Ask Dr. Drew - How Getting Sober Can Change Your Life: Ed Latimore on Stoic Self-Improvement – Ask Dr. Drew – Episode 106

Episode Date: August 5, 2022

[Broadcast on 7/21/22] • Getting sober can dramatically change your life. Ed Latimore grew up in Pittsburgh housing projects and struggled with alcohol addiction. He got sober in 2013, and now he's a bestselling author, competitive chess player, former pro heavyweight boxer, veteran, and successful speaker with a bachelor's degree in Physics. Ed’s writing focuses on self-development, realizing your potential, and sobriety — all of which he approaches from his personal experience with overcoming poverty and addiction. Learn more about Ed at https://EdLatimore.com and follow him at https://twitter.com/EdLatimore. Ask Dr. Drew is produced by Kaleb Nation (https://kalebnation.com) and Susan Pinsky (http://twitter.com/firstladyoflove). This show is for entertainment and/or informational purposes only, and is not a substitute for medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. 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/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey, welcome everybody. Today we have Ed Latimore coming in here. He has overcome quite a bit in his life. I am naturally drawn to people that have rich life experiences and can help other people who might be trying to find a path out. Ed, in addition to having gotten sober in 2013, is a former pro heavyweight boxer. He's a veteran and has a degree in physics. Just for nothing as they say in Staten Island. So I'll be interested to talk to him. We will take your calls as well. And remember if you raise your hand at Twitter Spaces

to come on up and ask your question you are agreeing to stream out on Facebook, Twitter, Twitch, YouTube. And I just learned from Caleb maybe three international platforms I didn't even know about. So it's sort of a broadcast of sorts. So we appreciate you all being here. And of course, I'm on Restream and we're over with the Rumble Ranters as well, seeing what they have to say.

And yeah, we'll get this thing going with it. Lattimore, just a second. 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. 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 help stopping, I can help. I got a lot to say. I got a lot more to say. BetMGM, authorized gaming partner of the NBA, has your back all season long. From tip-off to the final buzzer, We'll be right back. 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. Hey everybody, welcome on this important day. This is the 31st anniversary of Susan and Drew.

721, 22. And I was thinking about that, yeah, 720, but look at that good picture. And it was a ridge. That was last Sunday when we celebrated our anniversary dinner at Quality Italian. Oh, interesting. That's where that was. That's why I took it. Interesting.

Because we're not going out tonight. Right, we're staying home tonight and we have to travel a bit, so we'll be around. But I was thinking about how our kids were born on 11-11-11, 11-11-92. And then I thought, wow, we were married in 7-21, a lot of sevens. And I wait 721 91 is that a is that a fact is that a factor of seven i don't know so 70 yeah it is so it's like it's all divisible by seven their stuff is all around 11 and our stuff is and seven's my lucky number when you're playing craps it tends to be i don't know why you bet against it no It's now my lucky number. It was 22 for a while, then it was 33, and now it's 7. Interesting.

Well, it changes as you get older. You've got to also keep in mind whose birthday it is today. Well, that's where I was going next. I'm going for somebody else's lucky number. Look at that. Camden's first birthday is today. It's easy for us to remember now. Look, that's the happiest baby on earth, I believe. Wouldn't we say so?

You're talking about those numbers, Drew. So Camden's birthday is 7-21-21. Well, what's 21? That's three sevens. So you take 7-21-21. No, I know. Seven sevens. So he's our little seven baby. Yeah. He's with us. We're 7-21-91, and it's also, you know, that's. I don't know. Well, whatever. 14 sevens. You guys, I know, you're being silly.

And by the way, whenever we've, you know, Susan goes in for this stuff, as you know, and so whenever we've hit numerologists, they always go, oh, my God, oh, my God, the numbers. Your life oh the numbers oh your life is just based on our birthdays before they ever hear all this stuff so happy birthday camden happy anniversary drew thank you for putting up with me for 31 years and look we were like that about 30 years ago we had three of those at the same time my first birthday and so you know it happens it's it was a it was a good run you know what i mean we've had a good run we're not dying and we're not divorcing what do you what do you mean no but it's funny because we've had a good run sorry

peace out everybody intro to the show he says says, relationship expert. It goes across the banner. And I said, aren't you glad that we're still together? Like, it looks a lot better. Well, you almost can't be a relationship expert unless you've had three divorces. It seems like that's a requisite except for our situation, which I always thought was just ridiculous. Listen, we survived triplets. And as we discussed with the attorney yesterday, often no training in shitty relationships, and people call themselves relationship experts. So, okay.

No, I know. I remember when you used to, you would have relationship experts on Loveline back in the day and everything, and I was like, well, what makes them a relationship expert? And let's be clear, human relationships are exceedingly complicated.

I don't know if anybody really is a relationship expert. You know what I mean? No, there are. Unless you've been together 31 years. I don't know if anybody really is a relationship expert. You know what I mean? No, there are. Unless you've been together 31 years. I'm giving you credit. You know who does a good job with it? Nobody could be an expert. Well, no.

It requires a really serious level of training. And the emotionally focused therapists, in my experience, make good relationship therapists. Okay. They're very good at doing that. So maybe I'll get one on here. Yeah, we'll get one of my we'll get um yeah we'll get one of my friends on here to talk about this because it's an interesting topic it is yeah well so from the peanut gallery thank you for all of your uh congratulations on the restream

susan is pushing to have more caller show only let me know on the restream not only but you guys seem to really like no i'm not saying do hearing your peers and asking questions i think it's a it's call only shows right which only callers yeah um we love our guests obviously but um i just think that it they we've had such great callers ask such great questions and we kind of go in whatever direction a lot of covid you know i don't want to do it too much because then it's just covid nation but um but i think that everybody who's on twitter right now if you have anything you want to talk about you know go ahead and just offer your name your you know make a request because we want to talk about what you want to

talk about because i think that really is is a good format for this show. Right. So we'll maybe look more towards that direction. I'm trying to make it sound professional. I've got a bunch of other guests. I'm not dissing my guests. I like our guests. No, I'm interested in talking to my guests today.

And there are a few other people I want to get in here. So I get interested in people and their story, and I want to tell it. And so let's let today be no exception. Ed Latimore, as I said, was a former boxer, a veteran of physics, has a physics degree and has recovered from addiction. He has a TED talk. Please welcome Ed Latimore. Hey, what's going on, man? How are you, sir? So we, we, we tried to figure, we tried to retrace our steps because i remember i i retweeted or commented or something you said long time ago and i've been following you from a distance but i read

your stuff and i like it and then all of a sudden you reached out on dm and i'm like yeah well for sure i'll talk to you let's do it and here we are yeah i have no idea how anything how we connected at all but happy to be here man how anything happens so tell your story i don't want you to necessarily uh you know sort of undermine your ted talk but i i'm interested in just your your broad strokes where you come from how physics got involved with this you know there's a lot of turns in your story i'm like how did that happen so give it give us the broad strokes to start with i give you the broad strokes and and really the the abridged version and then i'm sure there'll be things we can pick up absolutely uh on the way through so so my the first part of my life, I was born into the typical at-risk environment, single mom, living in public housing, on and off public assistance, all those things.

And that environment tends to swallow you up. But I think one of the reasons why I didn't get sucked up into it, you know, part of it is, is luck in nature, kind of how you're designed and, and the parent you get. And, and my mom did a lot of things wrong, but I think, you know, one of the things she did extremely well is, is I always mostly felt loved at home. You know, I never, I never wanted to be part of that life. It never looked appealing to me. So I ended up playing a lot of video games to stay in the house to keep myself occupied until I turned 14. Then I ended up going to a school way across town in a completely different socioeconomic bracket. And that exposed me to a lot of different stuff. It's a small deviation in my life at the beginning of that time, but then it ends up you know causing a really big difference and how things turn out for me and so you know there's like the the kind of gray areas from like nothing

really interesting happens from 14 to 22. uh but then I start boxing at 22 I started at the ripe old age of 22 that's like ancient but but I just needed something to do because i wasn't doing anything and someone called me out on that changed my life completely and so i ended up walking into a boxing gym at 22 as an amateur i just i just kept i put my head down i said i you know however this turns out is however it's going to turn out. I'm going to go as far as I can. And my amateur career ended up being pretty spectacular. I did pretty much everything you can do except go to the Olympics. I won a state title, a national title, got a ranking, all that good stuff.

And then, you know, turned pro. But at this point in my life, I like yo this is i turned pro at all oh 2013 so how old was that 28 i think uh i turned pro but i knew that you know boxing could be taken from me one day one way or the other and i had no skills so i was like oh what's the fastest way to get some skills and level up my life i gotta go to school. And so I joined the army to get money for school and served in the guard. And so at this point in my life, I'm serving in the military, fighting professionally and in school

all at the same time. And fortunately, by this point, I had stopped drinking. And I stopped drinking because of other parts of my life. But alcohol had really held me back for a long time, I think, because a lot of this stuff, people see the story and they follow me on social media and read my stuff. And then they often forget. It wasn't really much to the story before 28. Booze kept getting in the way of any type of real progress.

And when I was finally able to put that down that's when things really clicked um that's when my fighting really took off school took off my relationship uh has has held wonderfully well you know 10 years now and expecting a kid and so like this is all like congratulations good thing thank you. It won't be triplets, but I still love you. You get there. Yeah, don't wish for that. Yeah, careful what you wish for. Yeah, that's crazy. But that's the TLDR, and I'm sure we'll touch on some other stuff along the way,

but that's the broad stroke of the story from from life and and did you get did you get get control of the alcohol just sort of white knuckling or did you actually go into the program of recovery of some type or treatment of any type so so i didn't so so when i um decided to get sober and like when i when I say decided, I mean, I was able to stick to it because I think a lot of people who, I mean, in fact, the numbers are out there. A lot of people who eventually quit, they have quite a, um, they, they, they take a lot of time, a lot of tries. It's, it's not a first try thing for a lot of us. And so when I finally was able to like, really ring this thing in, I didn't go to any program i tried

going to aa right i went to an aa meeting and and in my arrogance at the beginning of my sobriety i actually said yo as i'm listening to people go around share their story i'm like i'm not like these people i don't need a i said that to myself i went back four years later to a meeting because somebody wanted to see me get my chip. And I'm talking, I was like, and I said to him, I was like, yo, you know, when I first came, I had this kind of arrogance. Like, oh, I'm not this bad. And now I'm like, yo, I'm just like, yo, I'm like, I probably was worse because I was in denial. But what I ended up doing is is outside a I was so busy I have that and I and I I wanted to really make some of my life so it was hard to it was hard to do both and I had committed to I initially told

myself you know you got to trick yourself I said look we'll do this for like a year and see how it goes right and and by like six months and I was like why would i ever go back like i just i was just i was a much better person yeah it starts becoming its own reward and i'm sure now when you go back and you hear how the people that have sustained sobriety talk it'll all sound very familiar to you because people sort of sometimes will naturally apply the same kinds of concepts to their own life that people are needing a structure and direction to do in the program and and when you talk to this idea of making something of your life i'm interested in that because i don't know if it seems to you but it seems to me like young people today don't often have that kind of drive they

sort of feel like the system is broken or lined up against them or there's a lot of resentment and they'd rather stick in their resentments or act them out have you have you found that to be true how do you try to reach young people when they are in that space um and you know what do you recommend to them so so one of the reasons why i i think that way why i'm like oh you know my life was a mess and now it's and now it's not but one of the reasons why i think that way is you know when you grow up in the kind of environment that i grew up in you you never get a chance to entertain fantasy and and really just things that don't represent reality. I never got a chance to really, I mean, you grow up fast. And part of what that does is you pay a price for believing something

that is false. So all of my, I tell people all the time. I don't have beliefs. I just look at data and I try to make the best decision and For me I was like Ari at that point my life I said look I don't have any I'm working at I was working at T-Mobile selling phones for like nine dollars an hour with commission but non dollar an hour and And I was drinking heavily and and I putting relationships at risk. And I said, one day I looked in the mirror and I was like, yo, you're kind of a loser, man. And that takes real, I think, awareness, self-awareness. If you can be aware of yourself when you are making mistakes, whatever, you can correct them. And so when I did that, then it was just, all right, now I have

the responsibility to do something about it. As far as where young people are doing it. Yeah. Before you hold that thought, yeah, you heard me sort of breathing there hard because I was just thinking about something. And, and that is this idea of, of seeing yourself as you really are. A lot of people I know, well, most people I know that are successful in some kind of recovery or major change in their life, initiate that change at some moment. And that moment usually is often looking in the mirror. I can't tell you how often that it's looking in the mirror and seeing yourself accurately for the first time. That's what they'll say. The scales fall from their eyes and they go, that's me.

I didn't know that was me, but that is me. Oftentimes, in my experience, there's sort of a characteristic way that people get to that moment. Was there anything about what was going on in your life at that time that was different than usual that got you to that moment uh so nothing on nothing out of the ordinary right like but only relative to the the time before that it's not like things were going great or anything like that yeah i think the difference the the the big difference was that i i looked around at at some of my friends and where they were in their life because i've got a great group of of friends my close friends at least and and i said i'm not i'm not even close and i'm looking at like some of the things i started hearing about my reputation and and the whispers and and I used to actually say to myself I used to say, Oh, you know, if we don't get along.

When I'm drinking, we probably wouldn't have got along sober, you know, goofy addict thinking like that. And, and finally one day I was like, yo, that that's crazy. And it just it hit me because I'm looking at the rest of my life. I'm looking at the money in my bank account, almost non-existent. But I had money to drink. I could find that. And so I think what ultimately ended up happening is I was not living the life that my ego wanted to live and and I couldn't like protect my ego so I had to like change my surroundings so my ego was all this

is this is more on point or what we feel like we can be at that point were you having contact with anybody different or different sorts of people that helped you reflect on where you were other than that usual group of friends were you suddenly also exposed to people who liked you saw you differently than other people or anything of that nature and sort of new new quality to your relating two two things major habit that helped me like see myself differently uh one uh for most of my career as a professor as a fighter i was in one area i changed gyms and was with a completely different coach and it was the first time in my life you know everyone goes you know who'd you look up

to growing up and look up to anybody i didn't i didn't have any uh male role models or anything like that in my life there was no masculine presence my coach tanya kello the way he lived the way he approached his family the way he dealt with people in straightforwardness and and the way he looked at me and criticized uh my my drinking and in contrast to what we could do and what he saw in me, if I could stop drinking, that made a big difference. The second thing that made a big difference is, you know, when you go off to the army, you have your basic training, can't drink and basic training for the first, you know, 10 weeks. And then I had my advanced individual training AIT for another 16 weeks. And you can't I mean, you can sneak our base.

I certainly, I snuck one time to go get a drink, but like, it's not really any alcohol. And for the first time in quite some time, I'm building relationships without alcohol being in the background. And I'm like, yo, I'm a pretty cool, interesting guy. And that sounds weird. Like, I feel that way right now like i i legitimately feel like i'm the most interesting person you'll ever meet right now whether that's true or not relevant i believe that i don't think i believe that or anything close to it uh when i was drinking and and those two experiences seeing seeing how i could be a person that could be respected for my accomplishments and that I could make friends without it being over the course of being at the bar, you know, through mutual activity.

That was really something. That is the experience I was looking for. It's what I call seeing yourself through a new pair of glasses. Somebody sees you, experiences you differently, reflects that back to you and you receive it and you go oh man he sees x in me or he looks at me this way and and i really think that your coach or your trainer was probably the the big ingredient because knowing that somebody is caring about it really cares about it and then gives you something honest that that's what it takes those are sort of the ingredients i tell people all the time that one of the big way i

call it like you know bc ad my sobriety date um one of the biggest differences is that i i cared about myself and and that's that's that's really weird because I always felt like it was kind of a thing, a weakness to express self-deprecating feelings. But looking back, a lot of what drove my drinking and my behavior under the influence is I didn't have respect enough for myself. That's part of the reason why I had the drink so I can feel like I could be liked, you know, but but once I started getting this experience of approval, acceptance, respect, like socializing without any of it, I was like, wow, there's a whole it's like, it's like the lights come

on, the sunglasses come off however you want to whatever analogy or metaphor you want to use it is uh that's right that's what it's like yep yep I've heard these stories over and over and over again it's fascinating to me that that's it's other people that allow get us to that point where we see ourselves as we are uh we're looking at some comments alongside of you here. Where did you grow up? I grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and two housing projects.

We lived in the Hill District housing projects, Addison Terrace. I think it was our terrace village uh and then when they tore those down because gentrification uh they moved us to another one across town called northview heights and let me you know you know what's funny man the stuff you think is normal you you uh you don't realize it's not normal until you get away from it because that's all you know we moved to this neighborhood and i just thought it was hilarious. But just part of the part of the flavor today that we had a whole gate like you had to like check in, check out like like a real one way in one way or really two ways in two ways out. And then their their thought process behind this is that it will keep the crime out.

And I thought that was hilarious since all the cram was like come from within so it is it is uh what it is it's interesting that you know that there are all these factors that really sum up getting somebody to get you know to to to, to engage, to, to flourish. Really the word is flourishing. How did, how did physics get into it? So this is funny, man. Um, so I have, so first thing I was an app, so Lutely awful math student in high school.

I have an article on my site, how to get better at math. And, and I pulled up my, I went and actually ordered my high school transcripts just so I could make this point so people didn't think I was a math whiz and I was exaggerating what I had to go through. Yeah, in my mind, I actually was exaggerating how much better I was at math than i really was and i thought i was bad i was like like after algebra in the first and ninth grade i was you know failing at all anyhow with that background i was like well i'm never going to study anything that requires math and i had that idea in my head for the longest time and then when i when i started going through

this change in my life like right before i went sober, the change that led me into the military, I said, all right, well, let me look at all the jobs that are available. Because remember, I have no skills. The only thing I'm doing is selling phones, right? And selling phones, retail, terrible job. I said, let me get some more skills so I can earn more money. And I looked out, I looked and I did my research and all the top paying jobs had math involved and and the jobs with the highest level of I think it was like employee satisfaction had math involved. So I said, oh, I got to go learn math.

All right. So I went I started and then we're not even at the physics part yet, but I started in, in 2013, I went back to beginning algebra and everything I could find online, every book I could take from the library or order and just study and just started filling in my gaps of knowledge. It took over a year, but it was worth it because then I felt confident. Okay. Now, when I enlisted and was going back to school, I said, what am I going to major in school? And I'm anticipating that I'm going to have to leave for, I have a job or take a fight. So I wasn't going to study anything that required a lab science because those are like, you can't make those up really. My plan was to study math. That was the plan. Funny how that comes full circle. I did my AIT at Fort Lee in Richmond, Virginia. And I was at my official MOS, military occupational specialty, it was a 94 alpha

land combat and electrical systems repair. And that meant I had to go through six weeks of something called BMAT, basic mechanical and electronic theory. And I'm doing that and I'm like, oh, I really want to be an electrical engineer instead. This looks cool. So I said, I'll bite the bullet. I'll figure it out.

So I start, I go enroll in school and I start and all engineers have to take a set of physics to go for it and in physics one we did this experiment with projectile motion which is just when a particle is is under the influence of no other force but the initial force and gravity and it's part of the experiment here to like take the math and figure out where the pellet was going to land so you know i do the experiment run through it and don't you know the pellet lands exactly where i said it was going to land and i said yo this is like magic this is what i want to study instead mechanics so it was not my part so mechanics yeah. Yeah, so I was actually, I got to a program at Duquesne University here in Pittsburgh

where they actually had a double major of physics and electrical engineering with the University of Pittsburgh. I opted out of my electrical engineering degree because about three and a half, three years in, I really figured out this this making money online thing and people enjoying my writing so i said you know what and when i when i was really when it really the machine kicked on i was like 100 credits in i was like i'm not gonna quit but i'm not gonna put myself uh through this level of rigor and because it's hard uh for another for another four years when i'm pretty sure i'm not going to become an engineer you know so so that's how that that started

tell people about the online writing stuff and where can they get so okay so so all of my writing that i put out is on ed latimore.com i named it at latimore.com not just because I'm at Latimore, but you know, I wanted to random names out of the hat. Just a random name. Just edge. Well, that sounds good. I wanted my website to, you know, follow me in my journey in life if that without sounding to Yeah.

But what that means is there are a number of topics i would like to write about so i didn't want to pigeonhole and this is like been a point of contention or at least it was now it isn't anymore we'll get to it you know it's been a point of contention over the years as i figure out it's all on how to optimize my site and learn seo because ideally a website centers around a theme or two. And that makes it easy to gain expertise, authority, and trust. Eat as Google calls it. I have articles on my site on everything from forgiveness to porn addiction to sobriety,

getting better at math, writing, lessons from growing up in the hood, stuff like that. And so for a while, we were kind of paying a little bit of a penalty, but now Google seems to recognize that I know what I'm talking about on a few different topics, and then the website is trending great. But even if it wasn't about SEO, writing clarifies what's up here. It takes your thoughts the analogy I give is that writing is like taking a magnet and run it over pieces still before you do that the the pieces still has its own magnetopoles or poles but like they're all pointing different directions so the

still is not magnetized but once you align it then it's got real force it can move things with magnetism and writing is like that for my thoughts so interesting all of these different topics i just i like to sit and think about what i know and write out and then in doing so it helps me at least as much as it helps someone else who reads yes cool excellent ed latimer.com so we have to take a little break here uh and we're going to take we got some calls up yep and if those of you are in twitter spaces are interested in talking to ed or myself you just raise your hand there you request i'm fascinated that he was good at physics that's great he good i have no no no no no they're part of the story right so yeah so i put it so so i brought the math thing up because

to be to physics has so much math that you actually by default just get a mathematics minor in it and at pretty much every program I've looked at and and my my math grades are actually they have like a three seven or something I'm pretty sure I didn't like because once I get I always told my I used to tutor as well and I used to tell my students I said I said, I already know where you're going to mess up because I took it took me four tries to get calc one. Once I got it, it was I was like, oh, wow. And then the rest of high level math was easy. Calc two, three linear algebra, differential. All right. Right. Right. Fine. But the physics classes. Oh, goodness. They're hard.

They're hard. They're hard. It's applied math problem solving. I tell people physics problems not only force you to have a strong quantitative ability, calculation, numeracy, et cetera. You also need to be fairly strong qualitatively. At the very least, you need to be able to visualize your solutions. Or not even your solutions, you need to be able to visualize the problem. And then from working it out, you show me a physics exam or problem where there's not a bunch of free body diagrams or

pictures and models you know they don't exist there's no way to do it but but it's i love what it did for my thinking that's the the best part right okay that's right problem solving when he's talking about this i hear mama mama mama i hear exactly what he's saying i can't understand any of it i took physics and i had a short course and i lasted a week and i moved over to uh weather science he is just saying that when it comes i don't have qualitative or quantitative in my brain body's in motion or at rest uh there are quantitative way to analyze to analyze those relationships did you get into particle physics do you go all the way down or did you stay part uh took something with part okay so right so what did i take because i because uh spoiler right or not spoiler but i'm you know i have a ba

which is a slightly different program but i focused a lot on my own uh additional writing courses because it was i knew where i was going. What did I take? physics one and two optics solid state physics modern physics electromagnetism Statistical mechanics I'm forgetting something. Oh my mechanics in general for angel of mechanics were you like same stuff as physics one? But now you know differential equations and linear algebra so you can you can do things like quadratic uh drag and

all that uh i feel like i had something multiple variables yeah and then uh gravitational astrophysics so oh there you go so so that gets into the that gets into this deeper stuff. Now, Drew, this is a biological ability, right? This is not, I mean, not everybody can do that. Well, not everybody can do it, but the really interesting part of Ed's story is his motivation is what led him into all this. And once he had his foundation in math, which he formed on his own,

he was able to start to follow the path, am i overstating that ed that that is really you said it better than i've actually ever uh explained it and what i what i think is you know in terms of you know is this is there a genetic component or not maybe maybe not what I do know is this. I know- Do you have any astrophysicists in your family? No, no. I'm pretty sure. Let me think about this. I might be, I know no one on my mom's side. But my dad actually did go to college and finished. But I am probably, in terms of people alive, they could say they're directly related to me. Yeah, I'm the only one that's gone to college. Definitely not a thing.

No astrophysicist. No. I always say the strongest belief you can have is that given enough time you can learn anything and whether i am lucky or not i don't know i know i operate under that belief and i know that it took me uh over a year of self-driven study to get math skills strong enough to even to even make it through a calculus class. I mean, this is the piece. That is the piece, that part to go start the process. It's an insurmountable hill.

It's an insurmountable task. And yet, how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. And so you start that insurmountable task, and you stay with it. And you get available resources, and you stay with it. And you get available resources and you stay with it. It's every day, every day, every day. And guess what? You're right.

You will make progress with almost anything that way. And check this out. Check this out. So one of the things people are always amazed by, I say, look, the only reason why I thought this was possible, because there was a long period of time where I didn't think this was possible. I really suffered from a fixed mindset growing up. What changed me to a growth mindset was boxing. Because I started, I was not a graceful fighter. My footwork was like two left feet. It was pretty bad, right? But I just stuck with it because I got lucky and knocked a few guys out and said, I know I'm lucky. Let me work on my

skills. I get some great opportunities coming up as an amateur and then as a pro and I watched myself get better. And I said, well, if i did this with my body well my mind's more pliable than my physical set like like what i mean is my height is stuck i'm never going to get taller than 6'1 but i felt like once again whether this is true or not i felt like uh if i really work hard i can understand and learn these things yeah i love I love it. We're gonna take a little break and we'll come back with your calls. I think we have found the holy grail of skincare. GenuCell 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.

GenuCell 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 on 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 for me, but when 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. I love that ad where Susan's like, look, I'm a snob. I'm a snob. You know what? We did like 50 outtakes and I screwed up so many of them. I like the kind of... That was from my heart. Yeah, I could see it.

I could see the honest reveal. Yeah, I wasn't reading the copy. But also, I'm horrible at this. You know what I mean? Like, this is not what I do for a living. I'm never in front of the camera doing ads. But I have to say there are so many things in this product line. I said so many great things, but they could only use so much of it. And I don't want to say that I'm not using the products that I already paid for from the

dermatologist. I actually mix them in. I'll use the C serum and then I'll put another moisturizer on top of it so don't worry drew i'm using up the expensive stuff okay as soon as it's gone then i'm just going to use the genu cell okay good well we like it we both like we both use it in the standby now i have one more thing for ed i want to wait wait wait before you go we go to ed before I want to address the Rumble Ranters. They're taking on my clemency towards Dr. Fauci. And let me just frame it again for you all. Oh, they're just enjoying each other's company.

Let me just frame it, which is that I have followed him for my entire career. I got involved in the radio because he was urging us young guys to go educate about when you were aides we didn't even have an hiv yet we were just calling it just started calling it aids and he was saying we got to educate there's gonna be two million dead he kept saying two million daddy kept saying and i took it to heart and started doing radio and it was important for me and he was a great source of information. Now, something happened in this most recent pandemic where the chaos, the hysteria, the panic porn in the press, and maybe Trump derangement syndrome or something, he seemed adulterated. He seemed like he couldn't answer questions and it was not the same guy I was used to, but I kept saying he will revert to the mean.

Now, I would urge you to take a look at the way he's talking. He's talking differently. He's saying we urge you to wear masks. He's talking about relative risks. He's talking the way I always have known him to speak. So I'm suspecting that you'll be able to get much better information from him going forward. So I'm not apologizing for anything,

and there are issues that he will need to answer to no doubt but I'm telling you he has been a really important source throughout my career and you know I see him now talking like his old self so I'm glad to see that all right Susan now back he got wrapped up in all the politics it sure seemed like it well they made him like this like God too for a while. He really, I don't know, something happened. He was kind of exposing himself out there a little bit. Anyways, I have a comment I also wanted to add. Okay.

So since I went to college when I was 27, because I had sort of a career, I guess, that sort of trained me early on. I was not ready to study physics when I was 18, nor was I when I was 27. But I found that going to college later in life was actually better because you know what you learn from going in the military and you know what you learn from boxing. And when you're sitting in a classroom and you're really getting it, you're like, you know why you're doing it. Well, especially for males, our brains mature, and we can handle a lot of different things at 27 that we couldn't handle at 27 personally. Yeah, you get too distracted.

We're just animals. So go ahead, Ed. I didn't say that. We'll let you respond. No, you know, I know because I tried college the first time. I did it exactly the way they say you should do it. You leave high school, you go to college. And I was out of there in three semesters.

And really, I was about to get kicked out. But I did the whole, you can't fire me, I quit deal. And left halfway through the third semester. I was too busy drinking, chasing girls. and I had no idea why I was there. I didn't have really any confidence in my academic ability. Great at faking it. The opposite, really. I had no idea why I was there.

And I went back. The opposite of confidence. You had been eroded. Your idea of how you could perform had been eroded. You didn't think you had any potential and and going back at 27 well one i knew well 28 29 28 all right uh i knew like you said while i was there that was a big motivator uh another big deal not drinking whatsoever which which you know sounds weird but we'll get to the next part and why this doesn't sound weird uh when i for my end uh and i'm and i'm with my girl so

i'm not i'm i'm i'm there for a very specific reason and i'm not distracted by the other reasons there because because one of the things i i learned very interesting is even though I was like 30, it didn't like deter people from from trying to socialize with me. I got invited to like parties. I'm like, Are you crazy? I'm like, even if I was still drinking, I'm not drinking with you. Like, I'm pretty sure. Because if the cops show up and you got people under, you know, 21 here, I'm pretty sure. Because if the cops show up and you got people under 21 here, I'm going down. You might be. But really having a reason to be there, being partially, well, no matter what, I'm financially responsible. It's just how I acquire the funds, some from the military, another from a scholarship, and then some out of pocket, being financially responsible, knowing that like, yeah, this is me, this

is why I'm here. And yeah, all that makes a big difference. Skin in the game. I really believe one of the worst things that we've done is have kids right out of high school going to college, man. Most of us just need to chill out, take a two or three years, get a job, let life beat the hell out of high school going to college man most of us just need to chill out take a two or three years get a job get let life get a hell out of you and and then see what you want to do after but hit your bottom right uh benjamin i see you waving at me i'll get you in a second i got some

people ahead of you ellis you're a speaker go right ahead you're not muted but i don't hear you there's a little leg no he's all it's the twitter leg no somehow maybe he went to the bathroom no he's he's brought himself up and unmuted himself and i still can't hear him is there anything going on your end caleb uh no i'm not hearing anything over here as it's okay are you plugged well ellis i am there he is well there you are what's up ellis testing yeah we got you now i walked okay i walked closer to my router to see if that would work so it did that did the trick um thank you um so when i was in college my thing was i would take a whole bottle of vodka to a party and I would drink that whole bottle by myself. Good times.

I'm from Alabama and it's a really alcoholic state. Everyone in my family is probably. I got tired of it. I turned 31 maybe in two weeks and I got tired of it maybe four or five years ago. I don't know what happened. I just, it just clicked and suddenly I didn't want to drink anymore. So, um, but other people who are getting sober might also have this problem where I was really social and I met so many people and, um, booze is the center of all social activities.

You go to the bar to meet people and i don't know i find myself becoming reclusive and uh and i'm i'm just realizing now that this is a problem in my life i need to fix i need to start dating again after the pandemic i need to make more friends and i'm not sure how to do that without alcohol. Okay. Let's let Ed see what Ed's got to say. You're not more fun. You think you're more fun. Ed, go ahead. Yeah, that's a great line.

You're not more fun. You think you're more fun. So having experienced something similar to this this and i think we all do the suggestion that i have for you is one when you know it sounds like you've you've been sober for for a little while to the point where like it is not i think everyone in recovery or whatever goes through this period we're like that's kind of what they are doing they are in recovery now i feel kind of weird saying i'm in recovery i'm going somewhere with this don't worry uh it is it's now it's you you don't drink right now now think of it that way you're just a god that doesn't drink and that doesn't mean you like, I hang out with my friends all the time and they have beers and all that. Uh, but, but I'm not drinking and I don't, the pressure is all inside

your head. Like you feel like you got to drink. Cause that's what you, that's how you've known socializing. Once you start trying it out, once you start doing it, uh, and, and this is also key, you'll probably find a lot of the stuff that you used to do while drinking you don't really like it was just an excuse to drink for example i i used to love i used to think i loved football man i used to think i loved karaoke well well i i don't mind football and i like karaoke but certainly not enough to go out two, three nights a week to sing it. But it was a great excuse to drink.

Once you recognize, all right, there's some stuff I was just doing because I like drinking and it gave me a reason to drink. That is a big step. The next big step is then figuring out the stuff you like to do sober and then go do that. Like with my old friends, all my friends, now we meet up for coffee and chat or play some chess or whatever it is or still meet up and watch a game, but just have some wings and chill out and they drink.

But I focus on the people and doing things where alcohol is not an option, where I'm making a wish. We're not going out, like I'm not going out at night, for example. If we want to meet up, we'll meet up for a bunch of other stuff and we can do that. It ends up working out great. Or we go someplace and they have their beers, but I'm a dude that's not drinking. Once you make it clear, here's another trick. When you say, I'm not drinking, people tend to give you a little guff. But if you say I'm sober, people chill out. And that's just a change of the wording if you're worried about people saying stuff.

And once they stop. And these days, they're very supportive usually. They don't want to be somebody that undermines something that's of value. They're, oh, good. Excellent. Good for you, man. And it's usually the, I don't know, you know, your male peers can be, you know, we can be assholes to one another for sure.

But for the most part, usually people want to support somebody that talks about being sober. Yeah, exactly. Where are you, Ellis? What part of the country? I'm in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, yes. Oh, so Greenpoint. So, I mean, so you're in the city, and there's a lot going on, you know, not just in Brooklyn, but on Manhattan, obviously.

And lots of sober people around. Lots of them. My daughter just went to a sober, like, boat ride. Yeah. Two, actually, some. Yeah. I was running. I was running that morning.

And, you know, they have those cities, what are they called? Tours? Tours or cityscapes or something. Those boats that are parked. It was like 10 in the morning though. Yeah, 10 in the morning. And people were like moaning and hollering. And they parked these big boats by the Chelsea Piers.

And one was out there. I mean, it was like, it was on. It was so loud. I'm like, man, it's people crawling all over the boat. And I was like, what is going on in that boat? My daughter calls me later in the day and shows me pictures of her on that boat. She was dancing and doing, and it was a sober party. It was a sober group.

And she, she used to live in Greenpoint. That's the other cool thing too, man. Like it really has turned into like, I don't wanna, it's not quite like being a vegetarian, right? Like, but it, it's this, this being a vegetarian right like but it it's this this lifestyle and there are people in those groups and there's things that support it and and now you're not alone is my point you're not alone and the socials and the social stigma does not really exist anymore and now you know people call you out for being an a-hole about that kind of stuff so it's it's just it's i'll

sum it up with this it's mostly you you feel like you have the dream that's right that is exactly right once you get out there and you go and do it once or twice you're like huh no one really cares yeah we started you with you saying i'm more fun when i'm on alcohol which is saying i'm a better person when i'm on drugs the drug alcohol which is not real not true never it just isn't so it just you haven't found your footing as your sober self in a social context which you will very very very quickly uh this is uh benjamin who has been doing uh essentially jumping jacks trying to get my attention. So I want to bring him up. And there you are, Benjamin.

What's up? Hello, bro. Hello, Caleb. Hello, Mr. Dr. Drew. Hello, Benjamin. I'm good. Good. Excellent.

What's happening? Yeah, my name is Benjamin and I'm from Nigeria. Excellent. Well, yes, sir. yeah my name is Benjamin and I'm from Nigeria excellent well um yes sir you know like I would just uh listen to you guys conversation and uh you know like being sober is it's a good thing you know like to me I believe sober you know like it's like going through extinction like socializing apart from drinking you know sober means you know like taking a step towards the spiritual environments you know because sometimes in life you know being sober it's it's a good it's a good step to take because it's it's actually you know

radiculates the brain like yeah yeah it's it brings it actually brings endorse, you know, radiculates the brain. Like, it actually brings endorsements, you know, like endorsements, relaxation, you know, free thinking, you know, like it brings so many good things, you know, because like, for example, you know, like I'm actually an indoor person, but, you know, but sometimes I love being sober. Like I, I take it as a challenge, you know, because actually, uh, there's a short story about me, you know, I actually lost my daddy around 2020 and, you know,

every time I feel down, you know, I always go sober. No, it's really asked me so much, you know, I always go sober. It really helps me so much. You know, I plug in some, I plug in earpiece and, you know, dash into music, you know, dance, you know, walking on the street, dance, be happy for myself because now I believe in sober. It's a good, it's a good thing. Thank you. Thank you, Benjamin. Appreciate your comment. This is Brent. Lots of people with their hands up here I've got to get to, so appreciate it.

Brent. You're muted. There you are. Brent, what's up? I wanted to know if Ed knows about NAD and NR because those are two things that are

good for staying sober. Well, you're talking about nicotinamide riboside, the NR? Yes. Yeah. So they don't really do that much in terms of restoring or doing much to reduce relapse risk they help with withdrawal symptoms and they help with restoring liver function and they're excellent i take nr every day i have for a long time i'm convinced that that the pathways uh this is sort of an antioxidant is really what he's talking about ed and it's a these are in their nad infusions if you remember when joe rogan was treated for covid he had three days of nad

infusions i've never had an ad infusion but i'm anxious to get one they seem really good yeah susan wants one too but i think but i also think that the nad infusion is good for any people who have long COVID maybe. Yes, yes, yes, yes, sir. I agree. And that, again, I don't really know yet what the full application of NAD is going to be, but I think it's going to be substantial. And I'm a big fan of NR. I take TruNiagen. They used to be a sponsor years ago, and I've just stayed on it ever since. And I actually spoke to the scientist in great detail about their research. They actually had some research that they couldn't really go public with, but they were looking at its effect on fighting COVID.

And there's some benefits there too. But I'm convinced nicotinamide riboside is a good thing. Now, the question is, there's also- The NAD+, but this is NR, which is an oral form of NAD. Essentially, it's not as powerful as the IV infusion, obviously. And there's another form, nicotinamide mononucleotide. And I don't know what to make of that yet. But I do believe all this stuff is going to be important.

It's important in aging and maintaining health and that kind of stuff. It's not massively important, but important. Um, let's see. Uh, Shaniqua, is that you there? Hold on. Let's get you up here. You got it. Uh, you got to unmute your mic. Oh, there you are. There you are from New York city. I just had a question. Um, because I think right now I'm going through a transitional phase. What was your rock bottom? Uh, as far as, okay, because I think right now I'm going through a transitional phase. What was your rock bottom as far as, okay, I got to drop this and I want to get sober?

And let me say, Shaniqua, before Ed even answers, I'm going to bet that he had sort of a prolonged bottom, but that he got some really, right? You probably were scraping the bottom for a while and then he got some people in his life that really made him look at it and uh so he never really went to a deep bottom is that accurate that that is 100 accurate i never went to a deep bottom but for me um the the the bottom was I went out drinking when I got back from the army I went out drinking one night and

I don't remember much except that I woke up at a friend's house and I drove there and I was like yo this is no good and I wanted to get control of everything before then because I'm not afraid of dying but i'm terrified of prison so like that well and you don't want to be you don't want to kill

somebody else you do not want to kill somebody else that is not ed latimore's story you know i'm saying no so so but but shaniqua it's what i want you to take away, though, it's other people. It's the support and caring and honesty of other people that got him to see himself and motivated him to do the things he needed to do. And he was in a lot of structure in terms of school and military and boxing. And he was doing a lot of cool stuff. And there's always programs out there. 12-step programs do work. And they're free, free, free. And they're available on Zoom all the time. you can always think okay i'm definitely gonna look into that yeah definitely thank you all right you got it um yeah i mean your story

oh here's leopold let's get leopold up here uh leopold let's get him connected here You're still muted Leopold There you are And I want you to set up right now A date with Susan where you come on here Because we owe you for winning the bobblehead For you on the bobblehead thing I feel guilt

I'm that kind of person who feels guilt He gets prime real estate every time he comes on Because of it Yeah that's true Well and you and I share The whole Jewish guilt thing He gets prime real estate every time he comes on because of it. Yeah, that's true. Well, and you and I share, you know, the whole, you know, Jewish guilt thing. So, you know, I kind of milk it. And happy anniversary, guys.

Thank you. You and Susan. So I want to ask Ed a question. You know, he mentioned early on about the different addictions that he suffered. And I too, you know, I'm a friend of Bill, Ed, and also in, you know, 12-step recovery for, you know, 25 years. What is your experience with playing whack-a-mole with the different addictions? In other words, you get a handle with one addiction and things are going really well, and then all of a sudden you find yourself doing another.

I found that, and Dr. Drew, if you could talk a little bit about behavioral addiction versus chemical addiction oh yeah no problem gambling you know gambling sex those kinds of things versus you know hardcore drugs or alcohol could you go into that i will do that and let's uh let's have ed answer first go ahead ed so i'm i'm fortunate you know i i took my one addiction and then channeled it into a bunch of positive stuff uh because i i do not believe that you can just remove something you got to put something else in i i a lot of times i think back to that time in my life and i'm like how do I do all that oh right because I was working like an addict the difference I wasn't drinking so and it's the same way with like I I drink coffee that way uh the difference is you know after after a French press of coffee I'm not unable to drop or so for me it was really one not having exposure to any other thing. It was never my thing.

Like I smoked weed a few times, but it wasn't my thing. Never really any other hard drugs at all. It was just the booze. Once I got a hold of that, then it was like, all right, well, we can put this somewhere else and let's just use it. Let's convert it. It's like you can have uranium you can either use the power reactor or power bomb you know i was like all right we're gonna gonna power react yeah and uh apologize for the drifting camera i was drifting on it's not if you saw that but the

camera was drifting all over the place um it doesn't usually work like that ed is lucky i'd say in being able to do it uh usually it sneaks in in ways you don't anticipate the way Leopold was talking about. Let me let me give you a great example. Bob Forrest, you know, the guy that with the hat and glasses that I've done lots of podcasting with, and we did celebrity rehab together. He had year, probably decade and a half of sustained sobriety, like really high quality sobriety. And I had him work for us in a clinical setting.

I sort of stole him from another place. And we really trained him up. And he became a great clinician. And all of a sudden, he admitted that he'd disappear on Friday afternoons. He was just like, no, he just was gone Friday afternoons. He wouldn't be around. And we were like, hey, we got some shit to do here. Come on now.

Where'd you go? No, nothing, nothing. Turned out he was going to the horse races. And it didn't even occur to him. He just thought of it as sort of a, he needed the structure and the beauty of the horses. And he needed to go and get some fresh air. And it was a very stressful environment working in the chemical dependence unit in a psychiatric hospital.

And no, it was full-on gambling addiction. He had to go to GA. And it just comes up. And then with pornography these days, the sex addiction can easily, easily drift in. And so you have this biology. And once you've sort of activated it with using one drug or another it will it will naturally drift you into things that activate that same system so you have to be very vigilant about it i see you not nodding your head ed did you have some thoughts on this

well you said something really interesting about how the system, once it's activated, then you have to continue to feed that beast. Once it's awake, it's not going back to sleep. And, and you were saying, you know, maybe I'm lucky, but, but I think one of the things that happened, one of my like catchphrases is that, you know, the, the the what is it oh yeah people who think you know being liked is the same as being respected don't have much experience with either and and i got that from what motivated me to drink from a social setting which was i

really wanted to like fit in like i i didn't feel like people i still have this issue i i feel like people don't like me for me now i get that approval that i used to get from from being boozed and being artist drinker i get that from the respect that i that i gained from people and what i do and my writing, like I can't ever stop the stuff I'm doing. Like, like I thought there would, there would be this magical point where I stopped burning the candle at both ends. And the reality is I can't stop that because, because that, that brings me, that, that, that brings me worth, you know? And, and I feel like if I'm going to get my fix

for a lack of better term, I want to get my fix. I think that's the best way to do it because that, that is, you know, spiraling or not spiraling up, but you know what I mean? It's self reinforcing activity. Yeah, no, there's, there's no problem with that you have to again you don't really have this flavor of addiction but a lot of people have to really be careful because they'll drift into workaholism too and then and then that'll be an excuse to have resentments and then start doing something else so you have to kind of watch yourself and and i don't want to give people the impression that once you've activated the biological potential of addiction, it's a genie that's out of the bottle. It's there and it's a motivational thing and it will urge you in certain directions, but it quiets.

It quiets over time. It's not as powerful as it was when you first stopped drinking, that kind of thing. That's when it really, the addictions can can really um get you they're they're they're there and they they're people even exercise and eating all that stuff can get involved with it very very easily yeah i i tell guys that i have a sobriety habit. And I say that to, to let them know that when you first stop drinking, you can't go around where you used to be. Your habits not strong enough. You're going to go back to what you know. But after, you know, I, I, like I was saying earlier, I can go out and hang out with my friends. They drink, I have no no issue but when i stopped i stopped december 23rd 2013. i was not out after midnight again until january

it was like sometime in the first week of first or second week of january 2015 and i remember that because i wanted to watch the uh the j the Jones Comey, a fight the first time they fought and fights were on in Vegas. And they were on the West East coast. That means after midnight is when the main event starts. So I had to go to a Dave and Buster's to watch it. But, but that was after a year being sober, I was like, you know, around people drinking, but I wasn't like, I wasn't like foaming at the mouth or anything like that.

I was just like, okay, cool. No, no, no. This is what it's going to be. But my sobriety habit was strong prior to that. The, the times that I tried, it wasn't strong enough. I tried to continue to be in the old environment. And you're, you're bringing up another whole other topic. I'm sure we could read about it at latimore.com, but the idea of habits,

habits are things that you know have to be rehearsed you have to keep doing them you have to be just for something to become a habit it has to be a habit you have to do it regularly for a long period of time yeah and our brain works that way our brain it's essentially that uh cells that fire together wire together we say and so if you do the behavior and the cells fire, they'll eventually wire up. So it becomes kind of automatic at a certain point. And it's like it's like the guy was saying the first caller, he feels like he's a better person when he drinks more fun.

No, no, no. That's just the familiarity of the habit. And you stepping out and doing something different. Once you do it a few times, you're like, oh, I'm kind of a funny dude. Oh, I got interesting things to say. Oh, this is a great response I'm getting from people. Awesome. And then you transition into, I can't believe these people are drunk.

I am sober. I got to get out of here. That's a different story. Different issue. Yeah. So, again, a different story. Different issue. Yeah. So, again, a lot of you have your hand up. I'm not sure I'm going to get to all of you today, but I'll do the best I can.

This is Ryan. We're connecting with him. And, Ryan, there you are. What's happening? Good morning, Julia. Good morning, Julia. That's your mom's house thing. It's a long story.

It's a whole different environment. They thing. It's a long story. It's a whole different, whole different environment, but, uh, they don't teach it in physics class. No way. But I wanted to pick it up, piggyback off of what Shaniqua asked earlier about,

uh, where is rock bottom? I went through like three and a half months of behavioral and drug therapy, myself in inpatient. And they're like, Hey, like we can't tell you where rock bottom is because it's where you stop digging that's right it's where you stop digging yourself

in a hole yeah and at some point you're six feet under and you can't dig yourself back out you can't you can't climb back out of that and um it was a real eye-opener because i was like oh what i'm doing it's um i'm doing it ritualistically. I'm blowing blunts ritualistically. I'm drinking ritualistically. It's not the fact that I really wanted to get high or drunk. It's that going through the motion was part of my schedule, part of my day, part of my personality. And it was like rewriting myself afterwards.

It's like, yeah, I am kind of a blank slate now. What do I do? And it's like, well, what do you do like, yeah, I am kind of a blank slate now. What do I do? And it's like, well, what do you do with a blank canvas? You start a new painting. You start a new chapter in the book. And Ed said it the best where he said that you kind of just replace those habits. It's kind of hard to just kick habits because it's not your personality. You got to replace them with like a reading or a sport or whatever but it is it is an interesting point that depending on when you started using drugs and how bad your drug use

was you stop developing you just you just you just stay where you are and sometimes that's at a very young age before you have developed anything and so people have to sort of start finding out who they are they have to start from early adolescence sometimes figuring that out. This is somebody called The Doc. I think it's a female, I think. Let's get you up here. There you are. Hello, Dr. Drew.

Hey there. Oh, my God. This is like a dream come true. Where's Adam Carolla? No, I'm kidding. He's been on a book tour. He's got a book called Everything Reminds Me of Something is his book. And then I have to hear about it.

So there you go. The book should be Everything Reminds Me of Something, and then I have to tell Drew. It's cool. I just wanted to say, first of all,'m a huge fan obviously from like ages ago i i loved the celeb rehab because i felt like it was really cool that like it was you know just a show at the time that was being you know that was discussing rehab celebrity not you know and obviously this enticed people to to it and i thought that was just like an amazing idea and can we do more or do you do more and it's you know i i would like to do more

there are certainly plenty of people that could benefit from it uh and it's interesting it paying them and putting them on tv motivates people to go do treatment and then when they take their treatment seriously and get better they want to, they want to maintain sobriety. They want to be an example for other people. But I hope people understand, you know, opiate addiction is a fatal illness. And particularly back then, it was a terrible condition that my peers were inflaming by continuing to give the opiate addicts these opiates all the time. These short-acting opiates was terrible. So many of my patients died at the hands of my peers.

It's unbelievable. Oh. And so, uh, again, I, but VH1 has control of it and ownership and they have to want to do it. So, you know, if they don't want to do it, we don't do it. Well, you know, I thought you should know that like, honestly, you know, I think a lot of people respect your opinion as a doctor and that's awesome. know what i mean and you're it's amazing oh my god i feel like i'm talking to elvis or something and ed i wanted to say i love the story i totally feel like you know a lot of people don't realize how hard things can be like to you know especially when you come from those backgrounds so when you go through it it's like you really do like you know work a lot harder and if we could bottle it if we could if we could bottle ed's potions and we got the bottle what ed's got to help more people with it or inspire them at least because i don't think people have

the faith anymore in a bottle yeah that i mean and by the way what is your name? Oh, hi. I'm Liz. Liz, your handles don't tell us who you are. The dog, the pokey girl. I know. I like that name. I'm incognito. Come on. Come on.

All right. But Ed, go ahead and respond to her if you want. Oh, and Ed, yeah. P.S. The physics, I have mad respect because honestly, that was not my forte either. Susan, I'm with you on that one, girl. Like, not at all. And I had to go to tutoring every day

and I'd be like, I don't know when the trajectory of the fall, what's the trajectory of me throwing myself out this window? And my physics teacher was always like, what's more fascinating than this? And I'm like, anything? Like, God bless you and everything trust me I wish I was cool amen I wish I was that cool because I'd be like a freaking heart surgeon

I'd be I'd be taking over uh Dr. Drew's chief of surgery or chief of staff position if I was as smart as you that would be awesome but yeah so mad props let give it, let's give it a chance to respond. Go ahead, Ed. Uh, no, man, I, I just, you know, thank you for the con words and, and also, you know, can we, you know, bottle up what I have? I want to reference what the, what the caller said about rock bottom. And he said, you know, your rock rock bottom is is when you stop digging i i am of the belief that one of the the worst things that can happen to you is a high tolerance for pain because if you if you're able to suffer but not in the pursuit of something positive, you're going to put yourself through a lot of damage, right? And for me, I mean, I think rock bottom, if we give this to everyone, kind of a general

formula, it's that point where the suffering becomes unbearable. Now, whether that's before you do something irreversible that alters the course of your life or the lives of other people dramatically whether it's before or after that is a different story but that is you know kind of the rock bottom point and i think if you can get to that point we can get people to be be a little less tolerant of of discomfort maybe a little more ego vanity really helped you know one of one of my favorite i heard someone say it and they said it better than i ever could when he was talking about his personal transformation he said my life didn't match what my ego thought it should be and i was like oh yeah that's that's great i get that yeah and but but But to have that even be possible, you got to want to be somebody. You

got to see yourself as somebody, whatever it is. A lot of people are really good at sour grape and stuff or downplaying. And the reality is, no, you want to be somebody. You want things. Now, whether you want to do what it takes to get those things, different story. And I think sobriety and rock bottom is the same way. I genuinely think a lot of, most addicts, if not all of them, don't want to be. I really believe that. But whatever force or whatever those things are helping them cope, and that's what makes it work. Where you got to one day, all the treatment in the world doesn't mean anything if you don't if you're not like yo i'm tired of this but likewise if you're not really tired of it all the treatment in the world won't make a difference that's true it's very true thanks liz

what uh dr drew my question was actually the um can we talk a little bit about the withdrawals of alcohol i mean we know that there are some and that they are even fatal. So I guess that's my question to you, if we could actually kind of dive into that a little bit more, what to expect. Well, alcohol withdrawal is one of the only drugs that is commonly used that is a carcinogen to most tissue. And the withdrawal from it can be fatal now when it becomes fatal is usually when somebody is in severe withdrawal in my this has been my without exception my experience a severe withdrawal syndrome when they get a second illness on top of it like they get a pneumonia they get a urinary tract infection that's what my experience

tends to precipitate delirium treatments and dt's it's not just shakes and all that that's that's what in my experience tends to precipitate delirium treatments and DTs it's not just shakes and all that that's that's shakes DTs is cardiovascular collapse you end up on a ventilator you very likely to die of it DTs are very difficult withdrawal from alcohol again the shakes the shits the fits right the shakes the shits and the fits, right? The shakes, the shits, and the fits. So you get vomiting and diarrhea. You can be very shaky. You can have seizures. We generally treat these things with benzodiazepines, sometimes with anti-seizure medication.

The only trick with the benzodiazepines is they can accumulate. If you have alcohol or liver disease, you have to really watch for that and switch to non-hepatic metabolized benzodiazepines. You also have a risk of seizure two weeks down the line if you treat people with benzodiazepines. So they can't drive a car for a while because they can be driving and suddenly have a seizure. And people clear. I mean, they get wet brains.

They're not thinking the same when they're using alcohol. It has a profound effect on everything. Ed's here to tell you. He's saying, yeah. So when is the point where you should be concerned you know like oh it's like you know you know obviously the withdrawals aren't going to be enjoyable as they never you know are but like when should you be like okay i'm gonna die if i don't go to the emergency room or you know what i'm saying like when to be like yeah if you are well if you drink

without break like in other words if you get up and drink and go to bed with the last drink, that's a situation where you're probably going to need help. And if you are so shaky that you have trouble moving around, you need help. And if you're weak, if you're severely weak, you can feel like you have the flu sometimes too, and that's a situation where you need help. It's just because alcohol withdrawal can be so treacherous. There are home detox services these days. People have gotten better at doing it outside of a hospital. You know, when I did it, we did it nurse managed in the hospital and that was that. But people forget how dangerous alcohol is. They just completely forget. Liz, thank you. We appreciate you. And Ed, you did not disappoint today. It's exactly what, I mean, you know, I really enjoy talking to you and,

and, uh, I enjoy watching your stuff. Um, I haven't been on your website yet, but I'm going at latimore.com. Uh, what's the Twitter handles are just at Latimore. Is that right? Yep. Man, I own at Latimore man, the whole way through at Latimore, Twitter, Instagram, the website, thank goodness. How did you do that?

Yeah. Thank goodness. Uh, you know, you wouldn't think, cause I don't think my name is that complicated, did you do that? Yeah, thank goodness. You know, you would think, because I don't think my name is that complicated, but no one had any of it. Well, you just picked two random names, like you said. Let's try this name for the website. What about Ed Latimore?

There you go. Yeah, we'll get the website up there. Support Ed. Check out his stuff. He's got some great thoughts. I know you have kind of a stoic philosophy also that creeps in which i dig and uh people can read more about that at the website and do you follow ryan holiday and all his stuff i do follow around holiday ron holiday gave me a break man one monday he let me do a guest post for his site and i i knocked it out i thought and

uh yeah ryan i've been friends friends with Ryan since he was in college and uh he walked up to me he was a little journalist he was doing an article for a newspaper at his college and he walked to me he goes what are you reading right now and I go well I I'm you gotta understand I read widely and I'm a nerd uh I am reading this thing called the Enchiridion by Epictetus it's he's a what's called a stoic philosopher and you might get something out of it and that started ryan's whole the ryan holiday we know today we recommend his books ego is the enemy uh obstacles the way all that stuff if you want a primer on ryan and to follow him on twitter and facebook and everywhere else he's all over the place ed thank you so much my friend if we can do anything to help you, please let us know.

Hey, thank you for having me. This was an incredible, incredible experience, man. Very happy to have been here. We're happy you were too. Thank you, my friend. Talk soon. And for the rest of you, we appreciate the callers. We appreciate you guys active on Restream.

A lot of support and love for Ed there. And the usual cantankerousness on the rumble rants we appreciate you guys being over there anybody remember when susan called loveline those phone calls were awesome what like the time i got flashed on the freeway that was a good one but but it but it was it was she would call up and and use an expletive and and we'd go god susan youie, you can't do this. She'd go, what? Oh, shit, I said fuck?

Oh, okay. Now we're like, all right. No, I don't give a shit. Now we don't have the delay anymore because they were resetting from your last expletive. Yeah, I'm not a good guest on radio. So that was what made her stuff funny. So we tried.

We tried to contain her. All right, everybody, thank you, Caleb. Happy birthday, Camden. Happy birthday, Camden. And you guys have a beautiful family. so we tried we tried to contain her uh all right everybody thank you caleb happy birthday camden and you guys have a beautiful family i'm really sad you moved away and i can't see you in person but there is but god bless that little muffin they will all be in austin one day nation all right you guys thank you so much uh we are back on Tuesday. Am I right on that, everybody? And we're going to do more caller shows. I mean, strictly call-in shows where you ask me questions.

We're headed to Whitefish, Montana this weekend. We are going to Whitefish, Montana. If any of you guys live there. Also, we'll be in Austin the following week. And then back to New York. We're moving around. 105-degree weather. We are moving around, a lot and uh yeah

you don't have to put my face up everybody knows uh what is going on oh you we got to reschedule some stuff uh on the first week of august so because we're going to be traveling on some of the days that she's got stuff oh she booked somebody in the august on the wednesday when we're or we're going to go thursday though right no yeah we're moving but we're all the uh equipments in new york she can move them it's fine all right all right everybody thank you so much and we'll see you next tuesday 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.