Duncan Trussell Family Hour - 502: Dr. Drew and Paulina Pinsky

Episode Date: April 9, 2022

Dr. Drew and Paulina Pinsky, friends, a Midnight Gospel alumnus, and his awesome daughter, join the DTFH! Check out Drew & Paulina's new book, It Doesn't Have to be Awkward, available everywhere you buy your books! For more from Paulina you can also check out her personal site, PaulinaPinsky.com. Follow Paulina in all the usual places, including Twitter and Instagram. You can also find Dr. Drew's new collectible bobblehead here. Original music by Aaron Michael Goldberg. This episode is brought to you by: Squarespace - Use offer code: DUNCAN to save 10% on your first site. ExpressVPN - Visit expressVPN.com/duncan and get an extra 3 months FREE when you buy a 1 year package.

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Yeah, so what you just heard was a song created word for word from a truly a listing and they sang it to me when I went to LA recently looking for houses. This is how, how do I put it, passionate they are about trying to move inventory right now in LA. It has gone from a seller's market to a buyer's market and it is wild out there. I know in the last podcast I mentioned that some wonderful women may love to me after I looked at a house in Sherman Oaks that I ended up deciding it just wasn't quite right. But I feel obligated to play this message from them just so that the seller gets some

extra traffic at his place in Sherman Oaks. It was nice. It had seven swimming pools and it was reasonably priced. But I don't know, just I'm looking for something more on the west side. Me and my girlfriends made love to Duncan for hours when he was in Los Angeles. It was our way of saying thank you for checking out the home our friend Andy is trying to sell in Sherman Oaks. We oiled Duncan down, massaged him, gave him intravenous ketamine treatments and made him

orgasm over 23 times. You forgot the orgasms when we pecked him. Oh yeah, it was more like 30 times. Anyway, don't pay attention to the news. There's never been a better time to come to California and find your dream home. This message brought to you by California Real Estate. It's your time to buy. We have got an excellent podcast for you today.

My friend and Midnight Gospel alumni. Dr. Drew is here with us today along with his awesome daughter, Paulina Pinsky. They wrote a book together. It's called It Doesn't Have to be Awkward, Dealing with Relationships, Consent, and Other Hard to Talk About Stuff. It's available now. I hope you'll check it out. We're going to jump right into this conversation.

But first, this. Thank you Squarespace for supporting this episode of the DTFH. I get asked all the time how to start a podcast. And if you want to start a podcast, one thing you're definitely going to need is a home base where listeners can not just find your podcast, but connect with each other. And you, obviously, this is where Squarespace is the ultimate in podcast websites. They've got everything you need, including member areas. So if you want to create a paywall, manage your members, just have a place, safe space

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Go to squarespace.com forward slash Duncan for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, use offer code Duncan to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. Again, it's squarespace.com forward slash Duncan for a free trial. When you're ready to launch, use offer code Duncan to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or a domain. Thank you, Squarespace. And we're back, friends.

I have got a lot of dates coming up. I'm going to be in Austin next week. If you're listening to this on April 8th, I'm going to be there next weekend. Get tickets early. I'm happy to say all our shows have been selling out. So get your tickets, please. Go to DuncanTrustle.com. You'll see a lot of other dates that we have coming up, including a live podcast

happening in Los Angeles at the end of April. All the ticket links are at DuncanTrustle.com. And as always, won't you subscribe to my Patreon? It's patreon.com forward slash DTFH. All right, with us here today is Glassesman himself, president, Dr. Drew and his brilliant daughter, Paulina. I was lucky enough to chat with them, not just about their great book, but a lot of other stuff.

And I think you're going to love this conversation. So let's dive in. Please welcome to the DTFH, Dr. Drew and Paulina Pinsky. Dr. Drew Paulina Pinsky, welcome to the DTFH. It's great to see both of you. Hello. It is so wild to be here.

This is your podcast is my favorite podcast. Thank you. So Duncan, I thought she was going to say something like that. So I miss you. I didn't know you were living outside of the LA area. I wanted to go to dinner with you and Pete again. That was so much fun. Way too much time has passed and a giant pandemic in the meantime.

But then I realized that's not as important as how excited Paulina is at being on your podcast. Paulina, thank you so much. It's so great to meet your dad is one of my favorite people. Someone that I miss from LA, which is why before we started recording, the first question I have, which is for all my LA friends is, how is it going out there? As my wife and I are entertaining the possibility of moving back.

And that doesn't sound great. We don't recommend it. We don't recommend it. I'm actually moving back. Like I've been in New York for 10 years. Paulina is back. And the universe catapulted me back to Los Angeles in a way that I'm grateful for. Like I'm happy to be in the shithole.

You know, like I'm like a pig in the mud. Just like so happy to be there. We're here to talk about a book called it doesn't have to be awkward. We're exactly this kind of shit is what we talk about in the book is how to talk about awkward stuff with your friends with your family with all kinds of relationships and how to do it in a way that's healthy. It's really what the book is about. It was a book about it was a book about consent originally and consent figures

large into the book because we I was asked to write the book at it. You know, during sort of the me too thing and the young people were very confused about consent. And I said, look, I need it. I need a young person. Paulina is a writer. Let's let's get her in on this. Yeah.

And of course that was absolutely the right thing to do. And it became a much bigger project. But anyway, Paulina, you want to tell your story? You up for this now? Do you? Is it awkward? Well, it is awkward, but I'm willing to talk about it. But what I would like to talk about is TCB because that's the framework that we created

for the book. TCB comes from my obsession with Elvis Presley starting from the third grade. Okay. I pray to Elvis before ice skating competitions, tests, all these things. Yes, I know he's a problematic figure, but so is the Catholic Church. I like the way Duncan's like, pray to Elvis, dig. I got it. I love it.

I do love it. I do love it. If you can't pray to Elvis, who can you pray to? Where are we in the culture? If you can't pray to Elvis. He's my God, quite frankly. And I wore a TCB necklace, which stood for taking care of business of like his Memphis mafia, his pack of friends.

He gifted them these necklaces. And in the third grade, when I became very obsessed with Elvis, I was like, mom, like, I need a necklace too. And so I worked for 10 years. Cool. Pray to Elvis. And so that's where TCB comes from. For the purpose of our book, TCB stands for trust, compassion and boundaries.

The idea being, if you trust yourself, have compassion for yourself and understand your own boundaries, then you can trust someone else, offer them compassion and respect their boundaries. Even if they don't respect your boundaries, even if they're assholes, you can, knowing these things is just, that's all you, you're saying. If you know yourself, then it's going to make your interactions with the rest of your species much different than if you don't. Is that what you mean?

Well, you're able to identify what is not working in this interaction, right? Like if you have a friend who you tell secrets to and they just tell everyone everything, then there's no trust, right? And then you're able to identify that there's no trust and you're like, well, I'm not going to tell them anything that I have to trust them with, or tell them things you want distributed into the world. That's what I do. Those, I consider those, like, because of the way I shift that up with the friends who

like have sloppy mouths is once you realize that these are broadcasters, because there are broad, in any community, there's a broadcaster who generally, weirdly, is somehow someone you are drawn to tell your secrets to. That's why they're the broadcaster. They're like sponges for your secrets, but you will soon be shocked to find they're broadcasting. And then you can feel betrayed or recognize, oh, this is just like a mass male. And so then you can start telling them things as a secret that aren't really that you want everyone to know.

I've had lots of fun with that, but go ahead. Well, I just want to put a little code on that and say, we've probably been having discussions lately about getting reality right on reality's terms. And that's kind of what you're talking about. I mean, be real about who that person is and don't have false expectations. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah.

I mean, because the first time you are, you are surely should be upset. You trusted someone and they blathered, even though probably when you told them some secret, you'd been listening to all the gossip. They were pumping out and loving it and imagining like, oh, no, this won't apply to you. So but the second, you know, after the first realization of betrayal, I think, yeah, you're, you shouldn't be upset anymore. If someone who can't keep a secret keeps right, it's that point. Yeah.

I mean, I think more than anything, it's more sort of like being able to apply TCB in like a failing situation. So like, should I just dive into it, dad? Diving. I think you should. Well, let me just say one other thing that the, the, the, the while, you know, we designed this thing sort of for 15 to 22 year olds, maybe 12 to 19, that's where I stopped developing between this.

Well, that's why I bring, that's why I bring this up, Duncan. And by the way, I just, I, my favorite thing in the world is when you call out assholes for being assholes. I just realized when you said that, I was like, oh God, I miss Duncan. Oh, nice. He's so clear about, he's so clear about who the assholes are. But, but, but, um, I was always telling play like, you know, yes, we're talking about boundaries in all kinds of sort of macro sense, but the more delicate microsurgery is when you get

to the internal boundaries, the emotional boundaries, it's a, we're not all, you know, that aware of it, you know, what they're up to, you know, how our boundaries operate. And so now you may tell your story. Well, before I dive into my story, I started reading Pia Melody's book on codependence, which is sort of like the leading codependency book. Yeah. And she describes, and I wish we had read, I had read personally, you knew all this information. I wish I had read it while we were writing the book.

What is that book called? Sorry. She has a bunch of them. She, I, the one I got, I got you, uh, which one did you read, Paulina? It's got codependence in the title. Like codependent no more. Oh yeah, codependent no more. I know that book.

Yeah. Okay. I don't think that's her. That's, that's, uh, no, it is Pia Melody or the one that I'm reading is Pia Melody. I don't remember the titles of my books either. I love it. Paulina. We are the same.

I don't remember the name of the fucking books I'm listening to. I remember the author. I can't remember the name. Who cares? By the way, who cares? Go ahead. I read a book a week. I can't.

The author cares, but anyway, but, but the, yeah, but what, who cares about them? Well, I'm going to tell you the one I like, the one I really like is called, uh, Facing Love Addiction, I think, and that's what it's called. Okay. Facing Love Addiction. And that's a very, the first hundred pages of that one is a very concise review of all her stuff. So anyway, go ahead, Paulina.

Go ahead. Well, there's another one I need to read. Yeah. Yeah. So she's an internal and external and she uses, uh, um, a metaphor of, um, external boundaries being a bell jar placed over you and then internal boundaries being, uh, bulletproof vest that opens inward. And I wish that I had understood that because I feel like the bell jar is simple, right?

It's like, don't touch me. Don't get near me. Right. Um, and then the bulletproof vest, the fact that it opens inward, it's like you kind of decide what comes in. Yeah. That's right. Well, kind of.

But, but your, your understanding of boundaries will continue to grow. Trust me. It's a, it's a, it's a very, it's an uncanny territory, but it was, it was, it was appropriate for us to keep it simple for the book, frankly. Right. Wait, wait, what's your interpretation of that, Dr. Drew? Uh, you know, I too had kind of, well, most people have shitty boundaries, you know, it's just a common thing.

And really the, the real territory of boundaries is distinguishing emotions that belong to me and emotions that belong to somebody else, right? As opposed to emotions that are contagious that I'm really are from somebody else that I catch. That's a terrible boundary or emotions that are triggered in me that I think belong to the other person, but they're really mine. Right. These are very common misconceptions.

Because when we're, I'm really talking about feelings more than emotions, they're bodily based experiences that are sort of ineffable and difficult to talk about or access. So it's hard. And you can really only come to it in an interpersonal context where you're practicing boundaries. You're getting to know yourself in a relationship and understanding, oh, I'm, that person is holding these boundaries with me and holding me at the same time. So I'm having my own emotions and then my, and these motions, this is what therapy is all about dudes and the, and the emotions then become clearer and clearer and more self-contained,

let's say. Yeah. Okay. I got it. It's like, um, so, you know, and I have been in therapy for a bit now and it's amazing, but the, uh, one, you know, one of the things that you still, I, you, you can, I've realized is that if I'm around somebody who's in a garbage mood, then because when I was a kid, that was a survival method was to, like, if I did, if I didn't match my parents' emotions

that I would be in trouble. Like why are you, if mom or dad's upset, I should be upset. So then you'd keep doing that. And when you're an adult, right? That's the, that's codependency, right? You're around someone there in a shitty mood and you decide I will make myself in a shitty mood so that this person doesn't get mad at me for not being miserable like they are. And then, and then you become like, you completely become this sad, reactionary, like, say it.

How did your mom, how did your mom, how did your mom go from that kind of parenting to whom we saw in the midnight gospel? Okay. I said my mom and dad to diffuse. I don't know why I said that. I'm glad you asked. Well, look, and also when I look back, now that I have kids, and I look back at how young both my parents were when they had my brother and I, I feel a lot more compassion than when

I was like in my 20s or something, not with no experience of how stressful it is that have kids, you know, just like, if you can, these days, especially we got parents screaming, like literally they're getting together and they're like, moms are screaming in organized scream sessions. This is really happening. This is how. So anyway, so, you know, my dad had PTSD and my dad, over the course of his life, really mellowed out, but fresh out of two tours of duty, self-imposed tours of duty to Vietnam,

you know, got it. It's like, you know, you got it. You know what I'm saying. So you kind of learn a way of like, you know, interacting in that situation that I don't even know if the word codependency existed back then. So no, in that, so yeah, I'm assuming that's what you mean with the inward pointing with a bulletproof vest idea is that it's like, I don't have my mood doesn't have to be shitty because your mood is shitty.

Absolutely. Yeah. So to dive in, I suppose, I just broke off an engagement. And basically what happened was we ran out of weed and we decided to be sober, quote unquote, for a drive from New York to New Orleans to spend Christmas with his family. Yeah. And do this in a way that doesn't hurt anybody else. You know what I mean?

Yeah. Yeah. Um, but essentially what happened is he went into active withdrawal and over the course of the three day drive, he became increasingly illogical, verbally combative and suicidal. And from not smoking weed. Mm hmm. So he was taking up to 100 milligrams of edibles a day. I found out the week before we started driving, um, you know, dab rips before work, et cetera,

in addition to a variety of other substances. And basically, um, I, uh, during the drive, I realized I didn't trust him anymore. And the only reason I was able to identify that is because I had been talking about TCB for the past three months. And I realized that I got it got truly out of hand. Well, it did, but it really took to taking it to that extreme place to realize that my trust had been severed. Yeah.

And I realized that my trust was gone. I realized that he was showing me no compassion and he was not respecting my boundaries. Well, and, and you were getting traumatized. I mean, you went all the way into that zone. It was abusive. Yeah. Yeah. And so.

Dr. Drew, may I just say you don't seem incredibly disappointed by the calling off of this engagement. No, I liked him. I liked him a lot, but, but both, you know, two people that have some stuff to work on, they need to go work on it. Right. On their, on them, oh, by themselves. Yeah. That's how that works.

Otherwise you have what we call, you know, two people trying to correct really get well. If they're both doing it and both early in the process, they look at each other and see a life preserver. They grab each other and both turn out to be anvils. It's just not the way you can improve. You can't do it. Right. You got to go take care of yourself.

Right. Yeah. Yeah. And basically. Sorry, by the way. Well, but you, but you, but she came out with immense clarity. These moments of clarity are life changing. Right.

Yeah. Very desperate. Yeah. I, I had a panic attack in an Alabama gas station and I, I started, I like got out of the car and like a chill rolled through my body and my teeth started chattering and I started hyperventilating and I don't know if you've driven through the South, but there's always like that really like small patch of grass that's probably legally mandated. It's like covered in cigarette butts and broken bottles and maybe even used condoms.

Like it's just like disgusting. And I just beeline to the grass and I fell to my knees and I was saying, I can do this. I can do this. I can do this, but it sounded like I can't do this. I can't do this. I can't do this. You mean the marriage part? Just being in the car, just even anything.

I wasn't even like computing the marriage part. It was just like pure survival at that point. She was trying to get to New Orleans. She was just trying to get there and I just kept saying, she'd call us. I just say, just get to an airport. Just get out of there. You got to separate people when they get to these states because you can't think clearly because they're projecting everything into you and as, as a codependent, like I'm internalizing

everything and by the end of it, like I'm apologizing. I can't make eye contact. I think it's all my fault. And basically, uh, I was, so okay, wait, just to clarify, it sounds like both of you are having your own kind of nervous breakdowns simultaneously stuck in a car together on the way to New Orleans driving through the South. Pretty good summary. Oh, that is, that's a horror mood.

I mean, that's horrible. That's terrible. My wife and I try to time our nervous breakdowns so like at least one of us isn't having one. That's good. That's, that's a functional relationship right there. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

It all pretty much culminated in me getting him to New Orleans and making him choose between um, 911 being committed or rehab. And the only way he would agree to rehab is if I promised never to procreate. This sounds like the mo, how long were you all together before this engagement? Two and a half years. Two and a half years. Was it? Yeah.

Maybe almost two and a half years. Two and a half years before this shadowy stuff started bubbling up. It just, it just somehow in this trip to New Orleans just showed up. It had been a steady decline for the past seven months. Okay. It's all, it's all, you know, substance is a big feature of this and it's progressive. It is. This is what everyone misses.

Substance use has a, if you have an issue with it, it's progresses. And one of the areas where it progresses is relationships. Well, I think something that is hard, I mean, for me to wrap my head around initially was like, it's just weed. It's fine. And, you know, it got to the point where like I was smoking every day. I was slowing down, thankfully before that car ride, but like we were both smoking nonstop.

Um, the first time I did dabs, I felt my soul leave my body and then I projectile vomited onto the couch and the dog. And then I chose to do it again. That's just Saturday for Duncan. I think I have vomited on my dog. I'm not alone. No, I don't know. I don't do, I don't know.

I, my marijuana, my marijuana use is it like almost nothing. I don't, I went through that period though. And that it's a very strange thing. Cause there are some people who I think their metabolism allows them to devour massive amounts of, uh, edible marijuana or huge amounts. And it really does calm them down. Like it is some for them. The stereotype is true.

It just relaxes them and they're fine. But I have been through the other phase, but you're talking about where it's like a weird form of self-inflicted BDSM that you're doing with the substance where it's something in the horror is so strangely appealing that you want to revisit it, but when you, every time you revisit it, you're like, what am I doing? Like this is, why do I want to be afraid of plants? Like, why do I want to be so scared that shadows are freaking me out? And I like, I, so yeah, I've, uh, I know what you mean.

I think a lot of stoners have that kind of, uh, weird love for the pain of the thing. Like it's such a thing. It can be such a vicious substance when you're ODing on it all the time. Yeah. And I think because like it is seen as a plant, it's seen as medicinal, seen as magic. Like people discount the misery and the madness. This episode of the DTFH has been supported by the geniuses at Express VPN. Using the internet without Express VPN is like having a first aid kit, but not

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Yeah, and I think because like it is seen as a plant, it's seen as medicinal, seen as magic, like people discount the misery and the madness. And I feel like number one, like my thing is like only marijuana addicts use dabs. Like I'm sorry, but that's the truth. Like if you are getting high so often that you literally have to like use a flame torch to heat up a piece of glass, like what is the difference between that and like any other sort of like flame torch induced drug? That is equally as dangerous.

I mean, I don't know. Well, it's not equally as I mean, I think physiologically, if we're going to do an analysis of substances, do you know that Dr. Dr. Dr. David Nutt, I think is his name from the UK, did this incredible chart, the continuum of like the dangers of drugs. And he used a lot of smart ways of sort of coming up with why they're dangerous. It won't like, you know, alcohol being no, I need to look at that though. I'd like to see it.

I'm happy to it's fascinating. Maybe it's like, you know, in the upper it's accessibility is one of the components social, like how it affects communities and stuff physiologically. You know, so, you know, you've got cigarettes, alcohol, heroin, meth, opiates, obviously, these are like sort of in the upper spectrum. And then as it sort of goes down somewhere in there, you've got mushrooms, like psilocybin, all of them. But but I would say that like, you know, marijuana, marijuana, if we're

going to like, like analyze it, you would have to be a real profound, like marijuana cultist to not recognize that the substance can, if abused, cause like serious problems in a person's life. And it's in also, I remember like, I was at some, I was at a psychedelics conference and some doctors were saying, maybe you know something about this, Dr. Drew, that people with mental illness start self-medicating with marijuana or they start using marijuana because it helps them not even mask their symptoms, but gives them a reason for their symptoms that aren't mental illness.

So like people who are experiencing like actual, like, you know, whatever paranoia or something that they start getting high and then like, oh, I'm just paranoid because I'm getting high, you know, there's an underlying issue there that they're not wanting to address, which is another of the dangers. And also Dr. Drew, something I never forgot, I think our first interview, you pointed out to me that what can happen with marijuana is sleep disruption due to the anxiety that it causes, which can lead to an addiction to sleeping medication and benzos. And is that, you said that, right? Or did I make that?

I said that, I really said that about opiates. That's the, that's my grave concern because people on opiates get withdrawal that various times during the day, especially during the night and doctors uncannily give them benzos. And why the reason that worried me so much is that opiobenzocombo is lethal. Cannabis benzo is not lethal, but just leads to more benzos, which is a problem. And I think, you know, Pauline has seen that as well. I have run in a lot of pod ads that I've run into are like have Xanax prescriptions. Clonopin. Clonopin's the big one. Clonopin's the one they normally, the doctors give them.

And I just, my peers don't understand addiction. It's so weird to me. And again, we are not saying that everybody's folks, we need to see an addictionologist, not at all, we're saying, we're saying is if you have a problem, Pauline has some, you know, observations about where, what threshold, you know, means problem. I'd never thought about dabs, meaning a sign or a symptom of real trouble. I really fully believe that because like that was sort of a turning point for me. And anytime that I've seen someone use dabs, like they're getting high to obliterate themselves. And I think, I don't know, I think utilizing weed to, you know,

well, first of all, I don't know if I actually believe in using it for creativity. Like I think outsourcing creativity is probably problematic because then you're unable to sort of tap into yourself. I think anytime you are externally dependent on something, it ends up being problematic. But I mean, for a long time, it was just like, I would say I'm a harm reductionist, you know, and it's like, I didn't know what that meant, but it sounded right. And at the same time, I'm harming myself, you know, I'm like, not performing at my job. I'm getting stoned before work. I'm not showing up by my relationships. I'm isolating. You're doing the artist way, which is, I'm doing the artist. Well,

which is rule one, sober. Well, I'm leading the artist way right now, and I'm doing it sober for the first time. It will be my fourth time. Is it being sober one of the requisites? Oh, yeah, it's like on page one. And I was like, really? It's, it's pretty fundamental because she's a big AA person. Oh, okay. That's interesting. And so now it's 12 weeks. Well, there goes, I was going to start the artist way with a friend. Oh, well, are you not? You can still do it. I've already done it three times. No, it's really amazing. It's really amazing because it's not AA in that it's like

AA, but it's, it's, I mean, there is the sort of like 12 steps, 12 weeks, but I honestly think it's so, it's such an amazing tool and it really has changed my life. Can I just say, this is, this is my thinking as far as using psychedelics or substances as a creativity enhancer. I think that what is the problem is that they are, they are creativity enhancers. I think they do allow you to like go into places that you would maybe never go and that that's part of the problem. It's, it's not that you're fooling yourself into thinking, my God, these things are making me giving, giving me more ideas or making me investigate things I might not normally investigate. It's that they are. And so what, but what, and you know, if you

look in like cultures that use these substances as a sacrament, there is inevitably some warning in there. They're considered to be animistic. These things have a spirit and the spirit has to be really respected. And so that, that means that not in some bullshit way, like you bow to your bong or something like that, but like looked at, looked at which, which you could do, which is not a bad idea by the way. That sounds like a really nice way to honor it, but more, but more like looked at as like mischievous and in a potentially very extreme way where they say, either you, you use them or they use you. And the moment that you can't tell the difference, that's where you're in trouble. The moment that you are being like rolled and dragged around by

these things, that's where you run into trouble. And that's, that's real. And that's, I don't care what the substance is from coffee. I don't care what the fuck it is. Every single one of these things, if you allow them too much power, they will take it. You know, so I, but I just want to, I do want to speak up for what at least my, and again, I think another important thing is this is your subjective experience, which is incredibly valid and everyone has a different subjective experience. For some people, it's the, it's a creative sacrament for other people. It's a mind numbing, horror inducing paranoia tool that they're using to distract themselves or to procrastinate from getting on with their lives. It's from person to person to person. I agree with you. And

anybody who goes, Oh, she's Drew's daughter. That's why she's talking this way. I ran away from this for a decade. She was the other direction. She was like, would not have anything to do with, with my stuff. Yeah. One to 18, I was terrified of drugs and alcohol. And part of that was because in the third grade, my mom, and this is somehow tied, but in the third grade on the way to ice skating practice, my mom looked at me and said, when you lose your virginity, your father's going to broadcast it on the radio. Thanks mom. Yeah. Seared into my brain. Why did she say that? Because I know, here she, I know, Susan, come on in here. They want to know why you said that. Susan. And by the way, by the way, I thought it was because you keep, oh, she's running away.

And so, and I think you, you, it worked. So, so I worked, but the, I thought if you remember, I took you to the drug unit a few times where I did. And I remember I saw, I saw what was, she was a method addict, heroin addict. I was in the nursing station. I was like five. No, no, no, no. Oh, no, no, no, I didn't take you there at five. Trust me. How old was I? You were at least 9, 10, 11 in that zone. Okay. Yeah. Oh, great. Yeah, even better. The ripe old age of 9, 10 or 11. Let's go watch heroin addicts in a facility. Well, why not? It's a medical problem. I think people should be exposed to medical stuff, medical environments. And there's nothing, nothing unusual or special about drug addiction than any other medical problem.

Boy was I exposed. I was exposed big time. She had a meltdown in the nurses station, like full bone tantrum. And I was so taken aback because I, like when I threw a tantrum, I was put in time out. I have memories of my dad taking me into my childhood bedroom, holding onto the door frame like a spider monkey, like unallowing him to get through the door. Like I would fight it, but then I learned not to fight it. And I realized that like, oh, when I act inappropriately, like I have to like go and calm down and like sort of face the consequences. And so seeing her, it worked. And so seeing that I was terrified of drugs, absolutely terrified. Of course, like I have my dad, you always had a discreet, you always described

her, do you remember? Because you described it very accurately. Remember who with the pink blanket over her head? Yeah. Yeah, she actually wasn't having a meltdown. She was just no, she was just super sick in heroin withdrawal. And when you get like that, you just demand more medicine, more, more, more, more, and she just kept coming up going more, more. And then she's like, you are in dangerous territory. This is all we can do. She was not happy, but she was not, you've never seen a real heroin meltdown. That gets pretty intense. You know what, as a side note, Dr. Drew, I think that's a podcast you should do with other doctors is just psych ward experiences because I have friends who are doctors who like, you know, and I have friends who are doctors who've

worked in LA psych wards and who like, you know, feel very strongly kind of about the subject matter here, which is the eulogizing of these very various psychedelics as a cure all for mental disorders. Because as you know, any doctor understands the amount of time that goes into any kind of medication, studying it, finding out the adverse effects, how it works, and why people do that and how it helps you refine dosage or prescriptions and blah, blah, blah. But yeah, I've had friends who are like, you know, some people who are eulogizing like Ibogaine or eulogizing some of these hardcore, super powerful psychedelics need to spend time in a psych ward where they're looking at someone who after some of these substances have not slept for eight days straight

and you can't put them to sleep. Like, this is the scary thing. You know, like, they're like, they won't sleep. You're giving them, what are the things you give people to try to tranquilize them, Dr. Drew? Well, you're giving them the rays of ham and, you know, maybe even thorazine, who knows. But listen, this is your version of Paulina's lady with the pink towel or pink blanket over her head. This stuff sticks with you. For me, what sticks with me, and I've told Paulina this about hallucinogens, and I've always expressed this to you, I do believe hallucinogens will have great therapeutic value one day. I just no doubt in my mind. And we already have now exquisitely good evidence of the use of MDMA with PTSD in the right hands with a proper therapist.

There will be more. There will be more because I've seen positive, but I've seen negative. And the negative that two things I see that scare me, the personality, the person changes. They're literally like a different person. And, you know, putting that in the power of a chemical to change who you are, that is a ethical blow for me. But that doesn't happen all the time. That happens only occasionally. That's one thing. And the other thing, if people use a modest amount of hallucinogens, and I've seen this, I think I could talk about this now. I told Paulina that, you know, I remember the band Joe Cocker, Mad Dogs and Englishman, Duncan, do you remember that? No, I know Joe Cocker. I didn't know that was the name of his band, though.

Well, he had a band, he had a concert, he had like a festival band one summer, and they did a documentary about it. And part of the documentary was these guys do an acid and shrooms and stuff on a regular basis. And I ended up treating some of those people. They could not function. They could not function. And that's what happens. Your intellect is intact, your memory is intact, but you can't like participate in activities of daily living. You lose the ability to initiate just normal activities. It's very strange. And I don't know how much or what drug or we just don't know on that yet. Yeah, well, that's why I get scared.

You know, like now, I mean, I think it's lessening a little bit, but right now with COVID, you know, I'm vaccinated. My whole family just got COVID. I had Delta, old school fucking COVID, and my whole family just got Omicron, and I was vaccinated, I had Delta, did not get this super contagious form. I was certain I would get it. Testing every day, you know, didn't get it. But so I am, I think these things are important, and I totally understand why to get vaccinated. But weirdly now, like if you kind of mentioned like, but you know, some people, the vaccine does harm them. Like with all vaccines, there's some risk. Yeah, of course. People get really weird. Like you're some kind of anti-vaxxer or something.

You're not supposed to say that. It's universally good. It's like, no, I mean, most of the time, 99.9, I don't know, you probably know the exact statistic, Dr. Drew, but it's good. But of course, there's some small risk. Similarly, with psychedelics, that same weird prohibitive sort of, you get this sense that to mention, like, yeah, you know, for me, it will be something that I return to again and again and again, with less frequency these days. I mean, the fuck, I've got kids, you can't. What are you with the toddlers? You can't like, you have to, you know, it's like Tom Papa of my friend Tom Papa said, it's like you become a volunteer fireman, you know, you can't, you have to be completely lucid and clear-headed. Yeah, you're, you're, those rides

you used to talk to me about on the elevator, you don't have time for that anymore. You can't be on the elevator. You got to be available all the time. Yeah, there's no time. But I'll return to it later on. And that's a beautiful thing. And I think that, you know, honestly, I kind of do align with Terrence McKenna where he said that, you know, he feels like people who haven't experienced psychedelics are like people who've never had sex. It's like a human. It's like something very human and ancient and beautiful. But I'll go on and on in them on and on about it forever. I love him. But that being said, come on. Seriously, we know by now, we know people, we know people. Every single one of us knows someone who's probably, you know, probably could have taken a break.

We lost Dr. Drew. You probably like got sick of my psychedelic grief. No, I mean, I, I agree with you. Like psychedelics really opened my mind and changed the way I dress and changed the way I write and change, like in a really positive way. But I also think like it's the sort of black and white thinking that we see in America generally, like good or bad. And it's like, and I feel that with weed a lot. And it's, it's hard for me to come out as a marijuana addict because it's like, people are like, were you really addicted? And I'm like, that's annoying. Yeah. Yeah. And it's so, it's so invalidating and annoying and frustrating because it really was ruining my life. And, you know, sitting in MA rooms, like a lot, it ruins a lot of people's lives. And I don't know,

I think that it felt really comfortable to do it all the time, you know, like at a certain point, it was just a habit. But I don't know. I mean, once I got out of my out of my parents' house, maybe it's good that my dad's gone. Once I got out of my parents' house, I was like, drinking like nobody's business. Like my nickname in college was Barflina because I would either black out or vomit every time I drank. Oh my God. It must have, I didn't have a problem. All this stuff, you know, any, anybody who, like anybody who's had parents has probably had to struggle with, you know, if you want to, you know, do drugs or take their drink or whatever, you're going to live a double life because your parents, if they're not going to accept

that you're doing that, they're not going to want you to do it. So you're going to live a double life, but it must have been especially considering who your parents are. It must have been such a mind fuck for you to do that. My dad came to my class to talk about drugs. Oh my God. And you have to be around your peers when you're getting high and they're probably making like Dr. Drew jokes. They didn't invite me. I wasn't even invited. Okay. Yeah. So that's tough. I mean, having like, there's a lot of great things about having Dr. Drew as a father. He seems like a great dad. But yeah, there's aspects of it, of having a famous dad specifically famous for being an addictionologist. That must have been such a fucking bummer. Like at least like I could gaslight my mom.

You know what I mean? Like you probably can't do that because he's like been around. Oh wow, that sucks. And his bullshit meter is like pristine. Yeah, he's got such a great bullshit meter. Yeah. It's pristine. And I, you know, I too, like in high school, I like really struggled with perfectionism and high achievement mostly because like my dad's a perfectionist and I was like following his model of like workaholism. So I was like ice skating before school and getting to school trying to get perfect grade and doing dance during school and doing cheer after school and being the co president of the girls service league and being believed in the musical. Meanwhile, actively bulimic, holding this secret. Yeah. And once I got to college,

I addressed it and I also was like, fuck you, everybody. Like, no, I'm going to drink my face off. I'm going to bang a bunch of dudes and I'm going to like spew all the negative emotions that I've been vomiting up for years. Finally, like it was like a caustic bubbling up. Oh, welcome back. He's working. Yeah. Yep. Yeah. Oh my God. He forgot to plug it in. Oh, oh yeah. Yeah. I've done that as the people want to know about. Oh, she's running away again. She doesn't want to face what she's done. Well, you know, I got to say this, Polina, I really, I think as somebody who's got a lot of bats in my own belfry, people like us love it when people like you are being so open

about, you know, like, what, what do they call it now? They call it neuro divergence. They are being so, so open about that because I think that helps everybody. That helps everybody because, you know, keeping, keeping like secret about this stuff, you know, from my own attempts at, like, not telling anybody when the fucking gyroscopes going off. It's the, it just doesn't work. It doesn't work. It doesn't help. And the moment you start talking to people about it, that's when you start getting better. So I really love that you're being so open about all this. And I appreciate no different than any other medical condition. We shouldn't be, we talk about COVID. Why can't we talk about our brains? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And the, and like, you know, you like,

drop your phone a few times, you know, and that's enough to make it like fuck up a little bit, like God, think of how like we have tissue right above our necks that is like storing all of our memories and habits. So and also I love that you're like pointing out that for whatever reason, marijuana addiction, like people are skeptical that that's real and that's really fucked up. Like, you know what I mean? Like we can accept there's like sex addiction. We can accept that people can get addicted to work. We can accept that people can get addicted to so many things that maybe like are anomalous compared to other things people are addicted to. But what marijuana you think you can't get addicted to fucking marijuana? Yes, you fucking can. Yes, you can. Try to stop.

Try to stop. See what happens. Can you last more than a day? I couldn't. Not until I had a traumatic three day car drive that like literally catapulted me into sobriety in a way that would not have happened had I not experienced that trauma. Yeah, what other things do you crawl through your carpet looking for to smoke? Like, you know, if you've ever found yourself- Scraping resin. Yeah, I remember doing those days. Oh, that's a sad day. When you're like scraping and probably highly carcinogenic ash out of your shitty glass pipe in the hope of getting just some mild, dark high, you're gonna feel- Your lungs hurt, your head hurts. It's just like- Okay, yeah. All right. So you have this hell trip to New Orleans. And in this, it sounds like it was a sort of like come to Jesus moment for you.

Moment of clarity. Mary Carr, yeah. Mary Carr, who's my favorite memoirist, she has an amazing memoir. She's written multiple memoirs, but she has one called Lit about her alcoholism. And it's a huge, thick book. And the only moment I really remember is like her falling to her knees and like that being the moment of clarity for her. And like for me, it was the Alabama gas station on the patch of grass, like rocking, saying, I can't do this, I can do this, I can do this, praying to my dead grandparents, holding onto a tree, getting my breathing even, going into the gas station, swinging open the door, bloody tampon in the toilet, throwing up McDonald's onto it, sharing my brains out, coming out again, trying to get in the car, can't get in the car, going back

to the patch of grass, back to my knees, saying, I can do this, I can do this, I can do this, until I believed it. I'm so proud of you. I am. Yes, you should be. She's so smart and honest. Dr. Drew, you have some background noise coming in. Do you have an air conditioner on or something? Or you got a window open? No. All of a sudden, like is this raping noise? No, it's a it sounds like the windows open, like ocean noise. We don't have anything like that going on. It's the exact same situation I was in before. Hold on, it's got to be the- There, that's better. That's better, that's better. Whatever you did. Cable stood up. Okay, great. No, I think. Okay, let's go. Okay, so Jesus, I'm a problem for you guys today. I should just leave. No,

no, this is, it's great avenue. I love it. But you know, yeah, so do you think somebody went into that bathroom and was like, who threw up on this tampon? Or did you- Well, I threw up and then I shat on it and then I flushed it. You flushed it. Okay, great. Well, I actually don't really remember the flushing. I could have, listen, I'm so sorry to whoever found the tampon vomit shit. There's no falling at the bottom. Oh, I took a selfie in the mirror being like, never forget this. Did you really? Yeah. Wow. So one of the things I've noticed about people's moments of clarity is that a big piece of it is seeing yourself in stark, starkly realistic terms, like seeing myself in that moment as I am is like, oh my God, I have a vivid, I have a

paid woman I've known for many decades and she gets over a nurse friend of mine and she describes being in the hospital, strung out on opiates with an IV. I can't even remember all the different things she had done to herself. She was all carved up on her face and she couldn't see any of it until one moment she walked by a mirror and was like, oh my God, look, that's me. Look at me. That's what I've done. That's how I am. And you see it and it comes rushing in and it creates a lot of clarity. Yeah, right, right. Yeah, that is, how can you have a life if you don't know who you are, all of it? How are you going to do anything if you're, but that is one of the weird qualities of addiction. When I was addicted to catamine, the moment of clarity was when it took me

something like three hours to record a commercial for the podcast. It was like three hours, you know, and I had been really leaning into like, this is helping my creativity. And then like somewhere in there, I'm like, this is doing nothing for you. Like going back and listening to my voice sounded like I like I had a stroke or something. And then just realizing like this is, you know, and again, it wasn't like a profile. I mean, fortunately, catamine doesn't, you don't get physically addicted to it. And you can, you know, I wasn't at the place where, I mean, I was able to just flush it down the toilet and say good night. But still it creeps, man. And you need that moment of clarity. You don't even if you're not addicted to something, you know, that moment

of clarity is actually, that's a great observation. And I completely agree with that. That's, that's again, what kind of therapy is, which is you're allowing somebody else to see you as you are, so you can see yourself, they're reflecting it back to you. And when you're loaded, you can't do that. That's one of the things that, you know, drugs do, you can't have that function gets blocked. But therapy is really about that is being seen felt and understanding and seeing it represented coming back at us from another person. Right. I guess, I guess that's what I mean about outsourcing to creativity is like, or outsourcing to a chemical for creativity is like, if you can have an experience like take psychedelics and it opens your mind and then come back to your craft

after that, that's a different story than getting high to write or getting high to do a commercial. I think, you know, yeah, it can be used as a tool, but often it is used as a crutch. Right. And your job as a responsible person is to know the difference and or to know that you can't tell the difference anymore. You should be able to do that. Because if you can't, it's definitely time to take a fucking break. That's my old man opinion on the matter. And if you can't take a break, oh, you're in trouble, baby, you better watch out because now you can't take a fucking break. If you're doing the thing, we're like, I could take a break. No, I'll do it tomorrow. Tomorrow. I'll take it. And then like a year passes. Yeah. When's the break coming? It's never

good. Paulina old man. Trussell is going to come out in the lawn and yell at you. Be careful. Get out of my catamine, kids. No, but I mean, I was definitely that person. Like I went to like a fancy residency last year. Like it's like the leading residency in the country. It was fully funded, you know, and I was like, I'm going to take a weed break. I brought edibles. I went through them the whole first week. And then someone at the residency gave me weed and I crushed it up with a butter knife and rolled shitty joints. And then I drove to Massachusetts to get more weed. And I was only able to write from six to eight AM because that was the only time I had clarity. And otherwise I was like deep in my addiction. And it's just like, I only now I can

see that. And it's like, Oh my God, I just wasted this beautiful opportunity smoking the whole time. You know, and it's like the denial is so interesting up how you can't see what it's doing to you. That's the part that's frustrating for somebody who sees it happen to someone and sort of almost uncanny when I when I hear the stories. Yeah. What do you how do you interpret that experience? It's me. It seems wild that, you know, you couldn't have seen that. I couldn't. You couldn't. Yeah, I know. I know. I mean, the creative process is so hard. It's so hard to write, though. I mean, it's already so hard to write. It's already so it's that's hard. It's a very it's a very lonely thing to write. And it's a very hard thing. And if it wasn't difficult, there'd be all of us would

be writing because it's the coolest the coolest job ever. But it's a brutal thing. It can be sometimes not all the time. But so I think that it would be an easy thing to have some denial regarding, you know, not being able to tell like, am I having like, is this writer's block because of the weed or because of not enough weed? You know, it'd be easy to sort of like, like not not know. If you're actually that's a good another good test for addiction. If you're an addict, your brain automatically goes, it's not enough weed automatically. We need more. We need more. But yeah, so so I don't know. I mean, again, it's like this is a there's so much personal responsibility in deciding to expand your consciousness with any of these things. I mean,

as a human to human, we all want we want other people to be happy and filled with joy and and you know, so it's your personal responsibility to make yourself happy and full of joy. However, you want to do that. And if that's the weird denial thing is like, that's, you know, whatever the thing you're addicted to, it started off making you happy and full of joy. You can't fucking deny that it like, Oh, yeah, people do drugs because they were for them. Exactly. That's it stops working. Right. And you need to take breaks. But anyway, look, I'm I so you have this thing that you're talking about, by the way, that mournful feeling when you look back and you realize I wasn't really there. Like I missed it. I wasn't I was completely on autopilot.

I checked out this is mentioned in Buddhism, actually. And it's considered to be like a part of waking up is not just like all all like roses and you're like suddenly connecting with the world. But part of waking up is this phase of a kind of like sweet sadness, a kind of mournfulness, mournful quality. As you look back at all the like all the suffering you caused yourself and other people. And this isn't related to substance abuse. So addiction is a fantastic way to understand the second noble truth of Buddhism, which is, you know, the first being there is suffering or life gets translated life is suffering. But the second is the cause of suffering is attachment. And if you've been an addict, you fucking understand attachment. And so and also you

understand that hopefully you're at the phase now where you're you're getting the joyful part where you're realizing, wait, I'm happy minus the thing that I thought I needed. I mean, that's called liberate. That's called liberation, you know, but there is a period of more sadness. Sorry, Dr. It's a really interesting piece that very few people understand, really talk about or get. And so so there's sort of, there's the grief of the regret, right? Oh, I didn't get to experience, for instance, the residency fully. It's sort of grief and regret at what what the drugs took away from me. But there's there's sort of three griefs. There's grief at what they took away from me. There's grief at what I did to myself. And there's grief of losing my old self as I become

something new. This last one is the one that people don't get. It's it's it's what keeps people stuck. We this change, real change, but add it, but addiction is like a freaking fast train. And then making this all be necessary is where we really see people have massive changes in recovery. That's why I got so interested in the field. But the grief part holds you back because you see people humans hate grief, we freaking hate grief, we hate help us, we hate helpless, we hate grief. And by the way, just an aside for the hallucinogens, the people I've been I've been talking I talked to a lot of people that try to use them therapeutically. And one of the things I've noticed is it helps them see things as they really are. So see themselves have clarity. Yeah.

And and actually experience the grief, it pushes them to get into the grief. And very interesting. But but Pauline, does that fit for you? Those three kinds of griefs? Absolutely. And I keep saying that like the universe catapulted me into sobriety in a way that I never would have granted myself. And I think also I could hear mom talking in the background. It's painful, but it's a blessing. That's the thing. It's a blessing. But it's really three groups. It's it's what the drugs took away. And by the way, or whatever, it's drugs if you're an addict, but it can be other things. But what my behavior took away from me or whatever. What my what I did to myself. And then grief of losing that whole self, no matter how dysfunctional

it might have been, we hang on to it. Yeah, dad, mom's talking pretty loud in the background, like we can hear the conversation. I kind of like it. I like the buzz in the Honestly, how often do you get this like look into the Pinsky family? It's kind of cool. Like I feel like I'm hanging out with you all your house. It's kind of cool. Like I like that. It's cool. I mean, this is on my podcast, people are used to hear my they're used to my poodle barking and ambulances going by. Don't worry about it. So sorry, all I mean, when do you get to hear Dr. Drew's wife talking in the background while his daughter is opening up about something that's a really cool podcast. Yeah, please don't worry about it. It's so hard because I know that

like my stance feels so like it's both super uncool and cool, you know, like I never thought I would agree with my dad like post post leave my house cool. Oh my god. Oh my god. This is so cool. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I thought being cool. I'm sick of it. I love not being cool. I never want to be cool. I want to be the most being uncool is freedom. I mean, I like, you know, think of like what your coolest friend is like, you know, I don't know if you have this as your inner critic, but you know, I never really have like my coolest friend telling me what to do in my head and that's the first person you should ignore. Like don't be cool, please. And I and so no, I think this actually sounds like super cool. You like this is great. Yeah. And I think as a

country, like we are, we are obviously grieving like so many people died in the past two, three years. And there is no public conversation about grief, except avoiding the grief. We're avoiding it. Well, avoiding it. But Amanda Gorman read a poem on the CNN live countdown on New Year's Eve that like brought me to tears. And it was like, and Anderson Cooper like tried to comment on it. And Andy Cohen was just like, okay, we have to go. And I was like, they're all drunk. And I'm like, you know, like 10 days sober. And I'm just like, what? And then I that's when the grief came in, where I cried so hard, I vomited in my mouth. And Oh, by the way, speaking of vomit, she had the cannabis hyperemesis syndrome,

which people don't know about makes you vomit all the time. I heard about that. That sounds terrible. Yeah, I heard about like people are going into the hospital with this, like from like constantly puking. I mean, yeah, I think that, you know, we there's going to be you know, the way I've found a lot of the way I've been able to understand anyone's reaction to the pandemic is the stages of grief. Like, you know, some people are in still in the denial phase. Those are the people who think they're there isn't a pandemic or or or it's made up. Or if it if it is real, it's like, you know, this is actually a normal reaction when I got cancer, the first thing or the third thing I said to my doctor after he told me I cancer was like,

but I can I have, you know, shows next week, I have I'm going on tour. So can I I can still do my shows, right? And he's like, you have cancer, you got to get surgery, you can't go on tour. But the denial, though, like not being able to like deal with the truth at that level, it's a normal thing. And I think a lot of people right now are, you know, if you're annoyed with people because they're whatever way that they're manifesting something that you consider to be irrational, remember, like you, they're going through it too. They're grieving to they're just beginning to sort of cope with the reality that we experienced a what a category, I don't know, a very, a very hardcore cultural civilizational earthquake is still happening. And, you know, there's

a yeah, so it is I think grief is the model to understand what's going going down, you know, and personally and globally. Yeah, I'm definitely I'm definitely in grief in that, like, I'm able to sort of like mask the feelings with like, leading the artist way meeting with clients, like writing, whatever. And then like, something will happen. And I'm just like, yesterday, I was just pacing up and down the Silver Lake reservoir, like scream crying into the phone, vacillating between sad and mad, sad and mad, sad and mad. And my brother, he gave me this book called The Rosenberg Reset. And the idea is that emotions only truly last for 90 seconds, if you allow them to pass. Yeah. And the only like, the only

reason that they'll stay is like thinking about the emotion or raising cortisol levels that activate the emotion or whatever it is. And I think, you know, I'm 39 days sober today. Congratulations. Thank you. I'm really fresh. And so this is actually the first time I've really talked about it publicly. So it's, it's a little nerve wracking. But I've learned, I mean, when it came to my bulimia, I, let me just say on the, on the recovery front, you're going to get heat. You're going to, you're going to need to look at something called the, the 12 traditions, 12 traditions. And there's a, there's a injunction against talking in media. And yet it's the 11th tradition. And let me just tell you that that was created by Bill W's wife. And she before her death

reconsidered the whole thing. She said, we've got to get into the media and talk about this. People need to understand how this works. Shoes to be anonymous completely if you need to be, and you certainly should promote or be sort of a evangelist, but to describe what you're going through and your, your experience, absolutely, people need to understand that. So just know that. Oh, am I going to get in trouble? I'm not in trouble. It's just, you need, they're going to, you know, newbies talking, they're going to blame me for not saying what I just said. So I said, I'll take the heat. Well, when I, I wrote a piece in college about my bulimia and it, it was like a year and a half

into my bulimia recovery. And six months later, it got picked up by the New York Post and went national. And the, the, the news bit was like, Dr. Drew's bulimic and an anorexic daughter. How did he not see it? You know, his, his wife is a monster, whatever. And I was sort of thrown into the public sphere like very prematurely. And I became like a public eating disorder girl. And it like really messed with me, but it also, I think, held me accountable and sort of created a president what to like not hold my secrets anymore. And that I think there's a lot of power in, in being Dr. Drew's daughter and being anorexic bulimic addict. Like if, if his daughter

is suffering with those things, then like, right, anyone's daughter can be suffering with those things. And I don't know. I mean, I hope I don't get too much flak up. Now I'm like nervous. It's my fault. Blame it on me. It's my fault after this, you can just call your sponsor and talk it out. That's all. Okay. She can, you know, go. We raised the issue if you love tradition. And she's talking about it. It's all. It's okay. I think it's just, I mean, I get like, I think it's good to normalize to, to, you know, normal. But see, I'm not a recovering person. So I have no business speaking on behalf of recovery. And so very strongly that illnesses of the mind of brain and our, this thing in our skull should be just completely, they should be

talked about more than anything because it's more important than freaking bunions. And yet I talk about that a lot, you know, with people, it's like, nothing can be more important than our brain. And we hide that. Come on. And I want to hear more about this Rosenberg reset that you were talking about earlier. Can you talk about that? So the emotions only last a little bit of time. Yeah. And there's like nine primary emotions. Her brother went to a master's in psychology. Yeah. Cool. All right. Yeah. Unfortunately, I haven't read the whole book. But from what I understand, it's like embarrassment,

vulnerability, shame, anger, sadness, Anger, four more. I think I said anger. But I can go running at the book. No, it's okay. No, no, make them up. Hornyness. Hornyness. It's like resentment. You don't have to name it. I think it's one of them. It's the principle that I want to hear. So like the idea is the principle being that the emotion when it's fired off in your brain only lasts 90 seconds. So if you're able to just sit with that emotion for 90 seconds, it will pass. So like, I think it's great. I don't think grief is one

of them. I think that's too consuming. But essentially the idea being that like your reaction to the emotion is what keeps the emotion alive. That's the fuel. So thinking about it, ruminating on it, talking about it, your cortisol levels rise. And so that keeps the emotion alive for longer than it needs to. Okay. So I'm reading a book right now, which you will love. You should definitely check it out. It's called Start Where You Are by Pima Children. It's so good. And it talks about this very same thing from a Buddhist perspective, which is the way they put it is hang like the story that you're telling yourself, you know, like in Buddhism, like the idea is you meditate to get to be familiar with the

mental continuum, like what's going on. A lot of people have no idea how they feel or what they're habitually thinking because they're just constantly in action. So the idea is you take a break. This is what they call meditation. And you become familiar with yourself. And then in that, you become familiar with all the stories you're telling yourself, you know, which is essentially the explanatory method that you are using to understand why you don't feel great. You know, what everyone has in common is well, not everyone, but a lot of people don't feel great. So why don't I feel good? You, you, that's your story. So if you put that story away for a second and just feel, it sounds like the identical thing, just let yourself be with the hard feeling,

whatever it may be, like two things happen. One, what it seems like this book is recognized is that you realize this thing isn't quite as solid as you thought it was or lasting or continuous. It kind of, it dissipates that you can't, or even if sometimes if you have a rough feeling, you try just to keep the feeling going. You can't, it's not, so it's not permanent. But then the other thing, which I love is that whatever the thing you're experiencing, whether it's withdrawals from a drug or the grief of the pandemic or whatever the thing may be, if you pull the story away, you join a continuum of emotions all around the planet that everyone's feeling simultaneously. So you kind of, you drop into a human experience that

so many people are having because there's so many people on the planet. You know what I mean? Like anytime you're having an orgasm, how many people are having the orgasm, right? How many times do you know that Dr. Drew? Is there a statistic on that? Like how many orgasms per second happen on the planet? Thank you for asking, but it's not one the little president has looked up. But you know, anytime you eat whatever it is you're feeling or doing, probably a lot of other people are doing it, so you're not alone in the experience. There's something really profound in this, what you're talking about. And I think it's a really interesting thing to kind of dig into a little bit because I forever have felt that narrative is

way too powerful for people, particularly these days. It sort of leads to ideologies and rigid thinking. But by the same token, people only understand, only communicate through narratives. You know what I mean? And so pulling it as a writer, you're the perfect person to ask this question. How do we not let narratives dominate and step away from them much the way Duncan has again? So when I was in graduate school, my mentor, Liz Harris, teaches this seminar called Family Matters, and we read different family memoirs and we talk about like what's effective and why it's effective and whatever. And what I really took away from that class is like your narrative or slash, you know, writing about your family cannot come from a place of vengeance.

And true narrative nonfiction, you have to be a reliable narrator. So you have to both tell the narrative, tell them where you were at that time, and then the insight that you've gained since that moment. Okay. And so in that way, it's like, but think about this, this is sort of right to the point, which is if you had done that a year ago, you would have been so different. Yeah. And so that's why my memoir hasn't come out yet, because I haven't had clarity. The characters are not reliable almost ever. Unless they're deeply found, foundationally describing or sort of owning what Duncan's talking about. And I really don't worry about it so much in terms of memoirs and things like that. I worry about what this country is doing. I feel like

we've just gone into this weird place where we believe narratives and ideologies and teams and tribes and whatever. And it's just, it's not healthy. It's the opposite of what you're talking about, Duncan. Well, yeah, it is. Yes. And by the way, it's forming like tribes to out of safety. It's a very normal thing for, you know, monkey descendants to do. It should be, you know, it's like, it makes sense that that's what that's when you're freaked out and the world seems dangerous. What are you going to do? You're going to like, like just from a purely evolutionary perspective, this is why banishment is such a brutal thing. But you know, and I'm not just talking in the human biome, I mean, anyone who's seen me or cat manner, these fucking little creatures

will banish one of that. Kick them out and they're doomed. They're going to get eaten. So I totally get why people are joining tribes right now. But yes, this way of thinking in Buddhism is actually that it's, it's part of a practice called Tong Lin, which is a cultivation of compassion. And so the process sort of starts with first stop the store, stop whatever the story is you're telling yourself about why you're suffering. Not you can always, it's not inviting you to like do spiritual bypass or ignore the fact that if you're hurting because of something someone did to you, it's not saying it's not their fault. It's not any of that. But it's more along the lines of first, just feel the thing. Then and then we the exercise involves starting with yourself,

breathing in the pain. So you imagine that you're breathing in. You imagine that you're breathing in. The description is hot, dark, thick energy, which is, which is like poison. And then you're breathing out for yourself, clear, spacious, joyful energy as much as you can summon up. And and the reason it's cultivation. So the idea is probably initially you can't do much for most people, they just aren't feeling great. And they might even feel like they're pantomiming or making up some of this, which is completely fine. But then the next step is recognize the suffering that you're feeling, whatever it may be, a lot of people right now are grieving, they've lost people to this disease, a lot of people are lost their job. A lot of people like so many different

things have happened. Then read the recognition, and this is what flies in the face of the tribalism, that people across the political spectrum, across cultures, across ideologies are all feeling the same thing. It's not tribal. And so then you recognize that. And then you this is where it gets trippy. You're breathing in their suffering too. You're imagining that you're taking their suffering into you and breathing out a little bit of spaciousness for them so that maybe they can have like the moment of clarity that you had, or maybe they can have just enough space to recognize that it's not all pain. And it's a really great, it's a beautiful, I've been doing it myself. It's a really beautiful practice if you find yourself as a hyperreactionary

person, which I can be. It's a great thing just to, and Pima Chodron in this book, I'm sorry for going on about this, forgive me. Pima Chodron in the book, she says this is literally shortwiring the ego, because what the ego does the opposite, which is the ego wants to breathe out suffering and breathe in freedom, the ego wants to punish, the ego wants to blame, the ego wants to assign as part of the story, everyone else is wrong, except me. And that is exactly what you're saying in the Rosenberg reset, this only propagates the emotion, the story keeps, the fucking thing can't keep going if you drop that narrative. And so it's really a powerful method. It's a great book, you will like it a lot. I'm sure you're up to your ears in books

right now, but you should check it out. I will take that book, I will take any book rec you have for me, quite frankly. Oh, cool. Likewise. Yeah, I can't wait to see the Rosenberg reset. Like, I love anything that like has like a scientific explanation or psychological explanation for some of the Buddhist stuff, because, you know, that was it's very old, it's nice to hear like, you know, modern takes on this on some of these concepts. So, okay, so I'm sorry, I think we did diverge in a wonderful way from your book, to sort of talk about the genesis of this thing. So let's talk let's talk about your book more. So my computer is about to die, so I need to find an outlet. Oh, shit. Yeah, that's a classic problem. It happens to me. Yeah, you may have to

you may have to turn on the switch to the all the way over into the lights on your left there. Yeah. Other side. Yeah. Where are you Paulina? Where is that? Is that in your house? You have a studio in our house. Yeah, she's in the studio. Are you in your house right now? Are you all in the same house right now? No, I'm in Orange County. I'm in Laguna. Okay. So let's talk about let's talk about okay, let's talk about the book. This was that you have the this is the genesis of this book. And can you remind me of the acronym that you're using? TCB. Okay, the book is it doesn't have to be awkward dealing with relationships consent and other hard to talk about stuff. TCB is taking care of us, which we turned into trust compassion about.

Okay, I got you. Okay. So now, can you tell me a little bit about the compassion part of it and your definition of compassion? Both of you. It's very much the zone you've been talking about all along here, which is, which is, I think people understand compassion is showing charity, grace, and caring towards something. And we make, you know, a large point of saying that if you know, somebody's having an experience, if you try to not just it's not really empathize, because I don't want necessarily to have a full empathic experience, but to be compassionate to that person's experience, that there's a reason that they're experiencing the feeling the way they do. And a large part of our compassion, sort of, discussion in the book is being compassionate

towards yourself. Give yourself a break, because people talk for themselves. Paulina, do you think it is possible to practice compassion for other people if you can't feel compassion for yourself? I'd love to know your thoughts, too, Dr. Drew. I would say that in order to truly understand compassion, you have to feel compassion. And I think if you are unable to direct it towards yourself, then how like it's sort of the same idea of like, if you can't trust yourself, have compassion for yourself and respect your own boundaries, how are you going to be able to do that for somebody else? Right. And I think, I don't know, I think it's easier to sort of externalize compassion and sort of in a sort of like a pseudo way, and that it's kind of like,

I know I should offer you compassion in this moment, but I'm devoid of compassion for myself. So how would I actually know how to practice compassion? Right, right, like a Vulcan, like you're like logically, rationally, you're like, yes, I know I should be compassionate right now, but I feel like a fucking android right now. So I will fake being compassionate to you. Okay, yeah, I got you. It's complicated. Because this is, again, I'm going to describe it in a clinical setting. So, you know, I had a lot of therapy too. And early on in my career, yeah, I worked in a psychiatric hospital for decades, but early on, course, lots of trauma survivors, right? And they often I noticed have sort of, in fact, I wrote about this in the book

Crack, they often have pictures of themselves, sort of as children on the side of the bed, people that were traumatized as children. I don't know why, but they seem to be at least I noticed that at the time. And I and I would always describing me. Yeah, well, and I would always go into the room and go, Oh, I have such compassion for this person that poor injured child that he or she was Oh, Oh, right. And I really missed that I'd have a sociopathic drug addict on my hands. Now who they are now is not that not not this injured child. And that sociopath would clean, clean my clock would use me. I was ineffective in terms of helping that person. Because I was so compassionate for the injured child. That person who was now a sociopath, heroin addict needs tough

boundaries, clear direction, tons of empathy, tons, but not this compassion for the injured child. No, okay, which will make take full advantage of that. So let's solve the sociopathy. Okay. Yeah, gotcha. Can I just interject real quick? Chogum Chubba Rinpoche, this great Buddhist teacher, he calls that idiot compassion. Is it idiot compassion? It is. It's compassion because it's it's it's not being compassionate to who the person is. It's compassionate. And really, the compassion is your own shit getting mobilized that you think is compassionate towards the other person. But it's really only your own pain that's being activated. And that's a boundary issue. That's our boundary. Wow. Wow, that's so so you're basically having

compassion for the projection of that you're putting on the image of them as a child. You're confusing your pain with theirs. And now not that their pain isn't real, I'm sure it is real. But it's it's it has to be understood in the experience of that person as they are in the moment you have to deal with them. Because you know, I think a lot of people's idea of compassion is it's kind of mushy and soft and that you know that it's that it's like that it is that it doesn't have anything any rough edges. It's a great phrase. It's it's I think so throughout the book, we use TCB throughout different scenarios. And so like one of the scenarios is like, Alex and Mia are at a party. Alex's boyfriend kisses Mia, they're all drunk. Like, what do they do?

And like, we go through like, you know, obviously, the boyfriend severed trust and the friend severed trust. Obviously, everybody in that situation deserves compassion, even even the boyfriend. But also, like, what are the boundaries in that situation? And we we maintain the stance that when you're under the influence, you can't render consent. And so in that situation, you know, I don't remember what Mia wouldn't be able to render consent when the boyfriend kissed her or whatever. And so that is inherently problematic. But ultimately, like there is a boundary betrayal at a certain point, like Alex can decide, you know, it's more compassionate to myself to end this friendship. Or she can say, you know what, this friendship means enough to me, I will offer

compassion. Like I think that it's not inherently simplistic. And like, there's so many different ways to apply TCB in that like, as long as you're using that as a framework and like a problematic situation, you're ending up sort of using or I like to use the phrase from my second city training like playing to the height of your intelligence. Like, I think if if you're in a situation that's compassionless, like the only way out is to show compassion for yourself. Right. Yeah. And you know, you know, you know, like about the trust part of it. And what you were saying earlier, Dr. Drew is one thing I have done is, you know, like it's an easy trap to fall into where you're you have a disagreement with someone. And in your mind, you're thinking they're being

so irrational. Like this, well, their their their story that they're telling is not real. Like it's and so you know, since I've been going to therapy a little bit and like, if you practice trust, it doesn't mean you have to believe their reality tunnel. You know what I mean? Like that it might not be your reality, but you can trust that they aren't most of the time when people are telling you why they're feeling bad, they're not making it up. They believe that, you know what I mean? Like to them, that's real. And then if you if you try to to, uh, you know, rationalize with somebody, you know, from your own perspective, I hate it when people do that to me, you know, when people are trying to like explain to me why I feel is incorrect.

That's never good. You know, yeah, but it's so wonderful when people trust. Yeah, people push up their force field when you do that. Yeah, we live in a weird world of so called quote confrontation. It's kind of this, this Dr. Phil style of, don't you see what's happening? What's the matter with you? Humans do not respond to that. That is not therapeutic. That's the opposite of therapeutic. Right. And that Dr. Phil idea that, you know, and I'm sorry if it seemed like that's why I was asking you that there's like some simple solution to stuff that usually does involve like telling someone they're wrong and then everything gets better. It's not the case. I mean, it's, you know, things are so complicated. I think it's really cool that you are now that

I have kids. It's so cool that you wrote a book for people like, you know, for young people to start working with some of these ideas, because when I was coming up, nobody talked about this stuff. There is no conversation about consent, at least in the way that there is now. Yeah. So, and it's something we're already trying to work with our kids to, you know, start like implanting in them the idea of like what that means. So like, you know, if like I'm wrestling with the three year old and he like, he's like, I don't want to wrestle. It's not like that's, you know, you stop, you know, you're like, yeah, of course, you know, whereas my dad, it's like really attack more, you know, like, so, you know,

just little things like that. I worked at a Brooklyn co-op preschool for a summer and I wasn't allowed to say no or stop. Those were seen as problematic words. The children were instructed to say my body feels unsafe. And it was the most backward situation I've ever been in because like there was like one time like a kid was in a blanket and the other kids were like playing with him and he was like, stop, stop, stop. And the other teacher was like, we don't use that word. What word do you use? And it's like, oh, you're teaching kids that they can't say no. Like what? What was that some shitty nonviolent communication fascism or something? Is that pretty much? Oh, fuck. That's the wokeness. There it is. But wokeness isn't inherently

problematic. I think like wokeness as a phrase is only used by the right generally. Like no one actually identifies as woke anymore. Anyone who is actually like thinking and feeling isn't thinking. What did they call themselves? Let's use that. What did they call themselves? I don't know. He lived in a van. No, no. And he went rock climbing on the weekends. Co-op owner? Yeah. Jesus. So would they tell me about his love life and then he yell at me for saying no. Oh my God. Would they call it in light or what would they call it? Progressive? Okay, can I try to define the woke thing, even though it is like off limits to say the word and though it is being assigned and generally correctly to like people on the on the on the right. But I

think that if I think it's worth talking about and trying to define that word for and we probably all have different definitions. But to me, the definition if I identified it is in this actually stealing from what Ramdas would talk about like going to peace rallies, everyone has these signs that say peace. And they're yelling peace. Yeah, yeah. They're fucking pissed off. So it's like, I think, I think, I think the identity that that term, the identification of two seemingly paradoxical things meeting, which is a kind of like aggressive, angry quality meeting, what seems to be an intent to make the world a better place. And those two things, how are you how, how, how can we, you know, if aggression led to a better world to peace, then we would be living on the

most peaceful fucking planet in the most peaceful country, because we've been at war for 93% of our history. So I think when when that's being used as a pejorative, usually it's some indication of how like the person, the person who's trying to make the world a better place is trying to use an energetic pattern that has seen that is the thing that made it rotten in the first place. Is that, does that make sense? Is that too complex? Love that definition. That's absolutely correct. I mean, to me, it's like, woke was me as a college freshman encountering feminism for the first time. You know, like, I'm being introduced to feminism, I believe in feminism, but I'm nowhere near understanding actual feminism. And yeah, because and it's sort of like the fake it till

you make it kind of idea. And like, feminism is like foundational to my ideology and like my eating disorder recovery and my concept itself. But I think it's sort of like, I think aggressiveness is so spot on. It's like, it's it's a holier than thou mentality with the techniques of an aggressor. I love that you're admitting that you the way you just demonstrated it. I will I want to add to that too, so that I don't sound like I'm way waggling my finger at other people, which by the way, could be considered woke. Let me just say, when I went through my vegetarian phase, this is something I look back on, I'm mortified when I think about this. I don't want to say I was it I worked in summer camp. And I don't know how it happened, but I

ended up drinking some kind of fucking soup that someone had told me was vegetarian. And because I was doing performative vegetarian vegetarianism, because I wanted to seem cool or somehow better than everybody because I was being a fucking vegetarian. I made a big show of getting up and leaving the cafeteria of the summer camp to go vomit. And I got to tell you, man, it was purely performative. It was purely like me trying to like individuate and some kind of way that I saw as cool and like to so that's you know, and I've made that I've done various versions of that throughout my life. I mean, I think the other thing that the people who are like upset at the woke stuff. Okay, like you have not woked through the first woke, right? Because I think everybody's

guilty of it in some way, like every single one of us is subway has done performative. Yeah, we're describing a self righteousness. Yeah. Yeah. And who isn't guilty of that? Who is a guilty when he's like, we're all guilty of it. Yeah. And that's something that transcends politics. Yeah. Give me a break. True. But I but I think it's self righteousness based in ideology. And right, ideologies hurt humans. If we're self righteousness based in some sort of, you know, sort of sort of like, I don't know what some sort of scientific endeavor or some sort of treatment process or something, I don't know, but then then you wouldn't be self righteous because you'd have the humility to know that it's just a process. So that's the right guess that

we're sort of taking aim at. Well, this is a humility is an American ideal. Humility is is not not. No, I agree, especially these days, but it's been that way it was. It was the back and back when we had a large religious sort of overtone that we envy and humility. I mean, these are major preoccupations because they are destructive. If you're not humble, or if you're envious, it is destructive. You know, I'm Time magazine's most humble man of 2019. Are you really? No. The most humble man. No, I am the most humble man. I really am. Um, the, um, yeah, because people think being humble is being humiliated. I mean, look, we just have to, you, this is something

Romdus would say that I think about a lot. I would rather be in love than be right that, you know, that, yeah, right? Like you can, you can actually like for a little while see what happens if you let somebody else be right for once and just love them and, and, and see what happens. You know, for me, anytime I've tried to practice that, you feel incredibly vulnerable, put down the thing where you're going to be right and just try to try as you, you know, I'm very bad at it, but just try to be slightly open and loving to people and you know, nothing happens. I mean, I think the reason people like are leaning into ideology right now is fear and leaning into their rightness because, you know, usually you are right. Like if you're proclaiming

the importance of compassion or if you're proclaiming the importance of not hurting people, you are 100% right. Like, yes, you're like, right, you're right in, but what happens if you just try to, you know, put down all of the proclamations and just love, love people around you. You know, it's a really interesting practice. It's something that makes me very uncomfortable when I do it. I love that. But I also, I mean, it's interesting thinking about people hanging on to ideology, and it just makes me think about sort of like information dissemination and how like the education system is like failing and how televisions are the primary mode of education for a lot of people. That was, that was, that was Duncan and me. Now it's this,

it's the phone. It's a screen. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Right. And it's infectious. I mean, it's like a very, it's very, you know, I'll tell you, anytime I stop watching the news, I've, I'm instantly happier. Anytime I just turn off the data stream, like I just, like, I don't think our nervous systems are meant to worry about global problems. I mean, not to, I don't know why I'm going back to Meerkat Manor, but think of those, you know, you got that fucking Meerkat that like stands and looks around for danger. But imagine if that Meerkat was using the internet, you know, and was like having to not just broadcast, there's a bird over there, but there's a bird 6,000 miles away. All right. How stressed out the fucking Meerkats would be,

like they would never come out of their holes because they would be just monkeys that talk. Now we're into Meerkats. We've gone all the way to Meerkat, Duncan. I don't know what, I don't, yeah. Well, but look, I, I, um, yeah, I think that it's really exciting to me as a dad that you were able to collaborate with your dad to write up. It wasn't challenging. Are you serious? Did you guys get into arguments throughout the process? Every six weeks, I would call him in tears, being afraid that our relationship was only about work and that we didn't have a relationship otherwise because I felt so alienated. So that was a reality that I think now I can say it was a positive process. Like at the end of the day, like it created a framework for my dad and I to have

conversations that we never had. And I think through promoting this book, I think my dad's been sort of forced to listen to me in a way that he never has been forced to do. No, no, no, no. I wouldn't say that. I heard more of it than I forced. I heard more of it and although she and I disagree on things, I ended up really appreciating and valuing her point of view, which I thought as that grew, I started thinking, Jesus, do we need a lot of this in this country where you can have a real deep appreciation for another person's point of view and still not necessarily agree. You don't have to agree, but to understand it, appreciate it, admire it. Yeah, absolutely. That happened. Wow. Yeah. I mean, how cool to get to write a book

with your, I mean, you know, with your with your parent and also I love your relationship. You too have this like very honest relationship with each other. It seems like you're not you're so you're both very honest with each other with all the good stuff and the bad stuff. I mean, that's you know, because when I got when I became a dad, you know, I think anyone who's a new parent entertains this idea that you're going to be able to maintain some kind of perfect quality that you're not going to like, you know, infect your kids with like the stuff that your parents did to you or that there's that are even worse that like a good relationship with your kids involves some kind of like, I don't know, put it on a show or something

like that, but it seems like you two aren't doing that with each other. I think there's something really beautiful and I guess that that connects to your book incredibly awkward about it. Like you two seem to have really figured out how to like get through that awkward, but it doesn't it literally the book was a perfect description of how it worked. I mean, it's it's like you're uncomfortable. You walk into it. It doesn't have to be awkward. You know, it doesn't have to stay awkward. That's for sure. And I really, I think, you know, this book created a framework and I think that like having to like come home in such traumatic terms, like I that that foundation existed. And I think because we had this framework, like now it's like, and I'm like, I'm an expert

secret keeper. And like, that's part of like bulimia and eating disorders and addiction is like secret your secrets keep you sick. And you're a secret now. And so now it's like a compulsion where it's just like, yeah, I'll tell you about the bloody tampon that I vomited and shed on, you know, like that was my bottom. And I don't know, I mean, we did a millennial talk show pilot a few years ago, and I had a manic episode after it. So we've definitely had practice in situations in which performing the father daughter dynamic was traumatic. But that's also reality television, which is its own beast. And, and I think through that process, I think we've we've sort of, I think I've learned the ways in which external sources can be exploitive.

And that the foundation of the relationship itself, like I am very lucky to have parents that are married. I'm very lucky to like be as well educated at like, there's so much privilege in my life. And it's a function of like who my dad is. And like, I don't for a second take it for granted. And I also, I know it's been interesting, especially in life, you can talk to your brother. Oh, no, really? Are you are you in? Oh, my God. How many kids do you have? Dr. He's a triplets. Wow. Yeah. I was having three babies at once in, you know, it was insane. Turn my hair. I can't imagine my hair was your color a year later. It was this color. Wow. Yeah, I'm curious. I know we've gone out, we've probably gone way over your schedule.

So my apologies, but I'm curious. And you don't have to answer this if it's too awkward, but off camera versus on camera, because this is a thing that you grew up in. And I like that that isn't so bizarre and so weird, but off camera versus on camera. You two just seem incredibly open with each other and incredibly honest right now. Is it, is it like this when the camera turns off? Like, does anything change? No. I mean, the millennial talk show pilot, like that was, that was in 2018. I had producers coming up to me being like, there are so many unique, amazing things about you. But the one thing that people can't copy is that your dad is Dr. Drew. So when you talk to your dad, call him dad. And when you talk about mom,

say mom. And then the next they turn around. Okay, you're going to introduce this next segment by telling your dad when you lost your virginity. And like that, like that whole experience. And I, you know, I like, I'm an improviser, like I will, yes, and anybody, you know, like I just am aiming to please. And so like, I was like, dad, I lost my virginity at 16, because I heard you say it's bad for brain development to do it before then. And then the segment started, you know, and then like weeks afterwards, it was just like, my mom told me that I was, it was going to be broadcast on the radio. Like, thank God he doesn't do radio anymore. Like, is he judging me? You know, all these things. And so I have experience doing it in a way that felt exploitive and inauthentic.

And because of that, this point, this, that's why I kept calling every six weeks and being like, I feel like our relationship is only about work, because I've had the experience of it being performative and only about work. And I will say over the course of writing this book and promoting this book, again, TCB has provided such a framework for us to have these difficult conversations. And also understanding that my dad isn't judging me and that he isn't going to broadcast that I lost my virginity on the radio is helpful. Well, I mean, you're doing it for him. Paulina, Dr. Drew, what a joy to get to hang out with you. You know, if we do end up, you know, coming, moving to LA, which probably aren't after this conversation, I had a problem with you.

I hope we all get to hang out. And can you tell people where they can find this book? Wherever you get books, you can get it. Yeah, but Amazon just does independent bookseller. Don't give Jeff Bezos your money or Dr. Drew. Oh, Susan saying she loves you. Love you, Susan. Oh, yeah, she has a bottle head that she wants to promote. It's me. Oh, can we see it? Oh, you're going to get a bottle head, Duncan. You're going to get one. Wait, do you want to promote it now? Yes. Susan, get in here. It's coming. Get in here. I need you to get in here. Oh, that's cool. Dr. Drew bobblehead. It looks awesome. This isn't for video, so I'll describe it.

It's beautiful. Dr. Drew, very symmetrical, ripped. A lot of people maybe don't realize Dr. Drew is incredibly ripped. It's a beautiful Dr. Drew bobblehead. Where can we get it? It's so cute. Drdrew.com. I'm assuming. Dr-drew.com Dr-drew.com slash ready for Valentine's Day. Okay, and Wait, and in the book we have anything for the book, but Dr. Drew.com slash Awkward And you can find me at Paulina Pinsky.com or MISPIGI 111 on all social media. Awesome. All the links will be at structures.com. I don't, we got, you and I need to hang somehow, whether it's Nashville or whatever, if you're in town, please, I miss you. Seriously, this is-

Yeah, I miss you too. Yeah, I'll text you. I would love, I would love to see you. I think we're going to come into, come to LA in a few weeks, just to scope it out. So maybe we, maybe we can find time to hang out. Please, please, please. Awesome. Thank you for this. I really appreciate y'all. Thank you. Thank you. That was Dr. Drew and Paulina Pinsky. Definitely check out their book. It's called It Doesn't Have to Be Awkward. You can get it on Amazon. Links will be at dougatrustle.com. Thank you to all of our wonderful sponsors and thank you for listening. I'll see you next week. Have a great weekend. Hare Krishna. Next up with brands like Liz Claiborne, Worthington, Stafford, and Jay Farar. Oh,

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