Ask Dr. Drew - Necessary Narcissism: Decoding Our World Leaders w/ Professor Sam Vaknin & Sarah Westall – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 501

Episode Date: June 30, 2025

Professor Sam Vaknin, an expert on narcissistic abuse studies, unpacks how narcissism morphs into a pathological force shaping social media and politics – but a certain amount is essential for world leaders in high-stakes roles. Malignant narcissism, seen in 5% of Fortune 500 CEOs, can blend with psychopathy to create exploitative leaders. Vaknin argues narcissism is now a cultural cornerstone, amplified by social media’s attention economy. Can we harness this force for good, or is it too late? Prof. Sam Vaknin is a writer, professor of psychology, and author of Malignant Self Love: Narcissism Revisited. A former IMF consultant and editor of Global Politician, he lectures on personality disorders and proposed a theory on chronons and time asymmetry. More at https://x.com/samvaknin Sarah Westall is an investigative journalist, entrepreneur, and former business professor at Carlson School of Business. She authored the best-selling “Exposing Blackmail” and founded United for Free Speech. A systems design expert, she helped build the internet at USWEST !nterprise. More at https://x.com/sarah_westall 「 SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS 」 Find out more about the brands that make this show possible and get special discounts on Dr. Drew's favorite products at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://drdrew.com/sponsors⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠  ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ • ACTIVE SKIN REPAIR - Repair skin faster with more of the molecule your body creates naturally! Hypochlorous (HOCl) is produced by white blood cells to support healing – and no sting. Get 20% off at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://drdrew.com/skinrepair⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ • FATTY15 – The future of essential fatty acids is here! Strengthen your cells against age-related breakdown with Fatty15. Get 15% off a 90-day Starter Kit Subscription at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://drdrew.com/fatty15⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ • PALEOVALLEY - "Paleovalley has a wide variety of extraordinary products that are both healthful and delicious,” says Dr. Drew. "I am a huge fan of this brand and know you'll love it too!” Get 15% off your first order at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://drdrew.com/paleovalley⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ • VSHREDMD – Formulated by Dr. Drew: The Science of Cellular Health + World-Class Training Programs, Premium Content, and 1-1 Training with Certified V Shred Coaches! More at ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://vshredmd.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠ • THE WELLNESS COMPANY - Counteract harmful spike proteins with TWC's Signature Series Spike Support Formula containing nattokinase and selenium. Learn more about TWC's supplements at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://twc.health/drew⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 「 MEDICAL NOTE 」 Portions of this program may examine countervailing views on important medical issues. Always consult your physician before making any decisions about your health. 「 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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Matt. Well, thank you for joining us today on this early Ask Dr. Drew. We appreciate you being here. We are here to accommodate Professor Sam Vaknin, who is in Macedonia presently. I saw him speaking to Michael Schellenberger. He is a physicist and a psychologist,

and he has some very interesting observations on the course of humanity from the standpoint of our personality profiles. Personality pathology, which I've been railing about for a long time. We're gonna get in deep on that. And then Sarah Westfall is gonna join us. She has been in the pursuit of the truth

for quite some time here. She is a bestselling author known for exposing blackmail, where she uses the phrase, blackmail is the currency of the powerful. And she has been right in her fearless reporting to expose many distortions that we've been dealing with the last several years. You can follow her on sarah underscore westall,

I beg your pardon, west and all, and Sam Vaknin is Sam Vakkin on X, V-A-K-N-I-N. We'll be right back with Sam after this. Our laws as it pertain to substances are draconian and bizarre. Psychopaths start this, he was an alcoholic, with Sam's real. And we used to get these calls on Loveline all the time. Educate adolescents and to prevent and to treat. You have trouble, you can't stop, and you might help stop it.

I can help. I got a lot to say. I got a lot more to say. I got a lot more to say. I got a lot more to say. I got a lot more to say. I got a lot more to say. I got a lot more to say.

I got a lot more to say. I got a lot more to say. I got a lot more to say. I got a lot more to say. I got a lot more to say. I got a lot more to say. I got a lot more to say. I got a lot more to say. I got a lot more to say. I got a lot more to say. I got a lot more to say. Hey, Dr. Drew here and in honor of our 500th episode of Ask Dr. Drew and the compelling conversations we've had with experts from all sides of the political spectrum.

Today I'm joining two very different platforms at the same time, Blue Sky and Truth Social. Find them easily at drdew.com slash blue sky as well as DrDoo.com slash Truth and follow me on both. Let's find out together which one is more welcoming and which one is more tolerant of what I like to call a rational revolution. See you there. I'm excited to bring you a new product, a new supplement, Fatty. I take it.

I make Susan take it. My whole family takes it. This comes out of, believe it or not, dolphin research. The Navy maintains a fleet of dolphins, and a brilliant veterinarian recognized that these dolphins sometimes developed a syndrome identical to our Alzheimer's disease. Those dolphins were deficient in a particular fatty acid. She replaced the fatty acid, and they didn't get the Alzheimer's. Humans have the same issue, and we are more deficient in this particular fatty acid, she replaced the fatty acid and they didn't get the Alzheimer's. Humans have the same issue and we are more deficient in this particular fatty acid than

ever before. And a simple replacement of this fatty acid called C15 will help us prevent these syndromes. It's published in a recent journal called Metabolites. It's a new nutritional C15, padecanoic acid it's called. The deficiency that we're developing for C15 creates something called the cellular fragility syndrome. This is the first nutritional deficiency syndrome to be discovered in 75 years and may be affecting us in many ways and as many as one in three of us. This is an important breakthrough. Take advantage of it. Go to fatty15.com slash Dr. Drew to receive 15% off

a 90 day starter kit subscription or use code Dr. Drew to check out for that 15% off or just go to our website, drdrew.com slash fatty15. Also a special guest coming in at the top of the next hour, Emily Hagan, who's been reporting from the courtroom on the PDT trial, we'll get an update on what's happening right to the minute. First up though, I'm gonna give you the particulars

about Sarah Westall, who will be here in a few minutes, Sarah underscore Westall, W-E-S-T-A-L-L on X, and sarahwestall.substack and sarahwestall.com. Dr. Sam Vaknin, Sam Vaknin on X and sarahwestall.substack and sarahwestall.com. Dr. Sam Vaknin, Sam Vaknin on X, also narcissisticslashabuse.com, as you can find out more of his research and writings. Dr. Vaknin is a physicist,

I believe an astrophysicist or cosmologist, I'm not sure which, we'll find out, who went on into psychology. And I was just telling him that some of the most interesting psychologists I know were physicists first. So please welcome Dr. Sam Vaknin. Thank you for having me. Great to be here.

So I want you first to tell people about your training and your arc from physics to psychology and how these things are linked. In other words, most people think about these disciplines as unrelated, but I see the links, you tell me. I think what I'm studying is complexity. The universe is a complex machine, if you wish, machinery. However, the human mind is far more complex than the universe.

Hence my transition from one simpler machine to a more complex one, which is the human mind. And it was aided and abetted by the fact that I have been diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder twice, actually. And it forced me to confront my own condition and the unsavory outcomes of this condition. I delved deep into the state of the art at the time in the late 80s. I discovered there was no state and no art. There was nothing there.

And so I came up with a new language to describe my inner experience and the impact that I was having on people around me. And this new language is now widely used. It's mainstream. And then I went into academe in an attempt to interact with colleagues and peers and be exposed to the latest thinking in the field. And that's how I ended up being a professor of psychology. So I think my only relative advantage is the ability to look from the inside out and from the outside in,

which is denied to most of my colleagues. And so that's what I bring to the table, so to speak. And what do you consider to be one of the most efficacious sort of management, sort of different words we could use, whether it's trying to help the narcissist resolve these issues or get in touch with affect or manage the condition or other people manage the condition if they're involved with it, what do you feel is the most effective style? It's a bleak, gloomy prognosis. What we can accomplish in therapeutic settings, in clinical settings, is behavior modification.

We can minimize, ameliorate, and mitigate abrasive behaviors, antisocial behaviors. To some extent, we can nudge the narcissist or incentivize the narcissist to conform to socially acceptable morays and norms and conventions and expectations and so on and so forth. The impact is usually short-lived, so there's a lot of maintenance to be done. Nothing fundamental can be accomplished, unfortunately. There have been a pair of recent studies published in July 2024, last year. And one study claimed that narcissists tend to develop empathy as they age, as they grow older.

And the other study, which was co-authored by some of the leading voices on narcissism, Ronningstam, Gunderson, others. This other study claimed that NPD can be cured. Regrettably, both studies are dramatically flawed and I'm being charitable here, which is not common in my case, dramatically. Not your style, not with your condition. Not my style, case. Dramatic. Not your style. Not with your condition. Not my style, no. Absolutely not.

So, and so let's back up a little bit. And you're, so we're talking about NPD, Narcissistic Personality Disorder, but there's a reality that narcissistic traits, right? There's a point at which you cross from traits into disorder, and traits are more pertinent, more interesting to the public because we all have them and they have predominated and become more severe, I would argue,

across the 20th century. Can you talk about that a little bit? Yeah, I think we should make a distinction, the first distinction we should make is between healthy narcissism and pathological narcissism. Healthy narcissism, as the name implies, is healthy. It is the cornerstone of self-confidence and self-esteem and a sense of self-worth and having a self-concept,

which is realistic. So this is healthy narcissism. We all have it. We all have a narcissism trait. Traits are hereditary. They're genetically determined. So we all have narcissism that we have inherited from our parents. That has to be distinguished from what we call narcissistic style. That's a phrase coined by Lenspary, narcissistic style. Narcissistic style is someone who is a bit obnoxious, exploitative, not too big on empathy, and so on and so forth,

someone you wouldn't want to work with or collaborate with or get married to. But that's the style. People with narcissistic style do not possess any diagnosable pathology. They are what we call subclinical. They cannot be diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder because certain clinical features of narcissistic personality disorder do not make an appearance in the narcissistic style. For example, someone with a narcissistic personality disorder is unable to tell the difference between reality and fantasy, unable to distinguish external objects

from internal objects, in other words, other people from the representation of these other people in the narcissist's mind. Narcissists, people with narcissistic personality disorder, are fully embedded in fantasy. They're divorced from reality. They have what we call an impaired reality testing. None of these things apply to someone who is merely possessed of a narcissistic style. So in a way, there's a spectrum. Everyone is healthy narcissism, then some people have a narcissistic style, and some people are par gun. They have developed the clinical features

which regrettably are irreversible and cannot be kind of cured or healed or. I would argue in this country, at least I'm aware, that the, I think, pandemic of childhood trauma and certainly of cumulative adverse childhood experiences, however you want to frame that, has contributed to these traits in such a way that dysregulation and empathic failure

in many circumstances have become the norm. And that's been a lot, even though it's not a personality disorder per se or not even related to the traits, it's two things, plus throw in some substances and now you really have problems. Would you agree with that? And then what does the society do

that's constituted of these folks? Studies from the 1980s onwards, especially the latest studies by Twinge and Campbell and similar scholars have demonstrated conclusively that there is a rise in the incidence and prevalence of narcissism, the trait, narcissistic style and even narcissistic personality disorder, especially among young people. Young people being, young people under the age of 25. Later studies extended this to the age of 35. So yes, it seems that there is some kind

of narcissism pandemic. I'm saying pandemic because this is not limited to the United States. There was a major scholar by the name of Theodore Millen who suggested that pathological narcissism is an American disease. He said, can't find it anywhere else. That's regrettably untrue.

You can definitely find it in China, India. We've exported it like we do everything else. We've infected the world like we do with everything else. But that's far-fetched to think that. But let me stop you. I'm going to stop you. And let me stop you and say, okay, so we're now getting into the sweep of this

and I want to get into your theories about the sweep of personality across human history. And I want to tell you a quick story that I think my listeners have heard, unfortunately my wife's heard me say this a million times. So I worked in a psychiatric hospital from the early 80s till 2010. And when I first arrived, and I'm an internist,

I'm not a psychiatrist, but I was very interested in psychiatry, I was a neurobiologist, sort of by training. And so I paid attention, I watched very carefully what was going on, because I wanted to learn about all this. And everybody had an admitting sheet that came in the hospital.

And the way they used to construct the admitting sheets was there was an axis one, which is the acute psychiatric illness, and then axis two, which were the personality disorders. And most people had at least trait or possible personality disorder. And some had Frank, you know, disorder diagnosed. When I first got there in 1984, 85,

the personality disorders were actually all over the place. They were A, B, C, the dependents, there was obsessive compulsive, there's all kinds of stuff. And towards the end of the dependents, they were obsessed compulsive, it was all kinds of stuff. And towards the end of the 80s, I noticed that borderline, particularly for the females, predominated. And they all came in, I kid you not, with at least 10 lawsuits under their belt,

every one, every single one. And then I noticed that group started moving in, they were usually very smart, and they started moving into the legal system. They became the lawyers and the judges, and then the politicians. I was like, oh my God. Alongside of that, the entire spectrum

of personality disorders became completely stuck in cluster B, which is sociopath, narcissist, and borderline, and primarily those that had diagnosable disorders, sociopath and borderline. And I thought, wow, I think this is the childhood trauma. Clearly I'm seeing something, and that was it. That was the end of it, and it hasn't changed since. It's actually gotten worse.

So I've heard you say that really what was happening was the borderline style was taking over. And in a weird way, sociopathies sort of borderline for the male. Speak to this, tell me where I'm right, where I'm wrong, and I'm all ears. Well, we use the term anti-social. Sociopaths and even psychopaths are not,

there's a huge debate as you know in the community. sociopaths and even psychopaths are not, there's a huge debate as you know in the community. Yeah, I don't wanna parse those hairs out. Yeah, that's a whole another thing. Maybe one day we'll talk to have that conversation. Yeah. I think the problem is with the DSM, actually, that I don't see can statistical menu. I think the problem is with the DSM, actually, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual. It's an antiquated text, much behind the cutting edge research.

I'll give you an example. As always. I'll give you an example. The diagnostic criteria for narcissistic personality disorder in the latest iteration of the DSM-5, the text revision in 2022, the text has been copied verbatim from the DSM-4, a text which was written in 1998. So that's a state of the art with the DSM. That's why we-

Are you aware of the history there, Sam? Are you aware of the history? They, when they were developing the DSM-5, they wanted to do away with Axis II and have it all centered around narcissism. So, and then they abandoned it and they just went back to the 90s all of a sudden. It was weird.

Yeah, although there are traces of this debate. You have what we call the alternative model. There's in DSM, you have the alternative model of narcissistic personality. But what I'm trying to say is that there's another book, and that other book is called The International Classification of Diseases. It's a diagnostic manual that is used by 80% of humanity, actually. The DSM is used only by 20% of humanity.

In the International Classification of Diseases, there is no narcissistic personality disorder, or for that matter matter any personality disorder. There is a single diagnosis of personality disorder and what the ICD does, it gives you as a clinician, it gives you a list of traits and then it's like Lego bricks, you know, and then the ICD says, you can choose the traits which fit your client, the presentation of a client best. And then each and every client, each and every patient ends up with a highly idiosyncratic specific profile.

Not two clients end up being diagnosed with the same thing. And so if you combine, for example, dissociality, which is antisocial behavior, unencased here, which is obsessive-compulsive features, negative affectivity, the ability to experience only negative emotions, and antagonism. If you combine these four, what you end up getting is basically a narcissist, narcissistic personality disorder. But it's a much more flexible system and much less counterfactual, much more attuned to reality because people can't be divided

and classified categorically. That's completely wrong. Any clinician would tell you that someone presents with narcissistic personality disorder and two days later, there's a crisis and he becomes borderline. And then three days later, he's angry at you, he becomes a psychopath and so on and so forth.

It's contextual, yeah. Yeah, you're sort of moving back towards psychoanalysis frame for this. But be that as it may, talk to me about the borderline trend, because I heard you talking to Schellenberger about that, and that fascinates me, because if that's true,

I know of no other way to deal with borderline other than containment, unless the borderline is highly motivated and wants to deal with the borderline stuff. But what is happening and what can we do about it is really my question. I think what's happening is we are collectivizing mental health disorders.

In other words, we are transitioning from clinical entities, diagnoses, to organizing principles and hermeneutic, explanatory principles. We are organizing society and we are making sense of society and we are making sense of collectives and we are making sense of professions and we are making sense of events, borrowing terms and concepts from clinical psychology. So today, if you wanna explain the behavior of a certain politician, you're gonna say,

well, that's a narcissist. If you wanna make sense of certain trends, I don't know, the war in Ukraine or whatever, Middle East or whatever, you would say, well, these leaders behave in a borderline manner. They're dysregulated emotionally and so on and so forth. So I think we are using mental health diagnosis to make sense of the world and to organize our reality in a way which would make sense. But this

also has an impact on individual behavior because the context and the narrative that governs your life, what gives meaning to your life also dictates your behavior and also dictates how you experience yourself, your inner experience. So if the overriding narrative is borderline personality disorder, you're likely to develop borderline behaviors and you're likely to experience yourself

the way a typical borderline would. And I think that's what we are doing. likely to experience yourself the way a typical borderline would. And I think that's what we are doing. We are developing a borderline narcissistic and to some extent psychopathic civilization, and then individuals conform to these narratives and become these things. There's a kind of radiation, if you wish, ambient radiation. And so, how to deal with this? The problem is not individual.

Problem is not with individuals. It's all about containing individuals or even containing small collectives and so on. The problem is we have to redefine the civilization we live in. And regrettably, it's very difficult to do because of technology. We have created technologies that enhance

and buttress these features, these pathological features in our civilization, in our contemporary civilization. So you may well get rid of some civilizational artifacts, but you will never get rid of the technology. So it's the technologies that's driving the pathologization of our civilization, of our society. And that is very difficult.

To dig into that, to dig into that a little bit, are you talking about the screens, you're talking about the phone obviously, and the fact that there's a lack of actual human interaction or limited human interaction through the phone? Among other things, these are the well-known grievances when it comes to modern technologies. But I think the problem is a bit more profound,

a bit deeper. I think we are using technologies to signal. These are most of our technologies have two features or two, and they're not bugs, they're features. Number one, to escape reality. These are fantasy-prone and fantasy-based technologies. They afford and they provide us with alternatives to reality. It's a rejection of reality, or what Herve Kleckli called a rejection of life.

And the second clinical feature is signaling. So there are three types of signaling basically. There is existence signaling, like, hey, I'm here. I need to be seen. Notice me. Pay attention to me, and so on. So this is existence signaling and this is social media, for example. There is virtual signaling, and that sits well with victimhood movements and with grievances,

grievance-based discourse, and so on. So that's virtual signaling. And you have invulnerability signaling. I'm resilient, I'm strong, I'm superior. I'm a winner, I'm gonna prevail. And the technologies allow us to signal in these three ways and at the same time, all this signaling is taking place in a totally fantastic symbolic space.

So we've completely divorced reality. And our civilization is responsive to these technologies. So what's happening is, because we live in a fantastic symbolic space, people with narcissism, for example, have an advantage because narcissism is a fantasy defense. No one does fantasy better than narcissists. So they have an advantage in a fantasy-based civilization.

Similarly, because a lot of this signaling has to do with victimhood and with emotional dysregulation and with aggression, externalized aggression, internalized aggression, passive aggression, and so on, it caters to the typical structure of a borderline personality, the borderline personality organization. So it's a really vicious cycle.

Technology caters to these needs to pathologize civilization, and civilization is becoming more pathologized the more these technologies prevail and become more widespread. these technologies prevail and become more widespread. And, you know, I'm thinking of your, we started with a conversation about complex versus complicated systems and complex systems include things like

how, you know, fireflies begin to flash together or how birds fly in these very coordinated flocks and things. And I think you're signaling that as what the social media and the technologies are able to deliver. But I get what you're saying. I'm persuaded what you're saying is true. Once again though, my instinct, and it's a bad one. Well, you play it out for me. You said it's hard to change.

How do we change it? What can be done? If we can signal all this aggression and dysregulation, virtue signaling, it seems like we could signal other things as well. That was my idea about radio back in the early 90s. We could use it to do something good. I'm sure there'll be unintended consequences,

but couldn't we somehow infiltrate it with something better? That's an underlying assumption in what you're asking, and it reifies a kind of value judgment that narcissism and borderline are by definition bad or should be dispensed with. Depending on the context, narcissism could be a positive adaptation. And you mentioned leadership and so on. So perhaps if we do get to that, we can discuss this, but it could be a positive adaptation.

Psychopathy as well. Borderline as well. There's a reason these conditions, so-called, I'm using a bad word, but these constructs have been maintained through human genetic history. They have adaptive advantages in certain circumstances. But borderline is something that kind of comes on

in different situations. And I've had conversations, long conversations, psychiatrists like, why that disorder? And the only construct I've seen people come up with is they're sort of the canary in the coal mine. They're super sensitive to things and alert the rest of us to stuff that could be dangerous. But I don't know, you tell me.

Well, certain features have been linked to creativity, for example. And I think and others linked creativity to what they called psychoticism and neuroticism and so on. So certain features in borderline are linked to creativity. The emotional regulation, the dis-regulation of borderlines could feed into certain types of arts and crafts and so on. That's one example. Nothing is bad or good in itself. I keep giving an example.

I agree. I completely agree with that. These are just names. These are just things that humans experience. Yes. I keep giving the example if you were, and excuse me for the perhaps politically incorrect example, but if you're an inmate in Auschwitz

and you were happy-go-lucky and cheerful and joyful and you know, something's wrong with you. On the other hand, if you develop depression in Auschwitz, you were mentally healthy. You died. It's an appropriate healthy reaction. But you died. And you're more likely to die if you're depressed.

That's what, I blanking on the author's name, that's what he observed. But it's a healthy reaction. It's an appropriate reaction to... It's a realistic reaction. Realistic. I wouldn't even say appropriate. It's appropriate to be depressed in these circumstances.

So nothing is better or good in itself. It depends on the context. I think we are living in a civilization that is that is irreversible I don't believe it can be turned back and I think since this is the case We need to begin to adopt ourselves to narcissism to psychopathy and to borderline as features of our current civilization

the line as features of our current civilization. We need to accept this. Let me, I hear you and I don't think that's wrong in any sense, again, the language gets a little murky here using words like that, but I think what I would like to look for is a way to optimize the reality, right? How do we adapt and optimize this trend? And I guess that's why I keep focusing on borderline because excess borderline and predominance borderline,

it gets difficult to live with. It's not an optimization. So you tell me how we do that. And then we're gonna have to wrap up a little bit. So go ahead, finish up here. Everyone reacts to an incentive system. You can create an incentive system which would channel narcissism and render it productive.

You can create an incentive system for borderlines. For example, borderlines react to the twin anxieties, abandonment and engulfment. If you play with these two anxieties as levers, you can utterly regulate the borderline. So we can use these twin anxieties, we can construct environments where the penalty would be abandonment and the reward would be avoidance of engulfment, for example, and thereby get the best out of the borderline.

We can create an environment where the narcissist's grandiosity would be catered to, his self-concept would be upheld and so on and so forth, and this energy would be channeled towards managing companies, I don't know, running the world and what have you. Yeah, yeah. There are energies. There are fighter pilots.

Yes, there are energies there. Studies have shown that the prevalence of psychopaths among surgeons is much higher than the general population and among chief executive officers. Of course. Yeah, so- That's why I never thought, I never think of these words as,

I never think of these terms as pejorative. And yet there's an interesting phenomenon personally I have, maybe you can give me a little insight into this, is therapeutically, when I was tasked with helping people with these predominant traits, I did very poorly with narcissists and very well with borderlines. And it's kind of interesting,

I never understood why, but we knew that with my team I put together, everybody had their own strengths and weaknesses with different particular personality styles and whatnot. Some people even did better with the bipolar patients, whatever. My thing was I could really help the borderlines, I could not help the narcissist. What do you think that is? That's absolutely the fact. The prognosis for borderline is much better than the prognosis for narcissists. And the reason I think is that borderlines possess empathy and they they possess access to positive emotions

Whereas nurses is don't mm-hmm all the lines can tell that can tell the difference between reality and fantasy which nurses cannot Borderlines have a self concept which is a bit grandiose as well But he's still geared towards external regulation towards obtaining regulation from the outside. So it's more about health, ironically. Ironically, it's about health, maintaining healthy. But it's help me if you can, is their sort of position. Like, good luck. And then the narcissist, the only time I ever reached narcissists is when I would tell them I had trouble

with that style. And they'd be shocked. They'd be like, what? Why would you have trouble with me? I want help. You know, I, what? And they, and years later they'd come back around. It was very interesting.

But listen, I could go all day. I want to get into the weeds with you about psychopathy versus sociopathy and whatever all these different things that the people argue about and the dark triad and things. And I hope we can get you back to talk about these things. Cause you're- I love that, I love that physicist brain working on this stuff

because you're not, even though you have a subjective experience with all this, you're not locked into that subjective experience. And that's very, very interesting to me. And we have a tendency as humans to see everything anthropomorphically in some fashion or other. I mean, when we think about aliens coming in,

they always are shaped like us as opposed to who knows what. Or just a bacterium that inserts itself into our animal cells and creates plant cells and creates a mitochondria. I don't know. We don't think about it that way. But I do appreciate your thinking. It's been a privilege to talk to you.

And I do hope you'll let me talk to you again. Where can people go to read more and learn more about your ideas? Just Google the name. It's an avalanche. Okay, all right, I will do so. And I'll be deeper in your material when I get back next time.

So thank you so much, Professor Vancken. Thank you. Thank you for having me, homie Sam. Thank you. You bet. Very interesting. All right. We got a having me. Call me son. Thank you. You bet. Very interesting. All right.

We got a couple of quick guests coming after the break. Sarah Westall. She is sarahwestall.substack and Sarah with an H, sarah underscore Westall on X. She is gonna, we're gonna go over some of the news of the day and then on the heels of that, Emily Hagan is gonna drop by. You check out Emily Knows Everything.

Is that Emily's Instagram? Yeah. She is following that Diddy trial very closely and she has some amazing insights because she's smart and she's there and she doesn't let the distortions ring through which she wants to straighten us all out on. Let me just mention really quickly on Professor.

It's narcissisticslash-abuse.com, where you can find his stuff, and also Narcissism Unclean Energy with Michael Schellenberger in November 2022, you can find that. And we will back with Sarah Westhall right after this. Do pay attention, these people are important to us, we selected them carefully,

and they allow us to keep doing this project, so stay with it and support them. The wellness company knows that taking charge of your family's health care is a top priority and that's why they're constantly innovating to deliver the products and services to help you be rationally ready. Be sure to have the medical kit for kids on hand. Whether you're a parent or grandparent. It treats 20 childhood conditions, including nausea and vomiting, allergies, asthma, inflammatory illnesses, even bioterror. God forbid. Listen, croup, ear infections, lice, it's all available in the pediatric emergency kit.

You can also order the kids kit with an EpiPen should your child be at risk of anaphylaxis. Those EpiPens are carefully sourced and well priced relative to other EpiPens in the market. All seven kits, each customized for a different purpose, come with a telemedicine consultation and a guidebook. Skip the scramble to an urgent care waiting room full of sick people and expense or a pharmacy where there's no guarantee they'll have what you need. Go to drdrew.com slash TWC for 10% off any medical emergency kit or the supplements for that

matter. That again is DrDrew.com slash TWC. So I've traveled with my hyaluronic acid serum for my face which I use every day and we also brought along the active skin repair. Thank goodness because I wounded myself. I'll show you the wound as we go, I don't wanna pull the dressing up just yet. But the hypochlorous acid in this, I used it as an antibacterial, it's been proven as an antimicrobial,

and the thing is healing beautifully, like better than ever, like, feels great. Here's a picture of what it looked like before I put the dressing on. I was delighted with the effects of the active skin repair. Hypochlorous acid is antimicrobial, it's been clinically proven, and this thing is healing well without difficulty.

If you'd like some, go to doctor.com slash skin repair. I'm now free to enjoy my trip, not worry about infection, not worry about bleeding all over the place. This has been working beautifully. And I can get on and keep traveling. Let's ask Dr. Drew. I traveling. That's Dr. Drew. I have no idea who Dr. Drew is.

He's been watching a lot of Dr. Drew lately. We are lucky to have just received a shipment of Paley Valley's Polyphenol Dense Organic Coffee. We've been drinking it every day. Pairs perfectly with the grass-fed and finished bone broth powder, the chocolate of course. Susan drinks it with, oh she got it right now, with cream with ice.

Why is this superior? Because of its special ingredient, organic coffee fruit extract. High in polyphenols, powerful antioxidants that help protect us from not just everyday stress, but oxidative stress. Which is something you'll hear me talking a lot about. Starbot is often old and has lost

a lot of its polyphenol-rich content. Paleo Valley has sourced it, guess what, carefully from sustainable farms in Honduras and Peru, freshly roasted in the US using solar power. Paleo Valley thinks of everything. And then they test for pesticides, mold, and mycotoxins. Low acid, gut-friendly, and it comes in decaf as well, if you wish.

Get yours today with a 15% discount at drdew.com slash paleo valley or subscribe to get 20% off drdew.com slash paleo valley. And of course I have my active skin repair serum with me. It's with me always. And my skin has been a mess lately because the water in New York destroys me every time. You can see I've got things here

that that's something that got burned off. But the rest of my skin is doing pretty well. Thank you to Active Skin Repair. And I want to remind everybody again, please do check out the VShred MD products that I invented there. We will have videos for you to explain what this is all about.

This is the Senesync, which is reveritrol to improve your natural killer function after all the COVID and Fisatin to remove all the dead cells that remain afterwards. And then when there's the NR boost, you've heard me talk about nicotinamide riboside for longevity for years, as well as PQQ,

which improves muscle mass as we age. Theoretically, it improves muscle performance by supporting mitochondrial function. All right, my next guest is Sarah Westall. We're gonna talk about what's going on in the world today. Follow Sarah, get her book amongst other things, exposing blackmail. And if we have that, Caleb, as a full screen,

it is blackmail, the currency, the powerful, which I think something like that is clearly happening. Sarah, welcome to the program. I thank you. Thank you for having me. Tell me what you uncovered there with the blackmail, because in a weird way, I was thinking this morning that the weaponization of the justice system is a kind of a blackmail.

Be careful or we're going to come after you for something. Well, this book was a while ago and I can go really deep into it, but it was based on a series of interviews that I did with Detective Rostein, aka Jimmy Boots, who's taken down more pedophile networks in our country and in the world than anybody. And I did a six-part series with him where I went to his home and I did hours of interviews with him. And his informant, he worked out of New York, he had a strip, he came from Minnesota and they gave him the Minnesota strip. And

he realized within a couple weeks that prostitution wasn't what people said it was. And the majority of the people working were human traffic victims. And then he learned of how the whole blackmail scheme worked. But his informant when he took down these pedophile networks was Roy Cohn. And people who know Roy Cohn is, he's the one in the notorious blackmailer in DC and New York that had Hoover blackmailed and, you know, generals and admirals and things. And he turned himself around in the 80s, right before he he died and he notoriously was also Donald Trump's mentor during that time

So I spent quite a bit of time understanding it and that's when I learned I started learning because my show was always about the edge of change and I learned about all these things that were going on And I realized why are these these things that could really fundamentally help humanity, why are they being stifled? And I learned that there was this whole blackmail system going on. I learned about it from the top down and then I met him and he learned about it from on the ground and he taught me a lot about what was really going on. And that's where I termed the phrase, blackmail is a currency of the powerful. And I began to learn the day that Epstein died, I pulled up into

Ross Stein's driveway, heard it right in his driveway. And the first thing he said to me was Sarah, that's just the tip of the iceberg. This is just one blackmail operation, and there's many. It's just the way it works. And so I learned a lot during that process. And that, actually, my reports came out before people started realizing what blackmail, that blackmail was an undercurrent of everything that was going on. Before the Whitney Webb book and before all that,

that came out, mine came out, and it really changed the narrative, I think. And it taught me a lot. It taught me a different way of looking at the world. And it also taught me a little bit more about Donald Trump and the fact that his mentor in that time period, when you look at Roy Cohen, you think, oh, he was a bad guyikoh and you think, oh,

he was a bad guy, right? He was, wow, he was a gangster bad guy. But I learned during that time period, he turned his life around and did more good than almost anybody by being able to take down all these networks. And that's when Donald Trump was his mentor. And so I think he, or he was Donald Trump's mentor. And I think that's, that gave me a different insight into him as well.

And I'm guessing you, you're sort of look at things through the frame of that, what you've learned there now. Let's quickly touch on P. Diddy, if you don't mind. Is that another blackmail ring? Well, I believe so. I think that the government, you know, as I've been looking at it and analyzing it, I think if you look at the Giselle Maxwell case, you know, Comey's daughter was infamously the attorney that was prosecuting Maxwell. And the same, the same thing, the same theme is going on here where they wanna take her down,

they wanna isolate the situation and keep all the big names off the list. And so they're kind of threading a needle and she's very, very good at it. And they're doing the same thing with P. Diddy. They have witnesses that make him look really bad. I mean, he's a bad guy, right? But they're not bringing in the blackmail operations

and all the big names that really expose what was going on. And so I think it's a cover-up operation from the government standpoint of making sure, well, for sure it is, because it's making sure all these names are not exposed. And if as a public, if we- Is this CIA? Is this the CIA, how they operate?

Is that who's doing this? Well, I guess, unless we're in the operational rooms, we don't know exactly who's behind it, but we know that the district attorney is operating with somebody, and the CIA, Mossad, was a part of the Epstein trial, or the operation, so it goes to show, the intelligence is part of these operations for certain.

And CIA is- Is the blackmail always around, you know, sexual behaviors? Or is it money? Or is it just everything they can do, whatever leverage they can find? Well, they start with the lowest level you can, right? They don't blackmail people with, they don't go straight to child, you know, children.

They go to, if this guy can be, or this woman could be blackmailed with something easy, they start there because it's just easier. And then they, you know, escalate up the ladder. They like to put people into these positions who are more easily blackmailed. You know, it gets into your last segment where you're talking about narcissists and things.

They're probably a little bit, he would have to answer this, you might know more, but they're probably more easily blackmailed than a healthy human being mentally because they have, they need to protect their image more. And so they like to pick people who they can control. It's a control mechanism. Because if you have somebody in a position of power that you, they're affecting global trade and huge industries around, you know,

that are a part of our national defense, you can always make an excuse to why you do some of these things, right? And so they blackmail and then make sure that nothing happens with their global trade or whatever they have going on. Or their cashflow. Or whatever else they want to protect.

And you, this is a very unfair, yeah, this is a very unfair question, but you're sort of bringing me into a view of the world that is unfamiliar to me. I kind of knew, you know, Epstein sort of exposed all of us to this sense that something was like that happening. How do you construct your view of the world now? So when you see things happening in the world,

do you always assume there's something like that going on or there are certain areas you go, oh, that's where the blackmail operation is or do you kind of turn it on and off that view of the world? I think that when you start seeing irrational decisions that's when you go okay there's some kind of blackmail here. When things don't make sense. So hold on so there was to me there seemed like a lot of irrationality during the Biden administration. The, just take the Hunter Biden laptop. That just seemed totally bonkers to me.

Is that because people were being manipulated and blackmailed all over the place, including the 50 so-called experts that called it Russian collusion? Oh, I think there's a variety of reasons why people make decisions that are unethical and irrational. I mean, there can also be self-preservation for their own career, right?

But when it looks like that person's not going to make the decision that the power broker wants them to make, that's when they start implementing their blackmail operations. It makes sense. When you stand back as an intelligent person and you start realizing that these things are high stakes operations. What would a strategic person do that are narcissists possibly or they don't really care what line they have to cross to make sure they can control the behavior, it starts to make sense from a logical perspective that they would put these operations into place. And I'm, it's awful. It does make sense.

Yeah. It is awful. And it makes sense. I get it. It's just, I'm trying to understand where it operates. I'm trying to, cause it's, it's very untaste, distasteful and it's gross. But, and so naturally you kind of don't want to, you know, want to think that way,

but I think it's important that we do. And so to me, it just really smacks of intelligent stuff. You know, it's how spies manipulate things, I imagine. Sucking people into things that they don't know they're getting sucked into. It's always boiling the frog, I'm sure. It is. And it's also, you know, people with a lot of resources,

large companies and big pharma and all these people, they wouldn't be beyond that if it meant that it protected their multi $50 billion company, right? I mean, so you see these kind of operations going on all over the place, depending on, you know, what's happening. You see it at the highest levels. According to Rostein, you know, it's all the major institutions are involved in the CIA is brought in and other intelligence agencies are brought in to protect those industries

and our interests. And unfortunately, that has become normalized and they believe that this is what we need in order to protect our interests. And we need a much healthier. I'm guessing we're not the only ones in the game, right? You've already said, you mentioned the Musad already. I mean, there must be hundreds of other organizations doing this.

And you were talking to people that were outside of the government, technically, they were like to people that were outside of the government, technically they were like consultants and there were probably millions of those, who knows? But let me stop for a second and just, I've got Emily Hagan logged in. She wants to give us a report from the courtroom on the P-Diddy trial.

Are you cool to sit by for us five minutes or so and listen to that? Sure, yeah. Okay, all right. Sarah, I'm fascinated by your view of the world. Emily, thank you for stopping by. One of the things that Sarah just told us is that Comey is expert at not bringing in

all the big names that we all wanted to hear about in these trials, but zero, yeah, zero. So what happened today? Today was closing statements. And like Sarah said, they have been protecting the big names from the beginning. There has been an accountant that worked with Ditty very closely that was behind Britney's conservatorship,

TriStar Entertainment. And every single news outlet has redacted their name even though they have been mentioned in court multiple times by witnesses prosecutors and defense attorneys Nobody knows why their names are getting redacted But today we're not really hearing any of the big names We haven't really heard many during this trial The prosecutors are making their closing statements and they're really just trying to prove that Combs was running this criminal enterprise and they're trying to prove that all the people working together were working together to fit the goal of the enterprise and not the personal agenda

of Diddy. So today a lot of people are the energy at the courthouse was very kind of melancholy because the last couple weeks, people really thought Diddy had this in the bag. And today the prosecutors had these flow charts up on the screen. They were kind of proving the Rico on a lot of different levels. But it's not the enterprise like Sarah said that we were expecting. We're not seeing celebrities. It's literally just Diddy, like a chief of staff and security guards working together to make sure that all the shit Diddy did during his career was covered up and now it's being brought to the surface.

So it'll just have to depend on if the jurors favor him or not, I think. How is the defense? The defense could finish up to two? No, defense is not gonna start until tomorrow. They're gonna do prosecutors today, tomorrow, and then deliberations will begin. All right.

Well, Emily, thank you for stopping by. And Sarah, do you have any questions for her? I'm just curious. Well, what do you think when you're listening to it? Are you, what is your opinion on it? Are you disappointed by not? Obviously you're disappointed, but are you keep expecting them to bring up certain big names

that you probably know are associated with it? And how are they able to thread that needle? Yeah, I think that the entire world is disappointed because going into this trial we expected to hear that the music industry was about to go down and that we were gonna like the change of the Aquarius and Everything is gonna finally be exposed and brought to light. We're not really seeing anything being brought to light except some of Diddy's crimes from like the 2008 era. And I feel like it's strange that Comey is going out of her way to protect celebrity names and the big names that helped Combs run the enterprise.

But then she has no problem exposing the low-level Escorts names. TMZ has pictures of these assistants and escorts plastered all over the tabloids, but then how dare you even mention Tristar Entertainment in an article. I was told not even to say her name, that they're gonna come after me. I'm like, but she's in the transcripts,

but it just seems weird. And then last week there was a celebrity mentioned and Comey went out of her way to be like, don't mention the celebrity's name. And it's like, but you had no problem mentioning every single escort's name, every single assistant that was making 60K a year. And I don't get it.

I don't know if Comey is trying to build a separate case. That's the theory. a year. And I don't get it. I don't know if Comey's trying to build a separate case. Well, hang on. That's the theory. Emily, Sarah is nodding her head knowingly as you're talking. So let's hear what Sarah's perception of this is. Well, I think it's a protection of the black male scheme that they have going on. They don't want people to understand what these operations are really about because once these things are exposed, people aren't going to stand for it.

And so they have to keep it under wraps. They want to fall for it or expose it. They want to keep these schemes under wraps so that the average person doesn't understand it so that they can keep their operations going. What would the point then, what would the point then, of them doing all this stuff with the taxpayer dollars just to get Diddy? What would the motive be then to protect the other people and then to get him? Did he make someone mad?

Or is this a conspiracy that there's even blackmail? Well I know it's not a conspiracy that there's blackmail behind this because when you looked at some of these cases, especially the Maxwell case, it was person after person blacked out, right? They blacked all these names out. And where you're seeing that here, same attorney and the same process is going on. There's theories on why, you know, why did they go after P. Diddy? Some people say that they had to do something and hang somebody out to dry or P Diddy got unruly and it was too much liability. But I think that, and you know, and then they can close the door and move on because now

what happens once this P Diddy case is over, now what? Right. You don't have anything to follow. At least not yet. Yeah, I agree. And that's the conversation people are having in the courtroom every single day and online every single day. And I don't think we'll ever actually have the answers, sadly, especially when Comey

is running the show. When she's running the show and they're purposely keeping names off the list. Yeah. Well, hopefully I'll have some more answers for you guys. I'm going to go press Tenny and Mark Geragos one of these days and see what I can... They will of course not talk about this case, but I bet I can get them to talk about this interpretation that Sarah has. And Emily, thank you. Thank you for dinner the other night. And thank you again for dropping by here.

Thanks guys. Bye. Emily knows everything, everybody. Instagram, Emily knows everything. It's very entertaining and very- Emily with an IE. And with an IE, yes. So Sarah, I am absolutely fascinated by the world as you see it.

Let's pull back to the kind of the international scene. We have a ceasefire. Is there a blackmail involved in the ceasefire between Iran and Israel other than the president of the United States just yelling at them? Well, I don't want to say that everything is, but I mean, I think it's just those are the things,

tactics that they resort to when they need to. It's just one of their bags of tricks that they need to. They don't have lines that they won't go over. I would say the power brokers. Who is in power? The intelligence agencies, the leaders of institutions. I'm sorry, but it's really kind of how the world works because there's so much money and power on the line

that they're not afraid to do that. They're not afraid to bomb a city. They're not afraid to blackmail one person either. Do you think this is far-rehearsal? We have to get past the naive. We have to stop being naive. And this was traumatic for me. I know.

It was traumatic for me when I first started learning about it. But it's reality. Yeah, I'm super naive. I expect the best in people all the time. And I'm always shocked and sort of disgusted when it doesn't work that way. And, but I don't know when I will stop being naive

because it seems to be many layers to it. But it's happening right now as I'm talking to you. But let's try to talk about some little more current events stuff. How do you see the Israeli-Iran ceasefire playing out or do you have a theory about what's happening there? Well I've been talking to different people you know like Michael Yan and Martin Armstrong and different people who have analysis that I would concur with where the ceasefire, you know, once a war starts and there's a lot of animosity on both sides, it kind of takes a life of its own. And we have, yeah, and we have China in the backdrop.

So much of, there's big pipelines and trade routes going through Iran into China. And Iran's not going to want run out of weapons because they have weapons coming out of China and Russia's going to supply them. Russia and China are going to supply them. It's just that basic. And there's hatred. I mean, literally there's hatred.

If you talk to either side and you try to bring in some rational sense to them, they get angry at you. I mean, I'm sure if you've had a conversation with them, it's not that easy. And so I concur, you know, Martin Armstrong said that according to his Socrates program, where he analyzes world events, he says that in 2026, we're going to start seeing broader war, the isolated flash points are gonna expand to broader war. That's a show that I'm airing tomorrow night on my financial.

The show is- Working this out. You can see it at Rumble, Rumble at Sarah Westl. I go to sarahwestl.com. You can see it, but it always airs at 4 p.m. on Rumble. But yes, we're gonna be talking about a lot of that. And it's just the reality.

And I think it's been stewing for a long time. And will it be a proxy war of the US against China? Maybe. I mean, we're watching this happen. And anytime there's a global economic change, which is what we're seeing, there's a lot of economic reset going on, right? Anytime in history where there's been major economic shifts, there's been power shifts throughout the world,

and there's been war. I mean, pretty much every time. And how would you characterize it? Characterize the economic shift for me. Well, the dollar is losing its value, and with the debt, it's the massive inflation over time. Eventually it inflates to zero, and then you have to reset it. And then we have all the debt crisis that's happening all around the world.

And so this is the time where countries see the weakness in the empire, and they want to grab that power. And then this is where the power brokers start to... That's why war always happens during these times and also War happens because war camouflages the debt issue that that these can't these countries have And you have more flexibility It's awful to get more Yeah, i'm trying not to be naive

to get to get more granular, we have Trump eating on Powell all the time to lower the rates. And now he said he's going to bring somebody his successor in early, which I think is interesting. How do you think that little conflict is going to play out? Well, they talk about having a shadow Federal Reserve chairman. I think that it's never happened before.

Right. So, and the courts have determined and told Trump he can't switch out Powell until 2026, but you know, Trump, he's going to say, I don't like what he's doing and I, I need him to be out of here so we can do what we need to do. So he's going to try to coerce it from other perspectives. It will be interesting to say the least. And you're going to see to the face of us, you're going to see very, you know,

politics on camera is very different than politics in the boardroom, right? Behind the scenes. I'm sure. And so you're going to see a lot of things play out and you're going to see anger trickle out onto the screen. And so you get to see kind of what's going on, but there are gonna be games being played like nothing else. It will be very interesting.

I have learned that one of the things that people in authority and government do in the federal government when the bureaucracy doesn't respond is they set up a parallel employee group that if you won't do it, we'll just hire a group of people that will do it. And that is being done. They've been unable to do that as far as I can tell at the HHS, but I'm sure they've always done that at DOJ

and other places. It's interesting to me that now it's going to leak into the Fed, which is wild. Sarah, I am- The problem with the Fed is, let me ask one last thing. The problem with the Fed is do you have the one last thing, the problem with the Fed is do you have the power to do that?

I mean, the power situation is a problem. We'll see. We'll see. Yeah, we'll see, I don't know. And so you see the world through power and to some extent money as it reflects power. Is that your worldview? Yeah, I think that's how they get things to happen.

I mean, religion ties into it and all sorts of other agendas, right? But it all comes back to power and influence. Yeah, I am fascinated by your observations. I want to, Susan, don't tell me things like that when I'm trying to concentrate. It's okay. So I want to, Susan, don't tell me things like that when I'm trying to concentrate. I want to be, to talk to you some more about these topics. I want to get in, I just could,

I could listen to this stuff all day because I have to adjust my point of view. I have to really be careful with my assumptions. And I sort of see things on the interpersonal level, but you're forcing me to look at things in a very different way. And I persuaded that you're accurate and right. So we should go, if we want more,

and read the book, go to the Rumble channel. Where else do you want people to go? SarahWestall.com or SarahWestall.substack.com. Those are my two main places in Rumble. I air it four and then I'm all over the place.substack.com. Those are my two main places in Rumble. I air it four and then I'm all over the place. Please subscribe. That's the best thing to do.

I hope, yeah, please do. And I hope you'll come back here because I could, as things move and change and I would love your insight into things. So I'm going to use my influence. I'm going to use my blackmailing, whatever influence I have to persuade you to do that. Appreciate you being here and thank you so much.

All right, everybody. We have to wrap up. There's a special early show today. Let me look at you guys quickly on the rants and the restreams and whatnot, because you were very active in this process. And we appreciate you being here for the early show. We are back again, I believe it is Tuesday

at two o'clock Pacific time. Yep. And I have to wrap up now and we will, there's the upcoming guest. I'm seeing a possible on Tuesday, another possible guest that's kind of a special, special booking. See if we can get him. All right. We'll see you on Tuesday at two o'clock Pacific time. See you then.

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 updated 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 DrDew.com slash help.