a month before that whole thing went nuts. So we stopped the show about three weeks after that. He was fired because--
Jordan Harbinger: [00:10:25] Oh! He got fired, yeah, yeah.
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:10:26] We had nothing to do with it. Nothing whatsoever.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:10:28] That’s insane!
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:10:28] People don't care about the facts, they do not care about the facts.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:10:31] I mean there are people when they write to me and they disagree with something, I try to entertain them via email, Twitter, whatever. But if I look at your Twitter after you disagree with something and you say, “Hey look, there's no real evidence here, at this round.”
I just can't even, because we're not going to get to that ground level.
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:10:46] Yeah.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:10:47] Whether the ground is flat or round.
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:10:49] Yes.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:10:49] We're not going to get to that level in any short period of time.
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:10:54] And I've sort of learned that when people have these sort of strange ideas, it's not about convincing them otherwise using rational thought or evidence based inquiry. It is because then you got a backfire effect oftentimes, where they'll double down at other crazy areas. That can be worse than whatever it was you were fighting about.
[00:11:17] And so I think, I've not had the opportunity to really duke this one out. But I think what has to be discussed is people's worldviews, not the facts of the issue at hand, but what are your worldviews? Why do you not believe these things? And that I imagine a flat earthers worldview is the worlds, and I play safe. People lie to me. The government is some evil institution and NASA is probably the government, therefore I can't believe them. Therefore, if somebody I can trust, shows me evidence, I'm going to believe that. As opposed to my worldview where trigonometry and calculus and physics work, and where we can explain that mathematically. And if my worldview needs to change, well this thing suddenly -- this phone I'm holding suddenly stops working.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:12:06] Or floats upwards.
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:12:07] Floats upwards, where all these lights don't work. I mean, magically, all the things that are part of my worldview in application work, so I'm going to stay with them.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:12:16] A lot of people say that they don't, “Oh, I don't care what people think. I don't care -- I don't have any opinion about that.” “Oh, haters going to hate it, or whatever” I don't really believe that everyone thinks that way.
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:12:25] Of course, well, if you really do, you're a sociopath, right?
Jordan Harbinger: [00:12:28] Yeah, that's true.
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:12:28] Right.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:12:28] That's true.
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:12:29] So you, of course, we care deeply about what other people think, and our very self emerges in interest, subjective context, right? Without other people, we don't exist. So to, you know, if everybody hated or everybody disdained or thought ill of, that would not feel good. I don't care who you are unless you're a sociopath, or a severe narcissist. But to be able to sort of have equanimity, you know, given the world we live in, I advocate for that because it's just the way it goes now. It's just this just negativity and no matter where you go, but usually if there's negativity, there's also some positive. You have to start trusting that, if your moral and personal compass is lined up.
Jason DeFillippo: [00:13:14] You're listening to the Jordan Harbinger Show with our guest, Dr. Drew Pinsky. Stick around and we'll get right back to the show after these important messages.
Jordan Harbinger: [0 0:13:21] This episode is sponsored in part by The Great Courses Plus. Knowledge, I can't say the beginning of this, Jason, without thinking of that YouTube guy, that knowledge.
Jason DeFillippo: [00:13:32] Knowledge.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:13:33] Unlocks many doors in life. It's important to keep learning. And I do that in part by streaming The Great Courses Plus. It's a great way to build on information we already know here from the show or discover new interests. And Jason, you are learning something from The Great Courses Plus at least -- at least one thing. What were you working on again?
Jason DeFillippo: [00:13:51] I was working on my chest game.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:13:52] That's right. How did that go?
Jason DeFillippo: [00:13:54] Pretty well, pretty well. I learned some really good opening tactics and I, you know, I just don't have anybody to play with it, so it's a little difficult. So I just do it online now, but I learned a lot about chess. It was fantastic.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:14:06] Bam, bam. Can play chess?
Jason DeFillippo: [0 0:14:09] No, no, her little paws can't move those pawn.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:14:11] That's too bad. Well, either way you can do things by yourslef with The Great Courses Plus as well. You don't have to have a chest partner and you don't have to play online. Although you can learn about human behavior, investing, writing and grammar, playing the guitar. There are thousands of lectures to explore and they also have an app where you can stream just the audio in case you don't want to watch somebody tell you things on a screen because I understand how that goes. That's why I do audio only shows. I recommend checking out their course on behavioral economics. We talked about this a lot on the show.
[00:14:39] This is when psychology and economics collide, so we're talking key motivators in our decision making insight into positive and negative effects. Our personal biases have on the choices we make. Sound familiar? It's a topic near and dear to our hearts here on the Jordan Harbinger Show, and they've got thousands of courses like this. So enjoy a free trial with unlimited access to the entire Great Courses Plus library. Start your free trial. Sign up through our special URL today, Jason.
Jason DeFillippo: [00:15:07] They would be signing up at thegreatcoursesplus.com/jordan. Remember that, that's thegreatcoursesplus.com/jordan.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:15:14] Support for the Jordan Harbinger Show comes from our friends at Rocket mortgage by Quicken Loans. America's premier home purchase lender. Let's talk about buying a home. It can be one of the most important purchases you'll ever make, but today's fluctuating interest rates can leave you with unexpected higher payments, which can turn a great experience into an anxious one. That's why Quicken Loans created their exclusive power buying process. Here's how it works.
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Jason DeFillippo: [00:16:07] To get started, go to RocketMortgage.com/FORBES. Rate shield approval only valid on certain 30 year purchase transactions. Additional conditions or exclusions may apply based on Quicken Loans data in comparison to public data records. Equal housing lender licensed in all 50 States, NMLSConsumerAccess.Org number 3030. Thanks for listening and supporting the Jordan Harbinger Show. To learn more about our sponsors, visit jordanharbinger.com/advertisers. And if you would be so kind, please drop us a nice rating and review in iTunes or your podcast player of choice. It really does help us out. If you want some tips on how to do that and head on over to jordanharbinger.com/subscribe. Now let's get back to Jordan and Dr. Drew Pinsky.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:16:47] So as a personality that's highly visible, how do you deal with criticism? Taking it as feedback or taking anything as positive or negative feedback? Because of course it's really tempting to go, “All right, all the people who say the Jordan Harbinger Show is great.” They're clearly -- they got their head on straight, but this one person who says, “Screw you because of this, that and the other thing.” Well, he's a crazy person or I can't let that get to me. What I tend to do is I read feedback, both good and bad, and I look at the bad stuff and go, “All right, is there a kernel of truth to it?”
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:17:15] Yeah, for sure if you can.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:17:15] It drives my wife freaking crazy because she's like, “Why are you still thinking about this, guy?”
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:17:19] Well, if your suddenly thinking, because he upset you, then that's one thing, but if you upset you because there was something in there that rang true, that's tough, that's hard.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:17:28] It’s hard to make that determination in the moment though, I usually--
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:17:30] It’s very hard.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:17:30] I have to set it aside, come back to it in a week and go, “All right,” because in the moment I'll read somebodies email and go, “Well, you know what? Screw this guy.” But then I'll read it in a week and I'll say, “Oh no, this person's unreasonable.” Or, “Oh, you know what? I was upset because that is true.”
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:17:47] And sometimes it's the style with which approach it that you can't, you can't get past.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:17:51] A lot of tone deaf.
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:17:52] Yeah, just if they're angry or whatever, hostile, aggressive. It's hard to hear it. But you know, Carolla criticizes me for being too much adaptive, listening to people too much.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:18:06] I've been there for when he's done that.
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:18:08] Yeah. So, but that's just me. I mean, I really try to take input from the world and see if there's something useful there. I don't know.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:18:13] It's kind of tricky. It's a tricky balance. Especially if I looked at your Twitter, you have like 3 million Twitter followers. You can’t listen to those people. You can't listen to 99 percent of those people.
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:18:21] Well, here’s I can’t do. I can't respond to them, which is what's really weird because as a clinician you're just, you're not allowed to respond. You can't say anything or do anything that could adversely impact on somebody, so you can't throw back.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:18:34] Oh, so you just -- if someone's like, you're crazy person.
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:18:36] If somebody is horrible to me, I just got to like let it roll, just block them in.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:18:39] Oh man, I didn't realize you had ethical implications there.
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [0 0:18:43] And I just assume--
Jordan Harbinger: [00:18:44] That’s’ terrible.
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:18:45] --when it's really crazy that it's somebody who's not well. And so you have to always think to yourself, what do I represent to them that they -- because that's not me. So what do I represent to them that? Because I'm so --
Jordan Harbinger: [00:18:56] Geez.
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:18:56] I mean I'm politically moderate. There shouldn't be anything really objectionable. So unless I represent--
Jordan Harbinger: [00:19:03] Read your Wikipedia top page, and you will find.
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:19:05] I'm not going to—
Jordan Harbinger: [00:19:07] You’re highly objectionable. Don't read it actually.
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:19:08] Yeah, right.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:19:09] It’s a terrible advice.
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:19:10] What zone am I a problem in, generally?
Jordan Harbinger: [00:19:13] You know what? I'm not even sure.
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:19:14] Being a physician and using medication isn't that – but that's all we have as doctors. What are we supposed to do? We have a knife and we have pharmacology.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:19:20] Yeah, I don't know. I think it’s a lot of it is people misinterpreting things that you say.
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:19:24] Probably.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:19:25] And I think that happens to everyone at a certain level.
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:19:28] Yeah.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:19:29] Yeah. Most people will never face the same level of vitriol that a public personality faces.
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:19:35] No, I never, and as somebody’s, I'm sort of shame-based already. And so I always think to myself, “What have I done to contribute to this?” Because I must be doing something to contribute to it. And so whenever -- and sometimes there's sort of repetitive cycles of abuse I get, and I thought, I must have created that, I must have done -- I contributed somehow.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:19:57] But you're not advising that people think like there's [crosstalk] [0:19:59]
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:19:59] No, I'm just -- this is a weird thing I do. And it's like, because I feel like we're, you know, essentially responsible for our reality, essentially. I mean not entirely essentially. And one of the things you could do is look at your own contribution to everything. I mean, you know, we contribute to pretty much everything that happens in our life. Sometimes it's in a very, very, very small way, sometimes it's at a very big way. I just want to make sure I'm not missing something or doing something that I shouldn't be doing.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:20:24] I feel like we have that same, I hate to say syndrome because here at doctor, and I'm misusing that word.
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:20:30] No, it is.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:20:31] It really is like that, right?
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:20:33] It's sort of the opposite of that Dunning-Kruger effect, right? Dunning-Kruger is where you have a cognitive sense that you know a lot when you know very little, or you have a great ability when you have crappy ability because you've never seen, you've never experienced anything more. If you've experienced a lot and have a lot of training, there's sort of the opposite, which is the imposter effect.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:20:51] The imposter effect, yeah.
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:20:52] Yeah. And part of that is there's something wrong with me. I've, you know, I should be doing something different, you should have feel a sense of shame or guilt all the time.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:20:59] It is very common. What I always tell my audiences that the imposter syndrome, what's great about this is it's an indicator that you are probably a high performer or at least a deep thinker.
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:21:08] No, that's right. And it sort of goes back to something, I think it was Einstein that said like “The more you know, the more you know you don't know.” And part of that makes me feel like an imposter even though. And plus if you have sort of low self-esteem like I do, you sort of feel like, “Eh, if I can master this stuff, I'm sure everybody knows.”
Jordan Harbinger: [00:21:24] Sure, exactly. Yeah, that's very true. When I give talks to high schoolers and I say, “Who here feels like, you know, you're the only person who doesn't understand this, that and the other thing?” And the answer -- they never raise any of their hands. And then I'll go give a talk to a bunch of like funded startups that are running companies that are just at the beginning, they're doing really, really well. They're these unicorn funded startups or unicorn companies, social media companies, places where the founders have billions of dollars and options. And the whole room raises their hand and says, “Yeah, I feel like I'm the guy doesn't belong here.” And it's just so funny to see a room of high schoolers be like, “No, I know a lot of stuff.”
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:22:04] Yeah. Millennials are particularly guilty of this. And so it's like, “Ooh boy.” Because the phone gives them a false sense of knowledge. If they have information, they don't have knowledge.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:22:14] On the other hand, those same millennials are the ones running these companies, I tell you. It was older millennials generally.
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:22:19] I’m sure there are ones amongst them that have the imposter as well as.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:22:24] Yes, yeah. I think we can agree on that. You have kids so I would imagine you saw a change in the generation as you raise your kids.
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:22:31] Yeah. I mean I saw us, you know, the mistakes of our generation did, so just over, over parenting and over rewarding and worrying about esteem and stuff like that. Although I did, I personally didn't worry too much about that. I was much more worried about an education, education, education, don't do drugs. Those were sort of my things.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:22:50] Oh yeah. The addiction. Man, you had a front row seat to all of that. Not only given your profession, but hearing all these younger people calling on Loveline.
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:22:58] Yeah, yeah. I mean think about it. We'd get what? 30, 40 calls a night, and so we would know what we would hear exactly what was going on in real time. And strangely recently people have been asking for it again. It’s just Carolla and I both noticed like the last six weeks people like a lot just say, “Hey, bring it back. Please, bring it back.”
Jordan Harbinger: [00:23:14] Oh I was, you know, it's funny, I was going to ask if you are ever going to bring it back too.
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:23:15] I guess, we’re thinking about it. We could or I don't know if Adam wants to or not, but it's certainly of need. I was working with some millennials a couple of like two weeks ago, like three or 400 of them I was talking to. And I started talking about STDs because there was some increase lately and I saw them, their eyes kind of glaze over. And I was like, “Yeah, well you know, what about condoms?” I could tell, huh? And so I said, “Wait a minute. How many of you were, what percent? Show of hands, how many of you using condoms? What percentage of millennials you figure using condoms? How many percent in that room?”
Jordan Harbinger: [00:23:48] This is going to be depressing. 20 percent?
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:23:50] Zero. I couldn't find one.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:23:52] What?
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:23:52] I could not find one who had used a condom.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:23:56] That’s insane!
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:23:57] And then I dealt with another group the next week and I asked same question. Zero. So there's something going on now that's a little different.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:24:04] That's crazy. When I was growing up and everyone listened to Loveline, so I'm not saying it was Loveline that did this. Every single person used the condom
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:24:11] Yeah. But there was the AIDS epidemic and we've done such a great job with all that.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:24:14] Oh! That’s right.
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:24:14] Yeah. But yeah, I mean the STDs are on the rise again.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:24:17] That's really bad news. And so stupidly avoidable.
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:24:21] I know.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:24:21] So ridiculous. Unbelievable. Ugh!
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:24:24] They have a good times.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:24:25] Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's that. I love the idea of reading between the lines and I love the idea of being able to read people that is outside of practice.
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:24:34] Wait, what do you mean? Outside?
Jordan Harbinger: [00:24:36] Outside of just --
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:24:37] Common discourse?
Jordan Harbinger: [00:24:37] Getting reps in like, you know you are -- if you're on Loveline for how long did that show run?
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:24:42] 35 years.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:24:42] 35 years. So if the first five years you were wrong a lot, the last five years you're probably never wrong.
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:24:48] Right, right.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:24:49] So is it just the practice, or is there some other skillset that like if you were training somebody else to be the Adam or --
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:24:56] For that show?
Jordan Harbinger: [00:24:57] -- you on Loveline, what would you do?
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:24:58] I started focusing my training in areas that would help that. You got to remember, because I started doing the show when I was a medical student.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:25:05] That’s right.
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:25:06] When I was at medical school. And then as I came on through residency, I started working in a psychiatric hospital and just got interested in things that were coming up all the time on the radio show. And I would really pile into those topics, and got good at it. I knew a lot about them, and they were coming up commonly. So I made sure I knew what I was talking about, and if I were advising somebody to be able to do that show, I would have them do a medicine, followed by a psychiatry residency. I would go good medical school, medicine residency, and psychiatry residency. That person could handle the show.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:25:36] There you go. Yeah, because whenever I listen to your answers on that show or anyone's answers on the show, you or Adam. It's always, so there's a lot of insights unless Adam's just making fun of them. Those answers aside, there's a lot of insight there that you can just get.
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:25:50] And he was a good study to, you know, he's a good instinctively, right? So he always said, “If I were studying polar bears and I studied 30 of them, I pretty much know how polar bears were.” And so he got pretty good at sort of hearing the stories over and over again.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:26:02] Yeah, I suppose that's true. I've always found when I did my show on Satellite and we had live callers asking us similar questions, I guess because Loveline was probably off the air and they had nowhere else to go. I always was able to really solve only people that had kind of my own problems. Thankfully I had so many of my own.
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:26:17] That’s good, you had experienced.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:26:19] But I worked so hard at solving those that had put so much time into thinking about them, right?
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:26:22] That’s good. That’s good.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:26:23] Is your instinct to solve other people's problems or to give that advice, I should say. You're not really solving the problem. Were you mostly relying on conscious study or were you kind of able at one point to just go, all right, all these things, your subconscious brain, just plotting everything in and outcomes the answer, like “How mechanical was that at the end?”
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:26:42] Like every skill set, it was initially study, study, study, study, experience, experience, experience, parents like for you know, a decade, and then it became a little more instinctive like where I could trust whatever was going to come out of my mouth, I can pretty much trust it. And that really started happening with dealing with drug addicts out in the clinic, because they pull you into a vortex, they're bullshitting, they're upset, they're Oh my God. And you have to like, you have to like pull out of this mess something real and reach them.
[00:27:16] And I got to the point where I would just trust anything came out of my mouth and sometimes I'd sort of shut her on like, “Oh God, what did I just say?” And it was never wrong. And towards the last 15 years or 10 years of my practice.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:27:27] What do you mean by vortex? So I'm trying to make this applicable because I think there's people listening right now who go, “Oh yeah, my brother is doing drugs.” How do you know if you're in this vortex?
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:27:36] You feel spinning, you like your emotions are spinning around. You don't know what you've done, what you've not done. You feel responsible, but you're not. You just feel very -- you can feel confused. It's just like an emotional vortex. And they create drama and chaos as a way of sort of smoke screening so they can keep using. So that's just kind of how it works.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:27:57] Geez. What do we look for?
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:27:59] Well, I mean it depends on what age and what drug and stuff. Whenever I in my -- a lot of stuff happens in my mind’s eye. Like, I hear things and music and sounds and things that I know means something to me. Like if I hear the sound, you know a little cartoon where these yogada, yogada , yogada, yogada.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:28:14] Yeah, sure.
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:28:14] I know him with a drug addict, but I hear that you're going “Yogada, yogada,” sound in my head. Somebody doing drugs, I just know it.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:28:20]So that's your brain doing that --
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:28:21] That's my brain.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:28:22] -- because it’s spouting crap.
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:28:23] I'm just going to be sitting here listening to somebody going, “Huh, huh, huh.” And all of a sudden I go, “Yogada, yogada,” and I go, “Oh, okay, I got it.” It's like, well, I can stop listening now and just start asking him what they're taking, how much they're on, that kind of stuff.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:28:33] That makes sense. Because I remember listening to a call again in prep for this, and it was something like this woman was talking about, it was a relationship question. And she was saying, “Well, you know, this happened, this other thing happened.” And then you went, “When's the last time you used heroin?” And she was like, “Well, I'm not, what? I'm not calling about that has nothing to do with this.”
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:28:53] Yeah.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:28:54] And I went, “How the hell did you do that?” It was like a real life[indiscernible] [00:28:59]
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:28:58] I just knew. Yeah, and then again, that's just people would do these drugs have sort of characteristic behavior patterns and behavior in relationship and thing. And I just can -- when I see it, I know it. I just know it's there.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:29:09] It's like a fingerprint. They can't -- it's like an accent. They call and they go, yeah, and then tell you the story and you're like, “You're Irish.” Well, yeah.
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:29:18] Yeah, yeah. There’s an accent. It's strangely more than that. They usually are tells like, they'll say something like, “Eh.” “Wait a minute.” And there's sometimes, I can't even explain why I know it, I can't, and I just know it. When I know, I know somebody is using drugs or has an alcohol history or something, I just know it.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:29:35] It's like a superpower.
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:29:37] It is a little bit of weird super power. And it's because people that do these things have different, they fit differently in relationships. You know when you're fitting with them, you know when you're with them, and people lie and bullshit constantly, both on the radio and in real life and in the clinic, and when I'm seeing somebody as an outpatient or whatever, inpatient. And so I have to learn not to listen -- to listen, but not to expect truth. And if something's not lining up for me, it’s really against listening to my whole body and see what comes up.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:30:09] That is, it is never ceases to impress. And it reminds me of the -- when I started answering the dating questions a lot on satellite radio, far less cool of a superpower by the way. Somebody would say something like, “Oh, I'm trying to date this kind of girl and that kind of girl,” or “I had all these relationships with these strippers and stuff,” and then I'd be like, “Oh, so you don't get along with your mom, and it's like 99 times far more out.
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:30:31] Right, right. So that's the tell, right? Yeah, well it's a tell, it's like, “Hmm, the day strippers all the time. I wonder what that's about, and you cannot underestimate the value of a what's called therapeutic [wondermedling] [00:30:42]. What's that all? Even though you know notice of him. I wonder what that is. And you'll hear me do that all the time. People can't resist. They'll just come out with some real information, then that's when you-- and in the other hand, if you go at them, shields up, you’re shutting down. This is the weird misconception people have in this country that you can somehow attack people or out them in some way, that you're going to change their behavior, give them insight by it. It's the most bizarre thing I've ever, ever seen. I think the too much daytime television.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:31:11] I think that's probably true. Yeah.
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:31:13] Yeah, literally. I think it's like that. That's not how humans work at all, at all.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:31:17] Something you had mentioned probably, I don't know, 20 years ago now, was that people kind of want to tell you what's going on, especially if they call and do a radio show, but generally people want to tell somebody what's going on. And I don't remember exactly how you phrased it, but it was something along the lines of -- along with your therapeutic wonder [indiscernible] [00:31:33] got me, I think it was – you say something like, “Do you have a theory about why you might be like that?” And generally people have a really good theory that is exactly, or at least close to why is that.
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:31:44] I just ask it more simply. I just ask what do you think that's about? What do you think? And then they'll give you good information, then they'll tell you something. You may not be the whole story, but they'll give you something that's good.
Jason DeFillippo: [00:31:57] We'll be right back with more from Dr. Drew Pinsky after these brief announcements.
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Jason DeFillippo: [00:34:43] Thanks for listening and supporting the Jordan Harbinger Show. Your support does keep us on the air, so for a list of all the discounts from our amazing sponsors, visit jordanharbinger.com/advertisers. And don't forget to check out our Alexa skill. Go to jordanharbinger.com/alexa, or search for Jordan Harbinger in the Alexa App. Now, for the conclusion of our interview with Dr. Drew Pinsky.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:35:05] Why is it that you're also a GP even now? You do TV, you've got radio, you've got podcasts. Why still run a clinic?
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:35:14] Multiple reasons. One is most of these people are patients, I followed for 30, 35 years. And so they're all like in their 80s and 90s, and at least in their 70s, and they have lots of interesting medical problems, which I like taking care of. They play the guilt card on me. You promised you'd stay with me till the end. You promise you'd be here all the way. And if I'm calling myself a doctor, I better be a doctor.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:35:35] That's what I was wondering. Yeah.
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:35:36] You know what I mean? And you'd be surprised how quickly you can pull out of the, what's happening in medicine. It moves fast and it's not just about reading the literature, it's about what's the practices. So I'm around peers, I talk to peers, I share a thing, I hear things. And so I get to kind of keep up on what's going on a little bit, not the way I used to. I used to be like insane. They used to be like, “Leave me alone, practice medicine and just, we'll do a little television radio or something over here, but just leave me alone to practice medicine.” I did that for years and years and years.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:36:05] Last time you and I spoke was a couple months ago, and you said you were thinking about just going back and doing medicine or going back and doing clinical work and you weren't sure if you're going to that.
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:36:14] Yeah, I was getting, I was getting -- I was in a real bad mood. I don't know why. I'm still sort of there, but I have this fantasy that will just go back and work in the hospital, just get to work, see patients.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:36:25] Is that sort of escapism or?
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:36:28] It has something to do with what you were talking about earlier with all the negativity and stuff. It's like, “Ah, if people are so negative and I can't help anybody and I'm such a piece of crap, I'll just go back and take care of patients.” It's like, “I know how to do that. I'm good at it, so I'll just go do it.”
Jordan Harbinger: [00:36:41] Let my old patients yell at me, not some turd on the Internet.
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:36:45] Well at least they're -- I'm in a system and I'm poor. You know? It's just different. They don't -- people want to attack you and they just don't, in real life.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:36:54] Yeah. Well, that's true. They don't have the cover of the inner webs behind them.
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:36:57] Yeah. I mean what they do is if something goes wrong, they hire an attorney that's a different thing.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:37:01] It could be a little worse than Wikipedia and it works.
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:37:04] Except frankly it's just more of a waste of time, whatever I've been sued. I've been involved in malpractice suits has been the biggest waste of time. I mean, it would have been ridiculous.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:37:14] You spend like 30 grand and then the judge goes, “Yeah, there's nothing here.”
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:37:16] Never. They never go to trial. That's stuff I'm involved with. I get stuff like a, I had a case once where this woman was in the locked ward of the psychiatric hospital and she was so floridly psychotic. They couldn't get near her to do her physical exam. So I was on-call one night. They call me and they said, “Hey, this woman has an exam still stay three get up here, try to do it.” I went, “Okay,” and then they can like a half hour later they call me, somethings changed in her too, you better hurry. I went, I'm right there. I look at the chart, you can see these doctors trying to too wild, too wild, too wild, can't get her, can't get vital signs, can't get anything.
[00:37:49] And I go to her and she is comatose. She's not responsive to deep pain. And I was like, “Well this is not psychiatric, whatever that was not psychiatric either. We've got to get this woman out of here, and she had fasciculations in her arms, like these acute little muscular activities. And I thought this is, I don't know if she seizing, I don't know what's going on. This is neurological. This goes, get her out of here. She ended up on a ventilator four hours later, she had had encephalitis. So within 10 minutes of my arrival I had saved her life, got her to the hospital and she recovered with no sequala as far as I heard, sued for delay in treatment personally, yeah.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:38:27] Unbelievable, unbelievable!
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:38:29] Another one. I was sued on the case for a patient, not my patient. I was aware of it because people were talking about the case on the unit. Difficult case, I don't want to get into it, but as a patient that dimensionally died in hospice care, like it was a patient that the family wanted to stay in the psychiatric hospital. So he had some quality of life towards the end. Again, sued for, wrongful death. This guy had no chance of survival, wrongful death. Why was I sued? Because when the patient was being discharged, I was sitting with his doctor and the nurse leaned in and said, “Hey, Mr. so and so is being discharged. And his doctor said “Thanks, nurse so and so, and in the chart the nurse reported patient discharge, Dr. Pinsky and Dr. Smith aware.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:39:14] Unbelievable.
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:39:15] That was the totality of my involvement in the case. Months of depositions.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:39:19] That's, Oh God, I was going to say they probably just threw it out right away. No?
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:39:23] They did after months of depositions.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:39:25] Unbelievable.
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:39:26] We have to do the -- what do you call it? The discovery.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:39:29] Yeah, discovery. Yeah, that's irritating just hearing about it, and I'm an attorney.
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:39:32] Yeah, I know. Well, that's somebody -- I was talking about Dax Shepard on his podcast and he asked “Why he heard me or he heard I'd talked to my kids and said, “Nah, don't do medicine unless you really, unless you have to, unless you really have a calling.” I have a calling. It's the greatest thing in the world, but if you don't have that calling, it's difficult. It's painful and these are the reasons. There's just so many reasons, just so painful to practice medicine these days.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:39:57] That's super depressing. Lawyers can malpractice all day and they basically just have to apologize. Unless it's so egregious that a company will prove that they messed up, but you have to be terrible generally to have that happens. The opposite with doctors, you just have to be literally in the room.
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:40:12] You have to write, you have to be unlucky or have not crossed some T. Like literally some documentation wasn't exactly what it should be. That's it. There's your smoking gun. You're screwed.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:40:23] Geez. You mentioned before the self-esteem thing, and obviously you're successful, you're married, you're well-known, people love you. Obviously not everybody as evidenced by Wikipedia and Twitter.
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:40:32] Apparently, a lot of people do it, yeah, yeah.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:40:34] You got kids that are doing well. Self-esteem obviously doesn't care if you're successful.
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:40:40] Right. Self-esteem is something established I think by age five if I remember right.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:40:44] That’s depressing.
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:40:45] Yeah, and it turns out, I mean you can enhance it and you can move it a little bit, but most of it is set early, and mine was bad. Mine was -- and but I don't, but it doesn't bother me and I sort of use it, like it makes me double check myself. It makes me, you know, never feel like I've done enough or good enough. I might use it as a motivator, which is painful when you get a lot of negative stuff flying at you. But it's kind of nice if you know, if you want to motivate to do something good, it helps you.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:41:15] How do you get to that point? Because I think there's probably somebody, or a lot of people listening right now who go, “Yeah, I have low self-esteem.” How do you use it as a motivator instead of just going, “My whole life has [indiscernible] [00:41:25]”
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:41:24] Here's what would be bad is if my life were falling apart or something, and I have low self-esteem, that would be like a multiplier. Then I would cause me to tumble down the hill of feeling crappy. In terms of feeling good, it's like, “Well, you feel like you can never do enough.” Right? And I don't mind that. If that tormented me, I'll be bad. But I feel like I've checked myself, I was at make sure that if something bad happened, like I'm saying, I must've had something to do with it. So let's evaluate it because “Hey, it's me and I'm no good. So therefore I don't feel bad.” If I go walk around feeling bad. It's sort of, it just sort of a point of view almost, right? To perspective.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:42:03] Yeah. But this never gets solved per se, right?
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:42:07] So they say, so they say.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:42:09] They includes you, man.
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:42:11] I think, yeah, I think, I think what it is three years, years of therapy it, it just doesn't bother you. It's just not troubling. It just sort of a position, right? You get the negative or the positive pole. I got the negative pole and it's okay. It's fine. It's just a position.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:42:27] It is interesting that you were able to parlay it into something that is useful because I think a lot of people who feel like they have, even if it's low self-esteem or something else, they feel like they're stuck with that and it's going to limit them forever.
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:42:38] It doesn't have to. No, no, no, no. I mean Adam has the two is we joke with each other all the time, is that we both have these very low self-esteems, and so it makes us like not talk about our own stuff and not spontaneously remember to promote things and stuff like that. Because it's like it's my stuff. It's like who wants to hear about that?
Jordan Harbinger: [00:42:53] Well if that's low self-esteem then I got it too, because my producer and my business partners are always like, “Dude, we've had this free mini course at jordanharbinger.com/course for like three months and you've never said anything.”
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:43:05] There it is! Now it’s been said.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:43:06] Finally, my self-esteem is intact now. How do you find out if you have that? Like I know you're going to say “You know about it!”
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:43:13] If you have a low self-esteem?
Jordan Harbinger: [00:43:14] Yeah, how do you know?
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:43:15] I measure, there's scales out there.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:43:17] Sure. How did you find out for example?
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:43:20] I always feel bad about myself.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:43:22] Well, there’s that.
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:43:23] Yeah, I mean, I think I probably started thinking about it when all the esteem literature came up, people started talking a lot about esteem and enhancing esteem in young people and that kind of stuff, and that sounded like a good thing to me because I thought “Well, there were times in my life when that did not feel good.” When you're an adolescent and stuff and you have a low self-esteem, it's really hard to be effective. But it also made me strive to do things to fill -- make myself feel better about myself and to succeed. And I think that's where sort of the workaholism comes into it. So it has a liability there.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:43:54] Yeah. I definitely have the workaholism thing, and I think I got it from my dad just because he's a super hard worker. But there's also a part of me that wonders, “Wait a minute. Do you try harder at everything to prove to yourself that it, that you can do it because maybe there's a part of you that thinks, yeah, you probably can't?
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:44:13] Yeah. Right. And some of that, and that can be very subtle. It doesn't have to be overt low self-esteem. It can be just sort of, and it could be your dad, you're trying to impress some internal representation of your dad.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:44:24] Oh, he's very much external and still around, and still -- yeah.
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:44:26] But the reason we respond to it is that we internally –
Jordan Harbinger: [00:44:30] Of course, yeah.
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:44:30] You know, and some people theorize and yeah, that's okay. That's all right. You know, it just if it gives you trouble, if it makes you feel bad, if it gives you symptoms as it pairs your functioning, that's therapy time.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:44:44] Okay. Did you ever try therapy for that?
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:44:46] 11 years.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:44:47] Oh my God!
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:44:48] Not for that per se. I was having overwhelming anxiety, that was my main reason, at least that's my wife's reason for sending me. I always wanted to go. I always like I always just been -- I've always been fascinated by introspection and stuff, and I really did not know what I was doing or I started working in a psychiatric hospital and I was trying to work in addiction medicine and stuff and I knew what was going on intellectually, but I was getting taken advantage of, for lack of a better way of describing it by certain kinds of patients. They were able to manipulate me and things and I couldn't figure out why, but I knew I was contributing again, I knew something I was doing, years and years of therapy, I solved those problems.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:45:27] Wow. Yeah. If I had millions of dollars to spend on, and this sounds weird, a hobby, I would get a therapist that was a Rockstar every day. I don't think there's any serious thing going on, I just want to do that.
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:45:41] You need to time. You need time too.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:45:43] Oh! And time issue.
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:45:44] So what you want to do is, is five days a week psychoanalysis. It would be fantastic.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:45:48] Wouldn’t that be awesome?
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:45:50] Find time and money for that. Are you kidding me? I would do it this minute.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:45:53] I don't know how many people really want to go to a psychoanalyst five days a week.
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:45:57] Happily.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:45:57] I think you probably had some sort of weird--
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:45:59] To me be like better than sensory deprivation tank or something. You know what I mean? That would be like exactly what I wanted.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:46:03] It sounds like the most interesting thing I could possibly do that way.
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:46:06] Yes. What could be more interesting than exploring your mind?
Jordan Harbinger: [00:46:09] Yeah, so if anybody out there is listening to this and they want to volunteer for that.
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:46:13] I would do three days a week. I just don't have time for it. I'm tired. That’s another fantasy I have, is one day I'll go back and do analysis, so.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:46:20] There you go. Yeah. I think that stuff is fascinating because there's always--
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:46:24] There's a -- I don't want to make a distinction with people were talking about. There's a difference between mental health and mental wellness, and then sort of actualization or, you know, that we need like a different set of terms for people that want to really fully fulfill the exploration of their minds and beings. And it's not strictly speaking a spiritual journey. It's a psychological journey. I mean you may along the way discovered, “Oh I have some spiritual needs I need to attend to also.” And if now we're spending our whole day meditating, analysts would be really -- that would be bizarre.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:46:56] That seems less interesting to me, at least right now.
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:46:58] Yeah, me too.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:46:59] I definitely would love the analysis. Speaking of, since we're talking about your emotional problems or whatever --
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:47:07] Yeah sure, go ahead.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:47:07] On that note.
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:47:08] I'm all in.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:47:09] I was listening to a show with a mutual friend of ours, Caleb Bacon. This Man School Show that you guys recorded, I don't know, half a decade ago or something now.
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:47:17] A couple of years ago. I think, yeah.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:47:18] You're recording while you're lifting weights, and you had mentioned that you'd been lifting weights since you were, I don't know, 15 years old.
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:47:24] Yeah. 15, yeah.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:47:25] Just religiously.
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:47:26] It doesn't feel religious. They just feel, it's like part of my life.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:47:30] Yeah. Okay. Religious may be the wrong word. I think maybe somebody, you or him had used that word, but that you had OCD and anxiety around fitness because of something that I was not super familiar with, body dysmorphia. I've heard of it. Of course, I know what it is, but I never really thought that much about guys having this.
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:47:48] Oh, it's common. It's common. A body dysmorphia originally was preoccupations with little tiny aspects of the face and then --
Jordan Harbinger: [00:47:56] Really?
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:47:56] -- it became, yeah, that was the original description. People picking its skin and getting nose job and things like that. But is become more generally than the common lexicon applied to help people see themselves in their body, particularly as it pertains to eating disorders where people are never thin enough. They see a fat person although they’re terribly thin. And it's just, you know, you see imperfections I don't have -- I'm sort of being flippant about it or I don't really, really have it, but I have something, I have something that has me attended that very regularly and try to be okay all the time.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:48:26] Seems quite healthy.
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:48:28] Yeah. I'm using it again, another thing I seem to be using in a positive way, even though it's sort of, for me, it's part of my OCD and anxiety. It's all tied together because it's very OCD to be able to work out every day. That's the only kind of OCD people that really do that. And it relieves my anxiety when I work out and I get sort of a meditative quality from it. So there's a lot of stuff's kind of, and I think I can tend towards serve an exercise bulimia like if I eat too much, I want to work out more. That's not a good impulse either.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:48:59] No, that can be a lot of trouble. Especially don't your joint -- I mean your joints aren't going to get.
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:49:05] My joints aren't I, you know, I'm 60 this year and then my joints are getting a little messed up and I'm worried about that now.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:49:11] No Jujitsu for you then.
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:49:12] I have to get on the growth hormone steroids, that's all.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:49:14] Yeah, right. Sure. Didn't you use to work? Yeah. That was also part of that show. You used to work out at a gym a long time ago and all the guys were asking you to prescribe steroids.
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:49:22] Oh yeah, yeah. A long time ago. Right when I was getting my license, I heard what they were doing. They would come to me and ask for stuff and the whole -- back then, this is like the ‘80s, massive denial that there was such thing as steroids. In fact, the medical literature was they don't make you strong. Steroids, there's no reason they would do steroids. Yeah, crazy.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:49:41] What? Wow!
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:49:43] If you read that many -- read that literature in the ‘80s, maybe it made me crazy because I heard and saw what happened to them. I mean Jesus, it's obvious.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:49:50] Yeah, of course. And it's like all they needed to do to disprove that particular theory was put one or of course, a control group of people that don't use it, and put a handful of people on it and watch them balloon inside.
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:50:02] I know. They would just go – yeah.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:50:04] Ridiculous.
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:50:05] Yeah, it was ridiculous. It was so bizarre.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:50:06] So that's what makes people maybe distrust modern medical literature.
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:50:10] Oh listen, there's lots of -- again, on the behavioral health side, there's lots of crappy literature. Almost all the addiction literature is crap. I mean I shouldn't say it quite that glibly. A lot of addiction literature is crap because they don't do unbiased -- they don't do a observed screening. They don't screen from multiple substances. They believe what the patient says. They rely on questionnaires, patient's lost to follow up or just lost a follow up instead of relapsing. And the durations are all too short, way, way, way too short.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:50:37] What are some of the biggest myths that you think that people believe or that are persistent in medical literature right now that people take as well? This is the common belief that [indiscernible] [00:50:47]
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:50:48] The only way to treat an opioid addict is with replacement therapy.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:50:51] So like Methadone or whatever.
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:50:52] Methadone or Suboxone that you are a dangerous person if you do anything else, and that is a terrible message. Also that an average physician with limited experience with addiction should be able to prescribe to 250 addicts with replacement. I know what I'm doing. I don't think I could handle 30. They are very difficult patients to properly treat. 250 is nuts. That's absolutely insane.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:51:19] So the case load of 250.
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:51:21] With of active addiction, trying to treat with replacement and harm avoidance therapy, that's just insane.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:51:26] Because you can't just -- you just can't give them enough attention.
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:51:28] They need a lot of attention. Yes. They love attention and they need a lot of, a lot of time and a lot of intensity of services, and it's very difficult to deliver that properly.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:51:37] This might sound like an obvious question or a simplistic question, but how do we know if we're addicted to something? Because I think a lot of people think I'm not -- it's not drugs. I just like video games, right?
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:51:46] Right. So it's a progression. I mean, I don't like the over deployment of the term addiction, you know? So be careful. I mean, I like to see a biological heritage, and I would like to see evidence that the gene is there that causes real addiction, true addiction. And so family history of alcoholism, family history of drug addiction, particularly in first degree relatives. And then progression or preoccupation, progressive preoccupation in the face of adverse consequence, work or school, finance, health, legal or relationships. So any of those areas of your life are being affected and you're continuing. There's something wrong with that relationship with whatever is your doing. Most people, when they have a significant area of their life affected, they adjust course.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:52:34] So here's a -- this is a question that, again, I'm not sure you can answer. So what if there's somebody who does cocaine while they're at work and it's fine because they do their job well, there's no consequences to that relationship.
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:52:47] That might not be full on addiction, that might be drug abuse.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:52:48] Drug abuse, okay. As opposed to addiction, yeah.
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:52:51] Yeah. And that's somebody who's doing something that's dangerous. But I can't predict the course the way I can, if it's the full disease of addiction.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:52:58] Right, okay. But drug -- okay, that makes sense. Because you don't really hear that separated very well.
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:53:02] Oh, now the DSM five separates it. It's a hundred different ways.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:53:06] Okay.
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:53:07] Yeah, yeah.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:53:07] I guess we just only hear about addiction or people who used get lumped into that.
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:53:13] This is what bothered me about lot of the suicides recently is this, “Oh, depression suicide.” Each one of those cases was very different, very, very different.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:53:21] You recently mentioned that you weren't sure what was next for you, and we sort of touched on this a little bit, but how do you go about making a transition after doing something like this for so long? Something like radio, television for so long. Is your identity not tied so strongly into this?
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:53:37] Yeah, my identity is tied to sort of everything I do, I guess. But I just -- I have no blueprints for what I'm doing. It's all be a big improvisation, it's an experiment, and so I'm looking for a door to go through or a couple of doors to go through and trying to figure out which one to go through and how fast to go through. And I can always tell when I'm antsy, it's like I'm not satisfied, and I don't feel like I'm doing anything. I need to create something different. I'm definitely in that mode right now. Definitely. I’m workaholic. And so when I start getting not crazy busy, I miss it now. I don't want to be crazy busy all the time, but I wouldn't mind for six months being crazy busy.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:54:17] Yeah.
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:54:18] Yeah. Super crazy busy.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:54:19] Super crazy busy.
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:54:20] I don't know what -- I don't know what it looks like though. I don't know what that's going to be. I just don't know yet. I got a lot of different things, a lot of shit. I'm thrown at the wall a lot and none of it really sticks, right? So we'll see.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:54:32] Nice.
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:54:33] I'm looking for mostly -- I'm looking for a new home for, I would love to do a talk show again. I get somebody -- I really see how the HLN Show when we were doing it with an audience, that was something I really enjoyed doing, that was starting to take form and so I would bring something like that back.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:54:49] If only you didn't say those negative things about Hillary Clinton.
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:54:52] Hillary's doctors. You know what I said, right?
Jordan Harbinger: [00:54:55] No.
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:54:55] I didn't come up another Wikipedia thing too.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:54:57] Maybe it was in there, but I could only skim your talk page, it was depressing.
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:55:02] I've done 20 minutes the night before on Don Lemon about -- he was asking me about Donald Trump's mental health. And I was thinking, I know narcissism maybe, I don’t know, mania, hypomania, I'm sure. And I was saying, you know, plenty of presidents have had mental health issues, Teddy Roosevelt, Lincoln, and we just started talking about it. And so I went into my radio station the next day and my boss said, “Hey, would you do 30 -- it was good, do 30 seconds on it for our website.” I said, “Yeah, 30 seconds.” And as I'm getting up he goes, “You know, maybe out of balance that out, you got 30 seconds on Hillary, something about her.” And I go, “Well as a matter of fact, they just released her medical record and what the her doctors are doing to me is a little suspect and I got some issues with something. She's a really serious, she had a stroke and a transverse sinus thrombosis in her skull. I mean, like really serious stuff I didn't know about. And I was shocked and I was like, and they were, -- the way they were treating it and the armor thyroid causes hypercoagulation and I was worried that was maybe causing the problem. I mean she had two clots in her leg and one is in her brain.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:55:59] Geez.
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:55:59] And I was like, for God sakes. And so I said, “Okay, I could do that.” Well next day Drudge picks that up as doctor says not fit, which was not what I said. I said, “I'm wondering this and that,” you know, anyway, so it was terrible.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:56:13] Just twist it or -- what is it like to read something about you that is totally false?
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:56:18] It's the worst feeling in the world. It's really a bad feeling, especially when you met nothing by it other than trying to educate or explain something, and then you're accused of all kinds of sinister motivation or intent or that's what I go, “Oh, Jesus! Was I, did I, are they right?” I mean is something wrong with me? Did I, you know, I always go into that mode like, and then I of course feel guilty that people are reacting to something I said in a way that has a negative impact. It's not my intent.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:56:47] Yeah. For me that, that would drive me insane because I struggled to be as clear as possible on this show. I'm always trying to be very careful with my word choice a lot of the time, and you have to be even more so. I think as doctors or lawyer.
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:57:02] Why do I have to be more for? Yeah, you need to be doctors, lawyers for sure. But why do I need to be more so? I'm exquisitely careful.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:57:08] Oh no, no, I just mean you have to be more so than me.
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:57:10] I don't know.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:57:11] Not more so than me.
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:57:11] These days, everybody needs to be everywhere.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:57:13] That's true. Everybody does. I think it is more visible.
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:57:15] But I'm happy to be, you know what I mean? Here's what, here's what drives me crazy, is if I've done or said something wrong, I am delighted to adjust course because you know, it's me. So I'm like, I must, okay.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:57:27] It’s going to keep you up at night anyway.
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:57:28] Well, this is the stuff that Adam complains about that I take too much input from people and stuff. And I'm like, “But I do and I'll take course, I'll adopt and adjust and thank you for the feedback.” They don't allow that anymore. That's not allowed.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:57:40] What do you mean that's not allowed?
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:57:41] No one's given a second chance, I was just destroyed. That's it, you have to be destroyed now. I've never seen -- I would argue that there's been nothing like this since pre-revolutionary France, where people are routinely put on the guillotines. Why? Because no due process. I mean, think about it.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:57:59] Yeah, that's true.
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:58:01] The Soviets did it. If you sort of spoke ill of somebody in the communist party, you will lose your job. You didn't go to the Gulag, just lost your job, McCarthy did it. You just -- if you were thought to be a communist, you'd lose your job. Boom. No due process. But even then, at least you got had to come for committee. Now you say something, you step in the wrong direction. You say something, you're immediately destroyed.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:58:25] It's scary.
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:58:26] Immediately.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:58:26] Yeah. It's scary. Do you worry about that at all?
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:58:30] Yeah. Because you never -- you literally, anybody can destroy you. Somebody who just doesn't like you, or doesn't like something you said, or what they say doesn't have to be factually true.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:58:40] That's true. Yeah.
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:58:42] They just have to have a few people agree to it or say, “Yeah, that happened to me too.” And that's it, you're done.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:58:47] It's scares me, and I'm not a famous person.
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:58:51] And when I say me too, I'm not talking about the Me Too Movement per se. I'm talking about just any whatever these sort of unforgivable sins we have today of language.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:59:02] And the fact that you just had to clarify that a full on example.
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:59:06] Right, right. And by the way, I have this weird relationship with this whole phenomena and that I liked the fact that we're doing this and we're holding people accountable and we're you know, all this stuff is not bad. It's good. It's just, it's just excessive. The excessive sort of consequence that is going on and people being truly harmed that maybe shouldn't be harmed and isn't that what our justice department -- the justice system was all about not harming people who aren't guilty?
Jordan Harbinger: [00:59:37] Yeah. In theory.
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:59:38] Is that the bottom line? That's our greatest concern. And we've just completely gone around that now.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:59:44] Yeah. I mean, the idea and I got to look up where this came from because of the, well, we're going to get emails about it anyway, but there's something like, “It's better than a hundred guilty men go free than one innocent.”
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:59:55] Right. I think it was like a John Adams or something. It was way back.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:59:57] Right. It's going to be one of those. Yeah.
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [00:59:59] Yeah. And that's our greatest preoccupation. And yet we've thrown that to the wind completely.
Jordan Harbinger: [01:00:05] Yeah. It's terrifying. It's terrifying.
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [01:00:07] I mean, think about it. You're better off with a manslaughter charge. You get your day in court, you know what I mean?
Jordan Harbinger: [01:00:14] Yeah, that's true.
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [01:00:14] You can return to work if you're not guilty, it's a no harm, no foul.
Jordan Harbinger: [01:00:18] Turns out Dr. Drew didn't kill that guy.
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [01:00:20] Yeah, right. Or you know, it was an accident or whatever community service, whatever.
Jordan Harbinger: [01:00:24] It’s just negligence.
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [01:00:25] Yeah, right, right. Whatever. It's like you -- now, no, no, no, no, no. Instant be heading.
Jordan Harbinger: [01:00:31] Yeah. Good point. Yeah. You'd rather run someone over with your car just because it was raining and you couldn't see him. Then to be accused of some sort of other harassment or other transgression.
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [01:00:44] Some sort of transgression in the eyes of social justice warriors.
Jordan Harbinger: [01:00:47] Before I let you go, I'm dying to know this and I've always wondered this question actually, after you hang up with somebody or say Loveline, after you hang up with somebody on the phone, how often do you think about that person after the show? Did that fade over time? Because I would think a lot of those calls I would be haunted by them forever.
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [01:01:06] Some of them, some for a couple of days, I'd worry about or think about. Most of them were so the kinds of phenomenon where some common place to me, that I know they're not in real danger. I hope they'll learn from it. I hope they'll go see their doctor or therapist or whatever, that they would be -- my greatest desire in any of these things, just motivate them to get help. I don't want them to think they're getting help. I want them to think I'm elucidating their situation and motivating them to get help and where to get help, what kind of help. That's all. So if I feel like I've done that effectively, there are times when if I can't think of anything specific, but if I didn't like hit it just right or if I didn't feel the person really heard me properly, I'll obsess about that a little bit.
Jordan Harbinger: [01:01:50] Are there any that you remember even now where you just, you still think about like two or three random, just all the time, I don't want to say best of or favorite because that's kind of the opposite of what I mean. Anything that just haunts you, that always has.
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [01:02:05] You know, we have -- there's things I can -- when people always ask those kinds of questions and so we sort of will pick a call.
Jordan Harbinger: [01:02:12] Oh, I didn’t realize that.
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [01:02:13] That's the one that we rehearse and we'll always put out that one. But I can't think of anything that haunts me. I can think of things, I remember. I'm thinking right now, this guy that called us and wanted to know, women always freak out when they find out what I was in jail for. And we started talking – me and Adam was doing jokes and whatever, we started talking to him and all of a sudden, Adam goes, “Wait a minute, find out that you were in jail or find out what you were in jail for? He goes, “What I was in jail for.” And we go, “Oh well what were you in jail for?” I broke into a mausoleum and I twist it off the head of an old lady and boiled it to a skull because I needed it for my little brother’s snakes aquarium.
Jordan Harbinger: [01:02:57] Wow!
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [01:02:58] Wow! I don't understand that might be a little disturbing to people. Why?
Jordan Harbinger: [01:03:03] Okay. So he was --
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [01:03:05] Psychopath.
Jordan Harbinger: [01:03:05] Psychopath yeah, okay. That is unbelievable!
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [01:03:08] That's a haunting one, that kind of thing.
Jordan Harbinger: [01:03:10] Yeah, that I can see.
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [01:03:10] We talked to -- I have another one. Now funny, this feeling -- see this is how I work is with feeling. So the feeling I'm having right now is what it feels I have to talk to a psychopath. I remember we had another caller, a kid that called in, and said, “I think I'm a psychopath.” And I go, “Why?” And he described psychopathy and I said, “Well look, good. You can work with it. You're going to accommodate it, it's if you are feeling aggressive and violent and appreciate that people exist. They can get you in railroad trouble, but you should go talk to me, learn how to develop some mechanism.
It probably won't be empathy, but some way of managing this liability and people do it. 10 percent, was it? 1 percent, 1 percent of population.
Jordan Harbinger: [01:03:50] I think it’s 4 percent.
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [01:03:50] Yeah. So the people out there walking around like that and provided they were --
Jordan Harbinger: [01:03:54] Oh! 1 percent yeah, you're right.
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [01:03:55] Yeah. Probably they weren't abused when they were kids and provided their sort of otherwise sort of healthy. They can accommodate it. You should interview a James Fallon.
Jordan Harbinger: [01:04:02] James Fallon, I was going to ask if you saw that I interviewed him. It was really fascinating?
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [01:04:08] Which is great. Is it a great interview?
Jordan Harbinger: [01:04:09] It was a great interview. And the fact that he had made -- been able to make the distinction between what creates a harmful psychopath versus a functional psychopath.
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [01:04:18] And he's sort of tilts at the idea that there's different kinds of psychopaths that have not yet been fully characterized. In his case, in his family's history of psychopathy and psychopathy is a genetic biological thing. They kill their family members.
Jordan Harbinger: [01:04:32] Right. Yeah.
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [01:04:33] Isn't that crazy?
Jordan Harbinger: [01:04:34] When I interviewed him, what he told me was, he goes, “Yeah. So I rushed home to tell my wife,” and what she said was, “Yeah, I'm not surprised at all.”
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [01:04:42] And then he said, he went to his kids, they're like, “Yeah, we know you're an asshole, we know you’re an asshole.”
Jordan Harbinger: [01:04:44] Yeah, we get it.
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [01:04:47] And so he then started paying attention. He realize he treats his family like crap, but the rest of us, the rest of us, he's charming and entertaining. He sort of adopted that style.
Jordan Harbinger: [01:04:54] Yeah, yeah. I asked him if that style was something he'd always been like, and he said, “Yeah, but that's because smart psychopaths, they're nice, they're charming, they're outgoing, they're charismatic because it works better.” And that was a little bit scary and he didn't really realize why that's scary though.
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [01:05:11] Right. Yeah. And he had a weird thing too in his adolescence where you became hyper religious, did he tell you about this? And it was some sort of compensation or something for this.
Jordan Harbinger: [01:05:20] Like super Catholic.
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [01:05:22] Crazy religious, like over the top.
Jordan Harbinger: [01:05:26] Yeah. That makes sense. I read that in his book and I didn't really put those two things together like that, but it makes sense that it was compensated.
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [01:05:31] He told me it was, he felt it might've been some compensation dealing with.
Jordan Harbinger: [01:05:35] Yikes. He was a fascinating interview. Putting to that in show notes, just in case people are new to that particular episode.
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [01:05:40] It’s the best. It’s the best. Ypu can't get enough of James Fallon.
Jordan Harbinger: [01:05:43] Absolutely. Dr. Drew, thank you so much.
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [0 1:05:45] My pleasure. It's only taken us, let's say Tuesday. Seven years ago.
Jordan Harbinger: [01:05:49] Yeah. We'll do another one hopefully sooner than that.
Dr. Drew Pinsky: [01:05:52] Fair enough.
Jordan Harbinger: [01:05:53] So there we go, Dr. Srew only took us seven years, Jason.
Jason DeFillippo: [01:05:56] Yeah, seriously talk about a scheduling snafu to get him on the show. But man, I tell you what, this guy's intuition is so sharp that he just doesn't even know he has it at this point. It's like he's done so many of those calls and seeing so many patients in the real world that he can just like narrow in with laser focus on the problem with just vocal tonality over the phone. And the whole thing with the person with multiple personalities blew my mind, that he's that good and so attuned to what people need in the instant. It's crazy.
Jordan Harbinger: [01:06:27] Yeah, it's really next level incredible. I know people are like, “Oh well, you know, all this and that, just Celebrity Rehab.” I mean, we talked about that on the show, but it really is just an incredible guy all around. And a great big thank you to Dr. Drew. He is just such an awesome dude. Like of course, I'm fanboying out, which is fine. I don't care. As you all may be know, I am a regular on Adam and Drew every month on their shows, which as you can imagine is also kind of just every day I sit in that studio. I'm just like, “What is going on right now?” I can't believe it. It's like I'm on Loveline, only I'm in studio with these guys. Taking callers is incredible. So that's just a lot of fun and this is sort of come full circle has been awesome for me in the past couple of weeks.
[01:07:12] So great big thank you to Dr. Drew of course for everything, not just the show, but for influencing my entire career path and life. How's that? If you enjoy this one, don't forget to thank Drew on Twitter as well. Tweet at me your number one takeaway here from Dr. Drew. I'm @jordanharbinger on both Twitter and Instagram. And don't forget it, if you want to learn how to apply everything you heard from Drew, make sure you go grab the worksheets also in the show notes at jordanharbinger.com/podcast.
[01:07:41] This episode was produced and edited by Jason DeFillippo. Show notes are by Robert Fogarty. Booking back office and last minute miracles by Jen Harbinger, and I'm your host Jordan Harbinger. The fee for the show is that you share it with friends when you find something useful, which should be in every episode. So please share the show with those you love and even those you don't. We've got a lot more in the pipeline and we're very excited to bring it to you. In the meantime, do your best to apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you listen, and we'll see you next time.
[01:08:10] By the way, I know I've mentioned this before, but it's worth repeating. I've created a course of essentially a lot of the things I wish I had known 10 years ago about networking relationships. A lot of the practices I do every day, the little daily drills, how to re-engage weak and dormant ties, reach out to influencers, reach out to random people that I want to get in touch with for any reason. And I put that all into a little free course that we call Six-Minute Networking, and you can get that for free. It's just me on camera doing some videos, sending you some worksheets and teaching you this stuff. A dozen videos or so. Go to jordanharbinger.com/course. That's jordanharbinger.com/course. Again, it's free. It's really just stuff I wish I knew a long time ago and that will help anybody personally or professionally. It's also the beginning of what I've been teaching, military, special forces, corporations, bodyguards, all that kind of cool stuff and it's really important for men and for women, for adults and for kids and for your professional and personal life. It is really just clutch networking and relationship development skills. So go and grab that at jordanharbinger.com/course, and let me know what you think.
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