The Adam and Dr. Drew Show - Classic #1145: The Breakdown of Personal Dignity

Episode Date: June 9, 2026

September 4, 2019Adam and Dr. Drew discuss homelessness in California, including Drew’s efforts to get the White House and Ben Carson to see the problem firsthand. They also riff on emotional support animals and take a call from a man in his 40s who has never dated and wants to understand why.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Bet MGM, an official sports betting partner of the National Hockey League, has everything you need for 2026 Stanley Cup playoff action. Hockey fans in Canada can place live bets every game during the quest for the cup. Create same game parlays, take player props, and place futures on the 26 Stanley Cup champion. Check out BetMGM original bets. Hockey markets you can't find anywhere else. And it's not just about what you can do on game day.

The BetMGM app has improved its first line this season. to include insid withdrawals. Download the BetMGM app and enjoy the NHL Stanley Cup playoffs like never before. Betmgm.com for terms and conditions. 19 plus to wager. Ontario only.

Please play responsibly. If you have any questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connects Ontario at 1866-531-260 to speak to an advisor free of charge.

BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming, Ontario. Well, this episode, episode 1145, which is from September 4th, 2019, we discussed the homeless population in California. Also, Drew's efforts to get the White House and Ben Carson to see the problem firsthand. We'll talk about emotional support animals. We'll do all that right after this. Recorded live at Corolla One Studios with Adam Carolla and board service.

Certified physician and addiction medicine specialist Dr. Drew Pinsky. You're listening to The Adam and Dr. Drew Show. Yeah, get on. Yeah, get on. Go ahead and get on the show. Thanks, June, then, that's, I'm, about you, dad, dude. I'm not. What's a good guy.

He's also a special special. Thank. Drew. Yeah. Phil. The dog is in the studio. Yes. He's looking at your bag of meat.

Oh, he sure is. You better watch out. He's, uh... He's... He got him trained nicely, though. He just stood there looking at it. Yeah. He did not make us move.

He didn't have a little time out there. Here you go. Mm-hmm. Maybe I can do something for him. Then it'll never let go now. I think, I don't know. Would we make a fabulous gay couple? Oh, well, we always thought we would.

Are there trouble? Is there a problem? No, no, no. I'm just, I'm kind of, you know, fantasizing about Phil being trained and, you know, kind of the dual income. Yeah. Keyes. Keys, hanging by the door. Keys by the door.

Topia for you. Early morning, dystopian ice cold pool dips every morning. Wow. All right. Drew, what's on your mind? What's going on in society? Well, obviously this homeless thing has got me completely preoccupied. In fact, I've been talking to the White House.

I tell you this. I'm trying to get Ben Carson out here to take a look at all that's going on here. Is he HUDs? Yeah. Ben Carson. Yeah. Yeah. Damn.

Hey, Gary, that video, excuse me, like using my microphone as especially my own telephone. I'm looking at an email from the White House. I sent them that video from the girl we listened to

last week or two weeks ago. Last week, yeah. It got taken down or something. You try to send it to me again? I'll try. That woman made her Twitter account private, so the only place is that it is appearing is people who are reposting it,

and she may be pushing copyright claims, but I'll try to find you. So I talked to her today. What? Who? This woman Elizabeth Noback. So she, I asked her to put me on, I asked her to follow on Twitter if I could follow her. So I don't know if I got that.

Anyway. I have a thought, Drew. Well, I'm listening. Okay. Are you listening? Yeah. Okay. So.

Uh-oh. He's bored. So. All right. So, I've been seeing a sort of. of rash of sucker punching. Yes, there's been a lot of that. Andy Dick, you got it.

News reporter was doing a story out of Mexico, all this Antifa stuff that people's coming up behind people and just punching them. And there's a whole thing with the like Hasidic Jews and young black boys were coming and punching them. Yeah, you don't know about that. Yeah. Why not, true? I guess it's not something that the news media cared to share. What if Jews were randomly punching older black men?

Be a big deal. Okay. Well, there's a thing. You're allowed to punch up, but not down. There's a thing where Jews, like Hasidic Jews are like walking down the streets in New York and young black teens are coming up behind and punching them in the head, knocking them out. Awesome. No issues in that community with the father figures. But not an issue.

And I've kind of realized this sucker punching people is insanely dangerous, especially when the person is knocked out and on the way down, they slam their head on the concrete or they hit it on a table and then they whack it on a concrete. Easily die. Easily. Yeah. Easily. It's a little neither here or there. It's kind of a joke in a weird sense. Again, not covered that has seen him being punched out by the young black youth.

We don't want to talk about that. Yeah. Okay. Yet you put your arm on someone's shoulder and a convention and that's assault. Right. And I realized, hey, assholes, this is what happens when you take the word assault and you turn it into nothing. Yeah. When everything is assault, then nothing is assault. Oh, boy. So you've taken assault. Yeah. And you've just thrown it out. So everyone's been the victim of assault or somebody, you know, Al Franken put his hand on someone's thigh and that's a sexual assault or whatever it is.

And now we have people essentially their lives are being threatened with these crazy punches. I mean, if you're standing outside on a sidewalk talking to someone and someone just comes up behind you with a closed fist and takes a full swing at your orbital socket, they can kill you. Yes, easily. Or you can be in vegetative state for the rest of your life when your head smacks and you get brain swelling and everything else. Easily. Neither here nor there. There is no sense of we got to find this guy who are these people. No, no, no.

moving on. Cops, step back. Step back. Give them their space. See what happens when we take a word like assault and we fucking ruin it and turn it and everything? Then the actual salt isn't assault anymore. That's the real danger.

It's not the danger. Then we don't allow any policing. The danger isn't you putting your hand on someone's thigh in the subway and that she's accusing of assault. The danger is getting sucker punch in it not being assault. We don't care anymore. It's a weird trend. It must have some meanings.

It must be something to it. What are doing? Feels rolling around on his back. He gets bored. Yeah. I just notice it's a bad sign. It's prevalent now. People are doing it on camera with no fear of reprisal and everything.

Like, we got to fucking take one of these people who's caught on camera. punching somebody in a fate. Attempted murder. Trying for fucking something and put them in fucking jail and then put the word out. Hey, by the way, if you're going to dump a bucket of water on a cop and then throw the five-gown bucket at the back of his head, you're going to jail. Sure. You would think. It'd be nice.

Yeah. Yes? In a normal world, are we improving things by that not being the case? I don't I don't I don't think there's any I mean I heard de Blasio get interviewed and it's like he just wouldn't take a stand on on any of this shit you know like it's just there's this thing of law and orders now way out of vogue you know like you are you're not going to win any elections by explaining you're into law and order and my thing is is listen pussies. You're the guys who shit a cow if somebody, if Al Franken pretends to put his hands on the breast of your... Leanne. That's a capital offense. What about coming up behind a Hasidic Jew and punching him in the face with a full swing?

Not? No? Yeah. Can we figure this one out? are we really uptight about people putting their hands on people or not? We are really uptight about it. Okay, well then let's start prosecuting all the sucker punchers. I mean, I want resources.

And by the way, whoever punched Andy Dick, I don't want that guy in the street. The guy's very dangerous. The guy who steals a mountain bike, not so dangerous. That's a poor guy or drug act. The guy who just comes up behind people knocks them out for no good reason, or the young youth who knocks out their seat. because he thinks it's a game. These are scary people, yes?

Oh, yes. I mean, your life could be changed in a millisecond. You could be walking down Old Town Pasadena and someone could sucker punch you and then the next minute, you're just a vegetable. That's it. That's it. What? No, no issues, no sense of urgency. No, we want to catch these guys.

No, no nothing. I mean, I'm watching all this like Antifa shit and they're just running around punching guys in the head. and this would be any sense of urgency from the law enforcement about who these people are, how to bring them to justice? It's like, ah, well, they'll just kind of steer clear next time. Anybody has any information, we'll take it. Yeah, we'll take it. We're not going to act on it.

I don't know. Like, Gary, did they arrest the guy who punched Andy Dick? That's attempted murder. And I'm not a hyperbole guy, but once you see a guy's head slam onto the concrete pavement, yes, you can kill him. Yes, you can never be right again. And how about the guy that hit the, what was the journalist name? Andy, no.

That one. Well, that was 10 guys. Yeah, that one's tough because there's. They're wearing scheme asked. The Andy Dick guy did get arrested. Oh, good. I hope he's in fucking jail. Like, that's assault big time.

According to the assailant, he's saying that it was retaliation for, for Andy Dick grabbing his genitals. Yeah. Well, that's not. I'm not saying it's reasonable. I'm just saying that's the guy told police. Sounds like Andy Dick You're not allowed to come up and punch Look if you want to throw down with a dude

Throw down with a dude You're not allowed to come up behind them And punch him in the face But in here, in that phenomenon Is a general lack of What we call it? Decoran? Well, it's not that

It's like It's almost like Not the word isn't pride But shamelessness or something Like you should be a shame it being such a coward that being a sucker. Well, this is a very good point

I've made you bring up for being your verbal muse. I feel the same way with the fucking fake notes and the dogs on the airplane. Like, come on, man, why's your fucking dignity, dude? Dignity. I travel with my dog. I punch people from behind. Like,

yeah, okay, but isn't that weird? Does you feel weird about that? So where is the basic human dignity? What just happened to us. There's a lot of stuff like that where I just think what what? I know what happened. What? I know what's going on. I can tell me what's going on. I'm going to tease it. I'll tell you what happened. You want to know the answer? Yeah. I'll tell you the answer. You ready? I'm ready. What is this this rash of all this kind of behavior that just doesn't involve

dignity? Yeah. Two things. Truly undignified. Two things. A shameless. Oh my God. Yeah. I mean, wait to you just have, wait do you have a few people sue you? And you're like, I don't even know what you're talking about. How, you're an adult. You're saying this to me or your attorney or whatever. You can't even imagine. Here's what I'm saying.

Are you ready? Ready. There are two things. The more the government regulates, the more rules, the more things they do, the less you count on your own internal compass, your own more. compass. The more is outsourced, the more regulations, the more fucking rules, and the more attorneys and the more, oh, this Americans with Disabilities Act and all this sort of all this fuck, all the shit about, oh, you can sue over this is a hate crime or this is, this is

racial, whatever. The more that that's outsourced, the less you rely on your own compass. You have to have your own moral compass, which is, yes, I could sue. Yes, I could apply for welfare. Yes, I could apply for unemployment. I could do all of this. But you know what? I'm not going to because I have a moral compass. Well, you have some, yeah, it's, but in morality.

No, no, but what we did is here's what we thought we're going to do. We thought we're going to legislate everything. We thought we'd go, look, look, look. traveling on a plane with your dog is neither right nor wrong. There's nothing there. All it is is it's a regulation and there's ways to get around the regulation. You can get a note from a doctor that says this. The notion of saying this is, I have to travel with my pet because I'm not emotionally up to getting on an airplane is the most undignified fucking thing I've ever heard.

in my life. Right. I would sooner cut off my fucking pinky and sew it on where my dick was than admit to somebody. If you'd admitted this, you wouldn't have a dick. I need to, I need emotionally be supported. Yeah. Now, that's insane that people will even share that with another human being. I mean, I remember like eight years ago when I was sitting next to some fat cunt who had her

fucking dog and her gunt. And I said to her, what's the dog for? And she's like, oh, it's emotional support. I remember, like, I can't believe you're telling me this. You're telling me. What do you mean? You're telling me you're so feebly wired. You're so weakly willed.

You're fucking so broken emotionally, mentally that you can't travel without this fucking schnauzer on your lap. There's a fucking mangy dog that sat on her lap. She drank two glasses of red wine and passed out before we even took off. but I fucking stared at the dog the whole time. And I'm like, I can't believe you're telling me this. Now, what's going on with her and what's going on with me are kind of two different things. I'm pushing it through my moral compass. Right.

And I'm going, why we, I can't think. I'm not. Moral's not the right word. No. I'm not, I'm not dignified, but I have dignity. Yeah. And I can't imagine doing that. So when we get rid of that, that's what religion is, that's what family is.

It's family and religion. When you get rid of family and religion, it's replaced by regulation. Regulation is there to be skirted around. You see what I'm saying? Yeah, yeah. People who tithe with the church, they give 10% to the church. they don't try to get loopholes and they don't try to, you know, have write-offs or try to get it knocked down to 7%. I'm guessing those who think it's a good idea to tithe, tide.

Then there's the IRS. Now it's time to go to work. I bet the same people who tithe have a team of attorneys trying to get around the IRS. Why? Because they've overreached. They've over-legislated. When they get rid of God and they get rid of mom and dad and Elizabeth fucking Warren and Bernie Sanders, step into that slot, now it's on.

There is no right and wrong or up and down anymore. There's just rules and ways for you to get attorneys to get around rules. And then other people to get attorneys to get money from you. It's attorneys, legislation, lack of religion, morality, and parents. That's what's caused this entire cluster fuck. Nobody talks about personal dignity. What do we do to get out of it? Well, first things first, first,

everybody. Travel your fucking piece of shit dog. Go get your stupid attorney to do fake lawsuits and blah, blah, blah. Tell me how it turns out. Big picture. You tell me how your life is. The people I know that have dignity, they have much better life. Even though they've been sued, even though they don't travel at their dogs, they still

have a much better life. Chicken shit lawsuits used to be in that same category as you wouldn't dare. Yes. It was beneath you. Remember adult male? You're not supposed to be going there. What is that word? It's word like pride or we're not thinking of the right word.

And it's so out of our lexicon. We can't even think of it. And yet it was routinely what... Decoma? No. Guys, can you help us? They don't know anything. Man only knows what I tell them.

Yes, sir. That's right. I got, I have dignity. I like dignity. Yeah, dignity is very close. You're going to have to do it because I'm satisfied with My work, Drew. All right.

We'll talk to Tony, 40, Philadelphia. Tony. Hey, guys. How are you doing? Hi, guy. First, I just wanted to thank both of you guys. I've been listening to Loveline for, like, old episodes of Loveline for, like, the last 15, 20 years. I just listened to a couple of episodes during work, you know, and I just listened to them all day.

And I've learned so much from just hearing your... guys' opinions on other callers. And just listening to you guys over the years, I kind of put together kind of a my own hypothesis about what's going on with my life. What's going on?

I just wanted to, I just wanted to shoot up by and see what you guys think. What's going on? Go ahead. First, yeah, I'm 40 years old, and I've pretty much been single my whole life. I've never really dated at

all. Not because, mostly just because I've never really had a higher to. I think a lot of, basically, like, I want to say I have, you know, attachment issues. Do you? Yeah. I think it's stemming from the physical abuse that I've gotten from my father growing up. All right.

That's not attachment necessarily. That's trauma. Yeah, yeah, exactly. What kind of physical abuse? What was the story? Yeah, the majority of the people that I've called you over the years with trauma. you know, it seems like, like you guys have said, you know, a switch gets thrown in the head, and they become, you know, they try to recreate the past trauma experiences of the past

to try to, you know, gain power over the helplessness that they've gotten when they were kids. That did not happen with me. If anything, it completely shut me down. Like, I never really had any interest on establishing relationships. and, you know, trying to, you know, find, find a significant other for myself. That desire was never really there. Looking at my parents' relationship, you know, as the model. How's the rest of your life going?

You're successful guy? I'm on my way to be. It took me, you know, pretty much my entire 20s and most of my 30s, just basically been jumping around from job to job, you know, trying to make a living, trying to find a career that really suited me. And I actually just found one about five years ago. And I'm getting my, you know, I'm now finally just trying to get myself settled. What is your career?

I'm a, I'm a work for the post office. What? Works for the post office. Okay. So, yeah. So, look, you had trauma. It's like a weird place to land after after a lot of searching. but how and what kind of physical abuse are we talking about?

Physical abuse. Psychological and mental. What happened? Everything. Oh, specifically? Yes. Beated deep with objects. You know, psychological, you know, he would, my dad would like, would have this habit of, you know,

every time he would quote unquote discipline me. He would wait until I fell asleep and would wake me up at 2 or 3 o'clock in the morning to kick my ass. Your dad, psychological things like that. Alcoholic? Yeah, he was. Weird impulse that I'm going to beat on my kid. Very strange. Yeah.

But that could be a traumatic reenactment for him where somebody did that to him and he was good for me and that's why I'm going to do it to my son to toughen him out. I know it's such a weird thing when you have kids, especially think about. beating on them. You know, it's such a, I, I, I, it's sad. Like, if you say to me, how many people physically, like, being on their kids, I'd go, oh, under 1%. And he'd go, how many, how many, uh, have sex with their kids? I go, oh, zero.

Until you, until you're a love line. Until I love. Once you have, what I'm saying is when you have kids that the notion of either one of those things, like, if I started beating on my son or my daughter, they'd mostly be confused. They wouldn't even know what was going on that I was hitting them. I mean, they probably not enjoy it. But I think their first thought would be, I don't know what's happening. What is this?

I don't even know what this is. Forget about, oh, not this again. They'd just be like, I don't know what you're doing with your hands. I'm sure my daughter would just go, she'd call the cops. Yeah. She'd call the cops, go, like I touch me. No, he'd go something's wrong with him. His brain tumor.

There's something. They wouldn't even know what to do. They wouldn't even know how to process it. By the way, when I see the school bus camera that's in the school bus and the 13-year-old chick has got the other 13-year-old chick's hair and she's banging her head up against the metal railing, grab bar above the back of the seat, hey, moms, don't beat your kids. And dads, don't beat your kids because then that person comes out there. Right. And that's their conflict resolution skill. Right.

Grabbing their hair and smacking their head against a bar. Oh, because... Thank you. Thank you. For the most part. I mean, it's always been a lot of biology. All right. So he said he was shut down.

Shut down is exactly what trauma does. It makes you not... You know, you can go either way, you know, with these traumatic experiences, too, from compulsively seeking people to being completely shut down. to being hypersexual to being sexually shut down. Trauma just puts you all over the place. But shutdown is a very, very common feature with trauma like that. And so it makes sense you'd be shut down, both emotionally shut down and also interpersonally shut down.

Just something you have to kind of, man, it's interesting you had no bad experiences before he shut down. That's usually why people shut down. They do some traumatic reactions. Yeah, it's weird not to engage. Yeah. But go ahead. You're 40 now. You know what's going on.

Yeah. All right. It's interesting how the other thing that's interesting these days, and I've been hearing more and more of this when I talk to people that are having particularly interpersonal delays, they sound okay. They don't give me the bad feeling that we used to hear on Love Land all the time, which I find fascinating. So to me it sort of leads me to believe that he should just proceed. He's sort of semi-perseated. Proceed. The breakdown of personal dignity.

Well, let me get, I have a three words that sort of fit. So dignity, yes. Self-respect. Remember that word? Yeah. Honor? Honor's a good one. These are things you don't hear anymore. Well, the problem, what we did with self-respect is we turned it into mutated it into something horrible where people just explained, you have to respect me. Oh, yeah. Which is, and it's self-respect, there's this movement. And we always talk about the self-esteem movement, which is bad, bad, bad. But there's also this movement of like, I need to love myself. I need to learn to love myself.

You have to love yourself, you know. I think that's gone away finally, I think. Well, I... Not the way it used to be around. It's... You hear it once in a while, but it sounds like a platitude now, doesn't it? I don't... I don't know.

I mean, like, when they say, like, what I mean is used to have personal dignitial. Now there's this kind of global dignity. It's like these people that come to our borders, they need to be treated with dignity and respect and all humans need to have dignity and they need to be. Nobody should be disrespect. It's like, it's an internal thing. You must conduct yourself with dignity. This thing of like everyone deserves to be treated. Look, I don't know.

Do you? What are we talking? about. I just feel when a cop pulls me over, I just want to know, like, you, you, you're wearing a ticket or not. Like, I don't really have the dignity and the respect and the personal whatever. I just, I don't have any of that. Why? I don't, I don't, you go into a restaurant. You like to order and get your food, but it's, I don't, the dignity and respect part, you should have self-respect and dignity, personal dignity, but you shouldn't be outsourcing it, looking to be treated, you know, and but, and, but, So politician

DeJure number seven says he's going to treat everyone with dignity and respect. Everyone deserves to be treated. What does that even mean? There's always going to be someone who's cleaning the toilets. There's always going to be someone who owns the house with the toilets in it. What's the dignity and the respect part of it? You should treat that person with decency.

Yes. Decency is a better word. You're obligated to be decent to that person. who comes to your house. That's all good. But the dignity and respect, they're cleaning your fucking toilet for $13 an hour.

How much dignity and respect? If you really had dignity and respect, you'd clean your own fucking toilet. Which is interesting, because dignity was something reserved for like royalty. Yes. Yes.

He's not, he doesn't conduct himself in a very dignified way. It's a dignified air about him. You know what I mean? Yes, I don't know when all this started. You have to have to, have a sense of yourself versus I'm going to do whatever I can fucking do whenever I'm going

to fucking do it. That's the thing. That's undignified. Thank you. Go ahead. Phil hasn't moved the entire show. I dig it. I'm starting to worry about it.

No, he's fine. Think so? Physically stop moving. He's breathing. Not very much, but he is breathing. He won't move. Drew, I fear. I got to travel with him this weekend.

I get him up in the plane. What? No. Oh. I think you might like under the plane. You would have to pay me one. No, I mean under the plane. I wouldn't expect you to.

You'd have to pay me $1 million to get on a plane with this dog. And now, oh, what did FAA? Just, uh, mini horses. Many horses now are okay. There's emotional support. Have to let him on. Do people not see the danger in where we're, heading as a society.

Heading. Heading. Okay. Where we've arrived. Does there no, do people not understand what's going on? Correct. They do not. Yes, they do not.

These adults, oftentimes adult males, have no fucking idea what I'm talking about. There's people traveling with horses. So there's no dignity, no self-respect, and you have attorneys defending this stuff. And there you go. God, damn it. Until next time, I'm sorry for Dr. Drew Sane. Mahala.