Ask Dr. Drew - COVID-19, Marijuana Edibles, Xanax Addiction, and more - Episode 23

Episode Date: September 11, 2020

Dr. Drew answers caller questions about catching COVID-19 twice, marijuana edibles, Xanax, helping family members with addiction, and more! Top questions include: My partner stopped taking anti-depressants and is now taking marijuana edibles. Should I be concerned? I'm having my gallbladder removed tomorrow. I'm also a cannabis user. What do you think of my diagnosis? What's the best way to stop taking Xanax? Someone in my home struggles with addiction. How can I help? Where should I set boundaries? Can someone contract COVID-19 twice? I was diagnosed with Hepatitis C. Is it bad to drink alcohol while taking Hep C medication? Get an alert when Dr. Drew is taking calls: http://drdrew.tv/  Ask Dr. Drew is produced by Kaleb Nation (@KalebNation) and Susan Pinsky (@FirstLadyOfLove). THE SHOW: For over 30 years, Dr. Drew Pinsky has taken calls from all corners of the globe, answering thousands of questions from teens and young adults. To millions, he is a beacon of truth, integrity, fairness, and common sense. Now, after decades of hosting Loveline and multiple hit TV shows – including Celebrity Rehab, Teen Mom OG, Lifechangers, and more – Dr. Drew is opening his phone lines to the world by streaming LIVE from his home studio in California. On Ask Dr. Drew, no question is too extreme or embarrassing because the Dr. has heard it all. Don’t hold in your deepest, darkest questions any longer. Ask Dr. Drew and get real answers today. This show is not a substitute for medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. All information exchanged during participation in this program, including interactions with DrDrew.com and any affiliated websites, are intended for educational and/or entertainment purposes only. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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you, please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. Hey everybody, welcome. We were taking calls today at 9842 Dr. Drew. I got a couple calls on hold already. I will get to you guys in just a minute. Our laws as it pertains to substances are draconian and bizarre. Psychopaths start this way. He was an alcoholic because of social media and pornography,

PTSD, love addiction, fentanyl and heroin. Ridiculous. I'm a doctor for f***'s sake. Where the hell do you think I learned that? I'm just saying. You go to treatment before you kill people. I am a clinician.

I observe things about these chemicals let's just deal with what's real we used to get these calls on love line all the time educate adolescents and to prevent and to treat you have trouble you can't stop and you might help stop it i can help i got a lot to say i got a lot more to say uh before the mic heated up here a of you were asking questions on the restream. One was, first, Tom Brady said I'm biased, and I'd like to know, I started thinking about, why would I be biased? I mean, of course, everyone has some cognitive bias.

And I thought probably my main bias is that I'm biased by my biological training as a scientist. And that kind of gives you a way of approaching things that you might not approach things otherwise. So it's kind of a bias. And, and somebody, unfortunately we erased the screen. So if somebody asked a good question about masks, A, do they work? And yes, they categorically work, particularly when both people are wearing a mask,

probability of transmission that is very, very low unless you're around that person for a long period of time and they're producing a high amount of virus. And another question was, why can't we open the country if everybody just wore masks? And that is a great question. And I wonder that myself. I think we ought to think about that. The reason cases are coming down in the states, cases where there had been a surge is literally because people are wearing masks and distancing and doing those things. I've now been around the country. I'm in New York City right now. And people are wearing masks fastidiously here. And they're also distancing. People are scared to death.

It's clear that the outbreak here scared everybody. In Georgia, in Atlanta particularly, not so much. The mask wearing was a little bit spotty. And of course, Georgia is having trouble getting it under control. And in California, people are behaving themselves for the most part, at least distancing. And of course, there are people pushing back because the government in California has been excessively up our keister, way more than any other state I've been around. It's really sort of extraordinary.

We have a marked reduction in California in death rate, hospitalization rate. way more than any other state I've been around. It's really sort of extraordinary where we are, we have a marked reduction in California in death rate, hospitalization rate, the case rate is coming, coming down. There's been a very slight surge lately because of a backlog of tests coming in. And the question then becomes why are they threatening us with more closures? Why are they doing arbitrary closures of certain kinds of restaurants and hair salons? I mean, it's really so arbitrary. I liken it to some sort of concentration camp compared to other states where people are doing it voluntarily. In New York, there was a lot of lockdown and they're trying to loosen things up quite a bit now. And people just aren't coming out. They're just out of the city because they're scared to death. So that's what's going on in New

York. I want to look at some of your questions here. Do I believe in herd immunity? Again, belief is not the issue. What is the scientific evidence? We just don't know what the level is, the percentages of cases for there to be herd immunity. I can tell you in Ventura County, which is just north of Los Angeles County, cases have all of a sudden just dried up. They've just gone away. And one of the thoughts is that either the thing has run its course there or there is a certain level of herd immunity. Yeah, Ashley, our government in California is ridiculous. If you

add the state government, who has been propitious and arbitrary, inconsistent and hypocritical, and then the city government in Los Angeles has been bizarre, bizarre, really, truly bizarre, threatening us. The mayor of Los Angeles has a, has a, uh, a scale from green to red and just, just short of red is orange. And he's been holding it at orange in spite of a massive, we're better off now in terms of hospitalization and death rate than we were in May, but he's threatening to close the whole place down for, you know, in the whole place down for in the name of love in the name of love very very very wise uh okay let me just look around some of your questions here um some i had some emails that are interesting i'm going to go to those as well

uh give me a second to look at you guys good morning julia um and i'm tom i'm still looking for you to give me some instruction on, not Tom Cigar, Tom Brady, on what my biases are. Because I'd love to know so I can keep an eye on them. So I can, you know, biases are like blind spots. And the way our cognitive systems work is they have glitches in them called cognitive biases or cognitive. Cognitive biases is a good way to think about it. And I want to know where mine are. I think Kanye is actually ill. I've seen behavior Bell where he clearly is hypomanic. And he, his mom has said he has bipolar. He takes bipolar medication. He

is described as bipolar disease. His wife describes his bipolar disease. I will take them at their word. It looks like it smells like it and they claim it. Apparently the mom used to really manage the medication and bipolar disorder is a biological genetic thing and it's treated with medicine. And if you don't take the medicine, it eventually spirals. It's kind of the way I think about bipolar disorder. I think of it like a seizure disorder. You have a seizure disorder. You take the medicine. It can be controlled. It's kind of the way I think about bipolar disorder. I think of it like a seizure disorder. You have a seizure disorder. You take the medicine.

It can be controlled. You can come off the medicine for a while, but the seizures will come back much the same way with bipolar disorder, particularly bipolar one. Am I happier now, Redox Sarah, in a different environment? Yeah. Yeah. I will tell you two things uh i was getting depressed in california um mostly having difficulty initiating things and you know finding enjoyment and previously enjoyable things um and um tom cigar says i'm done in kruger right now right

now right now but coming to georgia and going into the sort of away from atlanta and where people are just living their lives was like a breath of fresh air and then now here in new york city uh just having the hope that this will get restored soon enough because they really only have 500 cases in the entire state of new york i mean it's sort of done here and people are being very compliant with distancing masks and things. And so they could really get things going again here pretty readily, though it's kind of weird. It's nice on one hand, because you can walk around New York City and no one's here. On the other hand, it feels like Armageddon a little bit. And in a city like New York, you can't find a restaurant very easily. That's rough. That's rough. Am I moving out of

California, Justin? I would kill to move out of California, but I'm pretty encumbered there. I don't know anyone that I speak to who's not trying to find an escape route from California. So it's going to be a massive exodus. So hopefully the rest of you that we were us Californians end up, I'm sorry if we bring our Californianess along with us. How is flying? Yeah, Michelle, it's interesting. Flying seemed very safe. The flight attendants, there are no sick flight attendants, there are no sick pilots. Everyone wears the mask. Again, out of Atlanta, the Atlanta airport, there was a lot of this kind of mask wearing, which is no bueno. If you don't put the mask over your nose, you're not covering. It's an often nose-to-nose transmission.

In fact, the primary means of entry is through your nose. But you can also give it to somebody else through their nose. So both people have to have it over their face, their mouth, and nose. So just to be sure, I was retested again today. I've been tested before. I'll be tested again today. And we'll see tomorrow what my results are. And we'll go from there uh okay let me go to some calls here to warm but we got lots of calls here to warm things up with

callers um all right let's talk to we'll just go down the line here. Stephanie, what's going on? Hey, Drew. You live, number one. You live. What's going on? I have a question. My partner was taking Celexa for depression. He stopped taking the medication on his own and has since replaced it with, I say replaced it but he started using phc edibles and what i have noticed is almost like a cyclosonic disorder that has developed from that

that i didn't see when he was taking when he's up and down is he irritable is that what you're talking about yeah so he he can become very irritable on sort of a dime um and he has at times really pressured speech and a flight of ideas and um he's very creative and he's like not not quite i mean it's almost kind of hypomanic right so so um but then he can be down too he's laying on the couch and right okay so it really sounds like a bipolar two episode right the cyclothymia is sort of uh not used so often these days at least i see it rarely used that people are using bipolar 2 as a descriptor that we used to sort of throw cyclothymia into. And look, people should not be treating themselves for any medical conditions. And I don't care what he's using. He's using a pharmacological, you know, it's pharmacologically affecting his brain to treat a medical problem.

You can't be objective about your own care. It's why I can't even care for my own family. And I certainly wouldn't care for myself. You can't be objective. Somebody has to be assessing you for the effect of the pharmacological agent, whatever it is. So he needs to get back in with the psychiatrist. Was it a psychiatrist that he was seeing? No, it was just a GP. And I mean, his argument against the Celexa in particular is that he felt like it stifles his creativity. And so I was curious if there's some other sort't, I'm not a big Selexa fan, by the way. And, and he, and if he has a bi, truly has a bipolar condition, he should not be treated with Selexa either. He should be treated with a mood stabilizer. And the fact that the doctor missed that or missed the potential for that concerns me greatly. So he really should see a psychiatrist. That's really what he needs is a psychiatric consultation. So don't worry about what he's taking. Let's get him to a proper specialist for that care.

Thank you for the call, Stephanie. We appreciate it. Whoops. Hold on here one second. I wanted to talk to Tyler here. Okay. Tyler, what's going on, buddy? Hi, Dr. Drew.

Thank you so much for having me. My question is a little bit of a turn on a cannabis question as well. I'm having my gallbladder removed tomorrow because I was diagnosed with bilaterally dyskinesia, gastritis, having upper right abdominal pain, back pain. I'm retching bile and sometimes spots of blood. It severely impacted my appetite. I'm a prescriber. I'm registered with the state of Florida to use cannabis. And I get the oil from a dispensary and I use it as recommended by my doctor who has recommended my recommendation. Could it be what I've learned recently called something called cannabinoid hypermesis? Yeah.

100%. In fact, when I read your call, that's why I'm going to take your call. I figured I can guarantee you that's what it is. It's so, if everyone I know, every patient I've seen that use cannabis, at least on a heavy basis, long enough, they get the hyperemesis. They get it.

And it's the intensity, the hyperemesis can be so violent that you can get exactly what you're talking about. You get back pain and chest wall pain from all the retching. And people even develop something that emergency room doctors have characterized as scrommeting. You're vomiting so much, you scream while you're vomiting. You're retching so terribly and uh it's very very common these days and the and by the way the treatment is a shower a warm shower have you noticed that helps it um no not really no i haven't i'm not i've i've i've saw baths in warm water but i don't have baths so i did not think of warm Yeah, so that's one thing to try.

And again, if you're retching and vomiting, of course, you get gastritis, you get esophagitis, you get all those things secondarily to all the vomiting. So rough, man. But taking the gallbladder out will not change it. Do you have stones in your gallbladder? No, no stones, but it is not contracting. It's supposed to be contracting at some 30%.

It's contracting at 20%. That is a non-clinical. They are reaching, man. And why didn't they think about cannabis hyperemesis? They did. I did see, I did a test date from it

for approximately two weeks and it did not change the pressure and the area or in the back. Right. All right. That would take more like six to eight weeks probably in that you have to have no vomiting for an extended period of time for the, for the musculoske muscular stealth stuff to kind of settle but you know uh it'll at least take one thing off the table in terms of potential causes for what you're experiencing and um you know it seems like a lot to go through uh it's rough what were you taking the cannabis for again uh PTSD and establishing diabetes disorder from the military. Yeah. Was it working? Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah. I, I, it treats the onset of, I have bad panic attacks. Um, so it, it severely helps day to day, but, uh, is there any way you could use it on, could you use it like on an intermittent intermittent basis could you use it on an intermittent basis like could you use it for you know when attacks come on or when you're having a bad stretch use it for a few days and you can use it heavily you know as long as you're not using it heavily without remission that that's what the vomiting comes in you know i mean right i'm not i'm not a

heavy heavy user i don't eat it um i like i said once in the morning is about and once at night is about all i do uh but yeah i uh it's usually it's if i if i start having a panic attack and that's when i use it sometimes i go days without it but it's usually to treat panic attack when i feel like what i'm asking is can you can you do away with the the baseline back the background dose and just use it for the attacks absolutely is that my yeah absolutely um my only last thing i want to point out is yes uh the last thing i want to point out is uh i started feeling this pressure about two years ago when i never started using cannabis when i actually discharged from the military i never touched before yeah i mean it's it's it's uh it's i'm not saying please don't have this done

uh i'm saying seems like a lot to go through and there are other things that could be done instead but once you have this done if you still have, at least you know it's not this. Right? Right. 10-4. Yeah. So let me know how it goes. I'm interested to see how they approach this because it's complicated, right? It's very complicated. I'm glad the canvas is working for you. You sound fine. Let me see I'm not quite sure what Johnny means here let me ask Johnny to see what Johnny's up to

Johnny go ahead there what's going on hey there doctor dude just wanted to say first off a long time listener to you very much looked up to you as a father figure from age 10 to 17 as I listened to Loveline religiously. And I'm the son of a physician. So very much appreciate you being there for us. We all need a little Dr. Drew in our lives. Here's what I'm getting at with my question. You know, my father suggested to me, hey, you might think about becoming a contact tracer.

And it just seems to me COVID-19 is so widespread. The testing is so messed up. Can we really get our arms around this with contact tracing? Is it worthwhile to become a part of that effort? I certainly think it's worthwhile to be part of the effort, and I appreciate you even thinking about it. To throw your hands up and go, oh, the whole exam math is worthless, is not true. It's just not true.

We are doing a pretty darn good job of contact tracing. The problem with the asymptomatic care is we don't know about, right? And that's where things are a little bit, the horse is out of the barn somewhat. But in terms of people that are having documented viral testing, we need people to get the hold of the contacts. I mean, that's how we have dealt with infectious diseases throughout history. And that's the primary means. That's just going back to old-fashioned quarantine and contact tracing. It works. That's why we've always done it that way.

The rest of us just need to wear our masks so we don't get exposed to the ones out in the wild that we don't know about. No, I think it'd be great. Right. So factoring that in, though, with everyone and the trickiness of getting everyone to wear their masks and do the right thing, do you think at this point in time with where we're at, it's reasonable and it's doable? I don't know what you mean by reasonable and doable. It definitely is reasonable.

It definitely is effective. Is it going to control the whole thing? It is categorically it going to control the whole thing? It is categorically not going to, but it's going to at least prevent, you know, localized outbreaks from spreading, right? It's the, again, okay. So just one arrow in the quiver. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We got to fight this thing every way we can. And this is an important one. And again, I, if we're all wearing our mask, it could be a very important one. Thank you for doing that, my friend.

Hey, Rachel Eagleton is an ER nurse, and she says, I've seen increase in patients coming in with cannabis hyperemesis, cyclic emesis, right? Cyclic THC emesis, it's called. I feel the increase in frequency of this population in 20-something patients. Do I feel, me, that this condition is becoming more common because of the medicinal THC use? It actually, of course, right, of course it is. But I actually saw the real increase come in California when we made the recreational

legal. That's when it really escalated. So I suspect that's more what we're seeing. Okay, let me get other questions in here. I did not see your super chat. Please let me know what that was. Okay, I'm sorry. I'm just going to look at your questions. Dr. Yeo has some exciting stuff about loranlimab. I'm aware of that, and I will be talking to Dr. Patterson and Dr. Yeo next week. So look forward to that. The preliminary data looks very, very good for that product.

Dr. Fauci seems to be pretty unhappy with how we're handling the COVID in the U.S. so far. I don't know that that's true. That's an interesting question, even. I wouldn't call him unhappy. I would him just maybe he's frustrated a little bit because it is a difficult problem. I don't see, I'm not sure where things would have been different in this country, almost no matter what we did. So, I mean, at california for instance we locked down completely for forever and when we all came out it spread all over the place look at look when you see that in almost every country where they try lockdown so so it's almost as though there needs to be an intermediate

kind of living with the virus accepting a a certain attack rate from the virus, but wearing our mask, changing our behavior, doing these things that really would prevent it from escalating and keep it at a slow boil until we can get the vaccine. I think that's kind of what we've done. Does quercetin work the same as hydroxychloroquine? It's similar. It's similar.

Let me see what else you guys got going up here just locate your questions and i'm going to go back to the calls so hang on there uh oh and also rachel eagleton i think it's the con the concentration that people are using too they're they're sort of very quickly escalating the doses into range that are more prone to cause the hyperemesis syndrome. And I know you've seen lots of it because it's very common in the ER these days. What are my thoughts on gabapentin and lamotrigine in combo to regulate severe bipolar? Lamotrigine is a great bipolar medicine if you can tolerate the higher doses of it. And gabapentin is a benign medicine that, again, is a seizure medicine.

Remember I talked about bipolar being like a seizure? That calms the hyperactivity of the nervous system. Let's think about it that way. And it's a very safe medication with almost no side effects except at the higher doses. All right. Look at the bottom of the page one more time. What would happen to, what would happen, would have to happen to stop using masks? Herd immunity or vaccines. I mean,

that's really what it boils down to right now. Now, Randy Fauci is not a frog. I've known Fauci for 35 years and he's been the same. He's a little conservative. He's a little excessive in his rhetoric sometimes, but in terms of worst case kinds of scenarios he describes, but he's extremely careful with his language. I will, I will, yeah, my number is 9842 Dr. Drew for phone calls. I'll get to that in a second, but I will remind everybody again that when he's, when he talked about masks, I'm going to review this one more time. He said, masks, please don't use masks. This was in the fog of the early phase of the pandemic because we need to preserve the personal protective gear for the first line workers. That was a fact. We had a problem that way. Number two, he said it

had not been shown to be effective. That was a fact. Number three, and he said, and I don't want people's hands going to their face to adjust the mask. Every time I put a mask on, my hands go up every two minutes. And I was always trained, and he of course was as well, that most viral illness are transmitted by the hands. Now, we didn't know that it was just particularly droplet to nose type transmission, as we now know, but that's the vast, vast, vast majority. Remember back early in the pandemic, we were all washing, we were washing our hands and it would be weird how we picked up Amazon packages. And when we brought food back home from the grocery store, we were all, you know, we were exercised about how we managed it. That was because we thought it was transmitted by the hands on left on services. Remember all that data data it's left on surfaces for three days it lives

on surfaces doesn't matter none of that matters we thought it matters it really doesn't i mean something that were for us good to know we should still wash our hands we still should keep our hands away from our face we still should sometimes wear gloves but the primary transmission is here that's why we wear the uh covers our mouth. Why wearing goggles now? Because there was some concern about aerosol in addition to water droplets. You want to protect your eyes if you can. Laura Mae loves wearing her mask. Is metformin safe to take?

Yes, it is. It has to be medically managed. And, of course, there's some good data that shows it improves longevity. If you have polycystic ovarian disease, it helps with insulin intolerance. And of course, if you're head towards type 2 diabetes, it's very important.

Jesse, how you doing there? Dr. Drew, my man. I've been listening to you for like 20 years. I love you, man. You taught me so much. So look, I'm tapering off of Xanax and I was self-medicating for a while

and I went cold turkey back in January and it was terrifying. I was hallucinating. I couldn't sleep. I couldn't eat. And so now, I'm wondering if you know anything about the ashton method and if it's uh successful is that what is that the rapid detox thing well it's it's i mean i don't have health care i would love to go to a facility where they could

do it professionally but i've been reading and apparently this ashen method just basically taper off of the the dosage you know slowly and i'm only down to like a quarter of a bar a day maybe at the most so i'm wondering i mean what what would be your advice for getting off of this terrible drug all right so so yeah yeah so slow tapers have been around forever. They are very difficult. True addicts cannot do that. They can't do it. Somebody like yourself, it sounds like, who just got dependent on a drug, which is different than addiction, they can sometimes pull that off.

But the hardest part oftentimes is where you are now. You're at one milligram a day. You've got to still be dropping every week or two by about a quarter of a tablet. Somehow you've got to find your way to one milligram and then break that into fourths. Take a fourth off to start with and then take a half off.

Are you going down every week or two? Yeah. So far I've gotten down to about an eighth and I just try to go as long as i can before eighth of a two milligram bar of a right right yeah so i'm just i hold off i hold off until you know the last minute where i'm starting to feel you know severely uncomfortable yeah even when you go from you know a severely uncomfortable. Yeah. Even when you go from, you know, a 10th to zero,

you're going to feel that, uh, typically, you know, the kinds of medicine that we use to help with that, we use anti-seizure medicines like Depakote, we use Neurontin at high doses and we use Phenobarbital. And that, you know, I, I usually do, uh, in my world, I bring people in the hospital, I get them off in 10 days. It's really pretty easy, and I've done it for years and years and years. But you have to have health insurance, and you have to write. I understand how difficult it is to get access to that kind of thing. And you're almost there.

You're almost there. But if you can find your way to smaller milligram tablets and then start breaking those up, I think that will help you. Because going from that, you know, that half a milligram to zero it's it can be a little rough and and obviously responsible thing would be for you to have medical management because your seizure risk is going to be substantial okay you've got to understand that thank you for calling by the way this is is jim hey jim what's up hey i've got a question about my father's sobriety he's gone now but i've been watching this tv show called shameless and one of the characters on there is a recovering alcoholic with about a year of sobriety and the show shows him just every day struggling with not drinking

that day dealing with his problems for that day it's just every day my dad stayed sober for 17 years and i'm i'm wondering if that's the experience for alcoholics that every single day they're they're starting fresh and having to try to stay sober if he. If he's not doing anything active in his recovery, what he's doing is called white knuckling. And nobody can, well, not nobody, people rarely can sustain that. They always, they tend to relapse when they try to hang on by themselves. Okay. Which is why we have 12-step.

And 12-step, now there's a Cochrane analysis done by the head of addiction medicine at Harvard University, which shows conclusively that 12 Step is free, it's available on every street corner, figuratively speaking, and it is as effective as any professionally managed intervention, especially if abstinence is your goal. So it's excellent. It works and it replaces, it's designed specifically to help people with that struggle. And once they get a recovery program in place, it becomes much easier, particularly after the first year. Okay. My dad was very active in the 12 step. He actually was a, he went back and got a certification to be a counselor. Oh, yeah. So he's the real deal.

And for somebody like that, they have dividends that pay out. They feel differently at five years, seven years, ten years. Really, each of those is an interesting landmark for them where they have different kinds of challenges and different things emerge. But they do great. And, of course, they're helping other people all along the way, right? His funeral was full of people I'd never met in my life. I came up and thanked me for what my dad had done for him. I had no idea what he had done.

So interesting. Thank you very much. You got it, buddy. Thank you so much. Let's see. Let's go through here. oh my gosh how about this this is a message from somebody that uh we helped marry right judy hi dr jude yes how are you tell everybody tell everybody how we met and what happened. Oh, wow. Well, you and Adam married, Benny and I, on a cruise October 5th last year. Yeah.

So, hello. It was the best wedding ever. I was surprised to all our friends. Anyway, I just was checking in because I'm from New Jersey, as you know, Benny and I. We're in the hot spot. We did. Yeah, you are.

Technically, where we live, not. We live in a very rural area up near the Appalachian Trail. So we were locked down in our place for 30 days. What a great way to spend our first year of marriage. I'm going to put you on hold, Judy. Your call was breaking up like crazy.

Great to hear from you, Adam. It seems like a lifetime ago we were on a cruise with Adam Carolla and his whole world of people. And he and I married Judy and her husband, and they're doing great. And interestingly, they're in the rural part of New Jersey. People don't think about New Jersey as having rural parts. It does, and they can be quite beautiful. Susan, what's the matter? I hear my wife laughing.

You want to join me here? We're going to be laughing out loud, we have to. Maybe not. All right. Let's talk to Shannon. Hey, Shannon, what's going on? Hi, Dr. Drew. Huge fan.

Watch all your shows. I was calling because I used to have an insanely high sex drive. I was like a boy. Like, wanted to have sex every single day. Hold on, hold on. Shannon, I'm going to interrupt you one second. Shannon, you there? I'm here. All right, let's try that again.

Yes, I'm here. Okay, let's try it. Okay. So I used to have an incredibly high sex drive. I would consider myself like a man because I would want to have sex every day. I thought about sex all the time. I watched your shows about love addiction, sex addiction. I thought I had that.

Then I had my two daughters with my husband. And after my second daughter, I had endometrial ablation because I was bleeding so much. And then since then, I've had the weirdest side effects. And one of them was just zero sex drive. Hmm. So let's, let's talk about that for a minute. Now having a high sex drive is not sex addiction. Sex addiction is about needing more and more and more diverse stimulation in spite of consequences right does that make sense yeah okay i didn't have that then i didn't do it and the sex addicts always complain i just

want to have a relationship and yet they're having you know physical intimacies with you know all these people and all these strange situations and they ask me more and more bizarre more and more intense intensity is what sex addiction is about. High sex drive is just high sex drive, and that's good. That's a healthy thing. Now, why it would have dropped off, it can sometimes drop off just after pregnancy, particularly as you go along with the pregnancies, it can get worse. So I'm wondering if it really wasn't the endometrial ablation. It was just the pregnancy pregnancy and you never sort of came back after that

is that possible have you talked to your doctor about that yeah i mean i i um i'm convinced that that started the catalyst because now i have like what you call it where the clitoris is covered but um but just the fact that like i had a very high testosterone level before I had my children, like 89 or something. And now it's like less than one. Oh. So I wondered if it was just I had a crazy high testosterone. You could just do that. Yeah, absolutely.

Now, why you suddenly stopped making testosterone is sort of interesting. And I wonder if somebody could figure out why that happened. But in the meantime, why not just supplement that i've tried creams but they just don't do the trick and then um i've considered injections but i know those can come with health risks or why don't you why don't you look at the bioidentical pellets i've seen a lot of good results with people that know how to do that in In fact, we were going to do another show soon. There's probably one up on my website with Dr. Donovan where we go into great detail about this. And we're going to bring him back soon because I really do believe that this is something that's effective for women.

It's just called bioidentical pellets. Susan, do you have the info on Dr. Donovan, where she can look to get his information? Remember his website and stuff? Oh, here she comes. Dr. Donovan's website. Yeah, go. Dr. Donovitz. Donovitz.

Right, Donovitz. And his website. Donovitz. I'll put the link on. Okay, we're going to put the link on the restream so you can just look at it on the chat, okay? Is she on, what is she on, Facebook? Where are you watching us uh shannon youtube youtube okay she's on youtube so she'll put it up on youtube so you can get the reference

to stuff go ahead okay and then my second thing was is i just feel bad because i i feel like i kind of tricked my husband he married somebody who wanted sex every day. Now that we've been married 15 years, it's like a desert, and I just feel so bad. And that was the other kind of question I had. It's like, do I just force myself to do it when I'm not in the mood? Well, I mean, if you can. Obviously, usually people feel, once they can get over the hump, so to speak, they feel like they're fine with it.

It's just you don't have the motivation to do it. It's kind of rough. And if you really have had a shut down, are you on any medication? Yes. Yeah, I have idiopathic insomnia since I was a child. So I come on a lot of medicine for sleep. Well, maybe that's doing it too, by the way, because that's common for, particularly if you're on antidepressants or tricyclics or any of those things. I mean, that classically will just shut your libido down to zero.

In fact, the reason I asked the way I asked, the way you're describing it, it sounds like that shutdown that we see from medication where it's actually weird to see people kissing, that people kissing looks kind of uncomfortable to you. And if you're having that, you have got to go talk to your doctor about the medication because that, that the medicine is that interfering with your marriage. Okay. Okay. So there's that. Secondly, you should get the testosterone up and it may be the medicine you should get the testosterone up in it. Maybe the medicine that's driving the testosterone down, who knows? And thirdly, your husband just appreciates that you're concerned about this.

I mean, that's his main concern. You got to understand that during early child rearing years, most marriages are at their sort of nadir in terms of this kinds of activity and satisfaction and stuff. So it's normal in a sense to not be where you used to be when you're trying to raise little kids. Right. So, and I'm sure your husband is a dedicated father and he just appreciates that

you're concerned about. Oh yeah. And that, and you talked to, but you've got great. I just, I feel bad. I get it.

I get it. And you've got at least three different things you can look into to correct this testosterone replacement. We're going to put that up on YouTube. Talk to your doctor about adjusting your medication so it's not shutting you down so much. And anything in the antidepressant category can completely shut you down. Let's see. Oof. Interesting questions here okay let's try this see Travis has an interesting question Travis let's get

have at it what do you got there hey Dr. Duke can you hear me I do you got there? Hey, Dr. Drew, can you hear me? I do. I got you. Hey, you wearing a high tight. High and tight. My friend. Hi, mommy.

So my question is about the Dr. Vladimir that you spoke with recently. Dr. Zelenko? The guy who you talked with hydroxychloroquine about who said he, I guess, managed a bunch of other countries. His name is Dr. Vladimir. Vladimir Zelenko. Yes, Vladimir Zelenko. Yes, I did talk to that guy.

Yes, that guy. So I posted that on social media and I got a bunch of articles linking that he actually may not have treated a bunch of people. And I'm very frustrated with that because this drug seems like it actually does help people. So how do I convince, or not maybe convince, but

say that this is not what you think it is. In a strange way, we live in a world where science is very frustrating. This is a discourse that should be had amongst physicians and scientists only. People who just learned how to pronounce hydroxychloroquine should not have an opinion about this i have been using hydroxychloroquine for 35 years i just did my on the flight over here i did my continuing medical education for uh for rheumatology and lo lo and behold, Plaquenil is still the main drug of choice for lupus and many rheumatoid arthritis cases. And it's

so safe, one of the few drugs you can give to pregnant women. This is something I did not know. I've never seen a side effect from it. I can't say that of Tylenol or aspirin, but I've used it. I've probably prescribed a hundred, excuse me, a thousand doses. I've never seen one side effect. I can't say that of any

other medication. And I would never, and I don't, I don't know. God, no, that, that we would do. Okay. So we would having again, a thousand doses out there with my name on it. I would tell the patients at the end of a year, see the ophthalmologist because it can cause corneal deposits. And in around 10 years, there's a rare retinal condition that you can get. So that's what I would have them do is every year see an ophthalmologist, never anything wrong, ever. Now, chloroquine, which is the medicine that was used for malaria, and I used to prescribe that for malaria all the time, is available over the counter it's so safe in countries right have malaria i i and by the way i have seen side effects from chloroquine chloroquine is a bit dicey

uh chloroquine can cause mental status changes and mood changes chloroquine i would not be super happy with but hydroxychloroquine um is a benign medicine, and it costs pennies. And so what's the harm? Well, there are some studies that show in advanced COVID, maybe there's some harm. Okay. And they've also shown that in hospitalized patients, there is probably no benefit. They can't say for sure. They say definitely no harm, probably no harm, probably no benefit.

But okay, because that's really not what it's meant for. What it's meant for is very early in the illness. The first couple of days when the viral reproduction, the viral replication is up, that's where it interferes with zinc. And by the way, none of the studies were done with zinc. So the one study we're missing is the timeframe in which this is likely to be useful with zinc. There was a study that came out in the New England Journal last week about prophylaxis, meaning they gave it to people who had an immediate exposure to COVID. It didn't seem

to work very well, again, without zinc. So I'm prepared to say, okay, no good for prophylaxis. Okay, no good for hospitalized patient. Show me the data with zinc on patients early in the illness because that worldwide is where it's being used and they're showing some efficacy and that's what dr zelenko was talking about so i will uh continue to be um essentially uh i will if i got a cove it i would take it immediately with zinc and with azithromycin right because there's no harm no foul um whether i would take it immediately with zinc and with azithromycin because there's no harm, no foul. Whether I would recommend it to other people, I have.

I have used it therapeutically. And sometimes it seems to work, sometimes not so much. It does not affect the cytokine storm, which is really the really challenging part of this. And the ronolamab, now we've got that. It looks good for it. We have IL-6 inhibitors. We have decadron. We have all these things. We have convalescent plasma. We have all these things now we can do for the cytokine activation syndrome, which is why the death rate is going down,

which is why people are staying out of the ICUs. So things are getting better on all fronts. Hopefully, we will see soon enough, Travis, the results on the early use of hydroxychloroquine with zinc. Certainly, at this point, no harm, no foul. As I said, I get these medical education exams I have to take, and one of the questions, it was, should you use this in a pregnant woman, was essentially the question. I said, no, I don't use anything in pregnant women, so I'll push no. And lo and behold, they were recommending it for rheumatoid arthritis in pregnant women. That's how safe it is, which was stunning to me. That was stunning. Okay, I'm trying to get to your...

Okay, this is Cassandra. It's sort of an addiction question. Cassandra, go ahead. Cassandra. Hey there. Hi, how are you? Good, what's happening? So I have a question. Alessandra. Hey there. Hi, how are you? Good. What's happening? Um,

so, so I have a question. Um, and the question that I called in for is about, I have a sister who moved in with us. She has struggled with heroin and meth addiction and just addiction in general, really for her whole life. Um,

she spent about the last five, six years, um, she was on the streets and had a situation with a really toxic family. She was about the last five, six years on the streets and had a situation with a really toxic family she was trying to help. She's had about six to eight months sober.

Then when COVID came around, she was having a hard time finding a sober living place to stay at, but she was comfortable. She was doing so good at the time that I invited her to come stay with us in our home um since then though the problem is I'm not her type of drug counselors or counselors at all that she was getting help from when she was living with them so now it's really hard for me to like

everything is sexy you know and I have a hundred steps she's using but she also struggles severely for mental health issues and my question is how do i navigate this without hurting her more feeling more like someone who loves her thinks she's bad or not good that's not it i understand addiction she needs help but i also have a child so then like it's just like a hundred months okay uh what is your drug of choice uh heroin mostly and meth yeah and the meth it really throws it you know throws her onto the streets i'm sure she ends up on the streets with this uh and uh what is her mental health problem?

What she's been diagnosed with is bipolar. I have seen her with, I'm not obviously a psychologist or anything, but I have seen her switch personality stuff and forget things and not psychotic. Yeah, but all that can be math. They can all be meth. So unless you've been on meth for several months, nobody should be making any psychiatric diagnoses of that sort. And sometimes meth induces bipolar disorder. I mean, sometimes it comes on because of the meth.

But anyway, neither here nor there. Do you go to Al-Anon? What was that? Do I go to Al-Anon? No, that's probably the answer. I don't that's that's gonna make the difference yeah that's good that's how you you're not going to be able to manage her by yourself you got to understand that when you're around the disease of addiction you're in the disease of addiction okay that's how it works it's a relational it's you you've been sucked into it enough to know that you put through

the spin cycle. You have to have somebody standing there with you going, no, no, come on, let's talk about it. You have to have that all the time or every interaction with your sister will end up contributing to the problem. And when you get into Al-Anon, you will stop, you will change the dance you have with your sister and she'll feel that change. and it kind of gets her attention sometimes. It might be, and certainly it will give you a strategy to go back to her and say, can we get you to a doctor?

Can we try again with sober living? You've got to get her back into medical care. That's the goal, right? Yeah, she does need to be back into medical care. Absolutely. That's bottom line, but you're not going to be able to do that all by yourself. You're going to need support for that one. And that is the old Al-Anon program.

I don't go into patients. You know, when I'm working with addicts, I don't go in by myself. What I always tell people is the disease of addiction is the perfect model for the disease of addiction is the plant and the little shop of horrors. The Audrey 2 plant, the feed me, feed me plant. If somebody goes in the room with the plant, the plant eats it. Unless there's somebody with the person holding them back from getting eaten from the plant, and then they're able to manage it. Addiction works exactly like that.

It takes everything in that, the identified patient, person with the disease, it takes their relationships and sucks them into the illness. And there's, and they're geniuses at it. I mean, it's, I get sucked into it too. Somebody said that the FDA is not allowing doctors to prescribe hydroxychloroquine. The FDA doesn't get to tell doctors how to prescribe anything. The FDA has nothing to do with the practice of medicine. The FDA determines whether drugs can be brought to market. The FDA can give us guidelines. What we do as physicians is up to us. The FDA is not involved with that. So it makes me very angry when people bring up the FDA. And the AMA has nothing to do with it. Our professional societies,

I'm part of the American College of Physicians. There's American College of Surgeons. Professional societies do set many standards that we follow, but what people think is going on is not going on. Not. The FDA works with the drug companies to give them the parameters for what they can bring to market. What we do with the medicine is up to us working with our patients. So that's that.

Okay. DEA is the drug. I'm sorry. FDA. I beg your pardon. I said DEA. Thank you for calling me out on that. FDA, the Food and Drug Administration. I said DEA, which is the Drug Enforcement Agency, is a whole different thing. That's a legal arm enforcement, not related to doctors at all unless we break the law uh okay uh why not consider fda i don't know what that means um i'm looking around guys see if there are other questions for you that i can address here um if i'm testing repeatedly, am I seeing patients? I haven't seen patients, but I have not since I've been out and about lately. And I will be on sort of a quarantine on that. Of course, I'm testing to make sure I'm negative.

And then, good, Susan put up Dr. Gary Donovitz's website. So if you're interested in the pellets, we're going to do a whole show about that coming up again, because I really do think that's underdiagnosed and undertreated. And there are people that really know how to do that now, both for men and women, frankly, this sort of perimenopausal stuff and menopause and men elderly. Okay, what's next for loranumab? I think that what's up next for loranlumab is they've got to get a big drug company involved to do a big trial.

I think that's what's gotta happen. But the FDA may get involved with that and do some sort of fast tracking it because it did look awfully good. That's what I'm hoping. Okay, let me go back to the calls here, sorry. Sorry, hang, sorry. Hang a second.

Oh, geez. All right. Now let's get, let's get through this one. Nathaniel real quick. What's up? Oh, hello.

Thank you for answering my call. I really appreciate it. You bet. You hear? Yep. Um, I know I have kind of a weird question, but it's going to be hard for me to describe here. But I seem to be having this issue now

with kind of long-term that is inside of my ears and inside of my head. And it feels like a lot of pressure keeps building up inside of my head. And I get a lot of pain from that up inside of my head and I get a lot of pain from that and it kind of comes and goes a little bit it feels like like a um we call it like an earache but it's like really bad and sometimes like why why you know like a doctor have you seen a doctor I have not seen a doctor about it because, you know, it kind of comes and goes a little bit. And I keep thinking that if I just let it go, maybe it'll go away.

But it's been a long time now. How old are you, Nathaniel? I'm 25. 25. You're behaving like a 40-year-old male. That's when you really start pushing things off into the future. But somebody needs to look in your ear and see what's going on. This could be anything.

It could be wax sitting against your eardrum. It could be a chronic infection. It could be a chronic rupture in your ear. It could be a sinus problem. It could be a eustachian tube problem. It could be a tumor in your nasopharynx. It could be a lot of things. Do this.

Probably, I'm going to bet, probably, I don't know. This could be a lot of different things, but probably in the middle ear. That's probably where the problem is. But you've got to get that worked on. Okay? Just any doctor. The ENT, ideally, would be the one to see, but you've got to see somebody. Somebody's got to look in your ear and your sinus and see what's going on.

Okay. All right. Cassandra. see but you got to see somebody's got to look in your ear and your sinus and see what's going on okay all right cassandra hi there cassandra what's going on oh she didn't come up hold on maybe that was me there let's try that again hold on one sec cassandra uh there There we go. Cassandra, go ahead. Hi there. Hi there. Hi. Hi. I was wondering if you know anything about using Lupron to treat endometriosis and what the lasting effects might be of using that. Well, it's kind of an old, you know, time, I don't know how to describe it.

It's been around for a long time. And Lupron essentially shuts down your entire system. And what I find is oftentimes the gynecologists don't prepare you for how miserable that makes you. They may essentially throw you into menopause, which is awful. Yeah, that's what happens. It does prevent the cycling of the endometriosis, and people do often get better. But it's not considered sort of a sophisticated treatment, right? There's a lot of other stuff you can do. The thing that most people look at as the most advanced treatment that I know of is microsurgery for endometriosis,

where they literally go in and get every little speck of it out of there. Okay. Do you know anything about lasting effects from i've been on the loop run and i ended up having a hysterectomy for the endometriosis ultimately and since then though i my teeth are like crumbling in my mouth i broke my tooth eating a banana the other day i have like joint problems they i'm being talked about maybe I have fibromyalgia. I'm open to maybe I have that also, but I've just read a lot of things online that we can cause those things. Here's the deal. When you shut down your estrogen, your bone and your teeth can break down.

You should get a bone density study to make sure you haven't decalcified all your bone, which would be awful. Mood problems are very common after this and certainly with it, but even after it, because sometimes things don't turn back on quite normally. Thirdly, let me give you a little advice about fibromyalgia. I'm thoroughly convinced that the primary problem in fibromyalgia is a sleep disorder. And I know that one of the problems with sleep is that you have pain. But if you can get your sleep squared away, the fibromyalgia gets a lot better. Okay. Yeah, I agree with that. I've worked on my sleep and I have a lot more better days now. Good. Also, let me speculate that and that, you know, pelvic pain, that's complex pelvic pain and fibromyal the pelvic pain is not really there. I just have some of the lasting physical effects that I believe are from the Lupron. Yeah, that makes sense to me. I'm so sorry. I wish your doctors

had started you on something. Thank you for saying that. Working through a process earlier. And let me just say also EMDR, if there's any residual effects of the trauma, EMDR, look into that. That really helps. Okay. EMDR. I'll do that. Thank you, Dr. Drew. Okay. You got it. Fibromyalgia is so damn miserable. The reason, again, when people have pelvic pain that's complicated, and it's not that she, you know, that's complicated, and it's not that she didn't have endometriosis, she had endometriosis. It's just that when you have sexual abuse and that kind of thing, the information that comes out of the pelvic is disorganized and overwhelming.

It hits a part of the brain called the insula cortex and fires in distorted ways, let's say. And then that screws up your mood and that screws up your ability to regulate, and then you don't sleep, and then you get fibromyalgia. And so it's a pretty nasty combination. I'm glad she's taking care of the whole picture. The whole picture. So she got her, unfortunately, in treating the endometriosis,

she got the loop-run effects. Okay. Let's talk to Matt here. Matt, go right ahead. Yes, Dr. Guru. thank you for taking my call. What's up? Okay, big fan. Wow.

Okay, question. With the COVID-19, in the beginning, there were reports that were saying that people were getting reinfected with the virus. And that was early on. Now, okay, without getting into it. Okay, so if people were getting reinfected, then what good is the vaccine? Or was that information bad information? Because I've noticed that there was no report now saying that people were getting or are getting reinfected with the COVID, correct? So you're asking a very, very, very complicated question. You're wading into waters where there's not a lot of firm answers for what you're looking for.

But let me describe the landscape for you. At the beginning, we thought there were not reinfections, we thought they were recurrences. But now they have documented some people who went positive, negative, and then positive again, and got sick. Those are presumed to be reinfections. In the meantime, they have no, now we don't know if that is actually a reinfection or not, but we're sort of thinking that those rare, rare, rare, by the way, cases where that happens, people are accepting that possibly these could be reinfections because we're noticing that the antibody levels are falling off quickly after the original infection. The problem is the antibodies that are produced by the B cells is not the whole story in COVID. The T cell responsiveness and the T cell mediated phenomenon may be more important, but we don't know how to document that and we don't know for sure that that's true. Now in the vaccines, they're getting two to three times the antibody levels

from even a severe case of COVID. So the presumption is we're getting an even more exuberant immunity from the vaccine than having had the illness. And there are vaccines now that are specifically going after T cells to try to prepare them to respond in addition to the B cells. Does that make sense? Yeah, I get the gist of it. Yes, sir, I get the gist of it. Okay, so I guess a follow-up question would be, just like there's different strains of the flu, is COVID-19 just its own individual strain,

or are there different strains of the COVID-19 just its own individual strain or are there different strains of the COVID-19? It is its own strain, but it is changing across time. But what is not changing is the spike protein. You see the pictures of the virus with all those little spikes on it? That spike protein is fixed. Yes, sir. That does not change. That's how it gets into the human body.

So that can't change. And that's what some of the vaccines are being directed at. I'm going to put you on hold there because there's a lot of background noise. Good calls, by the way, everybody. Thank you for calling. Oh, boy. All right, let's try this. Belle, let's give it a shot. Hi, Dr. Drew. Hi, Belle.

I was wondering, do you have any advice for an incoming college freshman interested in going to pharmacy school? Are you going in? Are you going to be in the dormitory? Yes, sir. Are you looking for advice on COVID or advice on the career in pharmacy? The career in pharmacy. Okay. So I have so much affection and respect for my colleagues in pharmacy and nursing. Those are fields that get left out of the equation. Nursing, not so much lately because of all the first line work, but certainly pharmacy doesn't get put in the mix. And pharmacists are highly trained scientists.

They are highly trained scientists. They are highly trained professionals. They have their judgment is extremely important. And what I would ask you, Bill, is if you have the opportunity to do any kind of hospital work, particularly in and around an ICU, where you're doing some of the complex fluid management and the medication is sort of at the cutting edge. I would do when I would do ICU rounds when I was teaching, I would always have my pharmacist there. And he was,

he was, I'll never forget him, Stan. And he got a lot out of being there and we got a lot of out of him being there. So if you can do any kind of, whether it's a residency or a postdoc or anything like that, do so.

Okay. Yes, sir. All right, of whether it's a residency or a postdoc or anything like that do so okay yes sir all right bell thank you great have a great time at school enjoy it too it's a lot of fun okay okay i'm sorry i'm going through the list here oh boy all right let's get storm in here let's talk a little hep C what's up storm. Hello. I love you so much. Thank you. What's going on? Um, I have been diagnosed with hep C for two years and I am, I just started my meds today. Where did you start?

I found out that I have fatty liver and they think that it's hereditary, but it could also be from drinking. Slow down. Wait, wait, wait. You lost me there for a second. They think that fatty liver is hereditary? Yes. Even though you're drinking and have hepatitis C, which is like a recipe for fatty liver is hereditary? Yes. Even though you're

drinking and have hepatitis C, which is like a recipe for fatty liver? Yes. Interesting. Okay. They told me it could be hereditary because my whole family has diabetes.

Okay. So are you overweight? No. Okay. So are you overweight? No. No. See, that's usually a non-alcoholic fatty liver is usually, there is also an insulin resistant sort of thing, but all right, let's not get into the weeds on this. Let's talk about your hepatitis C. What, do you know what genotype of hepatitis C you have? I do not.

I know I've been tested because, I mean, I'm on medication now. I just started today. It's oh, it has a VY in it in the middle. VY in the middle. It's not a...

Well, anyway, it's to kill the virus, right? Yes. Yes. And the good news is... So I was wondering if it's to kill the virus, right? Yes. Yes. And the good news is... So I was wondering if it's okay... Yes. Go ahead.

Go ahead. No, no, you wonder if it's okay. Oh, no, I was wondering if it's okay to drink with my medication. No, it's not. Hepatitis C plus drinking equals cirrhosis. That's one of the most effective ways to cause cirrhosis. So if we're going to be drinking, clear the virus first, okay? And if you have fatty liver already, you can pretty quickly get from fatty liver, again, to cirrhosis. Not everybody gets cirrhosis but it could happen um and uh you know

i i if you have alcoholism and to the point where you're damaging your liver you ought to look into maybe some treatment what do you think yeah well i mean i've been sober i was a i was a addict for years like 10 years and i got sober for two years and just recently I started drinking a lot well you you were an IV drug addict that's where you got you were an IV drug addict that's where you got hepatitis c so you're heading back there again you know you and your entry-level drug is alcohol and it just you know you know you know why are you doing this you know better you've been sober i mean i know but i'm not i can't go back to that i know that i have too many kids for that okay well i also have heard you talk a lot about your wife doing um hormone replacement

yeah yeah i have recently got well last year i got my tubes removed because i've had five kids can't have any more kids my body can't handle it um so i was wondering what do i have to do to ask my doctor questions what do i ask if i think that i mean my libido is super low. I don't have any sort of sex drive at all. Okay. And I'm wondering if it's my hormone. Well, it could be, but it also could be your liver disease. So everything in its time. First, get the hepatitis C taken care of.

Are you on Maveritt? M-A-V-Y-R-E-T, maybe? That's a V-Y. Is that what you're on? I think it starts with an H. You're probably on Harvoni. Harvoni is sort of the classic one. Okay.

But these are all good, and they all can clear the virus completely. And let me just look at the side effects, if there's anything about libido that doesn't say particularly. But here's the deal. They told me headaches and being tired. You have a life-threatening illness called hepatitis C, chronic hep C. That's number one. That's got to go. You have a second, like, potentially life-threatening illness

called alcoholic or non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. You need to see a hepatologist about that. Then, if it's alcohol-related, you're going to have to deal with it. Okay. Well, why they're not addressing your drinking, I don't understand. And then, once all that's squared, then you can talk to them about hormone replacement. And we put the, on our restream, on the chat on YouTube, we put the website for the guy that has a lot of information on that. And you can just take that to

your doctor and ask about it i mean you can do it sooner than later if you want but you got to take care of these life-threatening problems before you do anything else these are really no no i know that i just i wanted advice on it because i feel like if i go and ask him he's going to look at me and say that i'm young and i have all these other problems I just feel like he's going to push it to the side. He will at this point, but don't, don't let them push it off entirely. Uh, you know, with the, when we, we, when medicine, we get focused on dealing with the life threatening problems first, uh, and we don't want anything to get in the way of that or to confound that, that has to be dealt with first. So, uh, okay. Okay. We'll talk a little Suboxone now.one now let me look over in the restream

see how you guys are doing she could but the liver the fatty liver affects all the hormonal systems and the proteins the hormones travel on so it's a much more complicated situation. Yeah,

I see lots of questions here. Okay. Trichotillomania, a component of PTSD. It could be right. It could be, but it isn't typically. It's usually a separate thing. Maybe it's triggered by the trauma, though. I could see that

sin. Lou, 20 years sober, went back to heroin and that's no bueno. Sorry about that. You're going to have to get that treated. We're going to talk about Suboxone in just a minute. Okay, I'm looking through your questions on the chat, see if there's anything. Reports this week that New York has falsely reported

nursing home COVID-19 deaths by as much as 50%. Dennis Rodman, if that's my buddy, Dennis Rodman, tell me more. Loved you on The Last Dance. Okay, let's go back to questions here. This is Seth alright Seth go right ahead hi Seth

hey can you hear me Dr. Gru I got you man alright first of all I just want to say I'm a huge fan of your show Tom's show and Christina's show they entertain me every single week.

Thank you. I know you don't have a lot of time. I just want to break this down real quick for you. I've got a long past. I'm 32 years old. I had a long history of alcoholism. I've smoked weed,

I've drank a lot, blah, blah, blah. Once upon a time, I heard a suboxone, uh, on the street. And eventually I ended up getting into a clinic and a doctor, uh, subscribed me to boxing. Now he told me, um, you've got to ease yourself off it. And, uh, I told him, no, I don't. And I ended up in the emergency room. Basically, my question to you is, do you think it's better or worse? Do you think it's good? Number one, do you think it's good for doctors to be prescribing Suboxone to people with addiction problems? And number two, how healthy is it for you to take yourself off of it? Because once again, I ended up in the emergency room twice.

Yeah. I'm trying to do it myself, cold turkey. Yeah, you shouldn't be managing your own medication ever. You got to have somebody managing it, particularly a drug taper like that. And Suboxone is a treacherous taper. It's very difficult. It can be difficult. It can be very uncomfortable. So somebody's got to take you through that. Number one. Number two, you asked, how do I feel about doctors prescribing Suboxone? I am not a huge fan. However, I do believe it's important in terms of having that

tool in our tools kit. There are plenty of people that aren't going to get sober or whose lives aren't going to be saved any other way. I'm interested in abstinence-based treatment. That's what I did for 30 years. But I have what's called an X status in my DEA license where I can prescribe Suboxone, and I would if I needed to. I do believe people should come off it. They shouldn't be left on it indefinitely. Well, most cases, but there are cases where it can be left on for long periods of time and people are otherwise recalcitrant. So it's kind of complicated, but them leaving you to do it yourself is not good. And you being sort of a buprenorphine addict, you know, that's your drug of choice.

And it's not a great idea to be stringing stringing you along on suboxone uh okay really quickly here we had an interesting uh sleep question uh and then we're going to go back to the restream here uh matthew go ahead oh my god dr true oh my god i can't believe I'm on here. What's up, mommy? I have this weird thing that's been happening to me for, I want to say, the last five or six years. I have some really, really intense dreams. Usually they entail me being chased or a task that I have to complete that's just so menial and but I can't do it and then I'll be scared out of the dream but the dream continues like I'm awake my eyes are open I'm conscious yeah but I'm still dreaming I'm looking around and this has been happening every two or three months for like

at the beginning I am but then it lets off I don't know how to explain it it's such a weird visceral experience it's a sleep disorder that's a sleep disorder and people can have varying states

of what are called hypnagogic hallucinations so you're still asleep technically, but your eyes are opening and the dream is going on and you're literally hallucinating. And that can take many, many different forms. There's a lot of variations on that theme. I mean, essentially every alien abduction story is a hypnagogic hallucination. People seeing ghosts or having the devil lying on top of them, or people believe something came in and tried to have sex with all kinds of phantasmagoric

fantasies. But oftentimes, because there's also a sleep paralysis very often associated with this, they feel like something's lying on top of them and preventing them from moving. So it's a sleep disorder. Go ahead. I was just saying that oftentimes, yeah, I would feel exactly that. It's just a weight on top of me, you know? Yeah. Yeah. And that's a very, very common thing. And there are doctors that, you know, doctors that run sleep clinics and things like that can help you. Sometimes it can be associated with seizure phenomenon and night terrors and things. So it does need a real evaluation. And, you know, it's unpleasant, very unpleasant.

So why not get that treated? Thank you guys for those calls. Let me quickly get back to the restream here. Flora May saying her child has those sleep terrors and things, and they're very nasty. The acorn's having crazy dreams. He's relieved when he wakes up, he or she, um, don't forget heroin was a cure for opium heads. Yes.

Road, Roy joy, Roy joy. Um, I do a whole lecture on all the treatments, uh, that, uh, the, the U S medical, uh, system has provided to drug addicts as the non-addictive treatment for drug addiction. It's unbelievable. Heroin addiction was going to treat alcoholism.-addictive treatment for drug addiction. It's unbelievable. Heroin addiction was going to treat alcoholism. Cocaine was going to treat heroin addiction. It's just insane what we did. Always looking for the holy grail. The holy grail is the non-addictive, particularly opiate, to treat addiction. It's insane. It's never going to be. It's no such thing. Clearly, it's contrary to biology. Though Suboxone has been a good, useful adjunct, it's also not a cure.

It's not cured. It's also addictive, so you have to be very careful with that. It just doesn't cause the same process of addiction as, say, a heroin does. And Suboxone lately has been shown to be extremely useful in chronic pain syndrome. Really good. So that's where I'm mostly enthusiastic about it. Okay. I want to look up the chat stream again, see what you guys are up to. Am I floating over LA? No, I'm not floating over LA right now. I am. Oh, I am floating over LA. Oh,

well, there you go. I thought I was having a hypnagogic hallucination, but it was just an image behind me. Okay, thoughts on testosterone replacement for a 60-year-old man who has prostate cancer 17 years ago post-prostatectomy. Tamara, I fit that profile. I'm not quite that old, but I fit that profile for sure. And when I first had my prostate out, I told my surgeon, I said, you're going to put me at testosterone placement five years out. They won't. They just worry that it's going to, because, you know, the primary treatment for prostate cancer is androgen blockade.

And there's at least some reason to believe that you can stimulate, particularly metastasis, if you're taking testosterone. Now, the question is, if somebody could bring you back to a normal level of testosterone if you're depressed, but that's a hard hard that's a hard line to walk um because we really don't know what an exact normal level is for a given individual and if you overshoot that you can stimulate the cancer and that's no bueno not to say that nope i'm not saying no one would do it i'm not saying that uh okay you got um i was peaking in my nicotine use again this summer Okay. I was peaking in my nicotine use again this summer, the Acorn.

Uh-oh. I dreamt I was executed in a stadium, probably the worst drive I ever had. Well, you know where it came from. It's the nicotine. Norco, five milligrams three times a day, not addicted. Yes, earned. What are you using that for? You may not be addicted, but you are certainly dependent.

Steven, prostate exam is the worst. No, prostate biopsy is the worst. Same thing, but with a giant long needle. Okay, so let's, I'm going through your stuff. Talk about iron deficiency, anemia, and COVID. I don't, yeah, I don't know. I have not read data about that. I mean, iron deficiency, anemia is easily treated with iron. The question is, how did you get it? Why were you losing blood?

That's how you lose the iron. And so that should be easily correctable. So I'm not quite sure where you're going with that question. Is Sotolol good for atrial fibrillation? Yeah, it's one of the drugs that's good for that. It's not necessarily a first line, but it's a good one. Do removed lipomas grow back? They can.

They don't typically. Does testosterone go back to normal after stopping opiates? That's a great question. So, testosterone drops people's testosterone. Excuse me, opiates suppress the pituitary production of certain hormones that create testosterone in the testes and your testosterone just go to zip on opiates, particularly high doses and it usually does come back, though sometimes it can stay depressed. If you've been on opiates for long, long periods of time, you might want to look at testosterone replacement.

Okay. I think I'm going to have to wrap everything up. Are we good here, Susan? Anything from your standpoint? Yeah, we're good. Caleb, on your end, are we good? Everything's good here. All right. I'm sorry I haven't gotten to all the calls, but I've got to stop somewhere.

We appreciate your calls. We appreciate your comments on the chat restream. Go to Fox 11. Yeah, I've got to go to Fox 11, which is the – you can see it at what? Fox11TV.com. Is that right? Fox. Fox LA.

Fox11.com slash live. Fox11.com slash live. So it's not Fox11.com slash live. Fox11.com slash live. It's not Fox News. It's a local Fox affiliate in Los Angeles where they play Family Guy. That's FoxLA.com. FoxLA.com slash live. Yeah, we said Fox11.com.

That's FoxLA.com. Yeah, FoxLA.com. And it's going to be... Actually, it works. Fox11.com also works. Fox11.com works And it's going to be. Actually, it works. Fox11.com also works. Fox11.com works also. How about that? So Fox LA or Fox 11.

But there's a baseball game on right now on Fox 11. If you look at if you're in Los Angeles or if you go to the website and we have to time ourselves till after the baseball game ends. And then Liz Habib has her own show for half an hour, and then we come on at that. I'm going to bet it's going to be around 8 or 8.30 Pacific time. We might use this backdrop. Yeah, we might. Last night we did it in a room that made me look like I was in a sauna.

Tonight we're going to do it maybe with this backdrop, so I'm going to be floating over L.A., on L.A., just like you said. I mean, your head moved a little bit, just like we, just like you said. Oh yeah. So we'll see. Okay. You all, thank you all for being here. Thank Caleb for producing this. Thank you Susan for setting it all up here in New York, such as we are. And who else do I need to thank? Was anybody else? I can't see that. Susan, Caleb, did your wife help out on this one?

Yes. Taylor was called screening. Oh, thank you for screening. Tyler and Taylor. Thank you for screening the calls. Appreciate it very, very much. All right. That's it guys.

Everyone stay safe. Wear your masks, keep your distancing and this, watch this thing collapse. So we get, we'll get much, much, much lower numbers of cases as we go along here. Let's, let's go get this thing. See you tomorrow. Ask Dr. Drew is produced by Caleb Nation and Susan Pinsky. This is just a reminder that the discussions here are not a substitute for medical care or medical evaluation. This is purely for educational and entertainment purposes. I'm a licensed physician with over 35 years of experience, but this is not a replacement for your personal physician, nor is it medical care. If you or

someone you know is in immediate danger, don't me call 9-1-1 if you're feeling hopeless or suicidal call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-8255 anytime 24 7 for free support and guidance you can find more of my recommended organizations and helpful resources at drdrew.com slash help