The Adam and Dr. Drew Show - Classic #161: Joel Pt. 1

Episode Date: September 9, 2025

July 17, 2014 - Adam and Drew open the show discussing the way that the media can tend to morph things that they say into much bigger deals in an effort to get a juicier story. As the show wraps up Drew and Adam takes a call on a marriage falling apart and another about navigating the very early stages of addiction recovery.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Enjoy this throwback episode from July 2014. We discussed the way media can distort things and turn things into bigger deals to capture eyes and make things juicier. And think how naive that conversation was 11 years ago. My God, we had no idea what was coming. Enjoy this episode, number 161 from July 2014. Recorded live at Corolla 1 Studios with Adam Carolla and board certified physician. and Addiction Medicine Specialist, Dr. Drew Pinsky. You're listening to The Adam and Dr. Drew Show.

Yeah, get it on. Got to get it on. No, show's been to get on, man. Thank you so much for listening. Thanks for supporting the cause. Thanks for telling people about what we're doing, everybody. We love that, and we rely on it. We count on it, and we appreciate it. So thank you.

Thank you, and thank you again. What? Now what? I'm just looking at my fucking schedule. Oh, fuck. What are you talking to, Drew? I know this fucking... Oh, fuck.

True. I do you have to bring your phone in and... Because I have to communicate with... I don't know. Can I say this? Chris Max Appata. Have you ever seen me and my phone inside this studio? My phone...

In five years of doing this, is my phone rang on the air? Is there ever... A phone-related issue of any kind, of any magnitude or... any order. Have you ever known? It does ring a lot out in the lobby.

Have you ever known me to sit here and not have to communicate with my patients in office? The man is a doctor. He falls back on that. He's texting. All right. Us, let's see, Irvine on the 31st and then San Diego on August 6th and then Las Vegas coming up on the 29th of August as well. plenty tickets to Vegas Long Beach

second show probably going to be sold out that's July 19th what the hell is July 19th That's Saturday Sorry We don't Are you getting tired

Do you're getting tired Do all these shows I'm just tired I work every fucking weekend And I'm just fucking tired Just Why don't you not to do that You can choose not to do that

Well You can't I mean it's possible Right But when you're being sued by multiple entities, and you get bills every fucking week going, hey, this guy, he needs 40 grand because he's an expert for the patent trolls, and then you tell me what I do. Well, that's my question, is how much are you running in place chasing those bills?

Is it 100 percent? I mean, everything is... I don't know. I'm scared not to work. Because of this. Yeah. That's what I was afraid you were going to say. Yeah.

Well, because... Well, good. Well, attorneys are so productive, and they add to the productivity of our society. And this whole thing is such a good – I think it'll add to the general economic well-being of the country, don't you? Yes. Yeah. It's awesome. So, yes.

And that's why I go out every weekend. Makes me feel so bad. Do you think that's contributing to – people have been complaining lately about your anger. Mm-hmm. Do you think it's contributing to that? Why, you've – no, me too. You've been saying that for two years. What are you talking about?

No, no, no, no. I've been saying you were more angry. You seem to me I addressed that with you. I'm actually not aware of it right now. But people are sort of complaining. And I thought, well, maybe it is this. What do you mean people are complaining? Twitter or social media.

Twitter, social media. You get two tweets. Yeah, I'm going to read some of them. How many tweets? You go ahead. How many of those? How many tweets? I'll have to pick up my phone in order to do that.

Oh, your phone. Your phone, everybody. Now, mostly they're complaining that we sound like a tea party sort of. Oh, well, what happened to my anger? Well, and that you're angry and, you know, this is the sort of complaints. Listen, you. You, unfortunately, you catch me, first off, I have to follow your schedule because you go out of town for various reasons. I know not why, but you go out of town and I'm told every third week, Dr. Drew's got to, we got to do this on Monday or we got to do it on Wednesday.

Yeah, I appreciate that. And I always say fine, except for I come off of weekends where I work Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and then Sunday night. And then I get the news that Monday, we got to do it with Drew because Drew's going out of town. Yeah. So you're catching me. Angry. I'm tired already and I appreciate that. I'm accommodating, trying to be accommodating of your schedule.

So you understand, I'm doing rap rounds for something called the Prisma Awards tomorrow, which is an award. I'm doing it. It's a charity that gives awards to people who do. I don't begrudge. I'm just saying you catch me on mornings after long weekends of catching contractors and going out on the road and doing shows. I'm tired. I get it. And the going on the road is the recurrent theme.

And used to give me shit about doing that, about going on the road and chasing Nichols, as you called it. Now, look, what happens is this. You're going to go to Long Beach. You're going to do a show. It gets put on the foot. Look, here's what happens. You're not getting on an airplane. You're going to Long Beach.

Fine. Here's what happens. Here's how it works. Here's how the schedule works. Dig. Dick. Mike August says, hey, one to do a live show over in Long Beach. And he says this four months ago.

Yeah. On some random Saturday, which is this Saturday. Yeah. Fine. Okay, fine. We'll do it this Saturday. Yeah. And then at some point, that show sells out pretty quickly.

Yeah. And then they go, you want to add a second show. Well, now you've got a choice. It's going to be a long night, but you're already in Long Beach. It's already Saturday night. What are you going to do? Go out and see a movie and go out to dinner later Saturday night with your wife? No, it's Saturday night.

And by the way. It's two months off, sounds like, oh, I can't help that. It's maybe, could be four months off. But also, the second show is where you get paid. The first show sort of takes care of, you know, expenses. Expenses, so to speak. But second show is where you make the money. So not only are you there, but this is a more profitable endeavor.

So you're already there. You're already there. So you say, fine, we'll do it. No big deal. And then, you know, a bunch of stuff happens. you find out a month after that, catch a contractor starting. When's that? That's Friday, Saturday, Sunday.

Yeah. Where's Friday and Saturday? It's Long Beach. San Clementing. It's in, I don't know where the hell we went. You can ask Matt, but it was, it's Wilmington, which is Western Long, it's Long Beach adjacent. Yeah, yeah. So either way, I don't now know when I agree to this three months ago that I'm,

I will be in Wilmington slash Long Beach for the entire weekend before this weekend. Then what happens is you come off of working Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, and then you wake up Monday morning and you think to yourself, do I have this weekend? Can I stay home this weekend? Do I have this weekend off? What's this week look like? And then you find out Monday morning, oh, no, you're going to Long Beach for two shows.

Friday, or Saturday, sorry, and then you get a little, a slight bail of depression. Right, right. And behind that is the pressure of all those attorney bills. Right. Yeah, sprinkled in with a little dusting of anger, which is resentment for, A, having to fucking pay these patent troll, you know. Fox, yeah, let's call them what they are. Yeah, I mean, the notion that, you know, personal audio is just going to, you know, extract. money from us and it's not going to work I mean it'll get it'll get the attorneys paid it's never

going to work for them they're never going to get a fucking penny out of me and we're going to take them down the and we're going to raise more money but it's going to be a calorie burner fine listen there is no alternative other than to fight yeah and that's what we're doing right um but uh there's a slight compound when you come home uh sunday night and uh for dinner you have the half of the half of the sandwich that Ed, the audio guy brought by six days earlier. That was dinner Sunday, Sunday night. Feels good. Feels good.

Right. I have these conversations a lot, Drew. Tell me how much of it is just wishful thinking and how much of it is reality. You know, I have these conversations a lot. I don't know if you have these conversations with your wife, but I'll have them a lot. Like what? Well, where I go, I found, in general, ladies not as number-oriented as men. At least my wife.

Okay. She screws the math up quite often. But yet doesn't understand that component. You know, the things she's good at and things she's bad at, and there's things I'm good at and things I'm bad at. But if there are things I'm bad at, I try to write them down because I'm bad at them. Yeah, I do a lot of where you're at. I thought we were talking about eating dinner tonight. She does a, I'm in Malibu, and I'll be like, well, what's the deal?

It's 7 o'clock. It's Sunday night. Oh, you said you're coming home at 8.30. No, I didn't say that. Why would I say that? I asked you. You said 8.30. Why would I say that?

I do a podcast every Sunday night at 5 o'clock, and then I finish at 6.30, and then I drive home. Why would I say 830? Well, that's what I thought you said. Then I go, did you think I, now I can't figure out. Did you, there's three columns. I said it. I didn't say it. I thought you said it.

Those are the three? Well, here's the thing for me. First off, I didn't say it. I never say it. I wouldn't say it. I can't say it. It'd be like doing Loveline at 10 o'clock and someone saying, what time you're coming home. You go about 2 a.m.

Look, no, I come home at 12.30. that's the schedule. I do the show. It's always 5 o'clock Sunday night, and I drive straight home when we're done, and I get home at 10 to 7. So 8.30, kind of out of the question. So that part didn't come out of my mouth.

Now, now we get to the part where what you heard, maybe you heard 830, but why did you hear 830? I would never say 830. Then the third part is a gray area, which is sort of I'd like it to kind of be. This is what I'd kind of like it to be. but it never is and then it's pretty hard to argue with that's what I thought you said because that's what what do you do with that piece of information yeah you know scream liar

like there's there's nothing you can do but uh yes eating a half a half a sandwich and a handful of planters peanuts uh on a Sunday night after uh after a full weekend of work so do we need to work harder satisfying restoring a positive attitude here or taking more calls or talking less politics or maybe you don't give a fuck about what people think or say or politics and drew you're such an asshole first off i don't know why everything's fucking politics i just want to talk about shit yeah i want to talk about stuff and if people want to make that into political conversation they can make that into political conversation number one number two you get two fucking tweets and stop talking about politics and you just want to

pack it up and leave? No. Number one, let me, well, then this is kind of what I was hoping we were talking about, which is, like I've said, a million times, I'm a libertarian. My whole thing is, none of this is political as far as I'm concerned. It's all about everybody just staying out of everyone's way. That's everything for me. Well, and let's talk about how people take care of themselves in the meantime. Themselves, not the government takes care of them. They take care of themselves. Yes, which then becomes political. And yes, some stuff is political. It should not be Look, we were talking about Dinesh D'Souza, and I was talking about the fact that he gets a zero on Rotten Tomatoes amongst top critics. He got convicted of some crime or something, somebody was telling me.

Yeah. Well, let's put it to you this way. I'm not sure exactly what it was, but you write, you take a look at what's going on with the IRS, and now you come out with a documentary that's talking about Obama's, 20,000, 2016 Obama or whatever it is and what a horrible job Obama's doing. I don't know if you're guilty or not guilty, but you get what's called fast-tracked. But listen, that's why social media is so dangerous today. People get crazy and they become a mob and it becomes real.

It manifests in reality. That's what's scary about this shit. People take illegal action. People lose jobs. horrible things happen to people because of lies, frankly, because of bullshit. There's a book. I interviewed a kid on my podcast named Ryan Holliday. The podcast, it's coming out soon.

And he wrote a book called Trust Me, I'm Lying. And he gets into detail about how these bloggers and social media people take information that is frankly false and then spin it out. It goes, spins out of control. And how anger is the predominant feeling that, causes viral activity in social media. Without anger, nothing catches on. So you say something that makes them angry, even though it's not what you said. And now it goes, and it's a mob.

Now it has to take action. You have to lose your job. You have to have some consequence because the mob is active. And the response can't be promulgated because it's not making anybody angry. So it doesn't get spread. Right. The responses don't matter. Right.

Which to me, that's why I'm talking about this shit. I think it's the problem right now. Well, you, Drew, you, I think you're sensitive. I am sensitive. Not as bad as I used to be. I remember I used to read, you and I used to read, like, reviews on Amazon. I would freak out because one bad review of a book we did. Well, you'd have one cunt talk to you at an airport and you'd be ruined for the weekend.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm not like that anymore. But I am concerned about the way this is going. It's really, it's not, something's wrong. Something is very wrong with all this. and it's concerning, that's all. It's concerning if you think about it. No, for instance.

It's not concerning if you don't. I did not defend, for instance, what Dr. Oz was defending himself about. I said, hey, think about the fact that he's just reading copy on a prompter, and he blinked and a producer muscled him into doing it, and then he started, got used to doing it, and he should have paid attention. But think about that. Oh, you're backing Dr. Oz. He's a Charlotte.

It's still going weeks and weeks and weeks later, because. Because no blood, no blood, that's why. They've got to be blood. It's going because you're looking at it. No, no, no, no. It doesn't exist. Well, it doesn't exist. You know, I got to tell you something.

The biggest viral YouTube, whatever I ever got, is when I went berserk on the Occupy Wall Street guys. Yeah. Just told them to get their fucking shit together and go get a job. Yeah. and somebody told now here's the deal um i remember where i was more to be more exact i remember where i wasn't when you said it no no when it started going bananas on yeah youtube yeah i remember where i wasn't i wasn't fucking home yeah i was on the road somewhere doing something yeah and when i'm on the road i'm just kind of on the road yeah i don't travel with a laptop i have my cell phone

I answer a couple of emails if I can. I try to remind my wife and Matt Fondalear to answer some tweets if people say, hey, love the Mangria, tweet them back. Sometimes it works. But that's it. I call the kids and wife before I go out on stage, say good night. That's the extent of my technology. I don't have access to anything.

You won't find me in the business center looking up something or on. online. I don't go online for, you know, three days or whatever it is. So this thing's going berserk. I'm in St. Louis. I mean, I'm in a fucking red roof in, and then I'm doing two shows that night, and then we're going to the airport in the morning, and we're going from there to Pittsburgh. Guess what doesn't exist? Yeah, but Adam, let me give you an example. For you, it doesn't exist. To me, it doesn't exist. I had some, I had the Wall Street Journal write some out. And it wasn't, hold on, it wasn't even in a negative way, I was getting a lot of

praise for this, but it didn't exist to me because I was just in fucking St. Louis, and then I was in Pittsburgh and then I was sitting at Permanetti's eating a sandwich with Mike August, having a beer, and there was nothing around me. Like it was a tree falling in the forest. Let me tell you what happened to me. All right. So Wall Street Journal

writes some out and out lies about me. I mean, just frankly lies. Try to respond. They don't, of course, they don't listen. I had the same thing with Jezebel.com. Just frank lies. What were the lies? I don't want to get into it. because I don't want to get the scene going again. But here's the reason I'm telling the story.

All right. So fast forward three weeks. I get a letter from my professional society, the American College of Physicians, the word for whom I'm a fellow. You're guilty of unethical behavior. Look at this article. Come to Philadelphia and plead your case before a panel of ethicist. That's not what the letter said.

Oh, that is what it said. You go get the letter. You'll see it was a slightly watered-down version of what Drew's saying. I had to hire an attorney. I had to respond in great detail, lengthy detail, defending myself and trying to discourage them from needing me to come out there that they should look at the facts. And they then presented it to that committee. It took weeks and months and just like you, lots of money to make sure that your property defended came within inches of really serious trouble because of bullshit lies in the press. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, that's for real. As a professional, that is horrible. Well, that is, you know, you spent a lifetime working on something, and they go, and a bunch of liars say shit that affects your standing in the professional society. That's fucked up. Listen, I'm not going to argue with you on that point. It's this. But that's how it becomes real, and that's why it catches my attention.

I know. And look, it's sad, it's a sad state of affairs. There's no doubt about it. that's now unfortunately it is upon us Drew yeah and that's that at times I want to just embrace it and let it flame it up and let it go and go with it I don't know I don't what the hell you do with this you know what I mean I mean do just let's just go with it I don't know if you shut up let it happen my fantasies I just crawl in the bed like John Lennon and Yoko I want to just stay for one month and see what

happened that's that's what I do that's your dream come true be fair I just literally just go, you know what? Fuck it. You know what the internet has given us, though? Stamps.com. Ah, yeah. That's upcom. I love getting things done fast.

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dollars and free postage, go to Stamps.com, before you do anything else, click the microphone at the top of the home page, type in ADS. That's for Adam andrews show, ADS. That is stamps.com. Enter ADS. So that's why I pay attention to it, because it's threatening. Well, a small percentage of it is. The rest is you just paying attention to it because that's how you're knitted together. That's how you're knitted together. And look, we're all put together. Look, everyone has put together that way to an extent.

Yeah. Nobody wants to hear lies or negative things said about them, you know, outside of their home or inside their home, but especially in mass, on mass, in the press, that kind of thing, especially when they're lies. Yes. And, but this, you know what, you know what it is, Adam? Here's what it is. the feeling my biggest button in the world is talking and not being heard that really bothers me

it's kind of a helplessness that really bothers me you're going to be home at 7th yeah that same thing yeah except my wife hears me yeah strangely uh but because i can't tolerate being not hurt i really can't tolerate what do when she goes you said i get this all the time where lanet just goes oh no you said this and i'm like first off Why would I say that? I would not take that approach. I would never say that. Number two, who are you talking to?

I would take the approach of we need to figure this out. You and I need to communicate better. Something's wrong because I didn't say that. So let's figure this out. What it is is she wants it to be this way. So thus it shall be because I just said it this way. Yeah. Which is.

So I would say, I'll tell you what, I'm going to put it on the calendar every week. and look at the calendar and that's when I'm coming home. That's that. I have these guys, these guys looking for things to do. They're not busy. No, but listen, true. Guess who's so, guess who's busy? I understand.

I'm not going to go put it on the calendar. Have these guys put it in the calendar? Matt will put on the calendar. I have Matt doing shit like fucking, I'm fucking this close to telling Gary to give me a blowjob. Well, I mean, I'm here for you, boss. I'm just saying. No, Lynette gets a daily schedule. She gets a schedule.

Okay, so there you go. The schedule is schedule. That's it. There you go. Okay. That's how I do it. Yes. All right.

Anyway. And you can point at something and say that. There it is. No, no. I would point at it and say, there it is. Yeah. Which, by the way, is a time wasteer. But she would say, yeah, no, you said a third.

I didn't know if you were going somewhere after the podcast. Talk about calorie burners. I'm just saying it'd be nice. Yes. when you're busy just you say something it just is and writing things down

does help I've found as I'm seen with bucks slips in my hands constantly it's weird everyone treats not writing shit down

like some sort of badge of honor you know hey hey it's all up here no it's not no and I write shit down all the

I'm not telling you write shit down and then I'm not writing shit down I write everything down yeah I fucking drive my car and write shit down

I wish I wrote more down frank good discipline you should have thoughts should be written down the plans to be written down really that's all i do so write it down uh but anyway where were we we're complaining we're complaining all right so uh yes it is out there it is going to be out there and i think that the thing that's for i'll tell you what it is in a in a microcosm for those of you who might might not be in the public eye, but if you want a taste of this, I would say we all have clicks, friendships, relationships. And this, the feeling that you would have is this.

You have a couple of friends, and you go out to dinner with one of the friends. And then with that one friend, that one friend brings up the topic of the other friend who's not at dinner and you talk and they say things like well let's just call that guy Joel Joel is kind of late sometimes Joel sometimes you go yeah well yeah Joel's a good guy but Joel Joel is pretty tardy Joel we're supposed to go see Transformers and he was 15 minutes late and missed half the first act so Joel kind of screwed me on that one what's the writer's name or the film director's name dash I just call them Joel all right Joel's fine do you want to fucking stop in the middle of the fucking thing and change the person's name

Drew. Go ahead. Where's your fucking instincts? All right. His name is Joel. Now, all right. So what do they get from that? Joel stood me up.

Joel screwed me. That's the headline from that. And then you keep talking. And a lot of stuff where you go, Joel's salt to the earth. I love Joel very much. But Joel's got to floss a little more often because he can get a little funky breath going every now and again. All right. Joel, Joel has horrible halitosis.

So he's late, he's tardy, he's got halitosis. Right. And then you keep going for another hour-long conversation about your buddy. And before you know it, all they pick out is the low lights. And then they feed it back to Joel. And they go, well, Joel, did you hear what your alleged friend, Drew, had to say about you? And then the Joel goes, what the fuck? I thought we were friends.

All right, now, you take Joel and you just make that the community. And you take the snippets, and that's a Huffington Post interview. And now you go, oh, and now you have a million Jol's out there thinking, you just sat and talked shit about them. And now you're going, fuck, I didn't say, I mean, yeah, I said that, but I said it in this context with this in front of it and this behind it, but they didn't do that. Right.

When Gavin Newsom was talking about predatory check-cashing places, preying on Black and Hispanics and wanted to know, explain to me that Black and Hispanics didn't have access to checking accounts. The headline read, Adam wants to know what's wrong with Blacks and Hispanics. Yeah. Right. Like I brought it up. Like I said, Gavin Newsom, hey, I want to talk about what's wrong with blacks and Hispanics. He was talking about free white congestion. I jumped in.

Now, that's how it works. And that's how it's going to work. Now, here's the problem. Can I tell you why it's not going to work for long? Tell me. And why it's already starting to not work? Tell me. You can only cry wolf so many times.

Everyone can't be a racist. Everyone can't be homophobic. Everyone can't hate women. Everyone can't be xenophobic. Everyone can't be misogynists. Everyone can't be... everything all the time because it's losing its teeth. You know what's interesting about that?

I did another podcast here with the guy named Mark Rubberi is a really smart journalist. And he's a left-leaning guy. And he said, you know, the left is using these acronym these, what would you call a word like a racist? Like these pejoratives? Yeah, these pejoratives as the way the right used communists in the McCarthy era. It's become the same phenomenon where they're talking. trying to root it out and get it. And all we have to is call somebody that and they lose their job.

They get blacklisted. It's exactly what I said on my podcast. I don't know, a week ago. We talked about the McCarthyism. And I don't know if it's this podcast or my podcast, but it's a new form of McCarthyism. We're going to ground up all these people. We're going to turn them into haters of you fill in the blank. You fill in the group.

I actually got to say, I have mixed feelings about it because hatred really. does create horrible behavior. It really does. I'm not sure communism created any weird behaviors, but, you know, it does. And so to read out hatred is a good thing, but to go too far with it is, ooh, it then it becomes a thousand McCarthy thing. Well, root out real hatred. Don't root out people have never done anything to anybody. I mean, for Christ's sake. Jesus Christ. Anyway, or change them and not destroy them. You're not going to change them. The point is this. They don't believe what they're saying. They don't believe what they're saying, by the way.

Who's they? Well, let's say. Gavin Newsom. Okay. He doesn't believe what he's saying. He has no fucking idea. He's just whipping the mob up. Yeah.

He just wants. Did McCarthy believe what he was saying? I don't know. Listen, communism was a bad thing. Racism is a bad thing. Yeah, except for that doesn't exist near to the level that these guys say it exists. Racism? Yeah.

It does. To the level they say it exists. The hatred maybe doesn't at the level of racism. So you think the reason blacks and Hispanics aren't getting checking accounts is racism? No. Well, okay. Then it doesn't exist to the level. Okay.

Jesus Christ, Drew, that these guys say it exists. All right. Nobody says anything doesn't exist. Something. It all exists. It's not to. the level. That's what these guys do. Well, that's what I'm saying, whipping the mob up, getting the frenzy going. Okay, Drew. You're on record as a hero. Don't worry.

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