Ask Dr. Drew - Racism, Empathy, Censorship & COVID-19: Dr. Adolph Brown & Alex Berenson on Ask Dr. Drew — Episode 19

Episode Date: June 17, 2020

Dr. Adolph Brown III (author & clinical psychologist) and Alex Berenson (author of Unreported Truths About COVID-19 and Lockdowns) join the show! Sign up at drdrew.tv to get an alert when Dr. Drew is taking calls.   • Dr. Adolph Brown III is an author, clinical psychologist, and university professor with over 30 years of experience in issues involving mental health, social justice, and diversity. Dr. Brown has earned undergraduate degrees in anthropology and psychology with a minor in education, master's degree work in special education and experimental psychology, and a doctorate degree in clinical psychology. MORE: https://docspeaks.com/    • Alex Berenson is a former New York Times reporter and author of the new book "Unreported Truths About COVID-19 and Lockdowns” which was controversially removed (and later reinstated) by Amazon. He is also the author of a dozen spy novels, and winner of an Edgar Award for the best first novel by an American author. MORE: http://www.alexberenson.com/   Order Alex Berenson’s book at this link and a portion of your purchase goes to support our shows: https://go.drdrew.com/berensonbook Ask Dr. Drew is produced by Kaleb Nation (@KalebNation) and Susan Pinsky (@FirstLadyOfLove). THE SHOW: For over 30 years, Dr. Drew Pinsky has taken calls from all corners of the globe, answering thousands of questions from teens and young adults. To millions, he is a beacon of truth, integrity, fairness, and common sense. Now, after decades of hosting Loveline and multiple hit TV shows – including Celebrity Rehab, Teen Mom OG, Lifechangers, and more – Dr. Drew is opening his phone lines to the world by streaming LIVE from his home studio in California. On Ask Dr. Drew, no question is too extreme or embarrassing because the Dr. has heard it all. Don’t hold in your deepest, darkest questions any longer. Ask Dr. Drew and get real answers today. This show is not a substitute for medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. All information exchanged during participation in this program, including interactions with DrDrew.com and any affiliated websites, are intended for educational and/or entertainment purposes only. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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you, please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. Hey now, welcome everybody. Today's episode, courtesy of True Niagen. Go to drdrew.com slash True Niagen. Use the word Drew at checkout to get a discount on three bottles right now. And Christina P., I meant to get her hooked up on this today. She's very interested in that. We're going to have a return guest in just a minute. Alex Berenson, former New York Times reporter, author of the new book, Unreported Truths

About COVID-19 and Lockdowns, which was censored on Amazon until Elon Musk spoke up about it. And magically, he was put back on the list. After we talk to Alex, we're going to bring in Dr. Adolph Brown in here. He's a psychologist and university professor, 30 years of experience studying racism. We're going to get in very, very deep. Our laws as it pertained to substances are draconian and bizarre. Psychopaths start this way. He was an alcoholic because of social media and pornography, PTSD, love addiction, fentanyl and heroin. Ridiculous.

I'm a doctor for **** sake. Where the hell do you think I learned that? I'm just saying, you go to treatment before you kill people. I am a clinician. I observe things about these chemicals. Let's just deal with what's real. We used to get these calls on Loveline all the time. Educate adolescents and to prevent and to treat.

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. First, I want to go in with Alex. Alex, welcome back. Thanks for having me.

Last week, the book was censored. Now, there's a pirated copy on Apple. And somebody said, welcome to the wonderful world of self-publishing. Exactly. This is stuff I have not had to deal with when I have random house or, you know, pot numbers. Time to choose to start helping me out here. Exactly. And people, just so they understand what's in The Unreported Truth,

you're just chronicling what happened what people said was happening in the press and what actually had happened wouldn't that be about the way to you're just reporting the facts right i mean i would i would say part one is even simpler than that so this is as you know as we talked about there's going to be a multi-part series in fact i gotta get back to writing it very soon um but the first part is literally just sort of an introduction to, you know, how I, as a former Times reporter and, you know, author of a couple of books, got involved and got interested in, you know, the issues around COVID-19. Obviously, we're all interested in COVID-19, but how I started to question some of the modeling and the,

you know, and the estimates of hospitalizations and stuff like that. And then the second part of part one is very simple. It's just, here's how many people have died from this. Here's what we know about those people in terms of their age and their sicknesses. Here's a worst case estimate for what might happen. And, you know, here's some numbers to help put this in context. It's very, very fact-driven. And, in fact, I heard from an epidemiologist, you know, a couple days ago, and he said, I thought this was going to be much more saber-rattling and much more controversial.

All you're doing is giving people, you know, the most basic facts that the media has not given them. And part two is going to be a little bit, I would say, more controversial because that's going to take on the issue of lockdown and whether or not they actually do any good and how this spreads and what we know about that. And so that, to me, is a, you know, there's more scientific debate around that. Right. But around the issue of death, there's almost no debate at all. We know who is dying from this.

It's just that it's not really reported. That's right. I mean, that's all I tried to do at the beginning of the epidemic was try to reduce the flames of panic that were flying, and I was excoriated for daring to be optimistic and just daring and daring to try to help people regulate their emotions.

I mean, I kept saying two things. I kept saying, look, in 2009, 500,000 people died of H1N1. You don't even know that happened. And so kind of regulate yourself, right? And then listen to the CDC and listen to Fauci. They'll get us through this, but calm down. I never saw the CDC recommend lockdown.

Did they ever actually recommend lockdown? That was something the governors did on their own, correct? Well, it's a little bit trickier than that right if you look at some of the stuff that fauci and burke said uh back in march and april they you know there's a little bit of trying to have it both ways i mean my main focus has been on the media because to me the media hysteria has led all of this including fauci and burke but i don't think you you can give Fauci and Birx a clean pass on this.

You can find that infamous quote, where I think it was Birx, but I think Fauci seconded it, saying, well, this will be a bit of an inconvenience. And it's like, this is not an inconvenience. We are shutting down our society. That was back at the end of March.

And even now, the CDC, I mean, it's interesting that it's almost like, it's almost a little bit of jack on high. One day they come out with something that, you know, sort of very tempered. And then the next day they say, you know, wear your mask when you're eating, which I don't, I don't quite know how that works. I don't know how that works. It doesn't seem right to me. So, so, you I mean, I think, look, my point about this has also been we know a lot more now than we did three months ago. And, you know, a response that made sense three months ago may not make sense now. And at the same time, the media is just, I mean, you would not know.

So look at the stories about the second wave and the spike and all the stuff that's come out in the last few days, you would not know that the number of people who died yesterday was under 400. Okay, and it's actually much lower than that because that's the number that states reported yesterday, and they are continuing to sort of back the deaths and go back and look for deaths that might have occurred in May or in some cases even in April. And 400, you know, look, there's still 400 people dying, but that is the lowest number since March. And so what is the media now talking about? They're talking about, you know, quote-unquote, spikes in cases. And I keep saying this on Twitter, and, you know, it's something I'm going to go into in the book.

A case is a positive test result. It does not mean that you're going to a hospital, much less winding up on an ICU or a bed. It doesn't does not mean that you're going to a hospital much less winding up on an ICU or a vet. It doesn't even necessarily mean that you feel sick. It means that your blood has SARS-CoV-2 in it. Right, exactly.

And you may or may not be sick, even sick at all. And by the way, one of the things that the demonstrations are doing is increasing testing because people are nervous after they go out in demonstration and they're getting tested. And here in Los Angeles, they've set up testing sites at the demonstrations. I thought that was brilliant. Yes.

That is. But, you know, the other, I think another left understood part is we're getting better at figuring out who to test. In other words, the states now do have these contact tracing protocols up and running. And so, you know, even if you do 30,000 tests on people who are essentially random versus doing 30,000 tests on people who are living in dormitories with other people who are sick or who, you know, are best friends or, you know, or spouses with people who are sick, you should have more hits. Absolutely. I just keep saying, I mean, I know I find myself repeating myself,

but you need to know who the positive tests are with to know how dangerous this fight is. Because if it's 100 people in a nursing home, we have a problem. If it's 100 people in college, there really isn't much of a problem. Those people have a very low rate of serious illness from SARS-CoV-2. And it's funny, you say this to people, and it's like they get mad. It's like they want bad news. Right.

So you're aware that the whole notion of lockdown is something invented by a high school student, right? Yes. Yes. That famous paper, I think, high school student, right? Yes. That famous paper, I think, was in Arizona, right? Yeah, and it was written by her father, and he was a computer modeler. He thought, oh, this would be a good model for localized lockdowns, not national lockdown. He never imagined that.

And he put her as the number two author. I've actually got the paper up here. And she is the number two author, a high school student. And that became policy with the Bush administration. It became a paper. Yeah. And by the way, there's no evidence, you know, the whole six feet thing, almost all the studies that have been done, and, you know, they're pretty weak.

But the studies, they're all, thank you, dude. My son just presented me with a Hershey kit for my work today. All the studies that have been done are generally based on three feet, one meter rather than six feet. Three feet kind of makes more sense intuitively. I mean, you sort of imagine that a conversation is usually two to three feet away from somebody so so there's so much here that you know that that is unscientific verging on anti-scientific you know here's another great example so the NEJM and Lancet which as you know are probably the two most prestigious medical journals in the world they both had to retract this crazy paper that essentially seems to have

been based on data that you know i don't want to say falsified because we don't know but the authors will not show anybody the actual raw data which makes it very hard to believe right um and it's published hang on it's published by a company that no one had ever heard of heard of who has five five employees one is an adult model, and the other is a science fiction writer. So three employees. That's right. And two of the three authors are these terrible doctors. The third guy's a real guy, but two of the three are just absurd.

And so, you know, as soon as the paper came out, people said, look, the data here, how on earth did they get hundreds of hospitals around the world to give them confidential patient data in a matter of days or weeks? And that's a great question. So, you know, it is as if in our rush to, you know, to find positive stories or negative stories or, you know, some kind of scientific advance around SARS-CoV-2, we have we are we've lost I don't know we've lost moderation no we're hysterical we're hysterical and we're hysterical we're hysterical and the press is now become just panic porn I'm just hearing from a reliable source that Surgisphere closed their

doors today that's the organization that published that that bogus data in Lancet about hydroxychloroquine. Now, so given that lockdown was an invention of a high school student in 2006, people are asking, would the numbers have been different? Now, this is important. I want you to parse this question out very specifically. If we hadn't locked down, how could the numbers have been different? And I'm going to posit that it might have been a little more spiky, and New York needed to be shut down just to figure out what was going on, let's be fair. But it would have been a little more spiky, but the total number of cases and the total number of deaths would have been the same.

Would that be an accurate statement? I mean, I think the truth is at this point we don't know, and we may never know because we don't have a counterfactual to do on. We don't have a test. We don't have a scientific study. Well, here's what we do know. Nature, another top scientific journal, read two absolutely ridiculous papers last week claiming that lockdowns in Europe had saved 3 million lives,

which would only be possible if, based on the fatality rate that the CDC has calculated if Europe had more than a billion people. And didn't Dr. Neil Ferguson get back into the government, what would you call it? He did. He testified again. And said the same thing. Said essentially the same thing. This is the guy that has missed every epidemic in history. So there's this notion floating,

you know, along with, look at how many people the lockdown saved. They would have saved even more people if we'd started a week earlier, which is the ultimate counterfactual. Because if you're going to say that lockdowns work, present me some countries that didn't lock down that did worse than countries that did lockdown. And present me when a country stopped locking down that things got worse.

And right now, those two things that you would like to have, if you're going to tell me that lockdowns actually worked and continue to work, are very down on the ground. So, you know, in the states that removed lockdowns first, notably Georgia, also Wisconsin, there has not been an increase in deaths. Now, people are talking about places like Texas and saying cases are up. But again, cases, cases, cases are not the same as hospitalizations. And deaths are not up and cases are up but there's not clearly a trend because the delta hasn't been established yet so to talk about it meaningfully you can't yet you just can't that's that's that's right and forget the media it is i

mean one of the amazing things that happened i don't know if you remember but back in sort of late march early april there was the handful of states that held out and wouldn't lock down. And, of course, Sweden wouldn't lock down and Belarus wouldn't lock down. And there was enormous international pressure on those states and countries to lock down. And I said it at the time, and I'll stick with it. That's because the people who had sort of devoted, you know, putting massive public pressure to make the lockdowns happen, didn't want a counterfactual. They didn't want to know what would happen if places didn't lock down. Crazy. And I thought that was really disturbing. And so right now, what do we know about Sweden?

Sweden, look, has Sweden had deaths yet? Of course they've had deaths. Have they had more deaths than the other Nordic countries? Yes. But have they had fewer deaths than the countries that locked down in Europe the hardest, including uk including france yes so again and there's a lockdown and again nobody nobody ever said lockdown was going to save lives lockdown was going to flatten the curve so the total number of deaths should be the same either way it should be that's right if the curve is flat or not flat, you're absolutely correct, Dr. Zub. But given the damage that we know the lockdowns have, given the fact that the number of overdose deaths, for example, in British Columbia, which

obviously is a terrible problem with overdose, doubled in May compared to January, and was the worst month in their history, given that, you would like to know that lockdowns actually work to reduce COVID deaths. I don't think that's too much to ask. That's right. And we don't have that. No, we don't have that. Not even close.

Not even close to having it. In fact, I was studying some of the 1918 flu stuff, and the data there suggests masks work perfectly. Masks stop the outbreak. If people wore masks, they just didn't feel they could get everybody to wear masks. Here, we're doing it. We're relatively, we're pretty good at it.

Yeah. And, you know, that is one. And, you know, on masks, I would say, I think because I've gotten so cynical about the things that public health has proposed, you know, the establishment, what they've said in the last couple of months, I am probably more cynical about masks than I should be. Because to me, it smells like a kind of social control.

But again, that's the horrible thing about... If it actually works... Alex, I've seen this song before. When governments overstate a public health position, the public stops listening. I call it reefer madness. Whenever they go, cannabis is going to make you crazy and it's going to kill all you kids. And then the kids go, hey, wait, it's not so bad. Screw them.

I'm never listening to anything they say. I saw this during the HIV thing. I've seen it and seen it and seen it. I know that's how the public responds to public health messages that are draconian. They just go the other way. So I'm not surprised you're saying that. I have to let you go in a second, but I want to ask one more thing. Did you see the Elmhurst Hospital video from the nurse?

So I haven't, and I'll tell you why. She's a very strong anti-vaxxer. She's a bit of a gadfly. So I've actually heard, you know, not from a nurse, but from a patient, not a patient, but someone who is in the family of a patient, not at Elmhurst, but at another New York City hospital, who is complaining to me, saying, you know, terrible things happened to me, terrible things happened to people I know in this community, which was the Orthodox Jewish community, where a lot of people did get hospitalized. And I said, look, I need evidence. I need proof. And so far, I don't have that yet. So I can sort of talk about it, but I can't report it because

I don't have anything. The problem with whistleblowers is you you have to push them to the wall and make sure that they have proof. Well, also, I can tell you as a physician that some of the things that she was thinking were categorically not true. And she didn't know enough to understand the clinical circumstances she was even in. And so because she had a knowledge gap, she was filling with paranoid ideas. Now, I'm glad she spoke up. I'm glad she's calling things into question. But so much of what she said was extremely inaccurate in terms of what was going on in the patients she described. Very unfair. Very unfair. So I did listen to it and I thought, oh my God god i'm glad

to hear you say that because we need to you know we need to be very careful because the media will jump on people like you and me who try to raise questions not to overstep and not to cause you know and not to not to do anything that could undermine my credibility your credibility anybody's credibility who's on the side sort of of of, let's push back a little bit on this, I think is really smart. And that's why I've avoided even watching that. Yeah, it's, again, I appreciate what she's doing. I get it, blah, blah, blah. And she brings up some really interesting ideas that we should think through. Honestly, some of the stuff she questions should be questioned. I love it. But for instance, she has a trach patient that she's sobbing about

who dies. If somebody has such severe COVID that they've been on a ventilator so long they needed a tracheostomy, that patient's life expectancy is limited. And she doesn't understand all the different physiological processes that are going on in all the other organs. That person could be dead in a second, and he was. That happens a a lot they go by cardiac death sudden death arrhythmias because of a viral my because of an inflammatory myocarditis what's that right they're so sick yeah she's like oh my god they killed him they killed him they killed him i was like no no no a trach patient in a covet that person is on borrowed time if they get through through it all, they'll be very lucky. Then she talked about another patient that extubated himself

and that he saved his life by extubating himself. She doesn't even know what happened. She wasn't in the ICU when it all went down. That's right. One last thing. You're in LA. I'm in New York. There are bad municipal hospitals in these places that at the best of times, sometimes the care

is not what you would hope it would be. And Elmhurst is actually known as one of those places. So you add a flood of patients, you know, nervous nurses and doctors, you know, who don't know what they're looking at. A lot of staff coming in on locum tenens from out of town who don't know each other. And, you know, is it possible that people died who, under better circumstances, wouldn't have died yet? Does that mean that there was an effort to kill them? No, no. I actually signed up. I signed up to be one of those doctors. They never called me in, but I'm sure I was on the

verge of it. But but be that as it may, she did raise a really interesting point, is that the infrastructure of hospital bed and quality hospital programming in the city of New York may be deficient. It's a really interesting question. It certainly is in Italy and that's why they got in trouble. Maybe that's why New York got in trouble. If you're a billionaire at Memorial Sloan Kettering or New York Press, that's one thing. If you're at Elmhurst, it's something very different. It's exactly right. It's exactly right. All right, my friend, listen, I will come visit you in New York one of these days very soon, and I appreciate you stopping by here, and I know

you spent a lovely hour with my friend Adam Carolla. How was that? He's great! He's a little saltier than you are or I am. And this idea that we're not allowed to go on anywhere if we go on Fox, it's just crazy.

He was complaining about it too, and I guess you've had this problem too now. Well, I used to be on HLN-CNN. Then I was drummed out. Then I've been doing a lot of work on homelessness before the COVID break. And Fox News was the only organization that let me come on. So I came on to talk about it. I have no allegiance to Fox. I like the Greg Gutfeld show.

I like him. I like his cast. And so that's how I got involved. And then as this thing came on, I started getting a little vocal about how the press was creating hysteria. That became, I'm somehow a right-wing denier,

vaccine denier. And by the way, for the record, I want to get on the human trials right now for vaccines. I can't get on fast enough. I want to be a human subject, and these vaccines are great. I can't wait to get on one. That's funny you say that, because I actually just took

my youngest daughter in for her one-year shot today. But you know what? You can be first for the corona vaccine. Considering the risk, you know what? I'm not that anxious to be early in that clinical trial. I hear two reasons I am. First of all, they're on to phase three.

The phase two looked great. Phase three, the biology is exquisite. I understand it. I see the risk, and it's nothing. And I'm in my 60s, so I have a real risk from covid so give me the vaccine i'll i i want to be a human subject i want to push this thing forward so there you go all right well good enough let's let's talk again soon all right my friend good to talk to you and uh we will talk again sometime soon and by the way i canceled my prescription subscription the new york times i

couldn't do it fast enough i'm just so disappointed that one of my great joys in the day was reading the New York Times. It's gone somewhere where I don't recognize it anymore. I hear you. I hear you. All right, my friend. Talk soon. Bye. All right. Now, why are you laughing there, Susan?

I don't know. He's like, what do I say now? Because he was a New York Times reporter, and guys like him can't do reporting for the New York Times anymore. Yeah, he doesn't want to work there anymore. Well, I'm sure he'd be happy to, just like I'd be happy to go on CNN. We had another interview with him

on Dose of Dr. Drew. You can look up and see his previous interview. Well, we'll get him back. This was just a quickie because I've got somebody who I've been very anxious to talk to and I'm so delighted he is with us. This is Dr. Adolph Brown. He's a friend and colleague. What are you saying, Susan? I'm sorry.

Take a break, or do you want to keep going? Oh, let's take a break. Well, let me tell you about him first. He's a university professor, 30 years of experience, mental health, social justice, diversity. He has something called the empathy gap we're going to discuss, and how that construct might be used in the present historical moment to make us better. We'll also talk about how mental health professionals can contribute to the current discussion on racism. We've got a lot of stuff to get deep into. Dr. Brown has a degree in anthropology and psychology, a master's work in special education, experimental psychology.

A doctorate in psychology. He's also a clinical licensed psychologist, and he did a residency and ran a residency in psychology, so he is extra well trained so i'm delighted to talk to him we will after this break about a year ago i was introduced to true niogen supplement specifically designed to boost a key cellular resource called nad that's short for nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide i was really impressed with the research that showed that increased nad levels can promote cellular repair, maintain healthy mitochondria, and increase energy throughout the trillions of cells in our body.

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And I suggest you check out their information for yourself. To learn more about the research, science, and to order your supply of TruNiagin supplement, visit drdrew.com slash TruNiagin and use the code drew at checkout for a special discount on orders of three bottles or more so that's my website drdrew.com slash t-r-u-n-i-a-g-e-n and use the code drew today thank you to our friends at trunigin i've been taking the product for years and i'm convinced that the nad story is an important one i whenever people say i look young i think that's a true nitrogen and susan made her take it too because I do think it has advantages. I emailed the doctor today.

Good. Oh, what she's talking about is we're going to bring, this is a different issue, which is NAD infusions. We're going to bring in somebody that does those infusions to talk about that. Also, don't forget this, needle destruction device. This could revolutionize needle sticks and get rid of them entirely, which are a massive source of despair and cost in our country. If you're a diabetic or if you're cleaning up streets, this destroys needles and you don't have to worry about the biohazard anymore. Also, I mentioned these thermometers.

Everybody get them. You should be using them all the time. Whenever you go out, whenever you're around people, you can get this and a UV light that will sterilize. Susan, when we go to New York, we're going to have a handheld UV light to sterilize car seats and train seats and that kind of thing. It's at 866-4 Redhawk, R-E-D-H-A-W-K.

Check that out. All right, let's bring in our guest, Dr. Adolph Brown. I can't wait to speak to him. Dr. Brown, thank you so much for joining us. Good to see you. Thank you for having me. Good to be here. So, let's start with, we want to get into some deep stuff, but let's start with the empathy gap theory. Tell me what that is and what you think can be, how that could be used to help our current moment.

Well, Dr. Drew, it has to do with attribution error, implicit bias, all the things that mental health professionals know and talk about. You and I better step back and talk about cognitive distortions than first, because you and I know what we're talking about. So we're talking about cognitive dissonance, reasoning from conclusion, fundamental attribution error. By the way, there's a great website called You Are Not So Smart that just examines

these cognitive distortions, but I'll let you speak to it. Go ahead. Okay, well, I think most people think our brain was designed to teach us to think, when in fact, it was designed to teach us not to have to think. So the brain helps us more with efficiency than it does with correctness. So the brain categorizes things all the time, and it makes it easier for us to retrieve it later. So the issue becomes that we have to challenge those assumptions that the brain gives us. Basically, the brain

teaches us without our permission. So if we only use what the brain gives us, if you've never met a person like me or have relatives like me or work with someone like me then you're going to take your brain's information and use that to develop a profile of me and it may be incorrect and likely will be so that's implicit bias the empathy gap occurs when we don't check those when if i didn't get to know you dr drew then it would likely I would allow my brain to tell me about you. You would do the same. There's no bridge. That's a gap.

And many people are talking about gaps today. We talk about health disparities. We talk about achievement gap. But I believe that the source of that gap is empathy. When I don't put myself in your shoes, when I don't attempt to listen or understand things from your perspective, then there's no bridge. I couldn't agree with you more, but I want to throw a little wrench towards your theory, not into your theory necessarily,

not into the gears, but near the gears, which is, and you may not agree with me, so it's my premise here. Since I started working in a psychiatric hospital, I noticed the Axis II diagnoses rapidly shift during the 80s and 90s towards the cluster B, which is the narcissistic disorders. And one of the liabilities of narcissistic traits is difficulty with empathy. Are we too narcissistic to be empathic? You know, Dr. Drew, I think that's an excellent, excellent insight. I think we have, as a part of empathy, we have to do two of the most humbling things that human beings can do, that self-reflection and self-correction.

And on the continuum of narcissism, that wouldn't exist. So I think you're correct in what you're saying, but I think the good news about this is that empathy is a skill. So it can be taught and it can be practiced. So that's the good news about it. And to be fair, even within the construct I'm proposing, most people are not disordered narcissists. We just have trended that way. So there's traits, and you can overcome traits.

Definitely. Definitely. I think many people, I mean mean if you have people around you that are pretty much like you and and you don't have to go out of your way to to to stretch and put on other people's shoes or try to entertain understand other people's feelings um empathy isn't well developed so i think that's a point for diversity. Say that again? I say that's a point to support the need for diversity.

Yeah, yeah. So again, when people have looked at, there was a famous book in the 50s called Contact. And you must be familiar with this, right? And they were looking at how do we get over biases and racism? And lo and behold, what did they find? Contact. Being around people that you're not used to being around completely takes away your biases or at least reduces your biases around the people that you're hanging out with.

Exactly. Yeah. So let's get in deeper here. You and I talked a little bit on the phone today about what I wanted to get into. And I'm not sure where this is going to go. And I'm not hearing anybody talk about this. So I spoke to, oh, shoot, I'm forgetting his name now. He's one of the local leaders here in Los Angeles was developed out of a system designed to track down fugitive slaves.

And I thought, geez, I thought the LAPD, actually, the LAPD's history is more nefarious. It actually was a vigilante group against Mexicans, as far as I knew. But it kept ringing in my head. He kept talking about how seeing the the excessive, which we know for sure, statistically black men are hassled more than than anybody else. I'm not going to get a discussion about why or wherefore or what conditions this happens. It happens. And his in his head, that was this system of essentially a remnant of slavery performing a function in the present moment and i thought wait a minute this is what he feels about this this isn't necessarily what this is this is his legitimate feeling about it that comes from

a trauma that we should be talking about. You take that initial premise and tell me what you think about that. Definitely. I think there are things that happen in the present that can definitely trigger what some would call transgenerational trauma, whereby seeing police brutality, seeing many things would be reminiscent of what happened in slavery. I think the gentleman's discussion of the creation of the police department, I think that goes to speak to basically what happened after the Reconstruction period. Well, yeah.

And then recon- Yeah, go ahead. You have at it, man. I'm with you on this. We'll go on. We'll go deep on this. Yeah, I don't think many people talk about- No one talks about it. Reconstruction. No one talks about it. Well, you know who talks about it? My black friends talk about it, and I never understood that's what they were talking about, because isn't called that specifically but go ahead keep going yeah so so what happened in reconstruction the very first thing that happened was that you had free blacks that

didn't know how to operate in society as free people and then you had whites who didn't know how to treat or accept free blacks. That's the first thing. Yeah, that's the first thing. There was also marauding warlords. There were leftover Confederate troops that were marauding around. I mean, they're just destroying people. And Frederick Douglass has a famous statement.

He said, we gave up the lash for the shotgun. And people didn't lynch slaves. I mean, that would be, the slave owner would kill you if you did that. That's a valuable property that you destroyed. But after Reconstruction, that's where that started happening in just the most disgusting, uncontrolled way ever. Well, the South felt that Reconstruction was humiliating. They felt like it was a vengeful imposition, and they weren't accepting of it. So much of what happened after Reconstruction, in some opinions, is worse, or was worse than the actual at very minimum it delivered a traumatic blow that was profound that is a blind spot for most white people i would argue i i i would say that when i learned about it i was embarrassed and shocked that i didn't know more about that i

thought i knew about that period and when i I really started reading about it, I thought, oh, my God. Oh, my God. This is unbelievable. It's unbelievable. Yeah. And those feelings, for many of the people that were against it, continue today. Right.

And when people talk about things having been 400 years ago no no no that went on until what 1885 or something so we're talking about exactly exactly i mean and and that was a mad oh my god i just hate to think about it imagine people are hunting i mean so when people talk about hunting your family hunting people down that is a a thing that happened and so anything that looks like that evokes, brings that past into the present. And unless we really talk about that, I don't know how we can get forward.

That trauma. Yeah. That trauma is real. Dr. Drew, I have a friend that, she heads up a site for children, black and brown children, pro babies. She posted the other day. She said, how would you like a statue erected for someone who kidnapped your children and sold them?

Hey, listen to this. I haven't talked about this. You'd appreciate a similar thing. Do you know why they don't have haven't talked about this you'd appreciate a similar similar thing is do you know why they don't have the death penalty in germany do you know why oh because they the the thought that they might kill another jewish person just as an as a historical image is so profound that they just we're going to eliminate the death penalty altogether just in case a Jew gets caught into that. Think about that. Wow.

Right. Oh, yeah. That's deep. It is deep. And here we don't pull that history forward in the same way, right? Well, I think it's interesting that that's what happens in Germany, but look what happens in the U.S. with the 13th Amendment. The 13th Amendment freed slaves, unless you can be enslaved if you commit a crime. How many of us read this? You can be enslaved. In fact, that's

really what's going on in our prison system. I've worked in it. I know you have experience with it. That's what's happening. And even when it's not, let's get this clear, it evokes that history just the way if a Jewish person were killed in Germany as a result of a legitimate application of capital punishment, it evokes a history that they find inconsistent with what they want to be today. Make sense? It does, Dr. Drew. In fact, Dr. Drew, there are people who postulate that PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder, is actually different for black and brown populations where it's post-traumatic slavery

disorder. Well, tell me more. I'm all ears because it makes sense to me. Well, that's exactly what we're talking about. We're talking about the trauma. Yeah, it's intergenerational transmission of that collective. And we need language for this, too. That's what's bothering me a little bit. I mean, it is the American Holocaust in a way, but I don't think the Holocaust is the right word. We just don't really, we don't have language for this yet that I think would make everybody happy. Do you?

No, I think that we're encouraging courageous conversations with one another, and I get that. But what's your internal dialogue? I mean, that's where we live in mental health. What's your internal dialogue? That's where it starts, Dr. Drew. As much as I want reform with laws, and guess what? The White House is important, the State House, but my house and your house,

that's where it starts. That's right. So what do we do? Here we are, you and I, trying to talk honestly about the history of this country, honestly about the source of the feelings that are causing distortions in the present we haven't really talked about the white people distortion because we have plenty to not the least of which is blind spots that we don't know we have we just don't seem to understand we have them and we need a

language for that that isn't isn't making people push back you you know? It's, you know, I'll just tell you an aside. What blew my mind is the Frederick Douglass' biography, the new biography that's out, the opening chapter, I think it's even a prologue, talks about his speech at the consecration of a Lincoln Memorial. Did you read this biography? Yeah. Yeah, at the consecration of a Lincoln Biography Did you read this biography? Yeah.

Yeah, the consecration of a Lincoln biography, which was very demeaning to African-American people. And he got up, and let's be fair, Lincoln was a racist who moved away from his racist position, and he forged a relationship with Frederick Douglass. I would call them not just colleagues, but friends, wouldn't you? Right. This is the circumstance in which he gets up to give a speech about his friend, a statue about his friend. And he gets up and he excoriates Lincoln for being a white supremacist. And I thought, oh, I was shocked. I was like, how dare you? Abraham Lincoln, no. And then I thought,

oh my God, I get what he's talking about. And I just devoured that book like no other because I couldn't. I want to know more about this guy that I mean, I recommend it to everybody. Every American should read that book. And I thought, wow, that's I don't know if that word would apply. People could accept that word today, but he's talking about these blind spots. He's talking about looking at the world from a perspective that prevents you from seeing others empathically. It's really back to what you're talking about.

Yes. Yeah. Yes. I'm talking about when you watch the news at night with all the things that are happening now with the BLM movement and everything else, what's your internal dialogue? I mean, what are you saying? Are you discouraging people for what they're doing? Or do you return and say, I wonder what would make me respond that way? But I think oftentimes what people do, Dr. Drew, is they say,

I would never respond that way. So that's sympathy. You're over there. I'm over here. I'm glad it's not happening to me. That's sympathy but not empathy. Exactly. Empathy is actually being in your shoes. Yes, and learning to listen and actually experience it. I'm trying to find this guy. And that takes a lot of practice.

Kendrick. This guy's name is Kendrick. And I can't find it. Let me see if I can find it. I'm trying to find this guy. And that takes a lot of practice. Kendrick. The guy's name is Kendrick. And I can't find, let me see if I can find it. Because I don't want to diminish him. And Kendrick Sampson is the guy. Kendrick Sampson was the BLM leader that I'm thinking of. And let's say we're talking to Kendrick, you and I. How should we get him to start to look at what he's feeling about the present moment and connecting it to the traumatic heritage? Do we do that? Or is that – tell me what to do. Go ahead. No, no.

I don't think that's an issue as much for Kendrick as it is for other people to understand what Kendrick is actually experiencing. Okay. And so Kendrick's... I don't think that... But Kendrick's experience is going to be fired, fueled by that trauma and might make him to react emotionally aggressively or rather excessively, right? Well, I think that the fact that Kendrick can articulate it, I think the fact that Kendrick's alive today

would show us that Kendrick has a certain amount of coping strategies and a coping capacity to actually deal with it. I think the bigger issue would be where others understand and could connect the dots and put on kindred shoes. Okay. So where should you and I take this conversation from here? How do you and I help move this, the moment, forward? I don't know how to describe the moment even anymore.

How do we help? Well, Dr. Drew, we're doing it. We're actually doing it. Everyone talks about the courageous conversation. Look at the things that we're talking about right now. I mean, and there was a time where you said, you may not agree with me, and you said it anyway. guess what it's not about agreement as much as it is about learning and about insight so i think another issue goes with regards to people taking things more personally than seriously everybody's carrying something are are you seeing... Whoops, guys. Our Skype just kind of blew up on us here. Oh.

Hackers are taking down cell towers right now. Oh, interesting. Are we up and running? Are you guys on mic? Hello, hello, hello? Yeah, he's good. No, the phone you said the call-in studio went down? I did not say that. It was poor

Dr. Brown kind of broke up on Skype. I think I got you back, Dr. Brown. No, he's not on Skype. On Zoom, whatever, whatever's going on here. He's on VMAX. VMAX, I beg your pardon. Oh, I thought you said our Skype went down. No, no, no, no. Dr. Brown froze on here he's on vmx oh i thought you said our skype went down no no no no dr brown froze up and he's back now so finish repeat what you said there just together go ahead dr brown well i i was it would be important for us to put on kindred shoes. And one of the reasons that I think that's imperative is that I think the

fact that he is surviving and more or less thriving would show that he has the coping capacity and strategies to deal with what's happening around us. I think what will fuel his trauma would be the dismissal of it. So that's not an issue for Kendrick. That's an issue to help those understand. And Kendrick's issue isn't an isolated issue. Right. It's an issue for black and brown populations everywhere.

Right. And if he were being, go ahead. Oh, I'm sorry. And you had asked me asked me Dr. Drew what do we do from here the fact that you are having this discussion speaks volumes the fact that we're role modeling what how to have

a discussion of this magnitude as you said you haven't heard anyone talk about reconstruction neither have I, yet we're talking about it. And as painful as it is, we're talking about it. And we didn't have any preconceived notions of what it was. Hey, listen, I got an interesting idea. Let's each of us talk about our personal feelings about this conversation, because I bet they're very different. For instance, my feeling is shame and embarrassment, right?

I'm embarrassed that I didn't know more about this my entire life, and I'm ashamed that the country did this, right? So those are the feelings I have. What feelings do you have? Well, the feelings I have, I'm hurt, Dr. Drew. I'm hurt not with regards to necessarily what I know about the situation. I grew up in a household that was social justice advocates. I'm hurt for my children. I'm hurt for my grandchildren. I'm hurt because I know what I attempt to do, and I attempt to do it through love, light, and insight. As cliche as it may sound, you know, I could also do it,

you know, in a different way, but I choose love and light and insight. But I'm hurt. I'm hurt by the history, but I think I'm more hurt today by the endurance of that history. When I say the endurance, the perpetuation that if I don't talk about it, it didn't exist. It didn't happen for a lot of people. So I want to stop you. I want to stop you because now my feelings shifted, right? Now I have a totally different set of feelings, which is I'm sad too. I'm sad that I can't do anything to help you.

Again, and then I feel weird and embarrassed that I have to even say that I didn't know about this, but I'm sad that you're hurt. And if we all could sort of find that common spot, maybe we could find a common healing, right? I mean, it's terribly, terribly disturbing to hear that you have to feel that way.

Right. And I get it. You get it. But it's also important to understand that we didn't contribute to that history 400 years ago. You nor I. We're contributing. Exactly. That's right. And yet we're having all these feelings now that most people are

ignoring. Everybody else is ignoring and just letting this spiel prevail. Exactly. It feels like, and this now is going to sound squishy too, which is like we have to open our hearts. We have to speak heart to heart about this, right? That's my language. Okay. That's my language. And that's another part.

That's another blind spot that everyone kind of misses. But you have to get past the shame and embarrassment, which is not exactly fun, right? Because it's easy to go. It's easy. Here's the easy move that I could have made as a white person. I could have gone, hey, my grandparents came from Belarus in 1910. What do I have to do with this? And I understand the argument.

Aside from, I understand that they came here to a world that was benefiting from what had happened prior to that. I get it. But it's an easy move when you're feeling shame and embarrassed. It's an easy thing to sort of push it off. Right, but going back to the implicit bias that we talked about earlier, what we don't do a good job of, Dr. Drew, is we don't do a good job of protecting our mouths from our brains. And when I say that, everyone has implicit bias.

It's not a one-way street. Everybody has implicit bias. All human brains, right. All human brains. Exactly. Don't think that you are both, Dr. Brown and I, have it somewhere. And part of implicit bias is you don't see it you don't get to see it exactly yeah all right so so with that said it's also important to say the fact that

not every racist statement comes from a racist right keep going that's that's a different side that is keep going it's a blind spot go ahead keep going exactly so again it goes back to critical thinking it goes back to the mental health definition of maturity being able to separate your emotions from your thinking how often do we really do that well today i mean my god you're actually you're actually disdained for doing that right i mean social media you're rewarded for being as emotionally hysterical as you can possibly be. And that's, you know, as we talk here, that's the part I'm trying to wonder how we, as people with some mental health background, can push this thing in a healthier direction. Last time we talked, you said critical thought, and I could not agree more that critical reasoning is is largely absent right now but that's a hard thing to get people to do

brains don't normally do that and you you were you were talking you were talking earlier about essentially let's see how not to have to think i wrote your words down i thought that was a great that to me that was a new correct me if i wrong, but that's a new way of thinking about Daniel Kahneman's thinking fast, thinking slow, right? Right? Exactly. Yeah. Yes. In adding.

Go ahead. In adding the phrase, don't believe everything you think. Right. Right. And so we're saying, think slow. We're saying, don't believe necessarily what you think. And by the way, in my field, which is addiction, we call it stinking thinking because it causes people to do horrible things all the time. Bad thinking.

That's right. And don't even start with psychotic illness, right? Oh, there you go. Nice. That's right. Nice. That's my stinkin' man. So we, I still though, if we were to go on Twitter, I'm looking at the restream right now,

seeing how people are sort of taking our conversation. And some people are, some people like it. And some people are sort of spinning, you know, spinning in ways that I don't think is productive. Not horrible. People aren't being horrible. But I'm not sure we're getting... But even if they are... Say it again.

But even if they are, Dr. Drew, that's not necessarily a bad thing. They're listening. And I believe, as my grandfather, the farmer, believed, I want every seed that I plant to grow optimistically. But realistically, I know that some won't grow right now, won't grow yet. So I'm very optimistic about our conversations and the work we do. Regardless of the feedback we get. The feedback, they're even setting me straight on what I'm calling this thing I'm looking at. It's a chat, not a restream.

Okay, guys, thank you. So I get it. Natalie thinks Dr. Brown is cute. Oh, again, good feedback on you, though, Dr. Brown. We're getting good vibes coming in. But how about clinically right now? Are you seeing any trends, anything that worries you? Are you having any success in certain areas when the doors are closed?

Well, you know what, Dr. Drew? I'm not embarrassed to say this, but years ago, I found that coaching, in my opinion, was a little bit more effective than therapy. The philosophy I have with therapy, I was pulling, and in coaching, I'm pushing. So I'm doing more coaching today, whereby I'm not allowing people to stay stuck in too much of their past. Good. And I guess, and the trends I'm seeing pretty much, and this is more of a self-reflection for me. Please.

Based on where I'm from, based on what I've been through in my life, I'm not as tolerant of excuses as most. I'm about accountability. I'm about taking responsibility. So I would say over the years, if there's anything that I've seen, I've seen less and less of accountability, people taking accountability, owning the things that they've done, as opposed to projecting them onto a spouse, children, or whatever. A lot of projection. A lot of projection these days. I've noticed that, too. A lot of people projecting their feelings and saying that they belong to somebody else. It's also not empathy, by the way, the opposite of empathy. Um, how did you, if you don't mind your, your personal story, how did you come to accountability or did you, have you always been

that way? No. Um, mom and dad divorced when i was two um oldest sibling i left my mother with five children my oldest sibling and only brother oscar was murdered when i was 11 so i was that student and at public education with one foot in gifted education and one foot in alternative education wow um it wasn't so um inner projects, but I was able to have a respite with some really good teachers, really great school librarians. When I got in trouble in school early on, I was sent to the library. So meeting my wife at the college of William and Mary, she's from New York. I'm from Virginia.

She wanted all these fancy things, granite countertops and et cetera. I knew nothing about it. All I wanted is what you see behind me, my library. So my grandfather told me early on that there were three ways to get smarter. He said, read, read, read. And that's part of what did it for me. I saw that the world was bigger. I saw that people are different. I saw that the conclusions were always different and no one wrote my conclusion. They allowed me to have my own conclusion of my story. Do you know who else had a very similar

philosophy that I got to share a podium with and was deeply affected by was Antoine Fisher. Do you know his story? Do you know Antoine? Have you met him? What's that? An amazing dude. An amazing dude, an amazing story. And if anyone out there wants one of the best speakers you could possibly have, just have Antoine stand up and tell his story. It'll affect everybody in the room.

It can't not. But, you know, again, it was an empathic psychiatrist that broke him out of that pattern, right, of trouble. Right. And I'm going to give a quick pitch for therapy because for me therapy was very important, but I had a different issue. I didn't have a robust connection between my primary emotions and my secondary understanding of emotions. So I was sort of disconnected emotionally and therapy can really help with that yeah that was

from for me so it so I think to sort of refine both of our positions I think I'm probably more active to say the right treatment for the right patient and also the right professional too I mean you're an excellent right I mean you're an excellent coach. That should be where you put your time. Exactly. So I've been into performance coaching. That's what I'm into now.

But I started off as a psychoanalytic psychotherapist. Wow. You were a psychoanalyst. That's crazy. Yes. That is fantastic. I am. Yeah, yeah.

Wow. I'm jealous. That is so much training, man. You had a lot of training. A lot of am. Yeah, yeah. Wow, I'm jealous. That is so much training, man. You had a lot of training. A lot of training. Yeah, yeah. You get it. No, I get it.

I read your biography when I was like, oh, boy, that is a lot of training. And I'm jealous of analysts because they've been dancing around in that material. It seems so interesting to me. But, yes, its clinical utility is quite limited, quite limited, right? Well, I tell you, Dr. Drew, the fact that we're talking personally, you know, I tell students all the time, young people, especially, I tell them I'm so successful because I failed so much. I tell adults that I'm successful because I use success as my coping strategy. And that was my coping strategy to check things off i was checking off being a young tenured full professor i checked it off and i'm checking it off i don't think

that's uncommon i think that i think that's kind of common i think a lot of a lot of men do that particularly right it's how we develop our and and to be fair i think i do the same thing and i and i think it started from needing a place in the world like be something in the world yeah and then you kind of get exactly and you kind of like that so it keeps going people people reinforce that right and you took it to an extreme place let's be fair i'm just kidding the great news is i the great news is about that kind of training i bet none of it goes unused every day. I mean, I bet it all gets used all the time every day. You know, I'm able to give it back, and I'm out of my comfort zone when I give it back, Dr. Drew.

I'm an introvert. I'm a classic introvert. I don't get my energy from the thousands of people that I get to address on a weekly basis. I get my energy alone, reading. Interesting. I love research. I get it. And somebody's asking about positive psychology.

Are you using any of that philosophy in what you're doing? Yes, definitely, definitely. When I talk about positive psychology, my greatest reference is a book called The Happiness Advantage, which postulates that it's not the things that give us happiness as much as it is the predisposition of happiness that you have to attract those things. And I'm checking who that author is.

That is Stephen Steven anchor, right? Is that correct? Yes. Okay. Yes, you're correct. All right.

I think I, I think I have this book. I recognize that. I recognize that cover with the yellow smiley face. Uh, and, uh, Seligman,

is that the, the father of positive psychology? Yeah. Yeah. I've heard him speak a number of times. Martin Seligman right am i remembering it correctly yeah and uh it's interesting um these are all just tools these are just ways of looking at things in a ways of helping people well listen i i i knew this would be a great

conversation i it it you know back to psychotherapy and you, I'm going to say your psychoanalytic heritage gives you a immediate ability to hold people. You know what I'm saying? Hold in a safe space. And I feel like you've been holding me there right now. So you do that automatically. And I appreciate that very much. And as a result of this holding environment that you very naturally create, I feel like we've been able to have a little conversation here that I hope others will benefit from. It's helped me. It helped me because I moved from my embarrassment and shame into my sadness

for the sadness that you're feeling, which is empathy. Right? That's right. Yeah. That's kind of a big deal. And I've always known we needed to come from our hearts, and we needed to open our hearts and walk into each other's worlds, literally, without fear.

Well, there's going to be some anxiety, of course, but just keep your heart open. I'd like to also add, Dr. Drew, and as we conclude, one of my greatest mentors and professor, my supervisor, Dr. Mike Nichols, wrote a book, and his book is called The Lost Art of Listening. I think that would be a tremendous read for such a time as this. Lost art of listening. And as it pertains to listening, I always tell people,

listening with your ears is part of listening. But you have to learn to listen with your whole body and your being and read your reactions and listen to your reactions and listening to your body's reaction to other people. And we barely even hear each other. We barely use our ears, right? That's right.

It's crazy. People are asking also, I want to, oh, somebody read that book. Great, Natalie read it. Did you see the Dave Chappelle special, his latest one, where he was a little, and they're wondering what you thought about that. I've not seen it. I've not seen it yet. I will, but I haven't seen it.

Okay. Well, I know Dave Chappelle, and Dave Chappelle is known as a comedian, but Dave Chappelle is one of the most brilliant individuals to ever sit down and have a conversation with. I felt like he wanted to release i don't feel like it was a comedy special in any means i think he might have had you know some you know comedy exists from saying unexpected things so um i think he's so clever he's so clever he's gonna say funny stuff right no matter what

exactly exactly but i i think it was this uh i think it was a catharsis for him and i i think he knew that others felt the same way many feel the same way so that's what it was in my in my opinion and again it's for for those of you that have not had a shared experience like dave chapelle's listen carefully you got to listen very carefully this is this is back to this listening issue if you if you stay too deep in your experience this is not moving forward you got you've got to take on that of others uh people were asking oh did i hang up on the restream by accident? I did. People are asking first. Don't worry.

I just signed out by accident. The two books we're talking about, the happiness book is called The Happiness Advantage. The Happiness Advantage. And the listening book we are talking about is The Lost Art of Listening. And there we go. What's up for you? Speaking anywhere? Can people find you specific places yes every day i'm doing multiple virtuals for corporations and educational

institutions around the world um i can be found at doc speaks.com that's what i do personally um i work for uh my wife who owns uh the business and education leadership authority. Nice. So, but Doc Speaks is where you can find me. Well, please, I've been looking, trying to find a way to be useful in all of this. I've been sort of powerless and afraid, and this has felt different for me. So, if there's anything I can do to help support what you're doing or whatever, please call on me. I would love to do something like that.

Dr. Drew, I'm one of your biggest fans. I think our background is very similar. I was a love doctor here in the Hampton Roads, Tidewater area of Virginia Beach for years on the rodeo. Fantastic. Oh, yeah. So you did all that. Oh, yeah.

So that's its own kind of education and again speaking of listening right you with that experience of listening on the radio you have to like you you have to listen to you know how you react to just the voice it's incredible that's an incredible training yeah that's right well mr love doctor thank you for sharing your time with us and uh and i again recommend recommend Last Art of Listening, Happiness Advantage, Antoine Fisher's book. If you guys can, I don't forget what it's called. It's phenomenal. And again, if there's anything we can do to keep moving this thing forward, let's all look to do so.

And I'm at your service. Dr. Brown, thanks so much for joining us. Thank you. All right. Thank you. I appreciate it. You service. Dr. Brown, thanks so much for joining us. All right. Thank you. I appreciate it. You bet. Okay.

So I'm going to do a little bit of COVID stuff for you guys, because we had some updates at the university of Washington. I don't know if you quietly noticed this, but they very quietly upped their total death expectation to 201,000. And I didn't see the press report that. So we are getting used to the idea that this virus is going to cause hundreds of thousands of deaths. For the first time, that did not cause headlines, which I find fascinating. And it also showed us, whoops, I'm going to try to get some, hmm, why can't I get this data to come through?

The daily death rate in this country is just stable and not changing. And let's remind ourselves, it's about six, 700 a day. Let's remind ourselves that a stable pattern is better than a complete resolution and then massive uptick. We are generally at about 20,000 cases a day, and that is really not changing. And the hospital resources are being easily met which was the reason for flattening the curve like we said with Alex a little while ago flattening the curve just means stretching out the total number of cases and deaths over a longer period of time but it doesn't change the total number of cases and total numbers of deaths I've been looking at

some of the state-specific data and I don't yet see a trend. I do see an uptick. There is an uptick, as there has to have been, for two reasons. People were out on top of each other in massive demonstrations. Has to be some uptick from that. And at these demonstrations and following, there was a big increase in testing. People worried about themselves a little bit. But even in these, I'm looking at the University of Washington model still, even with the current data that includes the last two and a half weeks of demonstrations, there is no significant uptick in the summer in hospital utilization. Now, they've got this kind of weird uptick going on in the fall, and I'm assuming that's

an assumption that there is a second wave. I don't know why they're assuming the second wave will be a little bigger than the first wave rather than not just a consistent first wave. There's, as I mentioned yesterday, an epidemiologist I was reading who was saying that a steady first wave that does not have a spike and then a drop is superior in that the spike and drop is influenza behavior. And that's always followed in the new season in the fall by another spike and drop while a virus that we are coexisting with kind of like a cold virus, which is what Corona viruses are, is just going to continue at the same level and do its thing until we get these vaccines initiated. And if anybody,

Andrew, I'm not been watching the restream chat very regularly. Andrew, I saw your stuff in there early. But if I'm looking for somebody to help me get in a phase three clinical trial, I did go onto the NIH website and saw that if I lived in Bethesda or Seattle or Washington, D.C., I could get into a phase one trial, which I'm not so interested in. Phase one trial sounds a little bit scarier. You might be too old.

No, no, that one was for older adults. That one specific is for older adult. What I was worried about the phase three, I might be too old for. Or too old. I might be, but I would love if somebody can tell me, well, Andrew's in there somewhere because somebody's talking to him.

Papi's talking to him. If there's any way I can get in the phase three trial for the moderna vaccine i am all in andrew's andrew is drew's bff i know andrew's been a good source of information i appreciate that very much i really do because i'm otherwise i'm out here by myself and it's well and it's colleagues that really enhance your hey what about me no no you you're the reason we're here but it's colleagues that that and conversation with colleagues that helps expand knowledge uh those are two great guests we don't have a ton of calls we have a couple you know but well apparently we didn't have we don't

have calls um well just i think this was a really entertaining podcast and people were really listening it's it's you know it's hard to think of good questions when people are really listening. It's, it's, you know, it's hard to think of good questions when you're really listening. Well, apparently the phone lines are down, right? Because there were some hackers that took down the phone lines.

Nah, I don't know. I don't know if I believe it. University of Chicago, Illinois is going phase three with a Moderna vaccine or their own vaccine. Cause there's every month there's a new vaccine getting rolled out. Well, let me take a call on PTSD as long as we're talking about trauma and PTSD. This is Christine.

Hi, Christine. Hi, Dr. Drew. How are you? Good. What's up? I'm nervous, and I'm thankful for you. You've helped me for over a year and a half now. You did a cameo for me when I was at the peak of my suicide.

Oh. And anyways, I just want to ask, a person with severe PTSD and addictive qualities, how do they maintain balance? Right. It's hard. So first order businesses manage the addiction, right? And as you know, we manage addiction primarily with community and support. Yeah, but I'm not addicted.

I'm not addicted to, it's bizarre. I'm addicted to helping people. It's like I feel like I have to save the world. So it's sort of and how's your self-esteem? How's your self-esteem? How's your self-esteem? How's your self-esteem?

My self-esteem is really good. Alright, good. Because addicts will... Alright. Everybody's telling me I'm a ball hog on the Internet. Whatever that is. In the alter reality.

All right. Apparently I'm a problem child and I'm a ball hog. And I don't want to be that way. I want to be a team. And I just, well, anyway, I just just I'm afraid of our I'm 50-50 I'm half petrified of our government and I'm half you know

brave or courage is different than bravery um I want to fix the system western medicine the whole thing and I feel I have all the information to do that but of course I'm petrified to do it because I feel like they're going to sabotage me. All right. So let's get back to the PTSD.

And maybe in the same breath, we'll talk about fixing a system. You can't do it alone. You can't go it alone. This is the one universal truth of addiction, PTSD. And if you want to fix the system, you're going to need to have a lot of people working with you. So, and you asked about balance. I mean, it's imbalanced to insist on controlling and, you know, fixing the entire world, right?

That's excessive. That's grandiose. But you can certainly work with other people to try to improve the situation. So in terms of balance with PTSD, addictive potential, and this desire to help, it's about spending time with other people. And I don't just mean in giant gatherings. I mean, quiet time, listening to each other. And therapy can be part of that as well.

But it's, again, back to what I was saying about addiction is it's about community. It's about fellowship. It's about shared experiences, people who have been where you've been, and helping create that balance and those bonds and that regulation. And then together, you can do some interesting things. Are there PTSD groups? There are support groups out there. Not really. I mean, you know, there are groups like for military and PTSD, right?

And again, groups are a great place to go for PTSD because people don't feel understood unless you're around somebody else who's been through the kinds of traumas that you've been through. But that's not exclusively what needs to be done. Some individual therapy is very, very important. Let me look through the chat for a second. Thank you, Christine. Appreciate that call. And just think about the fact that just a message from me help you regulate your suicidal kind of feeling. Use that as a model for regulating your emotions generally. It's that other people are what help us do that. And people are saying they love you even as ball hog.

Flora May says we love a ball hog. So there you go. Let's see. Barbara's self-esteem has been down. I don't think self is low. Self-esteem is a bad thing, by the way. I think it helps you improve and look for responsibility and things. It just feels bad. That's the problem with it. I am looking through your chat questions. Hang out one second.

Yes, Andrew, I agree. The FDA announced today that hydroxychloroquine had confusing data, which is true. Secretary Azar with the HHS said basically it does not work late in the disease. I think most doctors would completely agree with that, that it probably works early in the disease. It probably has some prophylactic effect. Not great. It's not a great medicine, but it definitely does not work late. I would agree with that. And that's been my experience too, by the way. Thank you, Andrew. It's always good information. What did I think about Sam Harris's podcast? Leslie's saying that.

I think what I was interested in people's assessment of it, I mean, it was a courageous podcast. It was looking at a lot of data that people don't want to talk about. But it missed exactly what Dr. Brown and I were talking about. See, it had a blind spot right there. And it troubled me that he couldn't quite do that. Because if he had done, had the conversation or talked about the material we just talked about, then you could have contextualized all the things he was saying much better and i think he's going to probably get excoriated for what he did say even though it was an interesting thoughtful well-meaning um

conversation and again uh per dr brown today we all need to have these conversations we don't have to agree with everything people are saying but but we have to think about these things. But Andy, don't you agree that he had a blind spot on these issues that we were just talking about? And if you don't really see and empathize with these things, you miss it. You miss some of the important stuff. And it makes me uncomfortable when I hear people analyzing data that misses this. I can imagine how an African-American would feel. It misses the point entirely. So there you go. Okay, guys, I think we're about at the end here. Do you guys agree with me? Are we about where we need to be? And I got to do Fox 11 with Alex Michelson in a few minutes. I don't

know what we are talking about today because they did not send me any information, which they normally send me a little rundown. Let me see if I can find out what we're talking about. Also, be sure to support our sponsors. Go to drdrew.com slash trueniagen and get a discount with code word Drew. And don't forget the 866-4 red hawk for the uh now what's available at that number what that number is the the sand i believe you get the sand minis you can

buy that online i know you can get the uh thermometers when they're in stock i think they're in stock oh they are uh and you can get get the UV lights, which are very exciting. What does that say on the side of that? Bercom, B-E-R-C-O-M. Okay, I think you can get that online too if you go to Redhawk. I think you get a discount if you go to the phone number, 8664. And oh, I forgot a part. They told me today, they said if they don't pick up, leave a message, they will call you back. What is it, 866? 4Redhawk, R-E-D-H-A-W-K. I don't know why, I can't remember that. But I'll tell you what. The really exciting instruments that you can get there are the UV lights.

I've got one of them on the way to me right now. They have both UV lights you can set up in a room that will sterilize a room, but also these handhelds you can go into a car, like an Uber or a taxi, and sterilize your seat. That is a big deal. That's how you and I are going to survive in New York City, Susan. Does it also show where the virus is when you turn the UV on? No, no, no, no. It's not like a black light.

It's therapeutic. It's to destroy the viruses on surfaces. You just run this thing. Wave over your driver's head. No, no, no, no. It's not for surfaces. It's not healthy head and no no no no it's not for surfaces it's not healthy to be on people but it's for surfaces so um look into that uh 8664 redhawk we appreciate that thank you caleb for producing and engineering today thank you susan

again thank you for getting me uh dr uh brown i really enjoyed talking to him and alex is always very interesting um it's it's interesting to hear a journalist uh give a realistic assessment of journalistic behavior today because it's it's bad it's really kind of problematic uh anything from you guys anything else we need to review before i move on here let me see I'm having a show this week. Oh, yeah. Calling out with Susan Pinsky on Wednesday after our show with Tyrus Dose of Dr. Drew. Oh, yeah, Tyrus here on Wednesday. Tyrus is a weekly show and working on your NAD doctor. And hopefully, we'll see who comes up tomorrow.

Things always come up very last minute. Or we'll just talk to you. And tomorrow we're in here right you and i yes uh in here about 3 p.m three o'clock exactly oh boy no guests yet but we moved the uh the call to 230 so i'll do that at 230 okay great that's what i was asking about i had no idea what you're talking about and also make sure you go and check out drdrew.com for all the other podcasts. Yeah. You may want to,

the next couple of after dark episodes. Uh, wow. I mean, um, this week. Yeah. This is the coming.

We're not the right, not what's up right now, but what's coming up next week. This week is long and pointy. So that's number seven. Next. I, I mean, just wow. So number 71.

I don't know if you noticed. I talked to Christine at length about this, Susan. But do you notice the first time I went on your mom's house, Tom was the one delivering all the, I mean, he just was like destroying me with horrible things. Essentially me watching people getting killed as far as I was concerned. Right, right. And Christina in the background was like, Lily, apologetically, is it okay?

No, no, no. Now she just hammers me over the head worse than Tom ever did. So we got into that a little bit this week. I was supposed to go on her show this week, but I was preempted, so I'm going next week. Oh, she's making a list and checking it twice. I don't know who is more important than me. Well, she knows she can get you.

Anytime. How dare you. Yeah, yeah. Okay, you guys. We have to wrap things up. I'm sorry, as always, that I don't get to all the calls. Andrew Ashkazvili, please see if you can get me in a Phase 3 trial for the Moderna vaccine. That's the one I... Maybe we should have him on the

show. He can co-host. Sure. Come in and give some information. He's said his name like six times. Well, the Laurent Larab stuff is coming in and he's up on that. He can maybe give us some insight into that. He's working for us. Yeah, so that'll be very interesting.

Let's see. Javier is saying the University of Washington models have California having a bigger wave than ever in October. Yes, I noticed that. And I think that may be just a sort of a glitch. I think even they would say they can't make predictions that far out. And that's why I said, if things just stay stay low and level it's going to continue low and level if it goes up peaks and crashes down to zero that's when you'll see that october spike again i we are changing our behavior uh we are you know everything everything is being um adjusted so we don't transmit this thing except for the demonstrations and as you see outdoors the

transmission rate is very very very, very low. Somebody else, Andrew, Clara wants to get on the vaccine too. So you can get a whole bunch of us out of the phase three trial, hopefully. And we'll all do it. I'll do it for free. Personally, I want to be part of the part of the moving, moving the biochemistry forward, the biotech forward. All right.

Thank you very much. And we will see you tomorrow around three o'clock. Ask Dr. Drew is produced by Caleb Nation and Susan Pinsky. This is just a reminder that the discussions here are not a substitute for medical care or medical evaluation. This is purely for educational and entertainment purposes. I'm a licensed physician with over 35 years of experience, but this is not a replacement for your personal physician, nor is it medical care. If you or someone you know is in immediate danger, don't call is it medical care. 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 anytime, 24-7 for free support and guidance. You can find more of my recommended organizations and helpful resources at drdrew.com slash help.