Ask Dr. Drew - Rob Reiner: Another Family Destroyed By Addiction, As Son Nick Arrested For Murder Of Parents w/ Dopey Dave, Kira Davis, Amy Alkon, Jay Payleitner – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 567

Episode Date: December 19, 2025

Nick Reiner, 32 year old son of Hollywood director Rob Reiner & Michele Singer, was arrested for their murders this weekend. In past interviews, Nick told Dave of Dopey Podcast about his long history of severe addiction and mental health issues – and the countless times he dropped out of recovery programs, flew into fits of rage, and destroyed his parents’ guest house that kept him from being homeless. His addiction to heroin was allegedly a factor in the crime. Family friends told the Los Angeles Times that Nick argued with his father at Conan O’Brien’s Christmas party the night before their deaths, with rumors that his parents intended to cut him off financially until he returned to rehab. Amy Alkon is an independent investigative science writer and author of “Going Menopostal: What You and Your Doctor Need to Know About the Real Science of Menopause and Perimenopause”. Follow at https://x.com/amyalkon David Manheim (AKA Dopey Dave) is the host of the Dopey Podcast, a show focused on addiction and recovery. A former heroin addict, Manheim has grown the podcast into a large and active community navigating addiction and recovery. Find more at https://x.com/DopeyPodcast Kira Davis is the host of the Just Kira Davis podcast and a conservative commentator. She writes and publishes commentary on culture and politics and appears across digital media platforms. Follow at https://x.com/kiradavis Jay Payleitner is the author of Happy Semiquincentennial, America! and 52 Things Kids Need from Dad. Follow at https://x.com/JayPayleitner 「 SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS 」 • AUGUSTA PRECIOUS METALS – Thousands of Americans are moving portions of their retirement into physical gold & silver. Learn more in this 3-minute report from our friends at Augusta Precious Metals: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://drdrew.com/gold⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ or text DREW to 35052 ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠• 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://drdrew.com/vshredmd • 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 「 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. Executive Producers • Kaleb Nation - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://kalebnation.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ • Susan Pinsky - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://x.com/firstladyoflove⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Content Producer & Booking • Emily Barsh - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://x.com/emilytvproducer⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Hosted By • Dr. Drew Pinsky - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://x.com/drdrew⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A lot of show today to get into. We're sort of going to be under the shadow of the Rob and Reiner and his wife catastrophe. We're going to be talking about things related to that topic. We are going to have Dopey Dave from the Dopey podcast who has a very popular addiction podcast. And he actually interviewed Nick Reiner and actually almost had him as a co-host on the Dope podcast. Kira Davis comes in here amongst other things. She's going to talk about Prop 50. and about whether or not

perhaps Gavin Newsom lied about getting in the way of our ability to get the women's health initiative unturned. Speaking of that, we'll talk to Amy Alcon about exactly that. There's a lot, so much material to get in today. Jay Payleitner, then finally we'll round things out to talk about fatherhood and how to protect kids and the 250th anniversary of America back right after this. Our laws as it pertain to substances

are draconian and bizarre. The psychopaths start this right. He was an alcoholic because of social media and pornography, PTSD, love addiction. Fentanyl and heroin, ridiculous. I'm a doctor for a shit. Where the hell 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 Loveland all the time, educate adolescents, and to prevent, and to treat. You have trouble, you can't stop, and you want to help stop it. I can help. I got a lot to say. I'm more to say. Amy Alcon's book is going menopausal,

what you and your doctor need to know about the real science of menopause and perimenopause. The fact that that is controversial is bizarre to me. Amy can be followed on Amyalkon.net. Alcon is A-L-K-O-N and Amy's AM-Y.

And she's on X as Amy. Alcon. Amy, welcome to the program. Welcome back. And I'm going to ask you to start with a different topic than I just promoted, which is pathological empathy. To some extent, to some extent, there's some hints that what happened to Nick Reiner may have, pathological empathy is alive and well. Let's put it that way. Yes. And I just want to say my book is going menopostal. So with Nick Reiner, you know, we think that by denying care, we were talking about this before the program that the parents apparently did not allow him to get the medical care that he needed for mental health issues. And so people believe, oh, we're doing the kind thing to our, you know, for a child. And actually, it is self-interest that motivates this.

They don't want to feel bad. you know, it's hard to get someone into treatment. They're screaming and yelling and fighting and everything. And you avoid that entirely by just saying your child doesn't need treatment, which you cannot as a non-clinician make a judgment about. Right. And what I was saying is that people don't really get is that the illness of addiction, and we can discuss whether these things are not illnesses or disease,

I would just urge anyone that has an opinion about that, first give me a definition of disease that encompasses all disease, a definition that will cover all diseases. And believe me, people have trouble doing that. I've done that in university settings with academic medical faculty around and they can't do it because no one's ever asked them that question. They just assume everything they're dealing with is a disease. But of course, the only viable question is, is addiction a syndrome or is it a disease?

Anyway, I'm going to get away from that for a second. But we heard Rob Reiner say, we were alluding to this, Amy, that they wanted to make their own decisions. They don't want to trust the sort of so-called experts. Not always the worst thing in the world to do that, by the way, except with the disease of addiction, where it's an interpersonal condition. You lose your way. It will pull you in with it because that's how it works. That's how it gets its way. It's a motivational disturbance.

And it brings all the positive things in life to serve. broken motivation. Right. And you need a clinician for this a complex condition like this. You can't just, it's not just like, you know, well, let's, let's, you know, buck up, pull ourselves up by our bootstraps because all these complexities need to be dealt with. And when you don't, you know, this is the sort of thing that can happen where, you know, you're, here you are treating based on your opinion. And again, not all clinicians are worth hearing from, but you need to find those that are. And this is what you do. And it's very, very important. Yeah, or finding consensus or, you know, it's, I understand we live in a time, especially now when people are very distrusting of

clinicians. And you should be. You really should be. But ultimately, we do know something. We really do. Amy, tell me about going menopostal. So this is my book where I brought the science to women, because I fought three battles with Kaiser Permanente back, I think it was like 2016, 2017, get the progesterone that is the healthy, helpful drug in perimenopause while Kaiser was giving Medroxy progesterone acetate, which is a synthetic that binds with the wrong receptors in the breast, increases breast cancer risk, and is harmful to the brain and cardiovascular system. So this is a terrible drug. And progesterone that I take FDA-approved progesterone is the same chemically as the progesterone in our bodies. So this is healthy and helpful and it really

helps menopausal symptoms and what doctors don't realize is that menopause this is a lead up to menopause women have the symptoms often usually because they are lacking in progesterone from having cycles where they seem menstrual cycles that seem normal but where they don't actually ovulate. Right and ovulatory cycles we call that. How did we get off into midroxia progesterone? That's that's what's sorry I left that part off that they when you ovulate when they the egg, with the egg sack ruptures, and the, uh, the ruptured sack, the litter of that is what progesterone is made out of it. And so when you don't have the rupture of the sack, no progesterone and basically mental health wise, it's like rims on pavement in one of those freeway

chases. It's really, really pernicious and there are hot flashes and other terrible symptoms. And doctors actually don't know. Most gynecologists are not menopause experts. Very few are, even the ones who say they are. And this is, so women needed this book in order to have the evidence themselves, like we're talking about where, you know, we are intelligent people can make decisions if we're given the information in a way we can process it. How did we get off into medroxy progesterone? What caused us to do that and get away from the natural hormone? Oh, how do we? Well, progesterone was not able to get into our cells. It couldn't be made small enough until there was micronization in around 1980.

And the French were ahead on this. They've taken progesterum there since 1980, and we really have denied it to women in this country until very, very recently. And it is so horrible because you're increasing breast cancer risk and also harming the brain and cardiovascular system. And we've recently had the stuff going on with estrogen where the FDA has removed the black box warning on that. We are progressing towards science-based care. And I really have to laud Martin McCarrey and the people there for making this step. This is a huge step. Yeah, that women's health initiative was a catastrophe.

I remember I brought this up several times that on the heels of it, the New England Journal put out a couple of editorials where they said, if you do not follow this gold standard test finding, you are no better than a witch doctor. I remember they kept using the term witch doctor. You're talking about propaganda. We're used to propaganda now. Back then, I wasn't so used to it.

And I thought, oh, I guess I got to take all those women off this. They seem to be protected. They seem to have less bone fractures. Their cognition seems better. They don't get heart disease. Well, I had to present it to them the way we were being forced to present it. And everybody had horrible time. And some women, in spite of the Women Health Initiative, in my practice, insisted on going back on.

They knew better. it's so important and this is what we've come to see in recent years about the science that it is protective of the of the brain and the cardiovascular system and one in five women are dying now of heart disease cardiometabolic disease really and and we'll soon be one in three and so taking estrogen initiating it at menopause as a healthy woman is vitally important now taking it later there's a window of time in which it is healthy and helpful. And you need to be healthy, metabolically healthy, have healthy lipids in order for it to be helpful for you.

And so these are some important facts about this. When I see the shot about Gavin Newsom, he is really terrible in every way. You know, half the population. Half the population, he has denied medical care to basically, you know, we talk about civil rights. Civil rights involves everybody, having the same shot

and we don't as women have the same shot to being healthy you know men don't go through menopause and so okay we're going to just deny this to the women who do half the population it's just it's really medical evil well it's also a little bit creepy slimy

because it's Hallie Barry and getting a lot of attention he goes oh she must have misread the bill I didn't intend that at all what are we talking about here I mean come on she's not dumb it's misread the bill no we all read it right and he denied care to half the population

this is very very important especially for low income women who don't have access to care it's mainly for them you know the other women can get care and can read my book and see the science and make decisions for themselves

but low income women need this help and they're not getting it yes do you think I'm going to sort of ask a general question here that we're going to break science free of orthodoxy. It's been so encumbered by the system and orthodoxy. The scientific method itself has been undermined and misapplied. Are we going to get it right finally?

We're going to move that direction? Well, tell me what you mean by orthodoxy. I think I know, but I want to make sure. Well, that whoever is publishing in the right journal, whoever has the right position, who reaches a consensus and tells us from on high how we should be doing things, it becomes a little closer to religion. And many of the studies that we're looking at are not using, even using the scientific method. That's the thing that I find astonishing. Are we going to get back to this delicate procedure that is called the scientific method? Well, I think the problem is that doctors are not trained to read science, not trained in the scientific method in med school, you know, and some will learn on their own. You clearly have learned, you know, and so I just think that we're going to be stuck for a while, but we have much more skepticism and people are writing books in dietary science, you know, menopause for me, and then other books. And we have people out there who are challenging the quote unquote experts. And I think that that is very important. So I see a move.

movement toward this. And I think also, Macari at the FDA, he was an incredible choice and he's moving things in many areas. Testosterone, you know, I'd like to see that testosterone needs to be approved for women. And not just for you have to lie and say you have a sexual, you know, disorder. It's hypoactive, hypoactive sexual, I'm not, I'm not remembering, but you have a lack of desire. And when testosterone helps so much for, you know, the malaise that a lot of women have in menopause. And it's been declared safe. I didn't put it in the book because the breast cancer research wasn't out when I wrote that to show that it was safe. And it may even be protective.

And they have now, if you go to Kaiser where I go, they give you androgel for men. And I mean, this is, it's crazy. Women have skin that is men have, it's 20 to 25 percent thick. her skin on men and they have more seba more oil and we women need the estrogen cream in a measured dose and not i take testosterone i have to put it in a little makeup container scoop out what might be half put it on my thigh this is this is terrible and it's not science and we need to have that that really needs to be put through by the fda and recognized yes i want to emphasize something you said there that there is evidence that taking to estrogen and testosterone

together actually lowers the risk of breast cancer relative to no hormone replacement therapy. Susan, do you also have to take progesterone, though? Of course. Susan, do you want to ask Amy anything? Because Susan's been through her own dramatic story with this. I've been on HRT for 20 years now, 25 years. And when I found it, I had early menopause. When I found it, I was so angry that I was really.

robbed of my sexuality for like 10 years. And your mood and you were told you were crazy and stressed out and blah, blah, blah, blah. I went through the crazy era. I had hot flashes. I, you know, I couldn't sleep. I had to go on wellbutrin. I had to get therapy. You know, nothing was working.

And then my, you know, and I took a cocktail of stuff my doctor gave me. But when they finally took a blood test and realized that my levels were off, they went, oh, here, here's a pellet. we'll put it under your skin and we'll just keep you even all the time and I was like really how long has this been around they're like 30 years I'm like well where was my doctor when I came to him 10 years ago but and I had normal you know it it was just ridiculous it's so terrible and this is um the doctors they they the fact that almost no gynecologists have any scope of practice in treating menopause and perimenopause this is a horrible thing for women because

because you don't get this kind of help. And I'm so glad you took this for so many years. And you mentioned progester in what's really important, we get too little in this country. And this comes out of this fear instilled by the Women's Health Initiative study, the 2002 version when they fraudulently announced this study where they said the horrible methodology they used

where they gave estrogen to women in their 70s, up to age 79. don't do that. Women at that age, they're broken and unhealthy and estrogen will make them, will be harmful to them. You know, that they, um, they, so, um, I lost my train of thought a little bit here, but progester, you must take 300 milligrams of oral micronized progesterone if you are taking estrogen, but also progesterone is healthy, even if you don't have a uterus. You know, women will have a hysterectomy and they'll say, oh, you hear, you don't need this. Well, it protects the breasts.

It causes breast cells, generic breast cells, to specialize as breast cells. And so, you know, this gives them a job to do so they cannot be delinquents and double into cancer. This is so important. And progesterone helps bones and just multiple systems in the body. So doctors don't give us to women when it is healthy and helpful and really, really important, especially in perimenopause, the 300 milligram amount. Because we don't know our level of metabolism of hormones, that is the safe amount to make sure that you're getting, you know, likely getting enough to protect your breasts

and your other systems in your body, the endometrium, your uterine lining. It's really, really vital. And, you know, a woman in my book, Amy Dresner, she couldn't get it from her doctor, and so she used telemed to get the other 300, the other 100 milligrams. And, you know, women need to go about this in this sort of scheming way and it's wrong. It's not evidence-based, you know, and they just say, oh, that's what we do here. They do it in France. Well, French women are not Martians. Right, right. Amy, it's great to see you. Going Metapostal, get the book. What a great name.

Because I was. Amy Alcon on X, going Metapostal. Hopefully we'll talk to again very soon, Amy. Good to see you. Thank you. You bet. All right, coming up just second, I'm going to speak to Kira Davis. you can follow Kira. She is, uh-oh, my vision is out here. Cura Davis on X and also just Cure Davis on Substack. We're going to, I'm going to talk a little about toxic empathy to open the conversation with Cura. Amongst other things, we're going to talk a little bit. We've got so much talk about it.

She's been working very hard with Steve, my block on Steve's name, the guy's running for governor here in California. Billton be right back after this the other day he looked at me and he goes hey the v shreds working he likes it when i like try to look good for him there's an excitement that comes with doing these kinds of workout that kind of sustains you through the day it's exhilarating it's not working out hours in the gym it's not running on a treadmill forever it's not killing yourself with diet it's these are all very reasonable recommendations just got to follow We're actually really genuinely very excited about what we're getting out of this. We like doing it together.

We're both in on this, and it's been a real fun adventure. I don't know where we stop. In the first two weeks, I lost five pounds, so there you go. In your 20s, it's easy, right? We put on muscle easily. We're fit. We've got tons of stamina. But as you get older, you may not be able to lose weight as quickly or as easily.

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So if you want to learn more right now, click the link below to get your personal life plan. next year the national debt is going to hit 40 trillion dollars as insane as that sounds it's even worse when you consider unfunded liabilities for social security and medicare if our status as the world's reserve currency suddenly changes our nation could collapse under the weight of its debt and as we all know there are many forces trying hard to take down that u.s dollar this is why thousands of americans are moving portions of their retirement into physical gold and silver our friends friends at Augusta precious metals have put together a three-minute report entitled Debt will hit $40 trillion in 2026. Prepare your retirement now. It details how a self-directed IRA with real physical assets may be the best option in 2025. Go to Dr.Du.com slash gold. That is, DRD-R-D-R-D-R-A-W.com slash G-O-L-D.

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and see what Augusta can do for you. That wasn't all Dr. Drew or anything. Why would I screw myself? What am I, Dr. Drew? Just Kira Davis on Substant. Cura Davis on X. Let's bring Kira here to a fixture on my old daytime radio show. Kira, welcome back.

And thank you for taking time for us. Good to see you. It's good to see you. Great to see you. So I got a bunch of subs I want to talk about. But one of the things that really is troubling me, we've sort of had the shadow of the Reiner catastrophe or tragedy hanging over us today. And I don't think people understand that California is a big part of why that happened.

Because in California, doctors aren't allowed to treat patients if their disorders are of the brain. So let's say somebody is running around with a machete saying, I want to kill Kira. And the cops come, or they say, hey, we're going to take you to the psych hospital. You seem, you know, you're not in your right mind. He goes, I was just kidding. I don't want to hurt anybody. All that happens. If he does that, you cannot touch them.

This is how crazy our system is. If you remember back when you and I used to talk, it was AB109, Prop 47, Prop 47, Prop 47, these insane laws that made using drugs legal and stealing to support the habit legal in California. I'm glad you brought this up. to read this text to you that my friend just sent me before I came on the show because she saw I was going to be on here. She's from California. Our family lives in Seal Beach. And she said, I know you're going to go on air soon. But to Dr. Drew's point about California being part of the fault, my uncle is an addict and the system never puts him in jail long enough for his crimes. Every time we thought he'd be put away for a long time because he should have been, he was out again terrorizing our family. And in fact, right, now they're in the process of trying to secure a restraining order and hoping that that if he breaks in again that that will at least trigger some police action unfortunately she's literally not the only person i know who deals with this i know and i know you do too drew in the state of

california so many people are helpless they're helpless to help their children aid their because a lot of who are a lot of whom are on the streets you know they're part of our huge homeless problem They are helpless to go save their own children. The state, not only does the state not allow for it, Drew, I think the state actively works to keep people addicted and homeless and miserable. I think this is a top to bottom approach. When liberals talk about the pipeline, the education to prison pipeline, that's what this is. Yeah. It is part of that syndrome that we were.

I was just discussing with Amy, pathological empathy or toxic empathy. Oh, they're doing they live with their way they live. They don't want to be uncomfortable. They just want to do drugs. What's the big deal? No, it's a progressive illness that ends in death. You are contributing to their demise. I brought this guy up several times. Jared

Klickstein has a book called Crooked Smile. And he said the last couple years he was on the streets, he was getting his rigs from the city, getting heroin from the state, and was always patted on the back by these very, these service providers. And they would say to him, you know, once we get communism in place, you'll be fine.

How crazy is that? It's disturbing. I mean, I'm trying this not good TV to just be speechless, but I feel speechless, but I also feel enraged. And maybe this is just because of everything that's coming together in 2025. but I'm over it. I'm sick of it. This is deliberate and we should not accept this anymore.

I think people like Gavin Newsom and the super majority in Sacramento, they're our enemy. They're not our friends. Nothing they say is real. And in fact, they want you to be sick. They want you to be miserable. They want you to be poor. And when I was fighting some of these bills up in Sacramento that have come along over the last

few years, I've talked to staffers and representatives who have said, look here the goal in sacramento is to have everybody either part of a union or on the dole that is the goal and i know that sounds really crazy to a lot of people we're americans we can't imagine that a government would deliberately seek that out that is the government of california everything you see that's wrong here is a result of that including this talk about prop 50 what what should I say about prop 50 I did it was the fix was in it was in from the start Gavin Newsom would this is what everyone needs to understand we didn't lose prop 50 it was never winnable Gavin Newsom would have never put it on the ballot if he didn't know for certain it was

going to pass because he's running for president so he needed this on his on his resume to run for president so we never had a chance it was called two seconds after it, after the polls closed. This is what we're up against in California. Let me take this opportunity, Drew, to say this. I know Republicans get a lot of grief here for, you know, not showing up to the polls and the Republican Party isn't a real contender. And all of that is true.

But I also want to say that it's not just that we're up against a Democrat super majority, but Republicans don't feel hopeful here. You know, you've got to give people a reason to go out of, vote. You've got to make people feel like when they get there, someone's going to be fighting for their vote to count. And I don't think that that's been happening here locally or county wise or even at the state level. So I'm hoping we're going to see some action from Congress within the next year. It's going to give us some, give us a little headwinds here in California as far as voter ID and and with this election fraud, all of this. But all of this is connected. Even you were talking to your last guest, Drew, about the menopause. the menopause treatment and what Newsom didn't sign. I want to say this. One of the reasons that he rejected that not once but twice is because that's women's health care. And if you approve women's health care, then you are being bigoted because women's health care isn't for trans women.

And that's what that was. Wow. That's crazy. Oh, my God. We got a lot of pushback. He got a lot of pushback from the Q plus community. I don't even want to put the LG&B there anymore from the Q plus community. You got a lot of pushback. What about trans women?

You know, they don't go through menopause or they need this type of treatment. This is any health care initiative in the state of California that is aimed at women is always, always shot down by the Q plus crowd. because it's offensive to them. We're offensive to them. Just being a woman, a woman is offensive. And I don't understand. You think they'd be very much in favor of it since they're taking those very same hormones

and want to support that, somebody taking these hormones to be maintained with their feminine characteristics or female. No. I'm naive. No, because trans women aren't women. trans women are men who are angry that they're not women and angry men who don't get what they want get really vicious so no it's not surprising tell people about your uh your own transition

careful there true he means political transition everybody a 100% woman right here yeah drum roll please uh no i used to be a card carrying liberal drew no this from our days, Macon Radio at KBC in LA. And he asked me once, you know, what was your transition to becoming a conservative? Because I'm pretty hardcore red meat, hard, right conservative at this point of my life. And I told him that when I was a young woman, I moved to Gary, Indiana, to be a wife. I moved in with my husband who had a house there. And it sits the hood. And I began to work in the community services. And I started an after-school program. We mentioned, toward kids and I had 100% black population there and I got to work with the kids and work in

the education system and I got to come up against all of the policies and laws that I advocated for that I believed worked as a liberal and when I came up against them personally I realized they don't work and in fact they're making life harder for my community and one day I came in to tell my kids after school, I said, hey, I got a, I'm not going to be in the, in the community center for a week. I'm going on vacation, going to Jamaica with my husband. And one of my girls said, Jamaica, why would you go to Jamaica? That's where white people vacation. And I thought, what, what a very strange thing to say. So why would you say that? Why would you say it like that? She said, well, I just wouldn't want to go where white people vacation, because you're not

going to be welcome there. And at the time, I thought, oh, my girl. goodness, I'm teaching her this. I'm telling her on the one hand that you can be whatever you want. You work hard. You can have what you want. You can have the American dream. You've got to get your education and go to college, all that stuff. And on the other hand, I'm telling her, but the white people out there don't want you to have nice things and they're always working against you and the whole system is against you. But just realized I couldn't square those things. And I wasn't helping my community or helping my kids. And I don't know, it was a very convicting moment for me. And then that started my transition into conservatism. And now I'm a pretty

hardcore right winger. Don't make any apology for it. Totally transition. No medication needed. I'm, well, with living in California, there may be a different kind of medication. You need to kind of manage what it's like to live here. But I always thought it was, I've been thinking it was astonishing that more people from particularly sort of traditional democratic strongholds like the black community don't understand that exactly what you found that they're not being helped the what is being offered is i mean is it is i think is that much better now is that has it been good what they did no it's just look around and it's not getting better and that's what i had to say i had to say what have we gained after 50 years 60 years 75 years voting the same way and

i'm not saying that every black person needs to be a republican but we've been lulled into believing that there's only one party that has our best interest in mind and now we put all our political capital in that one party and now they can do to us well they've done to us whatever drew and now we've been cast aside that's what's happened you look at the south side of chicago those People are worthless now. They're nothing. What's Obama doing? He could solve the issues of the South Side with his personal bank account.

What's he doing? He's building a giant concrete monolith. These people are disgusting to me. I have no more patience for them. I don't want to hear their lectures. They have totally discarded the black community after gaining all of their political power and influence on our backs. I'm not making apologies for it anymore.

And I'm also not going to beg black people to get with the program. If you can't see what's going on around you right now, this is a you problem. But the rest of us are not going to drag people with us into the golden age who don't get it. You know, if you want to keep voting Democrat, do that. But see the results. And don't complain. To that point, Kira, you retweeted something. I think it was today about legacy media and the way it reports.

white crimes and black crimes and and so you mentioned you just said in your in your declaration there if you don't see what's going on that's on you but to some extent what's going on is being kept from people sure to some extent what's going on is is kept from people but I think we're finding out that people are more informed than we think they make their choices now here's what I will say the Republican Party and the right in general can do a much better job of going and messaging and telling people why there's value in looking outside of their traditional political box. This is what Trump has done so well. It's something that I really

like about him. I think that's why a lot of black voters like him too. But I don't, I think I'm sort of done making excuses for people. Everyone's adults at this point. And we all, we all operate on patterns, you know, and that's what I did. I looked around me and I saw the patterns. I said, doesn't match up. It doesn't add up. And so at some point, everybody's got to decide for themselves. I think maybe more black people in America are starting to see because of the way we're being treated by Democrats. We're totally being pushed aside for the illegal immigrant vote. Now, we don't count anymore after being told that we were the only people that counted for so long. And I think a lot of people are feeling disenfranchised. Now, what will happen is a lot of black

people just won't vote, which is kind of what happened in the last election. So this is a great opportunity for other entities like Republicans to go in and grab those votes, message to those people explain to them what the golden era is and why they want to be there. The pathological empathy has come up a few times today. How do you combat it? It's one of the ways we get in trouble with COVID. Do you want your grandmother to die? You want to kill people. No, nobody wants to kill people. Nobody. This whole, this weird empathy that they have, you know, that they apply in such a way as to harm people and then use it as a cudgel against others. Do you have a response to that?

We should just keep at how pathological it is? I hadn't really thought about it until this year and it's sort of come up in the public zeitgeist. We'll want to apologize to the tech people too. I see this light is coming in. We'll deal with it. But I hadn't really thought about it until those last year, to be honest with you, Drew. And when I paired how this conversation is coming up in the public zeitgeist with who Trump is, especially as we're having this Reiner conversation and these comments, you know, the ascension of Trump

and this idea of toxic empathy, I think they're hand in hand. I always say Trump is not, Trump didn't make the era, the era made Trump. And this is where we're, I think we're over the empathy. what is empathy getting us what is it gaining us is actually killing us i think the answer to toxic empathy drew i mean frankly i just think it's a spanking spoon you know a metaphorical and maybe literal at this point but like let's bring back the spanking spoon i'm actually i am in favor of everybody like start to tell the truth about each other you know it's a rob reiner wasn't a great guy and so maybe somebody needs to say that out loud even if it doesn't sound great or

you know what not every illegal immigrant is here to make a better life for themselves maybe we need to start saying these things out loud or when you you see that lady at the store who's being very rude or disrespectful or waving the palestine flag around or whatever maybe you say something we've we've gotten away from that we're now in this society we're like we don't want to say anything because you never know who's crazy that's a result of being in a low trust society if we want to to get back to a high trust society we have to start holding people accountable you know my husband always says drew he's like we need to we need a law that make sure that everybody gets punched in the face at least once in their life because you change when you get hit right right

that's right you start looking a little differently about who you're going to come front how you're going to act suddenly you don't feel so bold to be so ridiculous in public all the time we have a lot of kids with blue hair running out there who have never been punched in the face. And I just think maybe, you know, maybe metaphorically, obviously I'm not saying go punch people in the face everybody. But what I am saying is maybe we start telling the truth even if it's uncomfortable or rude. And finally, you ran for school board. I'm sure that was a lovely experience.

You can tell us about that, but is there any future political office in your crosshairs? I don't think so. School board was brutal. me. I was not prepared for how utterly brutal it was. I'm a, I'm a black conservative. I get horrible comments every day from all corners of the internet. Nothing prepared me for the viciousness of the mom crowd in suburban America. It's brutal. And it was a brutal experience. And the unions came for me, and they still come for me, Drew. And my school district is the second largest a school district in the state behind L.A. County. I'm in Orange County. And so there's a lot of

money, a lot of influence there. And I was part of the media. So they just really didn't want me on that board. Do I have plans to run in the future? I don't know. I don't think so. We'll see where the calling takes me. I can't imagine it right now because it was so brutal. But what I do have plans to do is to stay in the state of California and fight for the state and be a mouthpiece. And what I'm not going to do as be a wimp about everything and everybody's flutching their pearls today and everybody's so you know everybody is so anxious about everything and you know what the world needs everybody some truth tellers that that are willing to say the uncomfortable things and if you don't like the things being said turn off your app or turn out whatever but everybody put on your big girl panties

let's get the show on the road so so it's it's interesting to me that you know after on the heels of COVID, I've been talking an awful lot about freedom of speech, but I think you're saying we need to go to another level with this where we start really bringing the uncomfortable material into the public discourse. And that's you're right because that's how we get to the truth. Can I tell you something real quick? So in June, Drew, my mother is Canadian and she's a liberal. I was raised by godless hippies, everybody. And my mom's a god. God, liberal up in Canada and it was rough through COVID. But in June, she called our family, both of our children were graduating from high school and

college in June here in California. She called her family to say, I can't be a part of this family anymore. As long as Donald Trump is president, I don't think we can be family because he's very dangerous for my country. Trump derangement, severe Trump arrangement. So my mother said that to me. I have her only two grandkids. She missed their graduations.

And we have not talked since. So now it's what? This is Christmas? I have this, my first Christmas without my mother. We have not talked since. Now she people, a lot of people said, well, Kira, maybe you shouldn't have talked to her so much about politics, which still wouldn't be an excuse to abandon your child. However, I said, you know what? I didn't.

And that was very hard because my career is politics. And I'm very successful at what I do in media. I do things that people only dream of, but I couldn't share that with her because it's too contentious and she didn't want to hear it. We didn't talk politics, but what did it earn me, Drew? In the end, what did it earn me to keep the peace and not tell her the truth about things? Nothing. It earned me her abandonment.

So I don't know that it's worth it to hold your tongue anymore. Who are you saving? Right. Yeah. And I noticed up in Canada, they're very nice, by the way, very nice. but if you scratch the surface, seething rage, seething rage. And somehow Trump has, you know, brought that all to the surface. And so here we are.

So, all right. I, by the way, was not super happy with what he tweeted about the Reiner. So that was not the time for that. So I get why people get all worked up by his rhetoric. That's one that just happened to bother me. But I get it. He doesn't say, like you said. Okay, but let's keep in mind.

All right. Everybody wants to get upset. Oh, he was so mean. You shouldn't have tweeted that. This is the same guy who last month took all the guardrails off so he could save Scott Adams' life. And everybody has a story like that about Trump. Like if you know Trump, then he has helped you in some way. There are stories of Trump that people don't even know of him just calling some average

housekeeper. He heard about our troubles, giving our money. Those stories are everywhere about Trump. He makes one mean tweet about Rob Reiner and suddenly everybody thinks the movement is falling apart. But, Kira, that's the point is that, so your mom imagines yourself a nice person and yet is she supporting somebody in need? No. And gets rageful and rejects her child. While Trump uses horrible rhetoric, but he doesn't reject people in his family and he supports people in need.

So we think. All right, Kira, thank you so much for being here. We really appreciate it. Where do you want people to go? I want you to follow me on X at Kira Davis, K-I-R-A, and go over to my sub-sagga, just Kira Davis. And I've got a new project. If I could just pitch it real quick, Drew, it's the Orange Report.

You can find that YouTube, all the places. It's called The Orange Report. And it is an Orange County, California-based show on politics, pop culture. The idea being we are a border county in a border state, but we're sandwiched between these two huge cities. We have a lot of very important national news popping off in our county, but it doesn't get covered because we're overwhelmed by these two cities. But if you just go to my substack, you'll find everything there.

Drew, it was so great to be with you again. I have missed talking to you. Have me back. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, too. Thanks, Kira, you too. Kier Davis on X, that's Refinder. We've still got Dave Dopey to come up from the Dopey Dave Dopey podcast on X. And J. Payleitner, he is coming in also.

His book is happy. semi-quincennial. Two of 50 reasons why America is still worth celebrating. We are going to take a little break and be right back after this. I'm excited to bring you a new product, a new

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Let me spell you his last name. P-A-Y-L-E-I-T-N-E-R.com. That is also on X-J-Pa-Lightner. Jay, welcome. Dr. Drew, I'm a delight to be with you. And you had mentioned in that book, there you are, that we were sort of talking about cultural issues and you said you put something about Rob Ryder in there. Well, yes, amazingly so or not so much. My book that has just come

out, happy semi-quincentennial America looks at 250 years of America. I think we still have things that are worth celebrating here, as a matter of fact. And if you think about it, the last 50 years of our culture since the bicentennial. You remember that, Drew, the bicentennial. Rob Reiner has had a tremendous influence from being meathead to when Harry met Sally and Stand by Me and Princess Bride, a few good men. And then his father, Carl Reiner, you could say he had a tremendous impact on the 50 years before that with all his your show shows and the Dick Van Dyke show that he,

that he created. So the Ryder family is woven into the last 100 years of America, and we need to be, we need to salute them and cry with them and weep with them and embrace them and love those that are still around. So anyway, that touched me. And even more so, my best-selling book is for dads, but my second best-selling book is called What If God Wrote Your Bucket List? And in the introduction to it, of course, I reference the movie, The Bucket List, with Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman. And I say the term, the term bucket list was actually little known until 2007, the movie, directed by Rob Reiner. and actually if you haven't seen it go track it down it's an insightful movie and so that's what was

touching my heart the way the culture intersects with all of us I am not a a doctor or psychologist and so I can't address what your previous guests have been addressing but boy I understand yeah that is interesting well talk to us about the dad book what you know the the reiner story also is about families and parenting and you know in my you know world of how addiction of and affects the family but what did you come away from the dad book with uh what were some of the highlights for you yeah um the title of the book is 52 things kids need from a dad and i truly believe that um that dads uh moms and dads need to work together. And I think one of the solutions to our, uh, to the greatest

problems we have in America would be if we strengthen the family and dads are getting the job done, um, uh, with, uh, I don't have the stats in front of me, but we've, you've probably heard them, uh, Dr. Drew, uh, without a dad in the home, kids are, you know, much more likely to drop out of school and much more likely to commit suicide and much more likely to, uh, um, to end up in jail. The stats are stunning in that area. And I can't, going back to Rob Reiner and his son, Nick, again, I don't know that family. How dare I even judge what they were going through.

But I think the family, if we elevate the family, don't elevate the government. Don't elevate somebody with diplomas on their wall. But elevate the family with a mom doing her. job and a dad doing her job, I think that, I think the world's a better place because families are the building block of neighborhoods, neighbors of the neighborhoods of the building block of community, and they're the building block of our state and our, in our nation. So I'm just the kind of guy who says, hey, get the job done. Be there. Be there, dad. When I autograph my books, I write, be there, be there, dad. Once you show up, you get the job. You get the job.

have done. It seems like dads have been, obviously men have been under attack for a while, but dads themselves have been under attack, mostly to sort of protect single parent families from some sort of shame or any sort of judgment. But have it, has there been any pushback for you, supporting dads? Um, uh, no, because when I stand in front of a crowd or talk, I'm talking, talking logic, common sense, and anybody who pushes back about, I'll say, well, tell me about your dad. If you say somebody who's hurting, tell me about your dad, they're going to have some kind of father wound in their background, and they go, man, you know what?

Dads are important. I don't think anybody can really say dads aren't important for a while. You don't remember this a few decades ago, I just need sperm in a jar, that's all you need. or you don't need a you don't need dads but anybody follows through and thinks and through go man yeah if dads are getting the job done if my dad would have gotten the job done my life would have been better or my life's pretty good because my dad got the job done showed up just showed up well I mean certainly the data is unmistakable it's just really the outcomes are not good particularly for young males in households without without dads although

there is some data that suggests a single sustained relationship with a male authority figure outside the home by age eight mitigate some of that so we can we can do something with that go ahead well yeah i'm active with a lot of fathering groups i i co-wrote 4,000 scripts for the national center for fathering um and i can remember sitting right in his office get out of here kids I'm writing my scripts I got a deadline yelling at my kids to get out of the room

and they got that they understand that so I am not saying that when a dad travels has to travel kids understand that when a dad can't show up to a ball game I understand that as a matter of fact when a dad says

I've made it to every single one of my kids football games it's like a big deal have you had a conversation with it but no I don't get any negative pushback maybe because you know what I got five kids they have turned out well they're all paying into my their productive members of society and eight grandkids so um oh yeah and they're pulling their weight I was a lot I was a lot of kids that's a lot so let's go back to the sem Cisquitin I'm used to Cisquistennial right that's 150 years is the

semi quintennial what sort of things as a result to write in that book what sort of things now do you think would surprise us that are still worthy of celebrating in the American experience well I think there's

a lot more stuff to celebrate than there is to wring our hands about and clutch our pearls that's for sure in the moment I'm thinking back to the bicentennial and I was 18 years old, 50 years ago. You can do the math now. I'm 68. And the bicentennial freedom train came through town and I jumped on it with my girlfriend who I eventually married. And there was a moon rock and a constitution and Ted Williams bat and Lincoln's

rocking chair and other things, American inventions. And I came off that train going, wow, America's awesome. We can do anything. I love America. And then when I saw that the semi-quincentennial was coming up, I was like, ah, I don't have that same feeling anymore. So I wanted to do what I do best, and that is right. I've written 40-some books,

sold almost a million copies, and it's like, okay. So I wanted to create a kind of a little mini-Smithsonian in a book, the stuff that you're proud of. If you walk through the Smithsonian, you go, that's cool, that's cool, That's American. That's cool. And so the book is, it does talk about Pearl Harbor in Gettysburg,

but it also talks about teddy bears and red solo cups and California Redwoods and alligators and Mr. Rogers and Johnny Appleseed and Friday Night Football and prom and weed whackers and Chicago-style hot dogs. And you know what? Jello with weird stuff in it. That's American. And you can tell you.

I have some fun with it. But, boy, I think America, if you look around and you drive around and you take an American road trip and you stop at a greasy spoon diner and talk to the people there, yeah, there are people going through tough times, but, you know, tough times makes you tougher, I think. Kira was saying that every, I wrote it down, everybody needs a punch in the face. Kira said that a few minutes ago, and I'm thinking, well, yeah, we all need to. see repercussions of our bad decisions. Maybe that's the better way of putting it. We need to see the repercussions, but we also need to see the opportunities around us. And that's what makes

America great is the laws that protect our patents and our trademarks, and we write a song, we keep the trademarks and copyright laws. America is unique in many of those aspects that rewards creativity and stick-to-itiveness. So, you know what? Call me patriotic. Are you part of a trend? Because it's been so, you know, people have been not kind to, they've been saying that the American dream is over and that it's, you know, it's a colonial system founded on

slavery, et cetera, et cetera. Is that shifting now, that pessimism, that negativity? Well, again, your earlier guests, as I was listening, you know, California has got some challenges and Oregon will just pass some laws about where they have to teach presentism. Is that something they're talking about now? How we have to judge the past by today's culture. And that's just impossible to do that. Yeah. So I think...

Makes sense. Yeah. What's the point here? The point is, I think it's all we have it all. The country is great. We have the natural resources. You look around. You get inspired by the landscape.

And I just want folks to love America. I'm not all about making America great again. I'm saying you look around. And you can love America right here, right now. And dig deep, hang out and build your family, be responsible for your own, for your own life and your own home. And I think, I think we'll make it. I think we'll make it. I've noticed, I've noticed some of the European countries are starting to, because they've been, they have been down on themselves for a long time.

And they're starting to look around now and go, now, wait a minute, what does it even mean to be French? What do we say, it was German? What do we mean? What are we talking about? And, oh, there's this culture, it's an incredible culture. culture. And guess what? Napoleon was part of that. Yeah, we don't like all the stuff he did, but that was part of who we are now. And there is a lot of that going on over there. I don't think we haven't lost our way so far that we've lost our identity the way some or their identity was in threat the way it was over there. But I do feel like something like that needs to happen here, even if it's just to acknowledge the genius of the system that was established in the late 18th century. I think it's all still here, and I think the roots are go back 250 years. Can I take 40 seconds here to do a little kind of a, the last entry in the book,

Happy Semi-Quintennial, number 250 is about the National Anthem. If I can take just 40 seconds here. Yeah. The National Anthem, you would think that a national anthem would be, our country's awesome, we can dominate, we're the best thing in the world, we're awesome. But no, the national anthem. them, something that we've all sung hundreds of times. The first stanza is just two sentences, but they're not statements of greatness. There are two questions. The first question is,

was asked back in 1814 by Francis Scott Key. He's looking out across Baltimore Harbor at Fort McHenry, and it's in the morning. And he goes, oh, say, can you see? Here in the morning. Can you see in this dawn's early light? We saw it during the raucous red glare and the bombs bursting in air. We saw the flag still there over the ramparts. We could see it. But as you look now, can you still see that flag? And he's asking, does our country still exist?

Does this country, it's only 30, 40 years old at that point? Does it still even exist? If that flag is there, it does. Okay. Pretty dramatic moment. The second question is a little bit shorter, but starts the same way. Jose does the star-spangled banner O'Say does it still wave

and is our land still free and are each and every one of us still brave? So there you go and I think that's the question if we answer that, say yes, we are still free we are still courageous and if we hang on to that that legacy from

the War of 1812 and beyond I think we're going someplace and I think we're still there and that's kind of why I wrote the book. So let's think about loving America not just putting up with it, not just tolerating not even making America

great. Let's love America right now and look around and love our family and the people right in our own homes. Wow. I like the positivity. I do. That's great. Thank you, Jay. Appreciate it. The book, can we get it?

Usual places? Oh, the usual places. on Amazon. Amazon sold out of it for a while because it was going pretty well. Christmas gift and all through, the book won't sell in 2027. It's for next year.

Get and grab it. And I swear it's funny and it's patriotic. And it's a little silly, a little snarky. But I think, and it doesn't say America's perfect. Because we're not. We have a long way to go, but we've learned a lot. So Dr. Drew, thanks for having me on. I appreciate it so much.

Jay appreciate. Follow Jay on XJ. Hey, Lightner. See you soon, my friend. Good to talk to you. Yeah, God bless. Take care. All right, we're going to have Dave Dopey. Dave Mannheim. Yes, I understand. Dave. He said we could use his name. Okay, well, I'm about to get into all that. Dave Mannheim, himself, a recovering addict, did a podcast with a young man who I had treated years ago and that man eventually had a relapse and died of his condition it was a cunning baffling disease dopey thank god has stayed sober and remained a leader dopey dave uh Dave manheim has

remained a leader in the sober community and has been doing this podcast to great acclaim the sober community is very much involved with this you can follow Dave on dopey podcast on x and dopey podcast on instagram we'll see lots of um clips from interesting people he's how to on the show over the years. But what I want to discuss with him is Nick Reiner and what has gone on there and what he as a recovering person and an addict sees. You know, you've got to understand that you can't use your regular brain to understand addiction, nor can you use it to understand somebody in a psychotic state.

So addiction itself is a disorder of broken motivation. So all the things that our brain uses, our emotional systems, our cognitive systems, our feeling stays, everything that our brain has is under the influence of this disturbance deep in the brain, at the brain stem, the medial forebrain bundle. And that influences all the other parts of the brain. That medial brain, that brain stem area, the medial forebrain bundle is essentially a privileged region of the brain that is set up to influence all the rest of the brain structure because it is the survival system. So obviously it's going to have a privileged position. If you're doing something that's good in survival, that part of the brain can very powerfully put out messages that you want to do that again. The brain has two systems. It has a liking system and a wanting system.

And people do drugs because they like them initially. But even when they don't like them anymore, they still want them. And that's really what the disease is in full blossom at that point. And there are many secrets in the treatment world, which is, for instance, to get one year of sobriety, a severe alcoholic on average takes four treatments in five years. So the fact that he was treated multiple times is neither here nor there. Dave is here. Dave, welcome. Hey, Dr. Drew, how you doing?

Thank you for your first stopping by. I appreciate it. What are your thoughts what happened with Nick? Nick is someone you knew. I knew him briefly and through Dopee, and my thoughts are it's horrible and sad. Yeah. And shocking.

I mean, he wasn't convicted of a murder yet, correct? Correct. The situation is, is, Yes, I'm listening, Drew. I'm sorry. To me, I mean, we've got a lot of people in this part of the country running around with knives and machetes, and they're all on meth. Something about meth seems to make people violent, makes them take things apart, makes them disorganized, makes them go to the street and makes them pick up a thing like a knife. Do you think, is that been your experience being around people with meth histories? you know i've been i did meth for a few weeks one year i've been around a ton of people who have

crazy stories around meth i've never heard of a of a violent situation like that from a dopey guest but people might not tell those stories you know and we rarely have anybody in full-blown psychosis on the show and and some of the stories are so horrific they're probably not comfortable telling them in a show like dopey. Right. And now we have this P2P stuff out there, which is essentially made with, you know, motor stuff you get in a car garage.

And it's well known to reduce psychosis almost immediately and to actually damage brain, which meth already was able to do. But this stuff apparently does it quite readily. So people's judgment is off. Their frontal lobes are shut down. So, all right. That's what I suspect.

what we're dealing with here, but of course, I don't know. Can you talk a little bit about something Rob Reiner said about Nick? He said, you know, I know my son better than anybody. I should trust my parental instincts, and I shouldn't listen to these professionals. What do you think about statements like that? I think they're dangerous. I think that was part of the sort of Bible of that film being

Charlie. I think that was what being Charlie was when to be about. I think Rob Reiner is a creative genius and a brilliant comedic director, writer, visionary. And I think sometimes there's a blurred line between something like a script and reality. Yeah. Did Nick talk, was that movie, had that been made at the time before you knew Nick? It had just come out. We got Nick on the show on the heels of of him doing a press junket with Howard Stern and Rob Reiner and I heard him on the Stern show and I just thought he reminded me of Chris, you know, my partner who died and I thought he would be a perfect fit on the show and him and Chris really did hit it off and he was a perfect fit on our show. And being Charlie had come out, being Charlie had just

come out and he spoke about imagine you're newly sober or you're newly practicing harm reduction and a film comes out about how you overcame substance abuse and you've mended the relationship with your father on a press junket tour with your father where your story is being told by your father like the pressure was probably really really intense yeah i i could see that on nix face when it was happening. I don't think everyone understands quite what you're saying. Can you go around again on what that would feel like? I think that people who are not familiar with the condition of addiction would go, well, what? They're going to inspire him and hold them to a higher standard. And oh boy, what do you say? I think that is a possible outcome. And I think Nick

felt a tiny little bit of that. And I know that him and his dad did get to connect. when they were doing the press. But he talked about it on the show how hard it was the kind of pseudo-imposter syndrome that he faced when doing press around this movie. You know, it created this expectation to be perfect. And it's very hard to be close to perfect when you're a newly sober.

And especially when you have a genius father, genius grandfather, and you're kind of holding on by the seat of your pants. I think it's a lot of pressure. Yeah, I agree. I just am very worried about parents who think they can intervene. They don't, maybe you help me with this, help people understand how addiction gets into the parent child, gets into the parenting, gets used, the parenting gets used by the addiction. well it's so complicated because the parent wants the child to get well the child i was a child

i'm a drug addict i was a child drug addict i was a child drug addict i was shipped to many treatments from age 25 to age 40 or something i probably went to treatment five times and i probably went to detox 30 times and the parents the parents are told that the kid is going to die and the kid is told that the kid is going to die and the kid is told that if it doesn't do x y and z he's not going to make it and the kid has a hard time believing anything he hears and then if the kid defies what the treatment says the parent will often give up on the child it's it's a it's a very tenuous delicate situation which is why it's so hard for people to get sober Also, why the parents have got to have support on their side.

Everybody needs support. Like, support is what everybody needs for everything around addiction and recovery. And from Nick, his parents, anybody who's listening that's struggling with anything, the answer is being together and the enemy is being alone. Yeah. The disease uses every wonderful parenting instinct that it can to service the pursuit of the drug. That's it. And so if parents think that I can love them enough, or if I'm diligent enough, or I'm reason with them enough, whatever it might be, you know, it just doesn't work.

It just, you have to get off the dance floor is what I tell parents. And the only way you stop dancing is if you develop a relationship with another parent who's been in your shoes. That's where the whole Al-Anon and those sorts of codependency programs come from. It's funny because when I was really bad, my parents joined Families Anonymous in New York City. And they were told they needed to find a hobby. And the hobby that my parents found was square dancing. And they joined a gay square dancing group called the Times Squares. and dance their way to freedom.

That's so funny. Was there a moment of, I imagine it was, what was your moment of clarity? People may not know how important that is, but there's a point where people, they decide to change. My moment of clarity happened. I had a child and my daughter's mother left me with the child,

and I wasn't allowed to have unsupervised. visits without showing a year of continuous sobriety via hair test and I got the year and I started visiting I started getting unsupervised visits and me and her mom started dating and then her mom found out I was using benzos again and she said she said you're going to lose another year to supervise visits and I had to get another year of hair tests and I was writing her letter begging her to let me smoke weed that I could be a good parent if I could just smoke weed. And I had some thought hit me that if maybe I could not smoke weed. And then I went to a 12-step meeting in the morning and I told my story about just being obsessed with losing my family. And they said they would love it if I had

come back, if I came back the next day. And I did. And I just did that. And the moment of clarity was just like a random moment and I was open and then I just kept being open until it stuck. How about that mother-in-law? That's a pretty, pretty solid maneuver. Yeah, but my wife and her mother-in-law and her mother. My wife made the saw, their whole family was like, get the fuck, get out of there and we'll deal with with Nora. And then ultimately, I never missed a visit and I never missed a payment. But for the first six months, I was visiting high with my dad, and it was as pathetic as it could be. And I wasn't just high on weed. I was high on heroin, nodding out in the visit. I was nodding out in the courtroom. I was a disaster. Thank God you're alive.

Yeah. Thank God is right. Thank God is right. Yeah. Well, it's a cunning, baffling thing, as you said and it's dangerous and if it's not put into remission it ends in fatalities and it's just a horrible thing and we have to start dealing with it more realistically than we do in this country I think it seems to me particularly meth right now I'm very very worried about it everyone on fentanyl in the streets is also on meth and nick was on the streets a lot so I'm sure I'm certain he got on both yeah I think Nick also had some co-occurring mental health issues and I think this is the perfect storm right doctor yeah but nobody nobody on p2p meth uh doesn't have mental health issues it just destroys the brain causes all kinds of mood disturbances and

thought disorders that's just in the condition now so to say somebody had pre-existing you know who knows there was some note i read somewhere that he had gone to one of these uh you know one of these therapeutic living environments in Utah those therapeutic, what do they call them? D.C. Outward Bion type programs. Yeah. Yeah. Did he talk about that ever? He did. I mean, I think

one of the things that he spoke about more than anything was getting forced into treatment at such a young age that he saw and heard the romance of shooting heroin and smoking crack. and shooting meth and as an impressionable young person he when he left to relapse he didn't relapse on weed he relapsed and shot heroin for the first time and and it was weed was we was a drug they were sending him to rehab for i don't remember the story i think he was he was probably

drinking he was smoking he was probably taking psychedelics and he was out of control but i but i know that he he had gotten introduced to harder drugs in treatment which is another very common story. Yeah, I don't know. I have trouble blaming treatment. Young addicts have a way of thinking, which is, you know, if I'm so fucked up, I might as well have a good time. And they're already in that mindset.

And I'm not blaming treatment. I'm just saying like it's in it because treatment saved my life, 12 steps saved my life, other addicts in recovery, people like you, sponsors, parents, you know, It's just when I was open to it. There is a situation where there are stoner kids who wind up in treatment and they learn more than they bargain for. And all of a sudden, the end, there's no blame. It's just, it's a horrible situation, you know. I certainly don't blame treatment.

By the way, I am no fan of most treatment these days either. So the fact that people are aiming at treatment and taking issue with it, I agree a lot of it is just they are ripping people on. they're not giving good treatment you know robert f kennedy got sober from heroin at a work farm i think he said it was three hundred dollars a month or something and he got full food and had to eat and live there for years and we have to get more of those kinds of models once people are stabilized and of course they have to be psychiatrically stabilized and treatment has to get underway but ultimately they need to spend time in a structure environment do 12 step with their peers it's it's pretty simple but they have to do it for a long long period of time and we just don't do that and so

much of what, you know, people get exposed to are these super expensive programs from which the average addict in early treatment doesn't remember anything. Doing all these intensive therapeutics make no sense. Do you remember the first two weeks or two months even of your treatment? Bits and pieces, but nothing good. I remember a lot of bad stuff. And I wasn't ready. You know, I wasn't ready for anything. But it's stop gaps. You know, no people. My parents didn't want to see me die. I was strung out on heroin. And I certainly wasn't on the streets, but I was in danger and nothing good was coming for me.

So they, and I wanted to, I didn't want to be sober, but I couldn't afford heroin and I hated my life. So I was open to treatment, but it never stuck. And nothing stuck until something clicked. And if we, anyone could figure out how to create a click, it would be a different, industry. I know. I had a patient say to me once, how do you give somebody get it? How do you get them to get it? And to some extent, just spend enough time in the program, you'll be at it. But not, you know, a lot of people, they can't. They won't. It takes a while. So, well, listen, Dave, you've been very kind with your time here with us. It's late in the day there where you are. We'd love to have you back.

Yeah. Especially as this all unfolds, because this is sort of a new thing for, a lot of people and our condolences go out to the Reiner family and his fans. This is a very sad time and I hope this isn't affecting you too badly because I know that these are your colleagues and these are the people that you interview over the years. And I, you know, I'm very disheartened with what's going on with Andy Dick too right now because we did a podcast for a long time and I met everybody too. But thank you so much for taking time out and it's been really a joy to hear your voice again. thank you susan thank you drew great to see you and definitely i my heart goes out to all the rhiners

including nick yeah and and anybody out there who's sick and suffering and i appreciate both of you so thanks all right dave talk soon soon so bye thanks bye all right so a lot you forgot to ask him where to get the dopey podcast um uh on x just followed dopey podcast yeah he just put up the three episodes that he taped with Nick Reiner together in one episode. So if you want to hear, you know, firsthand what he found out there. And it was over the course of a few years. So he was on three times. Yeah, it would be interesting to hear what. And that was a long time ago too, right? So Nick has progressed and we don't know what else he's dealing with since those years. But it'd be interesting to hear him. He has a lot of interesting people on his

podcast. Like, you know, a lot of people have a connection. We had some of the same guest. for a long. We did a podcast called This Life You Live with Bob Forrest and Drew, and we interviewed all. And Dave and I became friends because he wanted all my guests. So I would send my guest to him. And he's still going strong. So support him. He's a good guy. He's also still alive by the grace of God. So we want to thank him for that. Joey Meatball says at the end of the day, it's personal responsibility. No, Joey doesn't tend to work like that, unfortunately. if if those believe me people that are doing drugs are desperate to stop many times and it's it's a brain syndrome that makes it in next to impossible so personal responsibility i mean you can talk about

you know being responsible for your recovery that's something they should be responsible for and you can talk about people doing drugs in the first place maybe you educate people enough there'll be less likely to do that but education doesn't seem to make much of an impact on on people's choice to do drug, but here we are. All right, everybody. So let's see what's coming up. Caleb, sorry about my voice today. I've got a little hoarseness going on here.

I guess everybody should just go to dopypodcast.com. Okay. Coming up. Jonathan Alpert, Martha Byrne, that's tomorrow. Roy Ignatianist and Libby Emmons, Shane Cashner and Emily Hagan. I think, isn't Emily coming in Thursday? Shane Cashman.

What did I say? Cassner. Oh, Shane Cashman. And isn't Emily coming in this week also? Emily Bar, Emily Hagan, with Shane Cashman. Okay, that's on the 23rd. On my birthday, on the 22nd. I see.

See, we, that's going to be Monday. We move the 23rd to the 22nd. Yes. Because we have to, it's holiday. Okay. Then the calendar's wrong. I'll fix it. Monday the 22nd, which is my 66th birthday.

At 2. It's going to be Monday at 2. In case everybody wants to send a gift. I like jewelry. Let's see today. and then it's tomorrow at four. That's Jonathan, Albert, Martha Byrne. And then the 18th, we're back at 2 o'clock.

And then the special episode is on Monday. Is Emily Hagan coming in also for that? Yes, I think so. Excellent. I don't know. I haven't talked to her, but I think so, but maybe not. All right. Thank you all for being here as we approach Christmas. Happy holidays, happy Hanukkah.

Happy New Year coming up. And we'll see you tomorrow at 4 o'clock. Ask Dr. Drew is produced by Caleb Nation and Susan Pinsky. Emily Barsh is our content producer. As a reminder, the discussions here are not a substitute for medical care, diagnosis, or treatment. This show is intended for educational and informational purposes only. I am a licensed physician, but I am not a replacement for your personal doctor and I am not practicing medicine here. Always remember that our understanding of medicine and science is constantly evolving,

though my opinion is based on the information that is available to me today, some of the contents of this show could be outdated in the future. Be sure to check with trusted resources in case any of the information has been updated since this was published. If you or someone you know is in immediate danger, don't call me. Call 911. If you're feeling hopeless or suicidal, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800 273-8255. You can find more of my recommended organizations and helpful resources at Dr.do.com slash help. Thank you.