Ask Dr. Drew - Does Dr. Drew Regret His 2020 COVID-19 Apology? Is Obesity A Disease? + More Calls – Ask Dr. Drew – Episode 117

Episode Date: September 2, 2022

Dr. Drew answers calls from viewers on his early 2020 statements about COVID-19 panic, advice for escaping a cult, if obesity is a disease, and more. Originally broadcast on 8/25/22. 「 ABOUT the SHOW 」 Ask Dr. Drew is produced by Kaleb Nation (https://kalebnation.com) and Susan Pinsky (https://twitter.com/firstladyoflove). This show is for entertainment and/or informational purposes only, and is not a substitute for medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. 「 MEDICAL NOTE 」 The CDC states that COVID-19 vaccines are safe, effective, and reduce your risk of severe illness. You should always consult your personal physician before making any decisions about your health.  「 SPONSORED BY 」 • GENUCEL - Using a proprietary base formulated by a pharmacist, Genucel has created skincare that can dramatically improve the appearance of facial redness and under-eye puffiness. Genucel uses clinical levels of botanical extracts in their cruelty-free, natural, made-in-the-USA line of products. Get 10% off with promo code DREW at https://genucel.com/drew 「 GEAR PROVIDED BY 」 • BLUE MICS - After more than 30 years in broadcasting, Dr. Drew's iconic voice has reached pristine clarity through Blue Microphones. But you don't need a fancy studio to sound great with Blue's lineup: ranging from high-quality USB mics like the Yeti, to studio-grade XLR mics like Dr. Drew's Blueberry. Find your best sound at https://drdrew.com/blue • ELGATO - Every week, Dr. Drew broadcasts live shows from his home studio under soft, clean lighting from Elgato's Key Lights. From the control room, the producers manage Dr. Drew's streams with a Stream Deck XL, and ingest HD video with a Camlink 4K. Add a professional touch to your streams or Zoom calls with Elgato. See how Elgato's lights transformed Dr. Drew's set: https://drdrew.com/sponsors/elgato/ 「 ABOUT DR. DREW 」 For over 30 years, Dr. Drew has answered questions and offered guidance to millions through popular shows like Celebrity Rehab (VH1), Dr. Drew On Call (HLN), Teen Mom OG (MTV), and the iconic radio show Loveline. Now, Dr. Drew is opening his phone lines to the world by streaming LIVE from his home studio. Watch all of Dr. Drew's latest shows at https://drdrew.tv Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey everybody, we're with you in just mere moments. We are doing a all-call show. Thank you for being here. We'll be on Twitter Spaces, of course. Those of you that are out on Twitter Spaces, please do raise your hand and I'll just request and I'll bring you up to the podium. And by requesting, you will be agreeing to be on multiple platforms. We are out on Twitch, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Rumble, multiple places.

And if you don't feel like raising your hand and you want to interact in other means, you can go to Rumble for the Rumble Rants, or you can go over to Restream on any of those same platforms. No, not Restream. You can go to drdrew.tv and get the link to YouTube, Twitch, Twitter, Facebook. And we can see your comments on Twitter now, which I did not know. That's how to say that. And already some interesting questions coming up on the restream. So I'd like to engage this conversation. We've got a lot of information in the last really couple of weeks and we sort of need to process all that and go over it and talk about what I do and I do not agree with and what my feelings are about all this we've learned and we'll get right

to it. We'll do this every week, I suspect at least once. So let's get right to it. Our laws as it pertained to substances are draconian and bizarre. A psychopath started this. He was an alcoholic because of social media and pornography, PTSD, love addiction, fentanyl and heroin. Ridiculous. I'm a doctor for f**k'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 Loveline all the time. Educate adolescents and to prevent and to treat.

If you have trouble, you can't stop and you want to help stop it, I can help. I got a lot to say. I got a lot more to say. We'll be right back. only get with BetMGM. And no matter your team, your favorite player, or your style, there's something every NBA fan will love about BetMGM. Download the app today and discover why BetMGM is your basketball home for the season. Raise your game to the next level this year

with BetMGM. A sportsbook worth a slam dunk. An authorized gaming partner of the NBA. BetMGM.com for terms and conditions. Must be 19 years of age or older to wager. Ontario only. Please play responsibly. If you have any questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to 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. Whether you own a bustling hair salon or a hot new bakery, you need business insurance that can keep up with your evolving needs. With flexible coverage options from TD Insurance, you only pay for what you need. TD, ready for you. Hey, everybody. Already up on Restream, somebody raised a question about Novavax and stroke. And so I'm quickly getting to the literature. As always, it's very hard for me to review literature while I'm also trying to talk to you guys and answer questions. But all I see really is thrombotic thrombocytopenia purpura, which is really what was known from the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. So when I look up Novavax,

and let's see, I just don't see it. So maybe you guys can put any quotes or any literature where you've seen that, maybe up on the restream. And Susan and Caleb, keep an eye out for that. We have lots of you with your hands up over on the Twitter spaces, so I want to get right to it. But before we do, I just want to say

some very interesting conversations we've had on the Kelly Victory Days. And the one thing that I have come out of it with absolute clarity is everyone wants more and better science. That is what my peers are asking for. Please give us more science. Please give us more data. Please ask the difficult questions. If somebody has a hypothesis that something is happening, like in Naomi Wolf's case, she has a hypothesis that there might be something affecting pregnancy, let's do the randomized control trials or let's do the necessary biological inquiries to try to see if there's any evidence. I don't see a signal. I've not seen it in my use and deployment of the vaccine, you would imagine that in a, you know,

a multi-billion outlay of a vaccine, you would see a pretty strong signal. Doesn't mean it doesn't happen. Doesn't mean it's not a rare or even moderately not so rare phenomenon. Vaccines, treatments, medical interventions all have potentially problematic outcomes. As I've pointed out many, many times that Johnson & Johnson, as I referred to at the beginning here, caused transverse sinus thrombosis, thrombotic thrombocytopenia purpura, really serious reactions, caused them to pull back on that vaccine.

There's also some data out today on Paxlovid. There's an England Journal study looking at hospitalization and death. Again, I've looked at, I've not had a chance to look at it very carefully, and I hate the fact that I'm saying that an awful lot these days, but I've been a bit busy today. But I did look at it, and they were looking at hospitalization and death as endpoint. And in those particular endpoints, it's not clear what Pax Levit is doing under the age of 65. Over the age of 65, clear benefits, but not clear benefits insofar

as the endpoints of hospitalization and death does not mean that you don't get better quicker, that it causes less misery, that it causes less long COVID, for instance. What would the impact of Paxlovid be on long COVID? We don't know yet. So there's more science that needs to be done to look at that population that doesn't already essentially is not getting hospitalized and dying. That's not happening in the under 65 or very rare. So rare that it's hard to get a big enough signal out of the studies. Not that it doesn't happen, that it's rare. Therefore, it doesn't show up statistically significant in these studies. Now, what should show up is a reduction in misery, a reduction in days lost work,

a reduction in infectivity maybe, and a reduction perhaps in long COVID. At what cost? At what cost? Maybe more rebound? Maybe less immunity? We don't know. One of my concerns about Paxlovid is that it seems to me, my clinical sense is that people that take Paxlovid at a young age are more prone to get Omicron again quickly. Their immunity doesn't seem to be boosted up. Like my own situation, I have hybrid immunity. I had Alpha, I had Delta, and I had a vaccine. And then I had Omicron, and now I seem impervious to Omicron. I've been locked in rooms with people with Omicron. I don't seem to get it. Will I get it in six months? Maybe, possibly. Doesn't mean I'm forever impervious. But for me to take a vaccine right now, interesting question. Should I do it? Should I not? Dr. Malone, Deanna is coming up on Wednesday.

I mostly interest myself in talking to him about the so-called mass formation psychosis, which I am persuaded is a real thing, whether that's exactly what it is or that's exactly what sets it up. There are many aspects of the construct that are really quite compelling, quite compelling. So let me take a look over. Can you see the Twitter feed under the, you know, when you push on the live stream, can you see the questions there? You mean the requested people, their hands up? No, the text.

Ah, yes, I can. Yes, I can. Somebody said they wanted to ask a question here and not come over to Twitter spaces. See, it's not on the restream. It's on the Twitter. You have to click on the actual. It does something weird though. I don't know if you should do that.

You might lose the Twitter spaces. I've got it, but when I click on it. Can you do it on your computer instead of on the, I don't know if that's able to do it. I think I'm looking at that. I'm thinking of looking at the stuff now. Yeah, I just don't want it to boot them out of the Twitter spaces. Okay, so I'm going to read what I've got there. I've got

Anna saying, thank you. Thank you, Anna. Same with Slugger11. Theo, I see you there. Do I agree that obesity is a disease? That is what Zazalyn is, and she's going to ask that question, so we'll talk about that. Yeah, that's not what I'm talking about. Anyways, just don't worry about it. I'll read you. I'm looking at the chat. No, it's not the chat. It's on the live stream at Twitter. I will read you the questions. Okay, go ahead. Or I'll text them to you. Go ahead.

There's nothing yet, but I just. Oh, my thing shows there's 10 there, 9 there. That's me talking. I see. Okay. All right. There's 40 people over there, and if they have any questions, I can see it. All right.

I'm going to get Zazlyn in here since I read her question. I hope I'm pronouncing your name right. Zazlyn, and everyone that comes up to be a speaker, a reminder that you have to unmute your phone in the lower left-hand corner. And there you are, Zazlyn. Am I pronouncing your name correctly? Yes, Zalyn. Hi, Dr. Drew.

I've been watching your sense, you and Adam. I did not pronounce your name as Zalyn. Is that correct? Yes. I'm named after Zsa Zsa Gabor. Yes, sir. And Lynn is somebody's name in your family yeah yeah jolin all right what's going on there all right so i just i just want to know your thoughts on is obesity a disease and how what is the new manjaro doing and has there honestly i'm to be honest, I'm a gastric bypass patient

and I'm battling regain. So I recently started Manjaro and I don't know what it's doing, but it has completely rearranged my thought process about food. And I, it's really strange to me. Can you help me out with that? Well, I don't know what that is. How do you spell it? Uh, Monjaro. I think it's M-O-N, uh, M-O-N-J-O-U-R-O, Monjaro. And what do you, what, what is it? Monjaro? So it is a once a week injection. Um, it's kind of like Ozempic, Wegovi. It's all of's all of those I never took any of those can you can you read can you read the generic name for me underneath there I don't think there is a generic because I'm paying a thousand dollars a month for this drug I don't think there's a generic yet no no but there is

always a chemical name there's a trade name and a chemical name. What is the chemical name? Like Ocembic is not the real name for the drug. Okay. So let me take a look. Yeah. You're outside of my field a little bit. It's very interesting, but I want to talk about this. Let's go.

Okay. And I know it's outside of your field, but the thing that is really compelling to me is that, you know, even so weight loss surgery, I'm eight years out and I still get up every single day. And I think, what am I going to eat for breakfast, lunch, and dinner? Um, now that I'm on this. Okay. So this, uh, is terzepatide. Okay, hold on. Okay, T-I-R-Z-E-P. Okay, sorry, sorry. Someone on Twitch answered this question like 30 seconds ago.

Oh, they gave me the name? Yeah, exactly. Good job, Jen. All right, so there we go. Interesting. Okay, Jen. Thank you, guys. All right. So there we go. Interesting. So, okay. Right. So this is one of these, essentially a diabetes medication.

And so it has helped you adjust your appetite. Is that correct? It's not even my appetite. It's my, it's really weird. You're thinking. It feels like it's messing with my way of's my i'm it's really weird you're thinking it feels like it's messing with my way of thinking in a really positive way but doesn't it make sense that if it affects your insulin metabolism it's not directly that but if it does that could affect your brain also

doesn't that make sense absolutely it does i'm just so, I am completely flabbergasted. I mean, this is only my second month. I'm paying full price for it. But even when I had gastric bypass, so I had gastric bypass on television. I'm one of those 600 pound lifers, right? So even though I had gastric bypass. It didn't change my brain. Yeah, yeah. No, it doesn't. It doesn't change your brain. So here are the mechanisms and just sort of broad sweeping sort of descriptions. Decrease insulin release. Excess blood sugar is expelled. Liver production of gluconeogenesis is suppressed and slows down gastric emptying. So your stomach stays

fuller over time and the insulin... Insulin metabolism is massively important. I got to tell you, I think the insulin story has only started to be told. And I'm really not surprised that you're having this kind of a reaction to it. But let me go back to your original question, okay? So is obesity a disease? Which one thing I will tell everybody is, because a lot of people toss around the notion that this is a disease and that is a disease, you must first define disease. What is any disease? What is a definition that we can use to determine whether anything, anything, whether this pen is a disease or not, or me moving my hand is a disease. There should be something that some construct that tells us something is or is not a disease. So does that sound reasonable?

Absolutely. All right. So disease from my perspective, and I had to do this, of course, in the addiction field long ago. And people, you know, I literally have been in medical schools and talking to fellows and faculty, and I'll just ask the simple question, define disease for me. And it is rare that someone can come up with a good comprehensive definition. And even the famous textbook of internal medicine, Harrison's book, has a definition that is extremely weak. So I came up with this definition. Disease, first of all, there has to be some genetic component and some environmental component. So there's a gene-environment interaction that results in

an abnormal state of biochemistry or physiology. We call that pathophysiology. So abnormal biology, by abnormal, I mean something that creates signs and symptoms, things that I can recognize as a clinician, and that the signs and symptoms follow a predictable pattern. And there is a predictable response to us trying to improve that pattern with something called treatment.

So it's gene-environment interaction, abnormal biology, reflected in signs and symptoms, progresses predictably, it can resolve, it can become chronic, it can kill the organism, and people like me try to do something to it called treatment. So in a sense, diabetes can become something that is a disease, right? In the sense there's certainly a genetic piece and there's often environmental influences. And here we are talking to you, finding that there may have been some biological adjustment that the doctor could make with treatment. And so in your case, it kind of does fit that model for a disease.

I don't normally think of it that way, but I could see where somebody could make that case. Okay. Does that make sense? It absolutely makes sense. My best friend is a gastric bypass patient as well. So she went from obesity to alcoholism. Very common. Very, very common, right?

That's very common. Very common. But I see what she goes through when she craves alcohol. I see that. And I am the same way so i absolutely 100 feel like whatever this drug is doing with the insulin it is totally rewiring my brain well and again let's let's for anybody else out there that is interested in this it doesn't mean it's going to work for everybody that's the way treatments are treatments have to you know the right treatment for the right patient is always what's difficult

but uh it's very very interesting interesting. Jalyn, right? Jalyn. Jalyn. And keep me posted. I appreciate you coming in here and talking about it. Very, very, very interesting. We've got to keep going here. Thank you so much for that call.

And now Mel C. We're going to see what Mel C. I think I'm pronouncing that again correctly. Hi there, Dr. Drew. How are you doing? I'm good. How are you? I'm doing good. I have a quick question.

I just wanted to ask you if you think that bipolar is something that can be overcome, and then also, can you get it on later in life? Both good questions. It is a highly treatable condition, but the question you're really asking is, can it be thoroughly treated? Can you get to the point where it doesn't bother me? And the answer is, in my experience, often, often, typically. You can really get it well under control.

Can it come on later in life? Yeah, yeah. But when it comes on later in life, we start looking around for other inciting influences. For instance, a elderly male, let's say a 70-year-old male suddenly comes in with mania. That's likely to be a thalamic stroke. That's what precipitates the mania in that case. Let's say a 50-year-old female comes in. I would worry about other things.

I'd look around very hard for some other problem, you know, some hormone or who knows what. I mean, a lot of things can, you know, the psychiatric, you know, when I worked in psychiatric hospital for all those decades, one of my jobs was to do a medical evaluation on all the psychiatric patients. And it was astonishing to me when I started out how frequently medical problems precipitated the psychiatric syndrome. So I would look hard for that when people get it later in life, though you can get it later in life and people, you know, don't notice it. I also worry about substances triggering stuff like that. Absolutely. Okay. That all makes sense.

Yes. Cause I was diagnosed with it when I was 18. I got off medication around 22, you know, and then I don't have any symptoms anymore, but I'm already in my mid-30s and getting ready to have my first child. So I'm just wondering if that's something that could, you know, onset it. Well, two things, two questions. Well, one question, one point. A, was there any drug use around the time you

had the original problem yes okay so that may be the whole story it can easily be the whole story particularly around that age number one but note well that having had that pregnancy you're more likely to get mood disorders you know post pregnancy and all that so some of your doctors should be very very very aware and watching for that okay and and by the way very likely to get mood disorders, you know, post pregnancy and all that. So some of your doctors should be very, very, very aware and watching for that. Okay. And, and by the way, very likely to, if you get it to respond really well to treatment, that's the other thing. Okay.

Okay. All right. Awesome. You got it. Okay. Uh, interesting stuff. Uh, let's see, Craig here wants to come up. Let me get him up.

You guys are all asking great questions. I appreciate them all. Uh, Craig, what's going on? He's not quite there yet asking great questions. I appreciate them all. Craig, what's going on? He's not quite there yet. Oh, good, Craig, what's up? I'm surprised none of you have questions about all the stuff we've been talking about here. Yeah, Craig, what's up? Hey, Dr. Drew.

Good to talk to you. I'm going to check to see our 14-year-old son, and I know you've mentioned in the past about the HIV for teenagers, and I just wanted to get your opinion on that. How do I go about that? Is that still something? You're breaking up. You said you work where? Yeah, Craig, you're breaking up.

Oh, boy. Well, let me do the best I can. Let me do the best I can to answer. I think you're talking about the HPV vaccine for teenagers, right? And yes, absolutely. It's one of the people who are once again getting weird about that because of all the wildness around the mRNA vaccines. But you should not get weird about the HPV vaccine.

It prevents cancer, cancer of the head and neck in males and females, cancer of the anus, cancer of the penis, cancer of the cervix. There should almost be no cervical cancer anymore if you get properly vaccinated. Now, the Gardasil vaccine protects you against most of the HPV, the human papillomaviruses that cause cancer. Like Michael Douglas and people like that, we're seeing a marked increase in head and neck cancer, pharyngeal cancer, that kind of thing in men, and that's a sexually transmitted disease as well. And if you smoke and drink and you have

HPV, you will get one of these cancers, also esophageal cancers way up there as well. So it is something to, I mean, why you wouldn't get this vaccine, the risk reward is clearly in favor of taking it. They're allowing adults to get it now. They are. Like under 40 or something. Yeah, which I have advocated for for years and years and years. My friend just had it, but she got a 100-degree fever from it. Well, you can have a reaction to it.

It's better than getting cancer, right? Oh, my God. And let me just say it over and over and over again. No medical intervention is without risk, nothing. Even calling me on this show, everything has risk without its medical intervention. Nothing, I can't say that strongly enough. So to start pointing at, oh, I heard this story

and that story, yes, yes, of course you did. And we have data, we have years now of data, particularly on the HPV vaccine. And it's very, very clear. Now, if you don't want it, up to you. I'm not a mandate person, right? I'm not a mandate guy. But my goodness.

And why do they give it at the young age, right? Why do they give it at 9 to 13 or 9 to 12-year-olds? Because that's when it has maximum efficacy across the lifespan. That's when you want to get it. So it's really about doing, and you can get it anywhere. Why under 40? I'm not worried. WWM is asking why under 40. You know why? Because the original studies were done.

The drug company had to pay for the studies and go to the FDA and get the approval. Now, you could find an enlightened physician that might give it to a 50-year-old or a 60-year-old. Yeah. If you're single all of a sudden. I cannot say this strong enough. I have two... I did this show on Fox 11 here in Los Angeles. I might get it if something happened. You never know.

Right? I mean, would you? Would you get it? Where is she going with this? If I turn up dead? If I turn up dead? No, if something happened to it... And Caleb, you heard the first...

If something happened to me, I'm going to put it on the other foot. If something happened to you. Would you think about getting it if you wanted to go out and date again? Yeah, I would. I'm old enough that it would really be kind of sketchy. I'm trying to just say. I'm not saying I'm going to try to kill you off. I'm just saying I might do it if.

So, okay, I lost my complete train of thought. First thing is Susan says something like this at least once a week, so I'm getting suspicious. Second thing is... I am too, that's what I'm saying. I missed all the other ones. Are you saying that you would consider getting the vaccine later

because they didn't have this vaccine before? Like you're talking about the HPV vaccine. Correct. We never got it. Correct. And here's the way this would go, is that, hey, we didn't have the HPV vaccine. I'm going to go out and date again.

Maybe I want to protect myself against HPV, but HPV takes decades to cause cancer. I don't really have decades left. So the risk reward on the vaccine starts to change. So it may not be good for you. I almost died last night. So, you know, you almost got knocked me off driving that car home from the Lexus dealer. She is obfuscating. She's trying to make it seem like she was not talking about knocking me off. If I had gotten on the freeway, who knows what would have happened to me. We think she don't protest too much. But I completely lost my train of thought.

What was I talking about? You're not good with vaccines anyways. I know I'm not. What was I talking about, everybody? Help me, somebody. Why they give it to people under 40 this is what i wanted to say so i i was on this fox 11 show every night for a year during the dark days of covid i really enjoyed doing it was a lot of fun alex michelson and i did it

and alex two things the two things that stand out to me most, I'm going to be on their show again tonight, just as sort of a, you know, recap, welcome home. That's, you know, old, old, old friends night, uh, recap where COVID is now, but two things from that whole experience stand out most vividly. One is, and I think Caleb, I was going to get you this video because, uh, Gary Smith has it. Maybe you can ask him for it. When one of the heads of the school board here in Los Angeles came in and said he's going to close the school, I kept saying, why are you doing this? Who told you to do it? The CDC didn't say it. Fauci didn't say it. Why in the world are you doing this? And to me, that was like an appropriate thing that nobody was asking at the time. And I'm glad I did i did it's aged well and the other thing was

i got in a fight with alex merritt michelson on the air air about the fda and that's why i bring this up he kept going oh but the fda says you can't i said the fda doesn't do shit the fda does not determine the practice of medicine has zero to do with the practice of medicine there's no licensing board there's no professional board board. We have multiple layers of professional organizations that monitor us and state licensing. The FDA has nothing to do with it. The FDA determines what drug companies and manufacturing and product manufacturers bring to market, how they bring it to market, and what they bring it to market for. What we do with it is up to us. Now, we take a certain amount of legal risk when we step outside of what the FDA has approved it for, but we are categorically within

our right to use something so-called off-label that isn't on the label by the FDA. Nothing to do with medicine. They don't do anything when it comes to us and our practices. There we go. Striking back. Thank you. So let's, I got lots of calls. I got a lot of things to say. I'm going to go make sure my life insurance policies are up to date. But while we do that, let's take a quick break here about our friends.

The car was meant for you last night. And by the way, Susan. You should have driven it home. Oh, you mean you've made sure the brakes were all screwed up? Is that what you're saying? It's like the Russian mafia. We have lots of good stuff from Janusil. Susan, you want to really quick before you go to that talk about?

I'm so excited. I got some new stuff. Read the labels. This is the deep connecting serum. This is the stuff you really like, the hyaluronic acid. Hyaluronic acetylcyclic. That is Susan's favorite. I'm going to mix that with my skin cream at night.

And then the ultra retinol is the other thing that she's very hot on. I'm very excited. So these are two things we've not talked about before. Just just came in the mail i noticed you went to the dermatologist yesterday and it sort of pissed me off because i was thinking i was they burnt some little things off my face because i thought jenny so was going to put an end to all that no i didn't buy anything there i didn't i've got all the all the goods now i so excited, Caleb. All right, let's hear from J.Cell. I think we have found the holy grail of skincare. J.Cell has absolutely changed certainly my skincare regimen.

I like that vitamin C serum, the under eye creams, skin nourishing primer. Susan loves the eyelash enhancers, uses it on her eyebrows as well. J.Cell has everything to make us both feel and look amazing. Best part, the quality of the products. Using pure ingredients like antioxidants, copper peptides, and a proprietary calendula flower base, GenuCell knows how to formulate products to perfection without irritation. For Susan, she hates that annoying dry area under her nose during allergy season, like right here. She's tried everything, but no matter what, the skin is flaky and dry. Nothing seemed to help until she started using GenuCell's Silky Smooth XV Moisturizer. Soaked

right into the skin. She was hooked after one use and now loves all of their products as well. I am a snob when it comes to using products on my face. The dermatologist makes a ton of money from me. But when I was introduced to GenuCell, I was so happy because it's so affordable and it works great. I was introduced to the Ultra Retinol Cream, which I love at night. All the eye creams are amazing. People notice my skin all the time and I'm so excited because it's actually working. Right now, you can try GenuCell's most popular collection of products and see what I'm talking about for yourself. Go to GenuCell.com and enter code Drew for 10% off. That is G-E-N-U-C-E-L.com. And the code is D-R-E-W. Thank you to our friends at GenuCell. Somebody asked me on Restream here if I've heard of the

Gabby Hanna deal, and I'm reading a little bit about it and something is up there. I don't know what that is. And of course, remind you that we're not allowed to treat people we're not allowed to take them to the hospital we're not allowed to do anything when they get sick until they say i'm going to kill myself or i'm going to kill somebody else and here's how i'm going to do it otherwise we're not allowed to put get near them and which is true you're 100 works out okay i have some i'm somewhat familiar with what's going on with Gabby from the YouTube community and everything. And yeah, that's the saddest thing

is that somebody needs to step in and help her, and yet everyone is pretty much barred from her at all. You're not allowed to. And that happened to, what's her name? Amanda, Amanda Bynes. She was clearly in serious trouble, and you can see how much better she is now after treatment. But no, no, we dare not treat those illnesses.

We dare not. Those are privileged illnesses. The brain is different than the pancreas. It's not an organ. It's something else. Please, stop it. Okay, I'm bringing up. You can blast it all over Twitter.

Night Gypsy, I think your name is, if I got it right. Well, at least they'll have an eye on her so they can send somebody in when she does start talking about hurting herself. Somebody else. Night Gypsy, you're muted. So there you are. What's up? Hey. I kind of have like a dad question. Okay.

So my dad just found out two days ago he has lung cancer. He's smoked since junior high, basically. High blood pressure his whole life. So my sister lives in Texas and he doesn't want to tell her. Yeah. You're still there. I'm still there. So, um, she's, she's, uh, she's two years older than I am.

I'm almost 50. Um, she is kind of a, I don't know. We call her the Texas tornado. She's just, She's just chaos. But he's like, I don't want to tell her. She's going to want to fly down. And we just don't need to tell her right now. But I honestly, we went through this with my mother.

She died about four years ago from ovarian cancer. And she was like, I'm not going to tell Lori. She's going to come down. She just gives me so much stress. And this really hurt her feelings. And honestly, I don't want to do all this by myself again. What kind of tumors your dad have? Do we know? We don't know yet. He hasn't even scheduled an appointment with an oncologist yet um so we don't even you know what stage it is i don't even know i asked him if if they staged it because he had a ct with contrast two days ago and he he's like i don't know he didn't even tell me he was going to the hospital have ct So, but like as a dad, you, you know, you had cancer.

And so what are your thoughts about withholding this type of information? So funny you should ask. Susan's leaning up to the mic. So I did not want, I knew I had a benign cancer. I knew it would not be imminently problematic. My kids were away at school and I didn't want to worry them, so I was just delaying telling them until I had to, frankly, until the time came.

Until they finished their first year of college. Yeah, until they got out of their first year. Because we didn't want to make them stress out and not do well in school and worry. Yeah, and it was nothing to worry about, but I knew, I, as a clinician, know it, but it would be hard to convince them. It was hard to keep a secret, though.

Yeah, but they're pissed, they're pissed. They don't think I should have done that, so. Well, though yeah but uh they're pissed they're pissed they don't think i should have done that so well they're not they're fine they they understood but also you didn't you didn't tell a lot of people in the business yeah we kept it quiet because again because i knew i wasn't going to do it i didn't do anything for two years in terms of the operation stuff i knew you know i was going to wait for treatment and things like that and um it's very different we didn't let it loose to the news you know just so you know the story caleb i don't think I knew I was going to wait for treatment and things like that. And it's very different than a lung cancer. We didn't let it loose to the news. Just so you know the story.

Caleb, I don't think you know this. Somebody from some rag called me and said, we hear that you have terminal cancer and CNN is going to fire you because of the cancer diagnosis. We're going with the story. I was like, are you kidding me? So we had to tell our kids. That was probably 2000. When did i have the operation 2012 it was 2012 because kids went to college in 2011 yeah it was 2012

probably yeah and uh and and so i like right then was like give me three months to pull this together and i'll tell you you know i'm gonna have it i think i'd already had the operation then hadn't i yeah yeah it's like yeah nobody knew and then, hadn't I? Yeah. Yeah. Nobody knew. I don't know. It was just- It was so ridiculous. It was kind of a, that's a different story though, because you're a celebrity and you didn't want everybody to be all over the news, especially before we told our kids.

But he has a right to decide who he wants to tell. Well, that's the thing. He has absolute right to confidentiality and you really don't want to violate that privilege. On the other hand, it sounds like he's not making a good decision. I mean, maybe you could get, when you see the oncologist, maybe you could get, enlist the oncologist, the nursing staff there, sort of do a little show of force. People do respond to multiple people, you know, when there's multiple people showing force and showing the same opinion, it does become very persuasive to them and help him understand. And I would specifically focus on what your mom's choice did to your sister. Right. That you don't want to put her through that again.

Does he know that she's resentful and angry about that? I do believe he does, but yeah. Unfortunately, he may not be ready yet. Yeah. He may not be ready yet. Maybe give him a little time. And if you have a stage one tumor, you might have a 70%,

you know, survival rate, you know, the first five years. I mean, it may not be an imminent thing. It is bad if it gets out, right?

You're aware, right? This is not good. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I know.

Oh, I know. Yeah. So, I'm so sorry you have to go through this. I know. Well, thanks. You're also a cancer survivor?

I am. Breast cancer? Or just paying the odds? Thyroid. Thyroid cancer. Thyroid cancer. Yeah. And everything went well with that?

Everything went fabulous with it. I just swallowed a radiation pill, and they took it out, and that's that. So you had papillary carcinoma of the thyroid. Is that what you want? Do you remember your cell type? Yeah. That's the one that things go very, very well. Sometimes they don't even do that. Sometimes they just put you on thyroid hormone and watch it for a while. So that's a good one. So there are good cancers and there are bad cancers, but even the bad ones we do remarkably well with these days. Just remarkable. I mean, when I was in training, the idea of being an oncologist was just ridiculous. Like, why would you do that?

It seemed an insane decision. Now it's terribly, terribly exciting. Because you can really do something about most of them. Ryan, you're coming up here. Coming up in May. Ryan? Hey there. Hey, Ryan.

Hey, Dr. Drew. Thank you so much i started listening to you in the 90s on loveline when i was 12 and i just have so much gratitude for i hope that helped your person it was so helpful i uh got your persistent recommendation and encouragement to addicts to get help and to turn to 12-step programs, it didn't keep me away from substances. But the day that I knew that I needed help, I knew where to go. And I just have so much gratitude for the stories that you shared. Well, thank you. And it's really funny.

When I first started involved in the field, I thought I was going to be able to prevent addiction. I thought education would prevent. I learned very quickly, no, we don't know how to do that yet. We just don't know how to do addiction. I thought education would prevent. I learned very quickly, no. We don't know how to do that yet. We just don't know how to do it. But your experience of jumping in when the time came is one I really was aiming for.

So thank you for saying so. Yeah, I'm five years sober and thanks so much. Congratulations. Yeah, thanks. Good job. That's it? Well, that was it, I guess. You bet. Whoops. Oh, no, do I have something else to it well that was it i guess you bet whoops oh no you do have something

else to ask that was it nope that's it all right just gratitude man thank you ryan i appreciate that bless you you see how gratitude is a really really healthy thing yeah but you're like that's it you know well ryan ryan i know you don't want to attack me for something ryan will help ryan expressing that gratitude gratitude helps him stay sober today. And the reason it does so is because it's a healthy move. It's a very healthy thing to express gratitude and to think about gratitude and to focus on gratitude. So I think that's just a great example of what people in a healthy space will do.

Hey, Josh. Hey, Dr. Drew. How's it going? Good. What's happening? Not much. So I've been listening to you about the COVID stuff. And I, you know, I'm always thinking the psychology, but I want to think about your psychology a little bit, because the psychology at the beginning for you is kind of like the psychology you were saying, you know, let's just see and look, look for the science and all the things that the same things that you're saying now. Um, but it seems vastly different.

The time when, when we first heard about it to now, I mean, no one knew that it was going to turn in, um, to something like this. I, I, at least I did. I thought maybe, okay, would they close it down and, you know, we'll be back and hopefully maybe a month or something. I mean, maybe I was crazy to think that, but, um, I just want to see if, you know, like you have anxiety, we all have anxiety, but when you first heard about it, you know, what was, what did you, were you scared personally? No, I've never, I've never been scared of this thing.

Never. And fear did not in any, never. And when I was sick with it, as I've said repeatedly, the most, the most confusing question I got from people was, were you scared? Has a 1% fatality rate. When I tell a patient they have a 99% chance of survival, I am telling them they are going to survive. That's what that means statistically. You're not going to win the lottery. You're not going to be that 1%. It's very unusual.

So that, that just the data itself. Now I was very concerned about my patients because they're elderly. A lot of them are elderly and I do felt they needed focus protection, but fear was never something I had. And so when I saw the attempts at trying to create panic, create fear, I was acutely aware of it, and it struck me as disgusting because it was going to harm the panic never makes things better now right what what's what's different from my perspective now amongst other things is i didn't know that that was a policy so i've learned from dr mccullough that that was in a conscious policy to try to subdue people into some submitting to mitigating everything till we get to a vaccine. What do you mean by it's a policy?

Whose policy? Caleb, you guys remember what, or Susan, what Peter McCullough, he had emails from the CDC, as I recall, where they were specifically saying, this is what we're going to do, and Dr. Birx as well. And again, don't quote me on this

because I'm trying to remember what he told us, but's you can re-listen to the that particular streaming show but he was explicit that he had the actual documentation of what and and alex berenson told me that they were actually using behaviorists the advice of behaviorists on how to do that how to make it as fear-provoking as possible, which makes sense to me. So they were trying to scare us. As much as possible to try to get us to comply with an unpleasant policy until we could get a vaccine.

So again, remember I've been saying vaccine uberalis, get to the vaccine. Right. So this is what I've recently learned. I don't know it to be factually true but this is something that has been you know sort of part of what i've learned by interviewing people that have you know been silenced and maybe they're not true but it certainly seemed like if they were not trying to do it they did it and by the way the the cdc and the public health world was was not alone in this that the the part that made me upset was the press. I remember I sat on a show called Daily Blast Live

right as the thing broke out, and I just kept saying, shut up. The press has no business talking about this. Shut up. Listen to Fauci. Listen to the CDC. Everybody else, shut up. It's going to be, you're going to make things worse.

Shut up. I kept saying that. Now, because that was my original sort of position, shut up it's going to be you're going to make things worse shut up i kept saying that now right because that was my original sort of position um somebody brought up this morning that i had veins bulging and i would say i was you know and i said yeah i've got a i have a i know look i have a i have a vein and anomaly here or a lifter right yes and so i've got a abnormality as my internal jug it was really bulging back then comes across my clavicle. It was really bulging back then, though. And I accused the guy of being ableist for having the temerity to point that out.

How dairy. That's my anatomical abnormality is an ableist bastard. Anyway, the— We've had other nurses and stuff say that. I know. Now everybody's staring at your neck. We understand. When you have congestive heart failure, it's your internal jugular not your external

jugular the external jugular can can expand for lots of reasons so so where was I so talking about shit so so they increase the fear to try to get everyone to do what they wanted them to do right and but then the press the press did it because they wanted eyes they they got addicted right but how much of that is good how much of that is good and how much of that is bad because if you look at and i did yesterday i looked at the numbers um if there was no lockdown and they're you know orders of magnitude uh than there would be if there was a lockdown. Just look at Florida. Part of that fear is good.

Look at Florida versus California. Just look at one was locked down, one was not locked down. Just look at that data. That's all you got to look at. And you're saying that the fear isn't good. And Florida, by the way, Florida has a lot more old people and they still ended up exactly the same as california wide open so i understand i understand what you're saying yeah wide open and california completely locked out still under emergency policies same outcome

same outcome but if you were if you were back uh in the beginning let's say we have another pandemic i mean this is this is the hypothetical that's sort of stupid but you have another pandemic and uh you know they've got another agent coming out of god knows where africa or something like that and um everyone has to lock down again what what's gonna go on in your head what's gonna go on in general well first of all if it's a if it's a illness that doesn't affect young people i mean i'm worried about polio i am more worried about polio right now than i was about covid because covid polio kills destroys young people's lives and in terms of years of life lost it's a much you have to it's not just death it's also years of life lost much more

serious now fortunately most people are vaccinated, so it probably is not going to break out. But there are parts of this country, they only have 60% vaccine rates. In propolio, you have to get above 85% to prevent an outbreak. So I'm very, very, very concerned about that. In terms of how, so first of all, A, is it something with a 1% fatality rate or a 50 fatality rate if covid had a 50 fatality rate i would have felt very differently about it but at a one percent polio can kill you polio kills well it destroy it destroys your central nervous system not not everybody but it can do that it destroys your life it destroys your life so so anyway and it's

children and it's children that it destroys yeah it that it destroys. Yeah, it's so awful. You know, so it's a whole, I mean, like I said, look, I brought, if you want to know what's out there, I brought, I potentially bought these books. This is a textbook of infectious disease of childhood. This is just children's infectious diseases. Small print. There are small print. There are thousands of pages in this book of all the things that can happen to children. How do you compare it to AIDS, Drew?

This is the smallest book I could find on infectious diseases in adults. These things are out there all over the place all the time. They are very, very serious. I had to carry it from the mailbox. It's different than a pandemic, right, which gets distributed everywhere. And it's a pandemic with a high, high fatality rate. I was worried about AIDS at the time, because probably I was affected by the, you know, I was treating these people. And again, look at the difference. 1% fatality rate versus 100% fatality rate. AIDS had a 100% fatality rate, and it was reaching

pandemic proportions, and it was looking like it was going to break into the general community because we had that in Africa. 100% fatality versus 1%. Or if you want to say 15% in the elderly, whatever number you want to use,

that is a massive difference between 100% and 15%. And there was a lot of fear during the AIDS thing, because I was young then, and you were on Loveline, and I was listening, and I was terrified of sex. I was so scared of sex, you know, when I was growing up. I hadn't had sex yet. I hadn't had sex yet. So I was thinking, this is what happens when you have sex. Already there's anxiety. Then there's just like, forget it. Yeah. So in terms of the re-examination of that, I would argue we use too much fear.

And it was Dr. Fauci again then. He was beating on us back then. He was great. He was a great leader back then. It's why I've admired him my entire career. It's why when this particular one started, I kept saying, listen to Fauci. He's been saying, by the way, lately, he didn't ask to have anything locked down or schools closed.

He did not. He never said that. So somebody like Fauci, again, needs to come in and go, hey, this is very serious, but here's what I want you to do. Not run to the other side of the boat the way the states did all of a sudden. The states, the school boards, they closed everything down. Not the CDC. Like I said, some states are completely closed down.

Some states are completely open. That's insanity. That's insanity. And so listen to the reasoned voices. Like the tweet I put out, a tweet from something I pointed out in February of 2020 came out this morning. No, I'll read it because i thought it was uh appropriate i oh shoot where am i uh here is so if you want someone to listen to you scare the hell out of it basically no no what you do so so because we were during the aids

epidemic we realized there was too much fear going on and we and us in a black in a white coat in a box educating people we thought we could educate people to change their behavior turns out that didn't work what worked was creating a relatable source somebody who had aids that could tell their story somebody somebody younger people could relate to magic johnson right let them tell their story how it happened what's been happening to them. Young people zoom right into that, use a little humor, use some music, somebody like me to sort of explicate alongside of it. We called this Loveline. That's where Loveline came from. And that's how you change behavior, it turns out.

It's why Teen Mom— Hang on, don't interrupt me, Josh. Sorry. It's why Teen Mom worked. It's why I jumped at that show, because I knew that would lower teen pregnancy. It did. There've been two academic studies now that showed that it clearly did. Josh, sorry, go ahead. No, sorry. I was just going to say, I mean,

but we had to mobilize so many people to stop, but there's the NCAA basketball tournament. So that's where my mind goes with this. They canceled that tournament, you know, the April, the March madness, right? basketball tournament so that's where my mind goes with this they canceled that tournament uh you know the april the march madness right yeah so this was going to go on in every city in the country packed you know stadiums and they completely closed that down i was pissed okay i didn't want them to shut i get it why is why is susan laughing by the way because it's true okay okay yeah no i was pissed I was pissed off.

Yeah, I got you. So for me, you know, and a lot of people, you know, the poor college students, that's their whole, you know, college existence. And they're not able to do what they want to do. And I was upset. So the thing with me is, if you had to mobilize people, how are you going to get these two surfer dudes to mobilize the whole country? You know, the guys who are like, you know,

whatever those guys, yeah. How is Chad and JT going to shut down the NCAA tournament with their, with their, you know what I'm saying? Yeah. So someone had to shut it down. So,

so I think, well, so Chad and JT, he's what Josh referring to is this, this couple of guys that we've had on the show before who did some really clever health messaging that really was effective. It made you really think. It softened people's resistance to things like masks at the time. And it made people think about it.

In terms of shutting down, yeah, I have no problem with large group gatherings being shut down for a while. I know this particular one upset you. I wouldn't have been mad about that. The hospitals would have been overwhelmed. my god i maybe i don't know i guess yeah now teenagers playing basketball they're gonna be fine they'll get over it in five days well who knows i the point is i would have been fine locking you know preventing large gatherings has been a policy of the cdc for a long time when they opened it up again though nobody got sick.

Right. That should tell you something, right? You know, I didn't like the lockdown. So I just want to be clear. I mean, Susan was laughing, but I didn't like it. I really didn't like it. She's laughing at your passion for the basketball. You really sounded passionate. It just made me laugh. And so look, I appreciate the comment and I appreciate the questioning. And so let me just sort of finish my thoughts about how I was then. I made errors and I was too hubristic. Those are two lessons I learned. A is to always be circumspect about medical things. Just don't be too certain about anything. Don't say always or never in medicine. It's just something we're

trained to not do and I should adhere to that. But I was so upset by the panic porn, the panic induction. It was just so upsetting to me, and I knew it would have terrible adverse effects on everybody, and it just got me. And there was no reason for it, and it was the opposite. Imagine if Winston Churchill, during the bombing of London, just every night went, no hope, no hope, shelter in place, no hope, mass deaths. That is not leadership. That is the opposite of leadership. That's not how people get through difficult things. And really focused, clever, properly managed messaging, that's the way you do it. And I just was so upset. As I said before, history's not going to look kindly at this. Yeah, true. We're looking back like, oh, shit. Caleb, what's that?

Yeah, no, I think that another good point here is, like you were talking about polio a second ago. Well, because of the enormous overreaction that was made over COVID, people are now looking at that and thinking, what else is the government overreacting about? And people are not getting their polio vaccines. Like stuff that's already been proven for decades, they're not thinking it's safe

because they're getting these questions. Well, there's a lot of more vaccine resistance. There's more vaccine resistance generally, and now people are blaming the Naomi Wolfs of the world for inflaming that. I don't believe it. I, like you, Caleb, believe that not pulling the curtain back is how you get resistance,

not putting it all out there for people's... Yeah, you've been in that camp. You understand what that is. Yeah, it's a serious thing. So, yeah, so it was, gosh, I'm getting upset about stuff, and so I'm having trouble following my train of thought a little bit on some of these issues. We should get that.

All right, let me just get some collars up here. Change the subject. Thank you, Josh. Yeah, thanks, Josh. Appreciate it. Oh, so my hubristicness and being more humble in my approach to things. But I know I was going to say, which was that people who had just learned to pronounce things like hydroxychloroquine the day before, the next day had massive opinions about something they'd never heard of, they'd never used, they have no clinical experience with, they don't know what they're talking about.

That was not just deeply disturbing, but insulting to me. Okay. Let's have Elle come up here. She's been asking for a while. Elle, what's going on? Hi. I'm calling from, I'm listening from London. Well, England.

I recently got out of a cult and I was wondering if you could give me any ideas of what types of therapy would be beneficial. Gosh, we have, Susan, does our friend have access to resources? John, isn't his name right? We have a guy that does cult support, reprogramming. It's very confusing. I know how that gets. You really are. Laurie Williams.

Laurie Williams, yeah, her cousin. Hoyt. Hoyt Richards. Hoyt Richards. There's a guy. Hoyt Richards. Hoyt Richards. There's a guy named Hoyt Richards. Let's look him up online and see if he has any online resources that does a lot of, Hoyt, is it Richards? Yeah.

Hoyt. Okay. Sorry that I'm taking the time to do this, but I think it's important. H-O-Y-T. There he is. He's got a lot of stuff here he's got a he has a uh instagram at hoyt r-i-c-h so it's h-o-y-t r-i-c-h maybe you could dm him there he's very keen on helping people uh post get out of colts and survive just froze your phone froze yeah i going to see if I was self.

Well, I think DM on yeah, oh, you're going to ask him, I was going to say. Okay, so we're going to ask him how best to get in touch with him, but he'd be a great sort of resource for you, Elle. Is that okay? Yeah, that's perfect. We know there's a lot of shame and guilt and confusion and there's a lot of stuff that goes on in those

first even couple of years after you get out. What kind of cult was it? I'm sure people will be curious. I was raised Jehovah's Witness. So it's extra difficult because you leave behind huge communities and family and just, oh, my God, it's so difficult. So you need support.

I mean, the main thing, let me just sort of say the main thing is support. You need people close to you. People can relate to you. People can attune to you and get help. Literally, I feel like I'm pushing you, holding you up as you go through this process because it's extremely difficult. It's literally like starting your life over again. That's a tough one. Cara or Sarah? Sarah, I guess it is.

Sarah, I think that is Sarah. Oh, I'm sorry. Um, my, my audio cut out for a second while I was connecting. Not a problem. This is so cool. It's just like, um, transporting back to, you know, my 20s when I used to watch you on MTV. Crazy. It is. I mean, what are we, like in 2002 or what? Thank you for allowing me to speak. I don't want to necessarily revert back, but you were talking with the other gentleman who kept interrupting you about the pandemic. But you did, and I'm saying this respectfully, you did have to walk back some

of your comments that you made. Today, I wouldn't necessarily walk back those comments. However, back then, tensions were so high and it was so politicized that you had to. Well, let me just also say there were threats being made on family members and super crazy stuff. And here's the deal. I have no problem looking at that and going, yeah, I got some stuff wrong. Like everybody did. It was impossible to get it all right. And it's interesting, this tweet I was trying to bring up from this morning, somebody brought up a tweet from January, February 2020, where I said, look, this thing is generally going to be mild for most people, which was not accurate. It's going to be mild to moderate for most people.

So I said, very mild. That was a mistake. Mild to moderate for most people. And don't panic. Don't let them panic you. And let's just take care of this the way we always do. Let the medical system operate. That tweet aged pretty well. That was from February of 2020. And that was my position. Now, I got a little hubristic because I was fighting this panic, this disgusting panic porn. And so I overstated my position and got some stuff wrong as a result. But my general position was exactly what that tweet was.

Listen to the CDC. Listen to Fauci. I said at the end of every statement I made at that point, I said, let Dr. Fauci be your North Star. Now, of course, all the things that got, you know, sort of circulated about me and were sort of viral, they lived that part out because Fauci was their guy, particularly at that time, and he was my guy too.

And, you know, things went a little sideways for everybody. But I have no problem apologizing for the part I got wrong. There it is. It will spread. It will be very mild in the vast majority. Stop the panic. Respond systematically as we know how to wrong. There it is. It will spread. It will be very mild in the vast majority. Stop the panic. Respond systematically as we know how to do.

There it was. That's what I said. And that was somehow sacrilege. Do you regret walking it back now because it was accurate? I don't. And I know that you had to. No, I had to because of safety issues, but I did get some things wrong. I did.

And I don't mind calling that out where I get stuff wrong. It's not humiliating to me. It's like, that's how I learn. I get some stuff wrong. The mistake was being so, again, certain, you know, hubristic and, you know, that was wrong. I shouldn't have done that. That was a mistake too. But it's this weird, I don't think I would apologize today,

mostly because I've learned that this apology world has become a problem, that people are demanding apologies that sort of don't deserve apologies and they don't need apologies and people get stuff wrong, not because they lied, not because they want to hurt you, just they got something wrong and that doesn't require an an apology so i'm not sure i would apologize today not because i wouldn't be willing to acknowledge what i got wrong but i just think this apology tours that people go on well now everybody's apologizing in the old day nobody apologized i think that's getting to be a problem in itself you started it true yeah no i again, I don't mind saying I'm maybe,

maybe before I do it today, it's, it's Sarah. Sarah, is that it? Sarah? It's Sarah. Sarah. The problem though, that I, that I'm seeing is that if we do have, and we will, we will have another pandemic of some kind, probably in our lifetimes, when this happens again, because... Uh-oh. Oh, shoot. That's my phone. Sorry. Hold on. Hold on. My mistake. Finish that thought. And politicized. And it did become a political issue. It still is. Do you believe that in the next pandemic that it'll be the same or will people be so exhausted that it'll be as though because I'm exhausted and I think everybody else, I don't know if I could do another lockdown. So how do you think it would go again? Would you be more vocal and not walk back? It's yeah, I feel.

I was disappointed that you walked back. Yeah, okay. I know that you had to. I wish you wouldn't have. I accept that. In my opinion. I get it. But I know you had to.

Well, I had to. Because of the climate. I had to, you know, there was a lot that went into that. I didn't have to, I suppose. But I wanted to set it straight. You know, people are saying, got something wrong okay i got something wrong but but i did not know what these apology tours would become the apology unfortunately is making the mob worse it's making them more bloodthirsty and the bloodthirstiness that we are seeing is what's concerning me more

than anything else so on one hand there's the bloodthirstiness of mobs, which is a very dangerous thing. Read any anthropology you want to on the topic, whether it's Le Bon or whoever, or talk about the Belgian doctor who talks about the mass formation psychosis. It's all the same phenomenon. Feeding it rather than containing it makes it worse. It has to be hit. It has to be stopped. And apologies feeded. I agree with you on that. I don't have any principled objection to apologies, but the way it's going now, I agree with you that it needs to be sort of pushed back rather than fed. Now, in terms of locking down and whatnot, yeah, before we get to the next pandemic, my deepest wish is that we have legislation that puts limits on public health authority.

They can't have so much authority that they can do things just because they want to. There's got to be some sort of procedural justification or somebody that can address and talk about it and decide what the right things to do. Not just one person or a couple people just making every decision by fiat. That's insane. And that is in our constitution. And I did not know that. And that needs to be contained.

That's how we got into this trouble. So if there were going to be something like a lockdown, we would have to first have people step forward and go, well, we've learned that lockdowns don't work with respiratory viruses. They don't. California and Florida have the same outcome. It didn't work. And that's something we should be discussing before anybody talks about another lockdown. Why we would lock things down again would have to be, somebody said something to me. Communism. Clifton Duncan said to me on tuesday he said you know we

were we were asked to give up everything that made life worthwhile and i thought boy that is a profound and accurate statement and before we give up everything that makes life meaningful again they have to convince us why and what the data is and why they would do something with absolutely zero science behind it. Six feet distancing, zero science. Lockdown, zero science. All these things were not, you will not find any of those terms in this textbook I'm holding up on infectious diseases. It's not something that existed and it didn't work. And I understand everybody was in a panic and everybody was trying to figure things out. They made mistakes. Let's

learn from them. Sarah, is that it? Yes. Thank you. I just want to say one more comment and thank you and then be done. But thank you so much for being such an iconic part of um gen x and um i can tell you that my my kids have recently discovered you and podcasts and youtube and um and my millennial children who have asked me have you ever heard of dr true yes so so they they are over at your mom's house which is which is a very different world i don't want you to know what yeah you're not supposed to know about that but but but but it is a it is an attempt to incarnate the the needs that loveline met back then to incarnate it now to reincarnate it in something that's helpful now that's the sort of goal of that so i think i think we're getting well yes yeah it was so taboo when we were when

i was growing up very different and it's very different yeah it's very different now they got access to everything and they're still confused they're still confused exactly exactly yeah so thank you very much you bet thanks for the call i really. So thank you very much. You bet. Thanks for the call. I really enjoyed this. Thank you. There's a lot more poop humor now, though. You know what that is, Susan? That's just because there's so many males over there at your mom's house. Oh, I know. It's always been here.

You just didn't know. All our friends over at YouTube can probably raise their hand right now. Okay. So a lot of questions here. A lot of people with their hands up. My goodness. I'm so sorry. I realize the Facebook is mostly women.

Oh, my goodness. What's the matter? We've never had so many hands up before, and I don't know what to do about it. So let me bring Leopold in. We can go a little longer. I will go longer, but I'm going to try to get to some of you guys. Leopold, what's happening, my friend? Let's get him up here.

Leopold, you're muted. You know better. Hey, Dr. Drew. Hey, buddy. What's happening? What's going on. Hey, Dr. Drew. Hey, buddy. What's happening? Hey, I know. What's going on? Hey, man. So, got a question regarding long COVID.

Now, this is, you know, you and I had COVID around the same time we had the horrible Delta variant. Yep. And I think we both suffered long COVID and different symptoms. Yep. One of the things I had was just incredible pain in all my joints, I remember. And one of the marker or two of the markers that I had tested were the CRP, the C-reactive protein and the sedimentation rate by the white blood cells or red blood cells. So how high was your sed rate, do you know?

I know that it was percentage-wise, because I don't remember the number, but it was something like maybe 50% higher than what the normal range was. Okay, so it was like 20 or 25, something like that. Right, right. And then the CRP was way much, it was like, I think normal was somewhere around 10, and I was like 80 or something. So CRP I think of as a surrogate marker for endothelial inflammation, lining of the artery inflammation. And we know that for sure COVID does that, for sure. So it doesn't surprise me that you had that. The fact that you had joint symptoms,

was it small joints, large joints, all joints, symmetrical joints? It was all joints. Symmetrically or would it fly around? It was everywhere at all times. So it was ankles, knees, elbows. Did they swell or get hot?

They weren't hot, but they definitely were. My knees looked like grapefruits and the whole thing. This is where my question's going, though. I went through a radical shift in my dietary habits. I think I alluded to that a couple of months ago. I've kept with it, which is, you know, going all plant-based. And what's interesting is all those numbers went down. All the CRP went down.

The sedimentation rate went down. So, but here's the issue. The joint pain is starting to come back. And I'm curious if the only thing that i changed was my dietary habits and i've been i've been you know really rigorous and really steadfast with keeping it plant-based if that's the only thing that's changed is it possible and again this is you know you know this uh if you put on your virology hat here, is it possible that there's some legacy virus somewhere that got tampered down perhaps? You know, and I'm talking long COVID again. And for it to kind of rear its ugly head again.

So that's kind of my question. Yes, I mean, you're asking something sort of impossible. Have you talked to Dr. Yeo or any of his group about this? You know, I put in a couple of emails from a while back, but, you know, I know he's overwhelmed with a lot of things. So there is definitely these cytokine markers that are elevated. So there's some sort of inflammatory activation. It definitely has something to do with the relationship

between the platelets and the lining of the arteries, and there's some sort of, you know, there's different cytokines that have been implicated. That group was looking in the central nervous system, and they found VEGF activation, and they found classical monocytes had spike proteins left behind, and those cells were not dying the way they should, and they were being left behind and doing something. So to your question, could something

be reactivated, those, and I think they were non-classical monocytes, if I remember right, that were sort of persisting and should have been dying, might be doing something. And whatever that mechanism is of spike protein interfering the normal life cycle of a cell, maybe leaving behind more inflammatory cells or activating inflammatory cells. This is very hand-waving stuff, right? Sure, sure, of course. And your question is, could it somehow be something in the genome that's activated, some viral particle ready to be activated?

Yeah, of course it could. We just don't have evidence of that yet okay and and my bigger fear is this is sort of even weirder is that it activated rheumatic disease somehow in you now now yes now the fact that you i really believe insulin is a part of this story you and i've kind of talked about that before that yes the inflammatory endothelial inflammation is affected by insulin metabolism and hyperinsulinemia and insulin resistant. So when you first told me you did this, I thought, I bet it's insulin. I bet that's the story. So maybe try smaller frequent meals, really low on the carbs or somehow where

you can kind of see if you can regulate insulin even more by flattening out the – Okay. And see if that makes any difference. Okay? Yeah, and that would make a lot of sense. You know, I don't know if you recall, but the COVID actually activated diabetes. I know. I remember.

Yeah, I went up to like 11.1 in my A1C and I was urinating sugar. Crazy. Yeah, no. And I was prior to that, I was like 5.8 or so with my A1C. So it went from 5.8 to 11. Something going on there. Something going on. Yeah.

Yeah, so interesting. I'm glad you're better. You're all well though, right? Yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. No, no. Things are better but the thing that's concerning me is i was viewing this whole plant-based as kind of a panacea

a cure-all for you know all my ills let me just say nothing is a cure-all forever but here's something i want to say i was being hopeful here's something i want to say well you've done something very good it's not it's not that you haven't done something worthwhile you've done something very worthwhile but but here's something that i to say. Well, you've done something very good. It's not that you haven't done something worthwhile. You've done something very worthwhile. But here's something that I'm glad you brought this up. I am sick and tired of people panicking about long COVID. And here's another. This is another panic porn that I'm upset about, which is that people are like, don't you know there's organ damage and there's long COVID?

And you're saying this thing's endemic and you're just going to say people are going to get sick and get organ damage and get long COVID. Yeah, unfortunately, I don't wish it on anybody. I don't want it to be this way, but the way it is. But behind that panic is a complete and utter lack of confidence in the human's body ability to heal. The body heals. You injure it, it heals. And it heals from COVID just like every other injury. Nobody points that out. Here's Leopold who had severe COVID and severe long COVID, and he healed. He helped himself heal. There are things you can do to help yourself, but the body heals.

Unless you kill it. Now, we can get to a chronic illness state. There is such a thing that seems not really to happen. People eventually heal from this thing. So all this, oh my God, how can we accept that? Behind that is a complete lack of acknowledgement of how a human body is able to heal itself. And I'm sort of tired of it. I'm

really tired of it. Bodies heal. They get better. Now, if they don't die and they don't get chronically ill and that kind of thing. And we as doctors, we suppress bacterial growth so the body can attack the bacteria and clear it out on its own. And I don't know where we've lost track of the fact that bodies heal. They do. And we're so used to treating everything that people aren't sort of, they've forgotten about or have no faith in a human body ability to heal. So I want to point that out

and point it out in strong terms. Yes, Leopold? Absolutely. No, I was waiting for Susan or Caleb to hit. Yeah, where's the strikes back, Susan? What are you doing? I was waiting for Susan to do a strikes back. Yeah. Where's the strikes back?

Susan, what are you doing? You're still talking. She's talking to, there it is. She's talking to Hoyt Richards. I love it. Okay. Right? You're talking to him.

He's so handsome. Yeah. There it is. See, she's talking to Hoyt. No, I'm not. I'm ordering dinner. Caleb, Caleb, did you, that was another piece of evidence I want you to push aside when I show up dead somewhere. Just make sure you caught that.

I'm saving a list. I'm going with the guy who came from the cult. He is really cute, though. Put that on a loop. He is really cute. No, I'm ordering your dinner. What kind of hamburger do you want? Don't eat it, Drew.

Yeah, just easy. Easy. Why? Oh, she's going to be the thing? Oh, you're right. Again, you've got all the evidence here. Just lay it all out okay here's what here's what i'm gonna do let me uh look uh carolyn points out that there's long

covid from vaccine as well absolutely true some of the more serious the worst some of the worst long covid i've seen has been from the vaccine absolutely true uh let me go back through the restream to uh ghost bus oh susan when is your next uh psychic show coming people are asking they want to call it the ghost buster show how's pharma company make money calling out with susan pinsky uh yes thank you uh tom cigars for pointing out that we have and tom cigars has been very instrumental in me uh changing my towards trolls. He's just very dismissive. Don't even interact with them. It feeds them. It feeds them.

I believe him. Give me a second to look through some of this stuff. Okay. And then over at the Rumble Rants, you guys, I'll see what you guys are up to. If you don't mind, see if there are any questions there that I can address quickly. They love sugar over there, a red rumble. Sally Method says, only the vaccine will keep you alive and you get a free donut.

I don't know what that means, but okay. And she's calling people. And whoever's salty is calling people racist. That's the silly group. All right. It used to be Twitch. So here's the deal. Let's look at what we have coming up next week.

We have Dr. Robert Malone coming next week on Wednesday at 3 o'clock with Dr. Victory back again. What time do you have to leave, Drew? Today? Yeah. I got to leave about 5.30 at the latest, maybe 5.20. He's going to be on Fox News tonight, if anybody else. Fox LA News. Fox LA, yeah, not Fox News.

What is it called? Fox 11. Fox 11. Fox 11, which is here locally. But you can also watch it on Facebook. I think they live stream it, or foxla.com slash live or something. I don't see anybody hooked up for Tuesday or Thursday. We might be taking calls.

Our booker has COVID. Here's the deal. A lot of you have your hands up. I see you. I appreciate that the hands are up. Can you meet me next Tuesday at 3 o'clock? I'll try to work my way. I will recognize some of these names and pictures again next week. I'm pretty good about that.

I will try to get you first thing Tuesday at 3 o'clock. We'll do more question and answer. And I suspect we'll do the same thing on Thursday as well next week. And I also suspect that we will have a lot to talk about with the group, answering questions after we've talked to Robert Malone. I suspect he has some provocative stuff to say. On Thursday. It's on Wednesday is Malone, Thursday back to calls again, I suspect. And I enjoy doing these calls programs. I appreciate you all being here for them and I appreciate the great questions

and the great feedback. And we will see you again. Check out geniusl.com.drdrew. Yes, so we can keep doing these things. And thank you all for being here. We'll see you on Tuesday at three o'clock. Get your act. Ask Dr. Drew is produced by Caleb Nation and Susan Pinsky. As a reminder, the discussions

here are not a substitute for medical care, diagnosis, or treatment. This show is intended for educational and informational purposes only. I am a licensed physician, but I am not a replacement for your personal doctor, and I am not practicing medicine here. Always remember that our understanding of medicine and science is constantly evolving. Though my opinion is based on the information that is available to me today, some of the contents of this show could be outdated in the future. Be sure to check with trusted resources in case any of the information has been updated since this was published. If you or someone you know is in immediate danger, don't call me, call 911. If you're feeling hopeless

or suicidal, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-8255. You can find more of my recommended organizations and helpful resources at drdrew.com slash help.