Ask Dr. Drew - Transgender Autism Connection, Law Of Attraction, Childhood Trauma & Caller Questions – Ask Dr. Drew – Episode 87

Episode Date: May 9, 2022

Dr. Drew answers caller questions about studies into the connections between autism spectrum disorder and transgender identity, if the "Law Of Attraction" has scientific basis, the effects of childhood trauma on adults, renewed interest in narcissism, and more in this special AMA episode. [This podcast was originally broadcast on April 8, 2022] Ask Dr. Drew is produced by Kaleb Nation ( https://kalebnation.com) and Susan Pinsky (https://twitter.com/FirstLadyOfLove). SPONSORS • BLUE MICS – After more than 30 years in broadcasting, Dr. Drew’s iconic voice has reached pristine clarity through Blue Microphones. But you don’t need a fancy studio to sound great with Blue’s lineup: ranging from high-quality USB mics like the Yeti, to studio-grade XLR mics like Dr. Drew’s Blueberry. Find your best sound at https://drdrew.com/blue  • ELGATO – Every week, Dr. Drew broadcasts live shows from his home studio under soft, clean lighting from Elgato’s Key Lights. From the control room, the producers manage Dr. Drew’s streams with a Stream Deck XL, and ingest HD video with a Camlink 4K. Add a professional touch to your streams or Zoom calls with Elgato. See how Elgato’s lights transformed Dr. Drew’s set: https://drdrew.com/sponsors/elgato/  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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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. Today is sort of a AMA, sort of ask me anything. I got a few things on my mind, but I'm interested. Susan, I can't. AMA means that ask me anything and we are i'm very proud of you for knowing that yeah you're so proud of me for knowing that i know i've seen yes i i didn't i did an ama with adam

was with adam or mike it was must have beenryker, but it was about 14 years ago. It was one of the first AMAs, yeah. And I had no idea what they were talking about. That code word? And I was informed then. Our laws as it pertained to substances are draconian and bizarre. A psychopath started this.

He was an alcoholic. Because of social media and pornography, PTSD, love addiction, fentanyl and heroin. Ridiculous. I'm a doctor for f***'s sake. Where the hell do you think I learned that? I'm just saying, you go to treatment before you kill people. I am a clinician.

I observe things about these chemicals. Let's just deal with what's real. We used to get these calls on Loveline all the time. Educate adolescents and to prevent and to treat. If you have trouble, you can't stop and you you want to help stop it, I can help. I got a lot to say. I got a lot more to say. So, hey, hey, all you out on restream.

I don't see any Twitch. I see YouTube and Facebook. Oh, Twitch. I just got the notification from Twitch. What do I know about Novavax? I am hoping it is released soon as well, Mary Kay. Novavax is a simple protein that stimulates the immune system to respond to that protein. If I decided to get another booster or a booster, I haven't had a booster yet,

I would get the Novavax. Covaxin is another sort of whole viral sort of old style platform that I think is being used in India right now to great effect. Dr. Monica Gandhi is a big advocate of that particular vaccine. It's another one you can get if you are concerned about the mRNA vaccines. So, Maria G., what do you do for anxiety? 59-year-old. So, anxiety is really prominent right now.

It comes up on anything. And, and tanya i know you're here maybe you could come in and uh take a call on clubhouse and talk about as a social worker what you're seeing in terms of the incidents of anxiety out there in the world but particularly my psychiatric colleagues that deal with child adolescents are saying the same thing anxiety depression anxiety depression anxiety depression they're just overwhelmed with it. And they're not enough psychiatrists and psychologists to see all the cases. Many of them aren't even coming in because they're maybe disdainful or don't understand how to treat mental health issues. So the way to think about anxiety is it's sort of really probably four categories to think about. One is, of course, general anxiety with or without panic.

And panic attacks are a special thing. There she is. There's Maria's question there. Panic attacks are a special. You can have panic attacks without a generalizing anxiety disorder or more typically is with a generalizing anxiety. And those of you that have had panic know what that is. You feel like you're dying. And panic has a slightly different treatment. It's sort of an open circuit in the brain

so it has a different treatment that generally is anxiety per se but let's just talk about anxiety per se so there's anxiety that is that causes depression there's an anxiety associated with a lack of connection to emotions it's sort of the the connection between primary emotions and second order representations and regulating those emotions are deficient because of primarily not getting enough of what you needed during the sort of rapprochement phase of development when kids go out in the world and do things and they come back to their primary caretakers and say look what i did look at them refuel me help me regulate myself didn't if you don't get a lot of that and if you have a lot of uh sort of chaos in your caretakers and say, look what I did, look, you know, refuel me, help me regulate myself. If you don't get a lot of that, and if you have a lot of sort of chaos in your caretakers and

you're busy taking care of them, again, your primary emotions are off in the distance somewhere. They aren't valued. They aren't identified. You can't bring them to the fore. You can't regulate them. And you're left with a whole lot of anxiety. That's one kind of anxiety. It tends to cause depression. Excuse me, a bigger part, tends to be associated with depression. So it may be a depression sort of is coming on and you only experience the anxiety, again, because you're sort of disconnected from emotions. There is a anxiety that causes depression. There are people that are very anxiety intolerant and when they feel anxious and overwhelmed, they drift into sort of almost like learned helplessness. They start to feel helpless when they're anxious,

and that makes them depressed. So there's depression causing anxiety, there's anxiety causing depression. And in either of those cases, there can be anxiety associated with obsessive compulsive disorder. So the anxiety associated with OCD is yet another sort of specific biology. It's more associated with the generalized anxiety disorder that causes depression, but it can be with or without depression. So OCD and anxiety is a category. And then these days, we're seeing a ton of post-traumatic stress disorder and anxiety, right? People that are in this sort of hypervigilant state,

their autonomic nervous system is turned on all the time. That is a residual of childhood trauma. And if you know the book by Dr. Vandekook, The Body Keeps the Score, The Body Keeps the Score, he talks about that very explicitly, how it is the body constantly in that state of trauma, even though your brain is saying to itself, I dealt with that a long time

ago. I don't think about it. I might not even remember it. There is the body keeps the score. There's another good book by Dr. Levine called Waking the Tiger, I think it's called, if I remember right. But these are, yeah, sympathetic overdrive. Ali Aleve-Green calls it, Aleve R. Green. Yeah, sympathetic overdrive is part of it. The problem is the parasympathetic system, the vagus nerve, is really more the mediator of a lot of this stuff, it turns out. If you look at Dr. Porges' work, you can see how the vagus development is embedded in our face, vocal cords, and ears.

And this instrument of our face, our voice, and our ears is how we have socio-emotional exchange. And when I talked about the coming back for refueling from primary caretaker's parents, it is the vagus nerve that is stimulated in the caretaker to give the prosodic intonation in the voice, the facial reflection of the emotions that happen automatically. That's because the vagus is embedded in the branchial pouches of development,

which become our face. And the brain stem is the source of the vagus nerve. It has three nuclei from which it emanates. And a lot of that vagus stuff is there at birth, though some of it develops later as a regulatory function and that later developing stuff doesn't develop so well if you have trauma, mostly because rather than triggering regulation

and socio-emotional interaction, the vagus triggers dissociation. And that now is Alan Shore's material. We talked to Alan Shore on this podcast about six months ago or so, probably, it seems like it was last summer maybe. So check that all out, Alan Shore's material. We talked to Alan Shore on this podcast about six months ago or so. It seems like it was last summer maybe. So check that all out. Alan Shore, Peter Fonagy, Bessel van der Kolk.

Who else did I mention? Peter and Stephen Porges. These are the prophets of this material, of what's called interpersonal neurobiology. And I strongly, strongly, if you're interested, look into it. Slapdash keeps asking me about Welbutrin and seizures. Welbutrin usually doesn't cause seizure unless something else is going on,

like you have a seizure disorder or an eating disorder. Usually that's where you see the seizures from Welbutrin, but it does happen. Hmm, interesting. uh usually that's where you see the seizures from well butrin but it does happen uh interesting make mk some sort of particular persistent testicular pain after vasectomy that does not sound like fun uh thank you maria g does match make sure it's both sympathetic and parasympathetic um different droto thanks for the provocative question, as you always bring. Uh, it is sympathetic and parasympathetic switching that, that causes sexual arousal and discharge.

Um, Zen 916 is asking me, what's my opinion on true niogen? Okay. I am, um, not working with true niogen. I, I did advertise, they did advertise, I think on this streaming show for a while or no, and, and for a while over in the Dr. Drew podcast. So I've been taking druniogen for about six or seven years. And I am convinced, I had a chance to speak to the scientist about nicotinamide riboside, and I was convinced he was onto something. I do believe the NAD pathway is important in aging.

I think it's one of the things that we can affect. If you notice, people are getting NAD infusions, both to recover from addiction, alcoholism, and it works, helps with alcoholic liver disease. I don't know if you noticed that Joe Rogan got three NAD infusions in his COVID recovery. I thought that was very interesting, and all the people that attacked his doctor for what he did missed the one really sort of outside-the-box therapeutic he did, which was giving him three NAD infusions. Nobody commented on that, fascinatingly, because they weren't in a hysterical focus

on the IWORD medication. So there you go. Okay. Rochelle is saying she's been on Suboxone for 20 years. Any studies you can enter? Rochelle, why? Maybe you just she's been on Suboxone for 20 years. Any studies you can enter? Rochelle, why? Maybe you just want to get off Suboxone so you can fully flourish or maybe get down a very low dose.

Carol Bowman, you're saying pay a lot for therapy. I'm not quite sure what you're asking there. How do people improve without meds or paying a lot for therapy? Okay, of course, there are lots of things people can do. Engagement. You know, I swear that the new preoccupation with the stoic philosophers is sort of a cognitive behavioral therapy that people do with themselves. Bond patches, I'll tell you about NAD in a second. You can obviously focus on your relationships. You can also focus on service. There's lots of things you can do to create.

The more you move towards creating a good life, the more you will be improving your mental health generally. But if you have really wiring issues, it needs to be treated. I mean, these things should be treated. If you have trauma, it needs to be treated. If you have general anxiety that you missed a phase of development, you've got to catch up on that in skilled hands. Heard that blood clotting can be genetic. Sure, it can be. NAD, it's a hydrogen transfer physiology. It's very, very much involved. It's involved in basic metabolism. And I don't know

if I could, you know what, maybe we should get the scientists back in here to really go over the connection with NAD and aging and cell senescence. The oxidation reduction state of a cell is very much tied into the health of the cell and whether it gets old and dies out, right? It's just sort of, it's part of what gets depleted with senescence, the NAD, NADH pathway, and the ability to keep that metabolism going. It's the simplest way I can say it, but I'd be interested in bringing the scientists back in here to talk about it explicitly. What do I consider a low dose of suboxone? Under eight milligrams, you're getting there, but I'd like to see people under four milligrams. One, two milligrams, that's where it really doesn't affect people's functioning very much.

0.5, still have withdrawal. Oh yeah, oh yeah, Blake. You can get all the way down to 0.5, but when you stop, you will get withdrawal. And it's a miserable two weeks, and you'll go through it, and that's it. You'll be done. Yeah, I've had that happen many times. People get under a milligram, and you still have withdrawal when you stop completely. Anything else on the restream And that's it. You'll be done. Yeah, I've had that happen many times. People get under a milligram and you still have withdrawal when you stop completely. Anything else on the restream here? Max Patrick, I don't know quite what's going on

with your parents there. Interesting. Do I know, am I vaxxed? Yes, I had the Janssen vaccine, the Johnson and Johnson vaccine, and I had a terrible reaction to it. And then I've had COVID twice. I had alpha COVID and I had Omicron. Omicron was a nothing. And I've had recently my antibodies tested with something called the Adatex score, which gives you multiple antibody profiles, including nuclear capsid and various spike proteins and neutralizing antibodies. And all that was way, way, way up. So I'm pretty

protected right now. What do I think about psychedelic medication? All right, Shane, I did a interview with the founder of MAPS, Multidisciplinary Association with Psychedelic Studies, on my podcast. And he's a very conscientious, very careful scientist. And he said, so far, we can tell one thing, that in the right hands, MDMA can be useful in recalcitrant PTSD. That's it. That's all we can tell at this point.

So for people to be using these things, you're only putting yourself in harm's way. We don't know what you're doing. And I can tell you for sure, I'm sure that, for instance, in end of life, mushrooms and LSD, if you have a terminal diagnosis, you only have a few months to live, those help.

They help you deal with that dread. Now, it may change your personality, but so what? Now, if you're having a chemical change your personality without your control, it's outside of your control. With therapy, it can change your personality too, but you're in control of that. But with a chemical changing who you are fundamentally, I have a real ethical problem with that. And I have seen lots of diverse personality changes from hallucinogens of various type

that have concerned me greatly. As far as the microdosing go, I have no idea. that and i have seen lots of diverse personality changes from hallucinogens of various type that have concerned me greatly as far as the microdosing go i have no idea i've seen lots of neurological problems with modest sustained hallucinogen use and as all i can tell now is you're putting yourself in harm's way uh no casey uh weren't i on Loveline? Uh, yes, of course. Um, Max, I don't know what you're asking there. Oh, I don't, I would need a lot more information. I have talked to your parents specifically to be able to say anything meaningful about that question. Uh, I don't even want to say it out loud because it's, I can't, I, it's just a not, I, I would need so much more information, uh, you know, about, about those two people. I'd have to talk to them and understand them.

And if you remember, Loveline was a calling show. We got that information. What is Kroll like behind the scenes? Not nearly so funny. No, he's not funny. PRN Tramadol. Jill, just know that both Kratom and Tramadol are weak opiates,

and they are certainly not as dangerous as the stronger opioids and opiates. But if you have no family history of addiction, no personal history of addiction, I don't see any problem with either of those if they help you. Why does Corolla walk all over you on his podcast? That's what he's always done, right? Susan, they're asking why Adam walks all over me. Isn't that what we've always done over there, on love that's what friends are for that's right so so so we're getting a few people on clubhouse i'm trying to put the word out there all right

i'm getting time raise your hand yeah tanya's in so tanya anxiety and depression what are we seeing out there hi hey oh my goodness wow um whenever you talk about all that, it's so fascinating to me. Because growing up with you, you know, hearing you on Loveline and all your projects, you kind of helped me to realize that trauma, child abuse isn't always what we think I remember saying something like, oh, you were abused as a kid. And I was like, no, I didn't think of it like that. So it only took me like 35 years to find out the importance of emotional regulation and self-soothing and really addressing that deeply rooted trauma yeah um so you know that i'm i'm working in the field i feel like it's just it's come to fruition i feel like it just it all makes sense well why don't you talk about the the sort of subtle nature of uh developmental trauma because somebody i did an instagram live a few minutes ago and someone was saying do your mom and dad have relate you have any effect on your psychology? I thought, oh my God,

people need to hear that basic stuff again. It's like, oh my goodness. But why don't you talk about how subtle it can be and how easy it is to miss real significant deficiencies? Well, I was listening to you yesterday, and I'm sorry to make it personal, but you were talking about growing up with a mother where there's some narcissistic behaviors and, you know, unfortunately, I know I'm very familiar with that on top of some other trauma, but it definitely begins with attachment and also the way our caregivers show affection or behave with us in the household. And so with COVID, you know, we're seeing a lot of the aftermath of our babies, our kids, not being in the best socially, emotionally healthy environments. And then you add the pandemic, all these stressors. So we're seeing a lot of, you know know kind of blanket diagnosis of adjustment disorder but when you talked about how depression can come with the onset of anxiety you know

features and vice versa that's definitely something that we're also seeing yeah yeah it's just and and the the the i'm thinking trying to think of a good word for this, the crass maybe disregard for the effects of what we were doing for COVID to the well-being of particularly our children and adolescents. And I just heard Dr. Fauci that day say something very disappointing, which was essentially, well, of course there's collateral damage. We're taking massive interventions here. It's like, whoa, dude, that's pretty glib. That's a pretty glib assessment of why didn't you consider that beforehand? Why didn't you help prepare for this? Why didn't you mitigate those effects?

Because they are just going to be with us. Profound, yeah. mitigate those effects because they are just going to be with us profound yeah unfortunately you know i think from a bureaucratic perspective they just kind of saw this as a liability i know particularly here in los angeles county but um my wish one day is that there's this implementation of curriculum where children are taught emotional regulation and self-soothing, and they're learning about what you talked about, the vagus nerve exercises and activating that parasympathetic nervous system and breathing and tapping and grounding. Those things are just, I don't know why we don't know more about that. Well, I know that in England they're doing some of that. They're really being very

proactive in certain institutions and then studying it so we should have data on that soon enough i i think they're probably three years into that work right now so that will be interesting but i i agree with you i look i i think just a life 101 class you know this is what biology is this is how a body works this is what cancer is this is your brain this is how your brain works this is how it works on drugs this is how it works interpersonally here's how to sign a checkbook you know i'm just basic you know there's nowhere that kids are really given the basics um and and you can make it as academic as you want right i mean this is obviously we can go very deep uh if somebody's motivated to teach, you know, some of the underlying chemistry, say, or whatever, you know,

they're interested in, but it's left out for some reason. Yeah, it's just very matter of faculty, and I, along with that, I guess, education about substance abuse and domestic violence and just some of these other trends we're seeing with our kids. Yeah. Well, I'm just thinking of an opportunity. I'm a big Hegelian believer, and I believe that we have these movements, and then we move back the other direction, and then we create a sort of a synthesis. So it occurs to me that part of a class like that should be sort of the impact of the history on the present moment,

history of our psychology, and issues of race and immigration are a perfect opportunity to talk about that. And so how about they do that and then include all this other stuff in the same class, and guess what? I bet everybody would be in favor of that rather than people going, I'm not in favor of this. I am in favor of that. You know what I mean? Let's talk about the whole picture. All right. Well, you just planted a seed. Now I have all these ideas. Good. I love it. Maybe one day we'll be implementing this. Yes. Yes. Good for you because think about it. I mean, the systemic racism and all those topics are a perfect opportunity to talk about intergenerational trauma. Trauma, yeah. And then go from that to, well, we also see that in

these forms of immigration and these kinds of families and these sorts of historical moments and just bring it all together. I mean, it's, and no one seems to get it. And that's terrible. How can you run a country, you know, how can we understand it? Yeah, you make it sound so simple, Drew. Because it is really, it really is, right? I mean, it's, once people sort of, you know, as you were saying in your own case, you're somewhat, you're resistant to looking at your parents as being traumatizing, right? So we'd have to find a strategy for delivering that in a way that people don't feel threatened by it but i and and let me and let me tanya let me say this you're out of here wait go say bye on the mic hold on i'm gonna make susan gate say goodbye to us because she's

going away for the weekend i'm doing a teen mom reunion this weekend so she takes please tell her hold on hold on oh okay she's on the mic go ahead, Tanya's had a message for you. Okay. Hi, Mrs. Pinsky. Hi. I wanted to let you know that I uploaded a photo of Drew's bobblehead with beer mug and Dave King of Mexico. Oh. It's on Twitter. Oh, okay. That's fantastic.

Okay, we should retweet that. All right, let's do it. Yeah. Okay, you guys. See you later. Okay, but Susan, bye-bye-bye. I will talk to you. I'll be listening in the car. All right, I'll probably call you tonight, and I'll see you tomorrow. but susan bye bye bye i will talk i'll be listening in the

car all right i'll probably call you tonight and i'll see you tomorrow i gotta drive for two hours in fact i don't know what time i'm due with it i'm doing one of these teen mom reunions tomorrow okay have a good drive safe bye they don't need to know we'll miss you we'll miss you okay miss you too all right take care susan all right so what i was saying uh tanya is one of the ways that one of the things i've been emphasizing lately and one of the ways I think we could sort of approach this issue of intergenerational trauma is to point out that all human behavior is adaptive, essentially. Everything's adaptive. And it really is people trying to survive. That's really what it's all about. And people survive

in ways that become problematic in certain situations, but even those problematic behaviors can have assets and liabilities associated with them. And the impact on the child can have assets and liabilities associated with it. So it's not all good and all bad. I want to just caution people. Like, so, so I. So you've heard me say lately about narcissism. There's a lot of talk, chatter all of a sudden about narcissism. Look, if somebody is going to be a fighter pilot, I want them to be a severe narcissist. That's who I want in that F-18. But if it's marrying somebody I care about, well, that guy's going to be tough that guy's gonna there's

gonna be some yeah something going on there just normalizing and validating without judgment right and that's where we have um you know the humanistic techniques that are implemented with therapy and solutions focused and that unconditional positive regard it's just matter of fact this is what it is and your brain is so great at adapting. Yes. Yes. And I've always been a little uncomfortable with unconditional positive regard because I do believe you can be very forgiving. You can be very grateful. You can understand somebody else. Let's take my own mom. I can understand her point of view. I can understand what she went through. I have empathy for her. Guess what?

You don't do that to a kid. Don't do that. It's not unconditionally positive. It's like, dude, you shouldn't have done that. There needs to be some accountability. Yeah, you shouldn't have done that. I understand. I'm fine. I'm forgiven.

I'm good. Thank you for everything good you did do, but you don't do that to a kid. Let's all agree. And see if we can get that to stop. That's all. Well, I hope that you're very proud of your your inner baby child drew because you're you're doing amazing and and there's a ripple effect so well it's funny i woke up this morning worrying about everything uh thank you uh

sensational cinema i'm just recording responding to stuff as we go along here um really worried about this country and i'm hoping and praying for us getting to a point and this what you and i are talking about maybe one of the roads there us all getting to the point where we appreciate what we have in this country. That we understand it better collectively. That we all understand it in the same way. And so that's sort of my thinking right now. It's sort of my thinking adjusted this morning where I'm like, that's what I want for us,

for this country. Gratitude. Gratitude, but understanding. Like we get each other and we all are rowing in the same direction and we understand the history of this country. Similarly, we have a collective understanding of it. And if those of you who are listening to other countries too,

I don't want to, please don't imagine I'm talking about American exceptionalism. I'm sort of disgusted by that a little bit, by the way. But I'm just saying we need to kind of get together here. If you're looking from outside our borders, things must look pretty weird. And guess what? They are. And I'm just wanting us to get our act back together again. That's all. And maybe it is about understanding. So much of what screws us up is that a lot of us are immigrants and we immigrated under traumatic circumstances. You don't think those Ukrainians are going to be traumatized by all that? I'm Ukrainian.

We had the, I was the last exodus from Ukraine. I was, it was the turn of the 20th century. We were the last exodus. And whatever happened there, they didn't speak about it, but it sure rained down on me emotionally. So that's what happens. That's how it works. Yes, Tanya? Yeah.

I mean, I could go on about this. We could talk about trauma in utero, you know, the exposure there. We could talk about, but, you know, I'm not going to say too much about this, but I've been meaning to say, I feel like we just need more of God, more of values, more of spirituality, whatever, however you want to identify with a higher power. Well, that is, yes. identify with a higher power. We are so lacking that. Yes. And I don't want to get preachy about that because I feel like people get turned off by that, but it is very prominently in my thinking. And it's so funny that three years ago, I said to Karol, about two years ago, I said, you know what we need? We need another great awakening in this country. I started looking at the history of great awakenings and they came at a time like this, like these great

awakenings. And I don't mean that they're good for us. I just thought, well, I was just thinking maybe that would sort of collectivize us, maybe that would get us out of this. And not that I would participate in a great awakening, because they were often sort of went into outer space with their, they became evangelical and that kind of stuff which can have its own problems but isn't it interesting that instead of the great awoken great awakening we got the great awokening isn't that interesting and the awokening is explicitly godless and without religion so it's sort of the opposite of a great awakening but with a similar sort of course to it it's very interesting to me and when it's written about i hope people sort of juxtapose great awakenings with the great awokening and the

excesses on both it's the the excesses that are the problem not the points they're making the excesses like back when the great awakenings had developed yes there was a spiritual vacuum a lot of it the problem back then was related to alcoholism frankly there was a lot of movements towards uh what do they call those societies temperance societies the temperance societies built up because they had alcoholics out in the street and uh it's really let me just a quick sidebar i think i've told on this on this pod on this stream before um andy bales at the union rescue mission downtown los angeles was telling me that his father was part of one of those temperance movements at the end of the 20th, 19th

century, excuse me, end of the, yeah, end of the 19th century. And he said, yeah, back in the day, they would pull the wagon around Skid Row, and the guys that were ready to get on the wagon, they put them back in the mission. So that's where on the wagon came

from. That the alcoholics would pile onto the wagon when they them back in the mission so that's where on the wagon came from that the alcoholics would pile onto the wagon when they'd had enough and go to the missions and get some sobriety isn't that interesting wow yeah well you are such a great agency i've worked with them for the last few years love them love them anyway drew i gotta get back to work i appreciate everything pleasure to talk to you you bet oh. Ooh, lots of questions here. So, Oh my goodness. Uh,

let me get to, uh, Jeremy. Hi, Jeremy. What's going on? I'm done. Meet yourself.

There you are. What's up? Yeah. I might have to mute myself cause I in public, but I don't want to get the backseat, uh, sort of thing about round me, but,

uh, I want to kind of make two comments before my question uh first uh i support like all of the content that you do back in 2016 i worked with geo on the uh loveline archive wow i brought in for him about 2000 episodes oh my goodness it's always great to help you guys out i love media archiving and all of that thank you jeremy um no problem no problemiving and all of that. Thank you, Jeremy. No problem, no problem. I appreciate all the content that you've given people over the years. That's for sure.

So you talked about Team Mom and such, and I'm one foot in and out of the world of reality TV casting and development. And just a little comment is that I think a lot of people don't know in regards to mental health that people that go on reality shows a lot of times don't know what it is that they're getting into they go on a show like a survivor and a big brother you know and mentally you kind of change

during that process and your networks a lot of times do not offer uh aftercare to contestants and it really screws a lot of people up i'm sure you've seen it with the addiction. Yeah. I'll tell you, I wanted to do a show called After Reality where we just examine people that had been let go. They're just in free fall after a reality show. They sort of in their mind think they're stars and they're going to be like this forever. And then everyone just leaves them. Now, let me be super clear that the two shows that I've been involved with, Celebrity

Rehab and Teen Mom, and this is hats off to VH1 and to MTV, who I've told them repeatedly they should take a bow for this, have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on ongoing care and after care, depending on what the needs were. They've never held back on anything I've asked for for people that have needed it in either cast, in either camp, and they really deserve it. That is a different approach, or not even approach, it's different than many other networks.

And I thank them and they should take a bow for it. I don't know why they don't, but they have never done so. So trust me, at least the shows I've been involved with with those't, but they have never done so. So trust me, at least the shows I've been involved with, with those two networks, they have never held back on exactly this issue for exactly the reason you're bringing it up, Jeremy. It's a serious issue. Yeah. And, you know, along those same lines, I tried at one point developing a show of my own that I was calling Reality Rehab. And I wanted to take more of an intervention approach of showing people and the

reasons why they decided to go on reality tv to like the height of their stardom or even if that's 15 minutes of fame you know show their decline and actually give them the help that they need to educate people for when they actually do decide to apply for their favorite show so or leaving on with that comment simply because i was going to say the same thing you did. It's like, why don't we have a show about this already? Well, why don't you email me at contact at dr.ru.com and we'll talk about it. Because I think people need to see this. I really do. The reality casting, as you know well, does not exactly cast healthy people.

And then it doesn't necessarily, if you don't prepare for what comes, you can make people that aren't so healthy, less healthy. So, um, absolutely, absolutely, absolutely. Uh, I do have a, uh, separate question though. Um, so I pulled myself out of a bad place mentally back in 2017. And, you know, this is a little cringeworthy for a lot of people, but really what helped me pull out of it was studying a lot of things around the law of attraction and you know a lot of the things like the secret it's so generic and you know it doesn't give you that uh knowledge that you need of taking action and getting off the couch and you know they feel like you just sit there and vibrate at a certain frequency and you get everything you want right but i've done a lot

of research i've been reading things like mind sight by a dance adult to tony robbins books to the leading brain and all of that and so i was wondering if by chance you can kind of cut through a lot of the nonsense and tell people a bit of what is true and what is false in that matter especially when it comes to something like the reticular activating system yeah as if like there is a process of needing a lot of repetition for the reticular activating system or is that something that you know you can take a law of action a law of attraction approach and you know just basically you know put it out there and let it go well jeremy it's a i the reason i you know the law of attraction has a foundation in something that is true.

It just takes it to a point of absurdity and, frankly, sort of awful, an awful place where people are blamed for having been in the way of a tsunami. It's because they chose to be in that place. Like, no, no, no, no, no. Look, this is ultimately, it goes back to positive psychology. You know the whole field of positive psychology, right? Did you read anything about that? Yeah. And it is sort of in the, you know, this is a kind of a goofy zone.

But the zone is essentially if your mood and your motivation will follow your thoughts. And if you get your thoughts squared up and your intentions, more even than your thoughts, your intentions squared up, you'll follow a little bit. And it's essentially action-oriented self-care. You know, today I'm going to go get a coffee and every and today i'm going to make and if you look at happiness literature uh whenever i've talked i've mentioned before on this thread that if i talk to people that um do actual research and happiness you know what's the number often their question i guess what's the number one thing i can do what's the first thing i can do to help my happiness do you have any idea what they tell these people, Jeremy? From your perspective, are you still with me?

I'm sorry. You kind of cut out there. I'm sorry. I was saying that the positive happiness researchers, when they are asked, what's the first thing you can do to help move yourself towards happiness? What do you think they say? Well, I mean, it's like, you know, change your brain, change life sort of perspective. You know, if you, as I tell people, you know, you have to have the positive outweigh the negative. And you're always going to have negative thoughts and thought patterns. You know, it's that cognitive behavioral therapy approach of the line between the stimulus, you know stimulus you know and your reaction you know and taking that deep breath you know but if you start at 50 percent and you build from there you're always going to be on the right track you know it's how i've always looked at it and i believe that people are coming to what you're talking about i think

that's why stoic philosophers have become so interesting to people because it does put the locus of control back on people and they have felt out of control for so long i think it's very appealing right now but back to answer the question about the happiness literature the first thing they tell you to do is make your bed make your bed and that has an impact on happiness so it's that kind of action-oriented positive movement towards things you're grateful for to for towards uh forgiveness and these positive emotions you're right jeremy it has a real effect hey man i look forward to talking to the future right all right yeah i will definitely send that contact over okay right away all right jeremy everybody that was interesting stuff uh to bring alana up here lots you uh

set up i'll try to get to alana what's going on hey okay there hey now how are you i'm good hey now good so the question goes back to um the intergenerational trauma yeah how as an individual can you stop that and i just sort of it's more of a double check for myself i grew up in an incredibly traumatic i had a lot of trauma growing up and i'm trying really hard not to pass it on to my kids yeah so i'm open to any suggestions and ideas it's it's it's impossible not to transmit some of it right because it's it's imprinted on us. It's left on our body. It's left on our emotional systems.

So to some extent, it passes on. I mean, your kids, this is something that I've noticed also people are interested in talking about is attachment and how attachment works. You know, an attachment is this ability to be close to other human beings. And that closeness is first established really with mom. And again again the research is on mom and we're going to talk about it as mom and the the things that she is able to do in terms of being completely available to a child's needs and emotions are very much affected by the extent to which she was attached to back in her own infancy. And then dad's, of course, the same thing.

But trauma makes closeness somewhat threatening, changes how your body reacts to closeness, and those reactions are necessarily transmitted to the child, right? There's body-to-body transmission of information in attachment. So really, all you can do is get your trauma treated. That's the important thing. I don't believe that you can really sort of think yourself, you can. I mean, we're just talking to Jeremy about that. It takes a long time. I just think really the way you interrupt the pattern of intergenerational trauma is with treatment. Even if it's a little bit of

treatment, like some EMDR or meditative therapies or something, something that interrupts this transmission, which tends to be pretty, pretty efficient from previous traumas. And again, back to these being adaptive, let's, you know, when humans are faced with trauma, they are, um, then they survive it, whatever adaptive mechanisms, let them survive it. You want to pass that to your kids. Unfortunately, they don't become so adaptive in situations where there isn't that same kind of threat. Got it. Okay. So I I've done that. So, and I had, yeah, no, no, no, no.

Like my mother got sick when I was six and died when I was 12. So that, you know, you have that six years of that no attachment. And it was a constant, she's going to die. No, she's going to live. She's going to die. She's not live. So I've had to, um, learn, you know, sort of relearn attachment so that I could give it to my kids worked really, really hard to stop. And I was just curious. Also, make sure you have managed grief. Right? Yes.

Grief is a- I've had years and years and years and years of therapy. Okay. And EMDR and all that. Yeah, so stop worrying about it. Stop it. Stop it. You've done your work, right?

And to whatever extent there's a little residual, good. So it makes life interesting. You know what I mean? There's no such thing as a perfect parent. there's no such thing as a perfect parent there's no such thing as a perfect child there's no such thing as perfect attachment it's just we it's much life is much that would not be an interesting thing human beings would not be very interesting if that we were all the same you know what i mean okay right so again just wanting to make sure don't think pejoratively about all these things you should feel very proud of what you've done. Okay.

Thank you. Thank you. Okay. So thank you, E Jackson. Thanks so much for having Zelenko in and let's see the share. Whoops. He's given me a inconvenient info aims at eliminating.

We need more free and open debate. Yes, I agree with that. E Jackson. I agree. I, my, my instinct always is when people are being suppressed and they are, they're legitimate professionals. eliminating we need more free and open debate yes i agree with them e jackson i agree i my my

instinct always is when people are being suppressed and they are they're legitimate professionals and with proper training and previously were editors of journals and things and all of a sudden they're being suppressed i immediately i want to see why i want to talk to them i want to know what their ideas are i still might not agree with them and that's fine that's good it's good when i don't agree but i want them to expand my sort of point of view for sure. All right, here we go. We're still trying to get everybody up here through your questions.

They've been great questions today as always. Corey, is that who I'm putting up here next? Corey. Again, the calls, I'm looking at you all on Restream as well. So when I look down, that's what that is. I'll tell you what, while I wait for Corey to come up,

let's take a little break. It's going to be very quick and we'll be right back. Let me take a minute to tell you about Blue Mics. Over the two years we've been working with our friends at Blue Mics, the world has completely adapted to working and meeting virtually. So whether you know it or not, you probably spent a lot of time in front of a microphone. Take it from someone who has spent probably half my life on a microphone,

sounding good is extremely important. And because of blue mics, I have never sounded better. But a good mic isn't just for broadcasting. Quality audio makes a big impact on whomever is listening on the other end, from coworkers to clients to friends. Clear sound can make all the difference. Thanks to blue Mics, you don't need complicated or expensive equipment

to get professional results. For simple plug-and-play setups, try Blue Mics Yeti Series. It plugs right into your USB port on your computer. Need something more robust? Blue's got an entire line of professional XLR mics like the Mouse or the Blueberry we use here in our studio, as well as the more compact Encore 300. I love it for clear quality sound when we travel.

Bottom line, there is no excuse to be the one on the conference call who sounds like you're in a tunnel or underwater. I cannot say enough about Blue mics, and once you try one, you will never go back. To take your audio to the next level, just go to drdrew.com slash blue that is drdrew.com slash b-l-u-e i have asked a couple of you up uh both cory banks and uh boom green so if you guys are walked away oh there you are boom what's going on you've got your uh microphone on mute so let me know what's going on there hey what's up i do what's up how's it going um i'm pretty good how are you good um yeah um well i have some experience with trauma but my main question actually wasn't regarding trauma okay it was regarding um a trip i'm planning to take

uh to nairobi actually um i got a chance to go train with a local rugby team there. Fantastic. How cool. Yeah, so last time I played rugby, it was in college maybe two years ago, I would say, before all this COVID stuff happened. And I know that

where I'm going to be training is really high in elevation. I have been hiking, trying to be active. I haven't really be training is like really high in elevation. I have been like hiking, trying to like be active. I haven't really been training or anything. And I wanted to know if you had any recommendations. How high are you going to be? I looked up like average height in Nairobi. It's like up over like 5,000 meters.

Right. And you're like 22 years old or 23? 23, yeah. Right. And you're like 22 years old or 23? 23, yeah. Yeah. You are not, have you been, had altitude sickness or had trouble at altitudes before? I mean, if I go snowboarding or something, sometimes my head hurts afterwards, but that's it. Okay.

So that's like above 9,000 feet probably if you were like, yeah. So yes. And if you were staying at 11,000 feet or something, you would probably notice it a little bit. But at 5,000 feet in your age group, you're not likely to experience much. The two treatments that are available, I don't know that I would prescribe either for you if you were sitting in my office. One would be oxygen supplementation, right?

The main thing is if you start really feeling out of it, an oxygen tank. And if you can get that, you're done. The other is a medication called Diamox or acetazolamide that shifts the hemoglobin desaturation curve. So your tissues are sort of giving off oxygen from the hemoglobin, delivering more oxygen from the hemoglobin at lower oxygen concentration. So it's called Diamox.

You can talk to your doctor about that. But again, it's a diuretic and you're gonna be working really hard and i don't know you know 23 year olds you know they they they become uh denver broncos overnight and they don't seem to have any problem with that you know what i mean they're they're all of a sudden they're in a football team that's at a mile high stadium and they're fine it just takes a while to adjust so but good for you man how exciting i'm a big rugby fan as a matter of fact nobody knows oh really yeah my son played rugby in college and we used to watch a lot of it and i still don't understand it he let me try to he i can only describe to you what

it was um so for a while he was the guy uh throwing the ball into the scrum okay right and then later he was more sort of at a wing position like out to the side yes yes yeah and uh and he was often the one that they uh lifted up during the inbounding thing yeah is that i'm a prop so i i would be lifting him up okay there you go there you go good times man it's uh that'd be fascinating to see you know have you been to africa before no this is going be fascinating to see. Have you been to Africa before? No, this is going to be my first trip. Oh, it's going to be cool. Yeah, and a quick follow-up question would just be,

do you have any recommendations for going into a contact sport, anything I could start working on? I've been stretching, doing stretching for about an hour a day, and then usually going on a hike for usually five to six miles. I try to get at least 10 to 20 miles. All good. I'm way outside of my expertise in this. I'm sure there are people that could give you really specific,

how much strength training versus how much conditioning. I would think you'd need both. Again, rugby is a lot of strength stuff going on there, but the amount of running is ridiculous. So I just know that you'll need both. I don't know how to do that or what balance to get, but I just think you're going to have a great experience. That's the main thing.

And you're a young man. Why not do something like that? Good for you. Okay. Anthony is a psychotherapist. Let's see what he's got to say. Anthony, what's going on, man? Your mic is muted.

I'm sorry. There you are. Sorry, Dr. Drew. Thanks for having me on. Of course. It's happening. So you've helped us with the nonprofit and the nonprofit world quite a bit. And so what I'm kind of asking is, I'm kind of stepping up to the plate and taking your advice on doing something. We're kind of setting up men's health.

That's a topic that we're talking about. We want to invite you on the show, on our podcast, the Spread Hope Like Fire podcast. And talking men's health. We want a doctor's opinion on a lot of the stuff we're talking about. Okay, I am starting some stuff where we're doing more men's health stuff. You noticed yesterday we were doing urology. Yes. Margaret complained that we did enough women's urology,

but we did some, and Susan did a moderate amount, and that particular urologist thing is men. That's her thing. It wasn't so much women. But, yeah, send me an invite over at contactddrew.com and susan will get on that she's very good about sending me that stuff so please please do that um i'm gonna have to blow through some of these calls a lot of great calls up there josh what's going on hey dr drew um i wanted to know what you were thinking about narcissism these days because i i heard you mention it a couple of times,

but you didn't say anything. You wanted questions. I do. I do. Why don't you just tell me what's on your mind? Well, no, what's on my mind is that I'm surprised that people are thinking and talking about it so much.

I mean, we had a president for a while that had lots of those features and a lot of politicians that have lots of those features. And why all of a sudden is it coming up now? I find curious. And so what I'm, and again, I wrote a book on it like 12 years ago

because it was there. I could see it coming. I could see it getting worse. Never imagined that, there it is, the mirror effect. I never imagined the histrionic component, which has come up during COVID,

but I saw narcissism come and I saw it, you know, essentially become something we all have features of it in our personality. And that's why I'm warning people against getting too negative about it because we've all got parts of this right now. The main thing I worry about are, well, really the thing that when I start worrying about narcissism, what I start worrying about is envy. That is really what I start

worrying about. And I saw an interesting TikTok today. I didn't really understand where it came from, but it caught my attention. Where this woman was saying that really underneath, and this was from the Yale Emotions Lab. And she was saying that resentment, which I'm seeing just shit tons of today, under resentment is not anger, but envy. And that jumped out at me like, oh boy, she's absolutely correct. That envy, it's manifesting as resentment, but it's really envy. And envy is this terribly destructive emotion that eats the person up feeling it and always directs aggression and destructive impulses towards the other person. It's a terrible, terrible emotion. And just because you're narcissistic doesn't mean you have to

have that. You can pay attention to when it comes up. And one of the things we say in the recovery world is resentment is like taking a poison and expecting it to kill somebody else. When you're envious, you don't care. But guess what? Only people with really narcissistic disorders don't care. Most people would go, oh, oh, oh, you're right, you're right. I have to be careful of this and sort of adjust it. This is back to what Jeremy was saying. There's a certain amount of cognitive work we can do to correct course, at least on a large scale. But what's your thought, Josh?

So I would just say about the envy that I think it's unconscious. So just to quickly make a mention of this. So when Dr. Drew says, you know, we're envious, we're envious, he says, I'm not envious. You have to understand at least that it could be unconscious envy. And unconscious envy is a real thing, like in psychoanalysis, but it's a real thing. So that means that you're not conscious of the envy that you have, but you behave with it there. In other words, you're envy of this person. You don't know why you're treating this person say negatively or manipulating them because you're not conscious of the envy that you have. So for most people, I'm not a psychologist, but I, but I, you know, I, you like, you like this stuff. I like this stuff. And I like the fact that I don't know

that I'm envious of you, Dr. Drew. I don't know that I'm envious of this person. And because I don't know it, it's very difficult for me to manage it. I 1,000% agree with you. And that, of course, is the most pernicious kind of envy, right, because we're not really aware that it's operating. But I would imagine,

I don't have any data to support this position but i'd imagine that most people if they were paying enough attention to some of their negative impulses again this is back to what jeremy was saying if they're paying attention to it and and desire to get to do less of it so that's part of the problem lately this is why why my attitude has changed a little bit this morning, which was we need to have a collective desire to do better. We need to stop it. We need to start looking at things we can appreciate together and come together about. It's enough, enough already. But you have to be wanting to diminish that envy and resentment somehow and to work on it or else it's gratifying in certain ways too and so particularly if you're a narcissist it's very gratifying and i'm not

saying you have to have glee in acting out your envy but it's gratifying on some level when somebody suffers that you feel resentment towards or envy towards and that is fucked up that's a clinical term you can quote me on it uh and that's, yeah, I'm with you. I spend more time thinking about envy, my friend. And, you know, envy in psychoanalysis is a really interesting topic, right? The first thing the child envies is the breast, right? Yeah. And I think that, you know, for me, you know, if you really want to talk about like the mother and the child, I would say what's most damaging, sort of the etiology or etiology,

that's a new term. It just means cause. So it just means cause. So we're talking about the cause of this. What could be the cause of this? And I really think it goes back to the mother with bad boundaries. Yes. Yes.

Keep, all right, I'm going to, we're going to stop because you go to back to the drawing board and cause, cause that's a gigantic topic. That's a huge, huge, huge topic. It's how we manage. It's how we manage the mother's bad boundaries. Do we become grandiose? But slow, slow. You're already getting the territory. It gets weird. Just, I think you're absolutely correct. And some of it And some of those boundary issues manifest early

and some of those boundary issues manifest later in the child's development. So go think about that. Go read about that. Because if we start being kind of prescriptive and descriptive, we're going to get off the rails quickly. It's a very, very, very complicated landscape there. But I think you are completely right. And part of narcissism is having poor boundaries. Part of trauma is having poor boundaries. So as we've been saying this whole afternoon, that the boundary issues are very deep in all this.

So I completely, completely agree with you, Josh. Completely. More to be said. My buddy Anthony Brown on the horn here. Anthony, there you are. All right, what's up what's up my friend hey dr drew how you doing good what's happening oh another day in paradise hey i was i was um tripping on this whole um this this deal about trauma yeah okay because i'm i'm like mr trauma or i discovered the other day that i've had your book yep and there's your book well not your whole life you had it just certainly your whole well yeah your whole life until you got off the streets yeah yeah yeah and so then i'm thinking

like i don't want to say i'm a trauma survivor because i don't want to get caught up in that label okay i think i think you were uh you were a trauma junkie i think you got it i think you got attached to the trauma you got high off it eventually yeah that probably did take it a little bit too far hey please watch and listen to anthony's interview i don't think it's been is it have they put it up yet the podcast yeah it's uh yeah we did a you did a great interview he really told his story sort of once and for all you listen to anthony's story at drdrew.com uh dr drew podcast with anthony brown really really really i was very moved by that interview and and i knew your story already you

know what i mean it was really i thought very interesting but anyway so back to your question so go ahead okay so yeah because i was um doing an interview with um from um dr bell from down here and he does this big old trauma thing and as we were talking i'm like holy crap it's like my whole life i'm trauma now i'm like okay i inflicted some trauma now i'm on the other side and i and i keep reading things like people are trauma survivors and and that's cool but i'm really um apprehensive about attaching labels to myself you know that's fine don't yeah i mean you're you here's the thing about first of all the thing about recovery and the reason i'm joking with you one of the one of the really wonderful mechanisms of recovery is humor right a lot of humor and recovery and so you'll find ways of identifying

yourself that are funny and are still true about the trauma it doesn't make the trauma okay but you can you can kind of laugh about some of the things because people are humans are funny they're just funny as hell um so and recovery community just uses that humor very richly um now in terms of how we could describe it without labeling let's think about that um tell me more what you're feeling it's like you have an aversion to it somehow because you don't want to be helpless or whatever you don't want to be labeled what are you thinking i just i just don't want to um convince myself that you know i i mean i know what happened but i don't want to relive it. Yeah. There's no reason to, I don't think you should. I don't think you should. Uh, I,

I do think that your spiritual experience is, is the ingredient that makes it, um, almost silly to call you a trauma survivor, if that makes right right you know what i mean because because that was that was such a big experience and took you so far above all of that um it sort of doesn't it doesn't describe your life to to to label it like that it's it's really just it's just i i don't know man think about it because i it's your next book. I suspect your next book is whatever that is. Uh, how'd your interviews go? Um, it went, it went well. I did the one, um, yesterday, um, with the guys over on, on Fox and that was pretty cool. I, um, it's, and it's really funny cause I was so worried about that. I'm trying to teach a class and I couldn't even remember how to do simple division. I'm like so embarrassed. So I have to, I have to go back and apologize to the students that I couldn't remember how to move a decimal point.

Because you were nervous. You were nervous about the interview. Right. Right. My head wasn't into the game that I should be playing instead of waiting for the one that's going to start. Yeah. One thing at a time. Right. Right. But I'm learning. But it was it was fun. It was comfortable. I made am amazing suggestions as i've heard from a prestigious gentleman that i want to be like and um i learned from you my friend so all's gonna be well and i just you know i'm i'm great but you know me i'm grateful that i get to experience everything yeah yeah my uh cool and that the whole part of what i went through i look at is like maybe it's just part of a

flower blooming and that was just a stage of my development that i had to go through to be this rose that i am today it absolutely is uh and as so long as it it is something that you can use to help other people then it only is a good well it still is you you still do this thing to yourself for you know you waste you start feeling like you wasted time and stuff, right? I've heard you do that negative thinking. You still doing that? Not as much. I do fall back into that, but I get confused.

It's like, okay, am I supposed to be egotistical and brag and boast, or am I supposed to be humble and go, you know what? You should be grateful that you're even breathing today because I screwed up so much in my past. I mean, both are a little extreme. Just gratitude straight across. It's your experience. You embrace it. You love it. You're grateful. And you can use it to help other people. Oh, most definitely. That's what it's

all about, giving it away so I can keep it. So, cool. Yeah, I just wanted to chime in to say hi. Alright, man. Always great to hear your voice and i can't wait to see what they do with it for the documentary it'll be very interesting okay i'll keep you posted all right thanks okay uh that's anthony brown of course uh anthony had a very long history of addiction and arrests and oh my god this that story um all right i'm still uh trying to get you guys up here i I'm going to wrap up in a

few minutes, but I still have time for a couple more calls. Datadrol, do I take the vax? Yes, I did. I took the Johnson & Johnson vaccine and I had a terrible reaction to it. And then I was thinking about getting the booster, but I thought to myself, you know, probably better if I got Omicron. Boom, that day I got Omicron. And I have since tested my antibody profiles against multiple antigens, and I am way high up with neutralizing antibodies. Toby, what's going on? Your mic is muted. I got it.

I got it. Hi. Hey. How are you doing today? Good. How are you? I'm good. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. A question with the trauma, it brought to mind my son. He's 19 and a half and he has ASD. He's on the spectrum and he has ADD and mood disorder and, you know, they throw everything on there. Now, with I've been getting a lot of information and researching a lot of things that children who are on the spectrum, they have a greater percentage of becoming transgender. And I was wondering if you could speak to that, because he, well, they, as we're supposed to say, he, they never, my, Will never went for boy or girl toys. We never forced anything like that upon him. And this is all new to me um

so i was wondering if you could speak to that and also the rise in um uh the children coming out within the schools well i mean these are super complicated i i would just direct you yeah deborah so does a lot of review of the literature in this regard, and she's sort of an expert. I would sort of direct things towards her. She should know more about autistic spectrum and this phenomenon. I have very little experience with this, except to say it makes sense to me in the sense that autistic children I've worked with do have more challenges when it comes to forming an identity and figuring out who they want to be. Because so much of the self is built on socio-emotional exchange, right? And if that is inefficient or ineffective, it becomes really difficult.

You're just adrift trying to do it on your own and uh it you know you become obviously if there's a lot going on in the environment that uh sort of influence you you might be more likely to be influenced doesn't mean it's the wrong thing i'm not to put i'm not passing judgment on i'm just saying that's right you know that's could be the very very right thing for for that child to do um but i would hope and i don't know this to be true, I hope that the physicians that are selecting treatment regimens for, let's say, young adults even, that come in that would like help with a transgender identity, I hope they have data specific for autistic kids, autistic spectrum children. And I don't know if that's out there.

I don't know. But Toby, it's a great question. I'll kind of keep an eye out for it, okay? Okay. Yeah, thank you. I wish I had more information on that or really knew something more about it, but I just do not. All right.

One more call from Chuck real quick here, and then I've got to kind of wrap things up. Plus, my phone's going to run out of battery. And they don't let you charge and do Clubhouse at the same time. Meantime, let me look quickly at the restreams. See if we have any questions there. No one

who's ever been injured, died. I don't know what you're talking about, TS. There we are. Chuck, what's up? Your microphone is muted. Chuck. And then I will answer the agoraphobia question from Shirley. There we go. Good.

Can you hear me? I do. What's up? Ah, well, question and comment to the young lady with the child on the spectrum. Yeah. My heart goes out to you.

I have a two-year-old that is on the spectrum, and you've probably earned your wings into sainthood because it is a challenge, and I have a lot of respect for people that have to go through that now that I'm going through it as well. Do you have support from other parents that are in that position? Because I, go ahead, answer that question first. Yeah, so what I, so one, there's a lot of stuff that I've been studying. I'm a data analyst at heart. I work in information. So it's probably, the is so far the only recognized thing yes yes but for a therapy perspective i understand from what i want to get at is what i want to get at is your way of talking about your child is different than many parents who have um changed their point of view on having autistic children, I think is the best way to say it. And I think support from other parents like that could maybe help you. Oh, really?

Yeah. Okay. Because they, you know, we're talking a lot today about changing our thinking and i think there's opportunity here to uh get support of other parents and to think differently about what what the challenges are ahead okay that makes sense yes yes it does and we're we're still in the early phases of that and i just from what i see there's just so little information and understanding about it um there there are probably the last decade i see that there's been a lot of new changes yes and there are programs that are exceptional out there ucla has a great program on autism and uh get get get access don't just read about things get access

to people and resources that are dealing with this on a regular basis. But I think you will see when you talk to other parents, you'll change your point of view a little bit, I think. Did you have another question? Yes, I did. And it was about trauma. I tend to not try to share too much about myself, but I was paralyzed at 19 from the neck down. Oh, goodness.

So, I do have some mobility, but I'm quadriplegia. You're C what? C-5. C-5 quad. So, you have some hand and shoulder, right? And kinodesis, yeah, and shoulder. Yeah, okay. So one thing that I realized is that, again, to me,

it's a surprise that they're only starting to, like, autism is an emotional thing. They didn't address our emotional being. They tried to heal us as a body, and that was one of my comments before. As a quad? Yes. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

Listen, I was. It's gotten so much worse. Oh, I'm sorry to hear that, because I know the intent was to make it it better because I've literally been in programs where that's what we talked about. That's what we're trying to do. So there are more peer support groups. So when I was originally paralyzed, I was fortunate because we were treated like football players. I was recruited from – I live in the DMV area, Maryland, and I was recruited from Florida to California. But just because there was a large ticket of money associated with me, I was institutionalized for a

year. Were you at the Rancho de Las Amigas back then? Actually, I went to Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania. It was a pretty good program. But even then, it wasn't much of the emotional piece. Crazy. And through my life. That's crazy. My life. Yeah. And now they only get you in and out in a couple of weeks and they still don't do anything about you.

Crazy. And you get it through peer groups. Oh. But one of the things as I've been trying, because I've tried to participate in other support groups, and I'm planning to do that with my child as well to learn more. But I question, is this the right recommendation I'm trying to give people? Because I found… Hear support? Well, I found that people, no matter what their problem is, it comes back to a self-worth issue, I think.

And my recommendation has always been tried to go, and what I've done to myself, is that you need to find yourself, and a way to find yourself is try to help other people. Absolutely. That's not even about worth. That's something much bigger than worth. Yeah. And I said, if you can set yourself in a process, is that when you're feeling like that, go help somebody else. And the more depressed you are, go and help somebody else out. And eventually, you're going to come back and say, gee, I'm really tired. I don't want to help somebody else right now. And if you reflect on that, you've done so much for so many other people that you have so much value just from helping so many other people that you have a lot of value. Every individual has a lot of value. paralyzed and can't move very much or whether you're you know some celebrity or it always comes

back i think to that same thing how many people you can touch and reflecting upon it and i thank you for doing it here no no no no no you you you put the nice code on this you're you're you you if if people did not hear your words i would shocked. Because you're coming from a position of challenge and you've shown resiliency and ability to maintain a positive attitude and you're still doing what makes a difference, which is, we need so much more of that today. Just our breath is taken away that you called in today.

It's exactly what I was feeling today. And I can tell you this, and I would put that to anybody else uh throughout my life i've heard it from everyone from the office counselor to uh everybody that hey you already get social security why do you want to do this hey you want to why you're not going to succeed why are you trying to do this? I'm very successful. I make more money than any of them. I have a family, a child, my own house.

I drive. There is success. And you just need to go to one of these support groups and look at some of those other people. If they can, you can too. Absolutely. And I want to direct you to the other parents of autistic spectrum kids for multiplicity of reasons. One is to get more resources, not just support from the parents, but to actually get access to quality resources, which it sounds like you're kind of looking for.

And then number two is to learn how to meet these children where they are and to and to think differently about this condition and i think other parents will help you do that okay that makes sense you got it so what i yep and what i've been telling people my child doesn't have a condition yeah she has a superpower she's just she's different she's not less. And we just need to figure out what her superpower is. Yeah. Assets and liabilities. Assets and liabilities. It's everything about the human. We all have assets and liabilities. Chuck, thank you so much

for calling in. I appreciate it. Thank you. And Christina K., thank you for the hearts for Chuck. Let's see what else is in there for Chuck. Chuck sounds like an amazing He does indeed. And that's not a droll who had been been sort of trolling us a bit today uh yep this caller is good thank you SD louder uh what else great advice thank you I'll leave green yep all right so I think that is the thing to end with

I do not I don't think we can do better than what Chuck just did. And we will leave it at that. Chuck does rock, Casey. I agree with that. And TS even, even TS bringing in on Chuck. So whatever you, whatever.

And, and of course, AccuHitman reminding us that hot sauce is the best. So that, thank you for that nice quote on the, on the conversation today with the hot sauce. If those of you are from your mom's house, know what that's all about.

As usual, if there's some weird greeting or some weird phrase that you're hearing, it's all from your mom's house know what that's all about as usual if there's some weird um greeting or some weird uh phrase that you're hearing it's all from your mom's house so here's the deal um we will leave it at that and uh we'll be back on uh caleb by getting this correct it'll be monday right monday at four o'clock i i think so they've been the calendar has been changed a few times but it looks like it would be, yeah, you're actually, I believe you're right. Four o'clock on Monday. David Swanson coming to Monday at four o'clock.

And we have time on Tuesday to give, maybe we'll do another caller show. I don't know. We'll see. And yeah, excellent. And then we'll be gone for a little while and then we'll be back from New York. I don't know if I mentioned to you or I said it to Susan is that somebody was

saying to me, how exciting you're going to be doing the show from New York it's like the wheel of fortune from Hawaii it's just the show from a different location it's like we'll have to have special special sort of events around us from New York we've been so long since we've done it uh Caleb thanks so much for doing the show today I see it turned out great uh can we talk about our friend Justine for a second real quick before we wrap up or is that not for public I don't want to I don't want to talk about our friend Justine for a second real quick before we wrap up or is that not for public yet I don't want to I don't want to talk about it yet not yet okay all right so we'll talk about that down the road somewhere uh and uh because it's very very interesting and hopefully she'll be a part of that conversation thank you and clubhouse great questions today thank you on

restream for uh being so vigilant and for uh even yeah having excellent energy that's what carol said that's exactly right all right we'll'll see you on Monday at four o'clock. A little bit different. Four o'clock Pacific. We'll see you then. Ask Dr. Drew is produced by Caleb Nation and Susan Pinsky. As a reminder, the discussions here are not a substitute for medical care, diagnosis, or treatment.

This show is intended for educational and informational purposes only. I am a licensed physician, but I am not a replacement for your personal doctor, and I am not 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.

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