The Adam and Dr. Drew Show - Classic #213: The Motivation of Addiction

Episode Date: August 6, 2026

Feb 14, 2015Adam and Drew examine drug addiction and the realities behind the motivation of addiction. The pair then jump into the recent Brian Williams controversy and discuss how some of what Williams may have done could be easily explained by examining human behavior. As the show wraps up they speak to a caller whose business partner's girlfriend is beginning to interfere with their business.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Well, throwback episode, me and Dr. Drew, February 14th. Is that Valentine's Day? Oh, who knows? 2015, we examine drug addiction, realities, motivation, addictions, all there. Enjoy. This is Corolla Digital. 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 choice but to get it on mandate. Get it on. Thank you so much for listening. Thanks for telling a friend.

Thanks for keeping the pirate ship afloat. We do appreciate you guys for doing that. All righty then. How are you doing, Dr. Drew? Good. I got a bunch of stuff. You know. I want to chat or you got something you want to go to?

Well, I had something that I saw on Bill Marsh. show real time that had to do with addiction that I thought was very interesting. And of course, my first impulse was to think about you and how you would react to this information because it's sort of a thing where I'll play the clip in a second. But it was information that in one way I thought, ooh, Drew's not going to like this. just because he doesn't like people talking about addiction other than he. On the other hand, it sure made a lot of sense. And on just a very visceral basic level, like you just sort of went, oh, yeah, I guess that does make sense.

And I guess there was a Huffington Post article about relationships and addiction and disconnected. Was it in anything related to that? Yeah, it had to do. And it's kind of, it was part and parcel of something that I've always just kind of said, which is, you know, if people don't have a community and they don't have a reason to wake up in the morning and so on and so forth, they quickly find themselves with a bunch of diseases that don't let them get out of bed. Yeah. I've just. No, listen, how many times, maybe you haven't heard me say this, I don't say it so much on this show, but the interpersonal relationship is what humans need in, for everything, for a means,

for emotional regulation, for their spiritual fulfillment, and if they rupture those, and again, early trauma is what ruptures that, they can't regulate and they have to reach outside of their body to find ways to feel okay. No, I agree with that. This is just took it a little further than that. I'll play a clip. Hold on. One second.

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On Pluto TV. Stream now. Pay never. I think what we should do is we should play this clip. This is a Johann. I think it's Haris, his last name. It seems to be South African or British or something like that. But either way, he wrote a book about drugs and recovery.

I wouldn't mind having this. guy on so we can make a note. But it's very interesting, and let's give it a listen. It's a three-minute clip. So, what I find most interesting about your book is that you say everything we think we know about addiction has been wrong. Is that right? Yeah, it really struck me. You know, when I started working on this book four years ago, I had a very personal reason to do it. We had a lot of addiction in my

family. One of my first memories is trying to wake up one of my relatives and not being able to. And if you had said to me, what caused his heroin addiction. I would have looked at you like you were a little bit stupid and I would have said, well, heroin causes heroin addiction, right? We think that we've been told this story for a hundred years that's so obvious to us, it's like our sense of, it's like our common sense. We think if the first 20 people in this audience all used heroin together with us, on day 21, we'd all be heroin addicts because there are chemical hooks in heroin that our body would physically need. That's what we think heroin is. The first thing that alerted me to the fact that it may not be right

is, any of us, if we step out of here today and we get hit by a car, God forbid, and we break our hip, will be taken to hospital and we'll be given a lot of diomorphine. Diomorphine is heroin, right? Diomorphine is much better heroin than you're going to score out on the streets. It's medically pure, right, as opposed to stuff on the street, which is contaminated and very weak. You'll take it for quite a long time, right? You'll get morphine solvening. Happening every hospital in the United States, every hospital in the world, lots of people are taking heroin for long periods of time. Now, if our old theory about addiction is right, we know what should happen. Those people should go out and score on the streets, right?

You would have noticed that your grandmother was not turned into a junkie by her hip operation. And so I was thinking like, how can this be? What's going on there? And then I didn't really understand it. Let's pause it for a second. All right. So his premise so far. He had some weird misunderstanding about addiction, which is interesting because no one in this country, at least, ever says that.

In fact, even the mice models we use, you hear about mice self-administered cocaine and stuff, only 10 to 20% of mice will take cocaine. You already have a genetic subset of even mice. No. No, we as lay people think when we think about our children that if you try heroin, there's a decent chance you may get hooked. No. But that's the way we discuss it. There's a decent chance you'll vomit and feel like shit. But the drug dealer gives them the first hit free.

You give them that one for free. Get some hooked. Well, but, I mean, didn't you see the movie the town? Yeah, I understand what you're saying. Yeah, yeah. So far from... Do you understand what the florist does? What I deal with.

But, yeah, you have to have the gene to get addiction, number one. You have to have the same potential. And then you have to have something really motivating you. But he's not talking about addiction medicine specialists. He's talking about... Average person. Right, yeah.

Okay. I went interview to man called Professor Bruce Alexander in Vancouver, who did an incredible experiment that helps us to really understand this. Basically, the old theory of addiction comes from an experiment that was done earlier in the 20th century. Really simple experiment. Anyone watching this can do it at home if they're feeling a little bit sadistic.

And you get a rat, put it in a cage, and it has two water bottles. One is just water, and one is water laced with either heroin or cocaine. If you do that, the rat will almost always prefer the drugged water and almost always kill itself. You might remember there's an advert,

partnership for Drug Free America advert, in the ages about this and said, it was never the case. It will happen to you or something like that. He said, hold on. He said it was an old... It was not. It was not.

He'd have to show me the study because all the studies always first pull out the mice that do that because most mice won't go to the drug at all. Right. They just don't like it. Okay. It's the ones to do that we study. Well, that's why I'm bringing this up to you. So, hold on. You will pull out the ones that go right for it because you go, okay, they have the gene.

They're the ones that self-administer so we can study them. Right. Or they breed those. Right. Okay. Bruce came along in the 70s and said, well, hang on a minute. We're putting the rat in an empty cage.

It's got nothing to do except take the drugs. Let's do this differently. So Bruce built Rat Park. Rat Park is like heaven for rats. It's got, in this cage, it's got like colored balls. It's got loads of friends. It can have loads of sex. Anything a rat could want, it's got in Rat Park.

And it's got both the water bottles. It's got just normal water and drugged water. But here's the fascinating thing. In Rat Park, they don't like the drugged water. Right. almost never use it. What Bruce says about that is it tells us that both the right-wing theory of addiction and the left-wing theory of addiction around, the right-wing theory is some moral failing, your party too hard. The left-wing theory is it hijacks your brain and so on. What Bruce says is

it's not your morality, it's not your brain, it's your cage, it's an adaptation to your environment. And there's some really interesting human examples of that as well. It's called the Vietnam War. 20% of American troops in Vietnam were using heroin a lot, right? And if you look at the new stories from the time, they're really worried because they thought, my God, we're going to have loads of junkies on the streets in the United States when the war is over. So what happened? They came home and they just stopped. Some did.

Some stopped and some didn't. The one that didn't were addicts. And the ones that stopped were dependent. Right. But he's right, though. But this is a new conversation about what motivates the initiation of addiction. And that's absolutely true. You know, if you have other ways to regulate your brain than doing drugs, you'll do that.

But rats like, you know, rat parks, humans like relationships. Right, right. Well, rat park is a relationship. Yeah. I mean, it's screwing and colored balls. Right. But the point is well taken. Absolutely.

And if that's how people have to come to it, they don't understand. This guy's got to tell the story. We've known that for a long time. What is saying? Right. You've known it for a long time as a professional in this industry. But I've been chanting about it for 20 fucking years. No, I know.

You've been talking about relationships and systems and support and community. But as a society, we've not really, you know, as I've always said, we, look, every good science fiction movie, Drew, every single one. Whenever there's an alien or an alien life force that comes to this planet, it starts off with finding, killing the aliens that are all dropping out of the sky, but at a certain point, they go, we need the nest or we need the mother. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We need the whatever. Yeah.

And our society, the source, yeah. The source is creating all the aliens. That's the big break. That happens toward the end of Act 2, and then the end of the movie is then blowing up the source, the mothership. So the source of all of this bullshit, the source of the criminal behavior, the school to prison pipeline, the drug addiction, what do you figure the sources? It's family. Thank you. And. Okay.

It's child. So, it's really now, it's gone beyond family now it's childhood trauma. Okay. So it's a hub and from the hub many spokes emanate. Yep. And some go toward addiction, some go toward prison, some go toward both, some go

toward poverty, some go toward violence, crime, sexual abuse of violence. They all just, there's one spoke in there. And they all just go different directions. Now, what my good friend at Gavin Newsom and the Huffington Post want to do is go outside of the rim, find each spoke, and try to address the nipple at the end of the spoke. What I'd like to do is focus on the hub. I don't know why that isn't discussed more often. Everyone keeps tweeting me the teacher.

union get their, you know, periodical, whatever it is, and it's a picture of a school bus dropping off kids in front of a prison. Yeah. The school, the prison pipeline must be addressed. Nice. I wonder how they're going to address it. We'll get rid of the bus. The bus is the fractured family.

Right. I mean, it's, but it's, I mean, look, again, find. It's intergenerational trauma. Find me with the, Gary, sorry. Find me with the super-educated person from the Huffington Post interviewing me. No, I don't want to see that again. I have to hear her. I have to hear her.

I have to hear her. I'm dying to talk to line three up there real quick. Put Josh on that. All right. Fascinating. All right. Discussion. Josh.

Josh. Hey, how are you guys? Good. What's going on? Good. The first 15 years, clean and sober. And listening to Love Line years ago with a meth pipe for one hand and a bottle of booze, the other, somehow you guys. peaked into my decisions to get sober.

So thank you guys. Cool. Thank you. Yeah. And, you know, one of the things that I heard you guys talking about a while back was how Seth Rogan seems to have some feeling that Dr. Drew hates or doesn't like marijuana or any drug. And I don't, and I seem to get that feeling a lot from people. And I never get that from Dr. Drew.

I know. It's bizarre. I don't, just the way there's no such thing as a, what, a good or a bad, whatever you were referring to, I forget not what you were, oh shit, you had a diatribe about this. Anyways, no thing is a good or a bad drug.

And by the way, people in a legalized pot, fantastic, have at it. Spark up. I don't give a shit. No, you know what? I think, honestly, Drew. What? Your name is Dr. Drew. Yeah. And you sort of look like the man.

And so we're now living, in a society that we've crafted that just puts everyone in a box and if you look the part, then you are that. But that's complete horseshit. Of course it's horseshit. If Dr. Drew is a doctor

and a diabetic comes in and Dr. Drew says, you know what? You shouldn't be taking in sugar. It doesn't mean you hate sugar. No, not at all. In fact, I kind of dig, I like, I ate a cake yesterday.

I don't know, by the way, it's probably not his example who's make, But, anyway, Dr. Drew had cake. I meant I spoke to much of pot. I understood. It was laced with cannabis. Yeah, what's going on is everyone, I feel, is insanely defensive about everything or protesting way too much, which is if you want to smoke pot, smoke pot.

And if you don't legalize it. Drew's never said anything other than that. No, I don't think this is a good drug and a badger. Oxycontin, man, if you have cancer, man, if you have cancer, that. That is a good drug. If you were a heroin addict, that's a bad drug. But it's not because the drugs good or bad. It's the context and the relationship.

And otherwise, I would actually go for legalization of all drugs, of all victimless crimes. We've talked about that 15 years ago, you and I, right? Well, we've never stopped talking about it. I never have, but at some point. I don't know it's the world I want to create necessarily because it does help me when there's legal parameters. It helps me help the patients. But I believe in our system and our government. If we want to legalize something, the people, they should.

I'll deal with the headaches as a doctor. Chris from Seattle, 37. Chris. Morning, guys. How you doing? Good. How you doing? Hey, not bad. You know, Adam, a couple months ago, I was having lunch over at Santa Monica,

and I'm sitting next to a woman. She's feeding her dog at the table with a fork. Right. Right. That, by the way, by the way, that's completely and utterly fine, but if you lit up a cigarette, you'd be taken out of that place in fucking zip time. Or if you tried to vaccinate her child. Or if you tried to vaccinate her dog. Protect the community.

By the way, those people, by the way, get their dogs, all their shots, not their kids. Interesting. Interesting. I dig that. The dogs get the parvo shot. But not the kids. Oh, ha, ha. Ah. I want to know the percentage of the people that give the dogs a shot and not their kids.

I guarantee the dogs get 100% of the shots. Dogs can't get autism, dude. They don't have bad. They don't have leaky guts. First off, Molly may have autism or she may be full-blown tard. I don't know. Doesn't matter. She does his nap all day and eat my money.

All right. No, it's okay But the whole situation just made me wonder Like if you yourself came across The situation like that A, would you say anything to her about the behavior And if not What do you think might be the evolutionary advantages

To narcissism, if any? Oh, there are many, I think Well, there's got to be a bunch Because otherwise we wouldn't have it I mean, there can be errors in evolution Not that even's a straight line But there's got to be some adaptive value Given its pervasiveness and its persistence

sense. And I think it is... I will tell you, I'll tell you why it exists or how it exists. Tell me. I do believe. I know why sort of... Every... Everything ultimately gets traced back to fucking. Okay. Because that's kind of why we're here. Right. The species gets perpetuated that way.

That's what we're here for. I think that's what Darwin said. Everything gets traced back to fucking. I think that was his original theory. stated as such. Women are wildly attracted to narcissists. Early, particularly during their prime reproductive years, interestingly. It's so funny because I've, it's weird. Like, I had an assistant once, and he was nice, shy, wildly ineffective at everything or unaffective.

I can never remember which one at it. Ineffective at everything. Eventually, I just had to have. to let him go because he was a bumbling like mess. But he was really good looking. But he never came across as attractive. Right. Because he was a kind of bumbling mess.

Yeah. But as I was just sort of one day just looking at his bones, I realized this guy's like John Hamm, but he's not, it's his posture. It's his mentality. It's his whatever. No, women weren't throwing themselves at Adams. Ultimately, I know guys who just are. literally their whole career is based on personal momentum, making millions of dollars and getting tons of good pussy just on that narcissistic kind of personal momentum.

Women are incredibly attracted to that. And I think from an evolutionary standpoint, that certainly plays a big role in it. They must be better survivals in adversity. It may not be adaptive in times of peace and times of communal growth and where we're all sort of, you know, focused on getting along together and building our relationships, but in a time of crisis, they may be better survivors. Yeah. They must be.

That's why it sort of exists. So, yes. So, and again, most people you see on TV aren't necessarily the most talented people on the planet. They have personal momentum. But, Chris, back to your question. Was that it? Well, would you say anything to her? I mean, because she clearly needs to have something said to her.

No. No, I... You know what? Wait, wait, I know what will happen. When that person walks down the aisle of the airplane and Adams in first class sipping on his bloody Mary, he will go, oh, it's game on. It's over. He'll announce to the plane. You'll announce to everybody that this chick is a problem.

I'll tell you how what I do. I'll tell you how I do it. I am not sitting at her table. I'm not paying for her meal. I pardon the pun, don't have a dog in this fight. So even though I don't like it and I don't like what society's turned into, it saddens me, but that's her business. I will tell you this, things that I have done in the past in terms of confronting people or telling people this or that, which I've done. I do rarely, but I have done.

When I park at the Burbank Airport and I go out and do a one-nighter while Drew and my wife get drunk and squandered my money on airplane rides will never take. But either way, when I come back to pick up the car, when the 5'7 guy gets out of the car, I have my $5 tip in my hand. If he's left that seat all the way up, I go, sometimes. and only sometimes. I'll go, no tip for you. You left the seat all the way up now. I can't get in the car.

And by the way, what if he gets back in right then and fixes it? I would give it to him, but they never do that. And also, you move the seat up. You got to move it back. But how about this, folks? When you see the guy walking toward the car,

and you see the guy walking toward the car 6-2, or 6-7, and you see that you're in the car with a nice bend in your elbows. How about you take your left hand, slide it down to that little switch that's on every car that's valeted these days and just push it all the way. How about just push the board? Probably this number one. It's probably a preset. No, don't piss in the guy's car. No.

Oh, I get you. Yeah. How about that just part of your job? There's only a couple of parts of your job. By the way, that guy will immediately. get on a website and talk about what an asshole you are for a shitty tipper. Same guy. Listen, I never give a shit about any of that stuff.

You're not doing your job. And the tip has to do with you doing your job. Speaking of doing jobs, I want to switch to what you're saying about how everyone's so sanctimonious and perfect. You know, no one, no one, you know, everyone is judging everyone else, but everyone else, you know, people on social media, of course, themselves, they're perfect. What do you think about this is Brian Williams thing? Damien's your thoughts on it. Well, I think I have more than one thoughts, a little bit layered. He lied.

He lied. He lied. He lied. Listen, I've listened to the... Okay, but hold on. I'm giving my opinion. But I think he lied. I think he lied, but it doesn't matter.

There's a couple things. You know what the facts about what happened or no? He was in the second helicopter. the first helicopter was hit. He had to drop his payload. They're carrying a bridge, and they all landed basically because of it. Right. And he thought at the time they were taking fire.

And he may have thought that at the time. Right. Okay. Yes. Okay. Now, what he did is what human beings do. I don't think of myself as a hero, but here goes. What we should.

Well, no, this is exactly what happened, and then you tell me. I've told you before when I was in my Santa Monica apartment many years ago, and I heard a woman screaming out on the sidewalk at about 10 o'clock at night. I ran out to the sidewalk to see what this woman was screaming about. When I got to her, she pointed in this guy basically mug me, grabbed my purse and briefcase or whatever, and he's running down. He's getting away. By the way, the woman was blonde and hot.

Good motivation. Yeah, I don't think it factored in at the time. I had a lot adrenaline going. I chased the guy down the sidewalk, and I started to catch up to him, and his friend kept weaving in and a beat-up old RX-7 trying to pick him up, jump in the car. The idea, one guy jumps out, grabs the purse, jumps in the car, they speed off. He kept weaving in, but I was too close to the guy.

I would have caught him if he stopped. to jump into the car, what have you. Anyway, at a certain point, he threw the briefcase, he dropped the purse. I guess maybe an attempt to have me stop chasing him. And it worked. So I stopped. And I gathered all the shit up.

And the chick was kind of trailing us, and she came up on us. And she was a cunt. Oh, no, seriously? I'm so fucking literally. What? She didn't appreciate what you did? Never said thanks.

Never got a fucking note. What? I came from a six-unit apartment building, and she knows exactly the, the apartment I came from. Oh, my God. Was she a neighbor or something? Yes, she lived like two apartments over.

And all I got when she showed up is, oh, God, he's got, oh, where's my wallet? He took my wallet. I just went to the ATM. I just took out $200 from the ATM, and he took my wallet. He took it. He still has the wallet. Oh, I knew it. I knew it.

You go to the ATM, you take out $200, and this is what happened. And I said, well, maybe it's around here somewhere. And at a certain point, it was dark. At a certain point, she went, oh, here it is. She didn't connect it to me. She said, I found the wallet. And then later on, as the cop showed up and the neighbors filed out, the cops said, what went on? What do you think the story was?

She chased the guy. No. We all heard the screaming and chased the guy. All the neighbors? All the neighbors. Oh, my God. This is human mentality. This is how we're wired.

They didn't come down and go, what happened? We heard screaming and that guy with the pew patch for haircut, that guy chased this guy down. And then later on, after the danger part was over, we filed out of our buildings to see what was happening. The story was we heard scream. We heard a woman screaming. So we all came out. Wow. And, you know, I don't know if they said we gave chase.

They made it into a communal thing. They took what I did, which was somewhat heroic, and they just grafted it to themselves. Because they were there at the same time. And the cop wasn't. And the cop wanted to know what was going on. So they did what human beings do, including Brian, which is, here's what, here's my. Here's what we did. That's the way humans are wired.

It'd be no different than if a gunman did a takeover robbery of a bank and tried to file everyone into the vault. And one dude who was an ex-Marine smacked the gun out of his hand and got him in a headlock. And then everyone jumped on him. What do you think that story would be? We got it. We all jumped it. All right. Okay.

That's how human beings. It's interesting. I don't think professionals would see it that way. Like if a cop were involved in it, they would say, oh, they'd have all broken down more because they're used to these things. There should be a slightly different standard, but look, we're 9,000 miles away. It's the middle of the night. This makes a pretty good story on Letterman. The story on Letterman is a lot better of having my helicopter taken some shrapnel versus the one in front of me.

So you do what other human beings do. And by the way, what human beings have been doing their entire life. I don't know. Read the Bible. Yeah. I don't know if Moses actually parted something with a staff. I don't know. But there's a lot of hyperbole and exaggeration.

When I go on Letterman or Kimmel or Leno or whatever the thing is, I tell stories. I use a little hyperbole. It's to make the story a little bit better. You get it? Yeah. If the kid woke you up in reality on Christmas morning at 8 a.m., you say, 6 a.m. gets a bigger laugh. It's not factually true.

But here's the deal. It gets a bigger laugh. It doesn't make me a liar? Right. There's another layer of irony to this. People go, well, he's a journalist. He has to stay with the truth of facts. Are you fucking kidding me?

These people distort shit every time they open their mouth. All of them do. Yes. Routinely. To tell the story that they want to tell it. And no one worse than print, fucking print, nuance and in innuendo that makes the story a story. Their fucking editors are all, you know, making it colored, coloring it in some way.

Yeah. That's all they do. A black teenage guy just walking down the sidewalk mind his own business, cop comes up behind him, shoots him in the back of the head. For no reason. That's the first story that comes out, you know. Eventually things start getting picked apart. But yeah, we get that story all the time.

We get a million versions of that. But what is the sanctimonious fucking bullshit where everyone's like, oh, that guy needs to be taken down? And they're not happy until he loses his job until he's hurt. No, look, I've got to tell you what we do, I believe, because we talk on this show a lot about wiring. And I bring up Lance Bass all the time. You do?

I almost never bring up Lance Bass. Well, that's me exaggerating. See, I'm prone to hyperbole. What I'm saying is is this. How we say this. We needed to know what if Lance Bass was gay because we thought Lance Bass was gay and it was bothering us. The second he came out. I mean, Lance Bass came out what?

Four years ago? Jesus, more. Seven years ago? At least, yeah. Find out when Lance Bass came out. He came out. Has there been any Lance Bass, any real Lance Bass gay discussions since then? No.

No, you know, we don't care. We cared when we thought we knew something that we weren't. We weren't being satisfied. I know that guy's gay. I know he's gay. No, I'm not. I got a girlfriend. God damn it.

What's wrong with me? See, what's wrong with my computer? Yes. We're constantly questioning ourselves. What else am I wrong about? Yeah. I mean, it's so we do it all the time where you go, who sings that song? And then somebody goes, oh, no, that's not.

That's a Seals and Croft song. And you go, no, it's not. No, it's not. I know it. I know it. What do you do? First thing you get home, you Google it or you do it on your phone because you're bothered by because you're worried about your own decision-making process.

Yeah, the reality, you try to assess, be connected around. Jesus Christ. Almost 10 years. Yeah. Nine years. Not coming up on nine years. Right. Not been a lot of Lance Bass discussion since then because it's not him being gay.

It's us thinking is gay and him telling us he's not gay. Okay. So, Brian Williams is gay. That's where they're there. I hope that that's where this all is going. And this is an elaborate ruse to throw me off what I know is the truth. Don't give me the family man married for 26 years with a beautiful daughter. Did you see his wife on girls?

His daughter on girls? Proof. No. What he did is he did what all of us would do. He did what all of us would have done and what everybody on 14th Street in Santa Monica did in 1989 or 1990 with that chick in her purse.

How you're doing down there? Rent control one bedroom apartment. Anyway, he did what we all do do and would have done. Now, then his explanation

put us in a Lance Bass department. So it's really the apology that fucked him up. Well, first off, I didn't need an apology. Yeah. I just needed him going. Explanation.

You know what? Yeah. I did what many. Well, first off, but this is not a story I'm reporting on. Yeah. This is a story from my life. Okay. Number one.

So I didn't put it, I didn't file it under professional, whatever. Number one. Number two, it's a better story to say you were in the one. one that was hit versus the one that was behind the one that's hit. And especially when your job is to go on Letterman, part of your job is to go on Letterman, that's the story. I shouldn't have told that story. I embellished a story. It could have been mine. It wasn't. It was the one in front of me. And that's it. And that's it. Now, instead, he said, in order to pay homage to a hero, I did this.

So the first thing he did was he took it and he said, I only really did it because I was trying to help someone else in the military, which is not the story. That's not why you did it. You did it for the same reason. Everyone told the cops in Santa Monica that they chased this guy down. All right. You're a human being.

Be a human being. That's all we want out of you. And this thing will, ooh, look, I knocked something over, Drew. This thing will blow over. But what you did is you told the story where you go, well, my memory faded. And I was paying homage to a fallen hero or to a hero. And then also two gut-wrenching days in the desert with a sandstorm. You kind of made it back into you being a hero again.

Part of it is... That's where people had the problem. Right. Now we should shut up and get the fuck on with ISIS and the school to prison pipeline. Right. But the people don't. don't want to hear nuanced anything. You know what I mean?

If it's a hard explanation, people don't hear it. I don't think it's that hard. It wouldn't have been at the beginning, I agree with you, but now I'm not sure they want to hear it. It's a frenzy. The problem is in the way, what I do with everything all the time, everybody, I do it architecturally and I do it contextually. I just do the opposite, and then I know.

I always do the opposite. When I'm... Meaning what? Well, I've always said this. When you're thinking about an automobile, a sports car, high-performance sports car, a race car, and you think, hmm, what would be the most aesthetically pleasing? You go, okay, front tire and back tire the same size? No, back tire, big and meaty, front tire, little skinny. And then you go, how do I know that's true?

Reverse it. Reverse it. Just put a big, fat, wide, slick in the front and put a little skinny tire in the back. Oh, my God. You've just taken a Ferrari and turned into a piece of shit, right? Yeah, yeah. All right. So all I do with everything is reverse it.

All right. So his memory failed. Let's just say it was the opposite. And could this ever happen? Could his helicopter have taken fire? His helicopter taken fire. And his memory remembered the story of, The lead helicopter took fire.

Mine didn't. If he had actually taken fire, yeah, no. That's impossible. Right, right. We all know that's impossible. Right. Well, then we kind of know that the opposite is possible. Is or impossible as well.

You know what I'm saying? Right, right. Would there ever be a fact where his memory faded when he did take actual fire? No. All right. So your memory wouldn't fade in this situation. Yeah. You know what I mean? It's like this.

I'll give you a very good example. Many people have spoken to owed me money or owed someone I've known money and I've said, hey, did you pay that person or did you pay me back? And they went, yeah, I'm pretty sure I think I did. I'm pretty sure I did. I'm pretty sure I did. And I go, no, you didn't. How's that person's memory when you owe them money?

Right. Perfect. Okay. So we know it's not the memory. Yeah. It's the situation. Yeah. Okay.

That's how I do things. It's an interesting skill to know what to reverse. It's not immediately obvious to know what you should be reversing. I tell you when you're placing a hinge, I'm looking at this door. There's an upper hinge. Take the hinge and put it almost at the very top of the door and you go, oh, that doesn't look very good. Don't move it down three inches. Move it down a foot and a half and go, ooh, that's, no, no, no, we've gone way too far.

It looks bad there. you know your zone. But when I'm always thinking, just reverse it or jump the other way with it or flip the script and you'll find your answers. That's the way I do everything. It's interesting. It's interesting. I don't do that.

I do it about murder trials when I hear about OJ going, look, if somebody accused me of cutting Lynette's head off while I was on the way to the fucking L.A.X. and then pulled me back from Chicago and said, we found her in a condo with her head cut off, and we think you did it? I'd be like, oh, boy, someone's going to get sued. I'm going to be rich, but I'm done with this. When they find the junkie that did it, I'm fucking suing all your asses.

Where's my lie detector? What do we got for evidence? Let me give you some saliva, and I'll give you a stool sample, too. Let's go. Yeah. Let's do this right now. I don't want to go another fucking 10 minutes.

I get back to Chicago. What are we talking about here? I mean, that's my, that's, that's the reaction if you are, in fact, in the back of a town car and on the way to L.A.X. You understand? Yeah, I'm just thinking about how the prosecution might spin it if there's no remorse, no grief. Oh, no. The tears will come. Well, first, there's denial.

Denials first, right? Yeah. It wasn't me. I got a corporate kick. All right. Man. No, I'm saying, what I'm saying is the reaction. I get it.

Not appropriate. Okay. You find that Huff Poe thing? I just want to hear 20 seconds. So painful. I don't care. This is how they work. What was it?

The you and Gavin Newsome were talking about. We were talking about poverty, right? Gavin Newsome one on this JAG where he said half the Hispanic and African-American people living in Los Angeles don't have access to an ATM or checking accounts. And I said, why not? And he said, what do you mean, why not? Or something. And I said, what's the problem? And he said, oh, it's a multitude of problems.

And I said, well, what are they? And he started off on this JAG about check cashing places, preying upon black. blacks and Hispanics. And I said, who else they're praying upon? And he said, everybody. And I said, then why did you just single out blacks and Hispanics? And he said, because they're praying upon them. He did a bullshit, cowardly politician, talk in a circle, provide no answers,

just make these broad sweeping proclamations that black people and Hispanic people couldn't get checking accounts. And my question to him is, was and still is, why not? What's going on? I mean, if a Hispanic person walks into a bank, they're going to be turned away, or what's going on? And then you're a politician. What are we doing here to try to... He didn't give you a good answer as to perhaps what he thought maybe some of the systemic causes are that...

It's zero. It's zero. You know, in positions where they are more likely to live in poverty and be great... I gave him the answer, which is family and education. We could all get out of this mess, and he said it was much more complicated than that. But then... What is a little more complicated than that than just saying family and education? Not much.

Oh, but come on. I mean, it's a system right where if you... It is much harder to get out of a certain income bracket if you're born into it. If you live in a certain neighborhood, and that affects the quality... That's why you have to focus on family and education. I mean, I'm not Christian or anything. You bring up Asians. It would solve everything.

that's your usual go to. This family and education? What about, you know, the drug war that we have that's failing? What about the school to prison pipeline things like this? The school to prison pipeline, if you focused on education, I think would interrupt the school to prison pipeline. Well, the problem is that schools are, well, yeah, schools are maybe not focusing on education so much as they are on representing children.

All right. But there is an interesting thing. You can keep going. You don't have to agree with it. You're going to fix it. I was curious. By the way, hold on. I don't have to agree with her.

Turn it down. Families and dad. Please stop it. Focus on education. Chris, wake up. There's a guy waving his arm wildly next to you. Here's the thing. I don't have to agree with her.

Agree with what? She's just disagreeing with me. Right. She's talking about systemic poverty and blah, blah, blah. I don't know. But she's no answers. All right. We disagree.

Let me tell you what an argument is. Argument is, is we're going to the Bay Area. I want to take the one. No, no, take the grapevine. Now we can sit and argue about why the one versus the grapevine is a better route. One's shorter, the other one's more scenic, one has more traffic, what time are we going? Your answer is just no. We're not going to the Bay Area.

Right. We just disagree. We're not disagree. You have no fucking answer. I encountered the school to prison pipeline in a way that I thought was productive. This weekend, Strange, I was in Arizona. And I was giving a talk on addiction, and this woman started talking from the audience asking questions. And she goes, I'm on a school board, and we have two 15-year-olds that just got picked up for possession of pot, and they're going to get expelled.

And I said, well, that's, then what's going to happen to those kids? They're going to get on the pipeline, man. They're going. Yeah, I do agree with that. Right. And so I said, well, why the fuck don't we give kids? opportunities for treatment and education. And that's right there.

That interrupts the school to prison pipeline. There's something to do there. Let's talk about intervening there with treatment and finding what the fuck's going on with those kids. Well, of course, they don't. It's too costly too expensive to do that. I agree with all of this stuff, which is let's not throw everyone out of school and arrest everybody. But what I am saying is family staying together and intact is going to impact this more than all the little stupid ideas you don't have.

But what was stunning to me was, believe me, this woman would more aligned with that woman that was interviewing you than with you. And she was bewildered by this idea. Like, you mean, what? We could do. I mean, there might be something wrong. This kid might have something. Bewildered. It was amazing to me.

This is a school board member who has those ideas that you were coming back. My ideas are not my ideas. idea is called life, nature, and gravity. I'm not making up anything. I don't have ideas. I simply observe life and look at it based on its components. This is just life. This is not my idea. I always love it when I talk to people and they're like, I'm like, look, given all things being equal, all things being equal, a mother and a father, better for raising a child than two moms or two dads. All things being equal. And they're like, well, okay, you have your opinion.

That's not my opinion. That's not my opinion. That's just the way nature, God, Allah, whoever, that's just how it was designed. Not saying, look, I would have been better off raised by David Gaffin and his partner. Believe you fucking me. Or just two raccoons. Or two fucking raccoons. I would have been better off.

But I'm just saying all things being equal. that's your opinion. No, no. It's not my opinion. It's nature's opinion. I'm just echoing back. I wish I thought of all this stuff. Yeah.

I wish family staying intact and focusing on education was my idea. It's nature's idea. There are plenty of examples of cultures that focus on it, by the way, that have done pretty nicely for themselves over the years. You need to start listening to me then about deeper education and grit. Okay. Because look at the evidence, just the cultures that you're just talking about. I tuned out.

Sorry. Nathan? Nathan? Nathan, 30 from Texas? Gone. Did we pot him up? Is he all right? Let's try it again. Yeah, they just started premarital.

We'll go to line four. That guy's for a long time. That's a really interesting question. Okay. Jeff? Jeff? Yes. What's going on?

Hi, guys. Get it on. Good, man. Hold on a second. Nathan? Nathan really is out of it. Yeah. All right.

Jeff, sorry. Go ahead. I'm back. guys for keeping me entertained while I'm on hold. I appreciate it. Thanks Jeff appreciate it. Good attitude. So I get right to it. I got a I'm 30 years old and I started a business with a at the time a guy who was 60 and he quickly became my mentor and kind of a good buddy and almost like a father figure. A couple years ago his girlfriend is always also up there in age and I think they're just wanting to, she's wanting to retire.

He's got, he's got a motor like you guys, always wanting to work. People pleaser. Now he's an introvert, meaning that's where I come in and we'll make a great team and we run the business well because I'm kind of the opposite personality. What kind of business? It's landscaping. We do landscape maintenance. Landscape is pretty general.

We're up here in Seattle, so it's almost year-round work. We don't get any snow and it's always raining. Right. 50 degrees. Yep. No Mexicans. Oh, yeah. Who do you hire, man? Just, you know, Sleppy guys who barely finished high school or got through GUD and can follow a simple direction.

So they get it done. I love to her. How many times I told you that story? You know, poor people. They do this thing all the time. again, it's very Huffington Post where they act like, well, you got the white privilege, so you're like, no, I was poor.

So I was a, I was a labor. Yeah. It wasn't a assistant or a carpenter's whatever. I was just a labor. I was a day labor. I got paid by the day to do labor. Like this guy's employees. Like the guys I went to high school with.

Yeah. Yeah. Not the Jewish ones, but the other ones. Sorry. That's absolutely, that's who we hired. Yeah. just like you. Yeah. That's how I started.

Yeah. Me and fucking Ryan, Chris, the guys who were shitty students in high school. So Jeff started to. Parents didn't give a fuck. Yes. Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah, guys do, you know, one out of the three guys doesn't have a car or doesn't have a license. There's no white privilege. You're not up here anyway. Yeah, well, so. I don't see it.

Well, of course, you wouldn't see it. You got blue eyes. Absolutely. Blue eyes can't see white privilege, man. Privilege is invisible to those of it. Well, no, but so, Jeff, you started on, what, 12 years ago? Absolutely.

And what did you make an hour? You got out of high school and you did what? Well, push broom and, you know, pushing mowers. You make minimum wage you're close to. Right. Until you start getting your bearings. Once you can read tape, meaning, you know, measuring tape, you get a little bit more an hour. Yeah.

You know, you just kind of, you work your way up from the bottom. And you really, I've worked my way to the middle. Yeah, but you realized, you realize probably like a 19-year-old Adam Carolla did that digging holes for a living is kind of a shitty gig, like pushing a mower for a living, is kind of a shitty gig. And you looked around and you saw other guys with tape measures and tools and said, if I could learn to use the tool and read the tape measure, I can get myself up to 15 bucks an hour and maybe buy a decent truck. and by the way, buying a decent truck would get me another buck an hour. And you just kept going from there, right? Absolutely right. Start buying your own tools.

You start just showing a little bit of initiative. Otherwise, you know, you'll see those guys. They need new knees at 50 years old because they're still doing the ditch digging. I know. It's adorable. I know. All right, so. Back to the problem.

This guy's my mentor. He's got wisdom. them. Every time I work with them and we do any project, it gets done three times better than anything. It's weird. It's like magic. I've been doing this for a long time. But him and I together, whenever we do anything, it goes well.

And when we do make mistakes, you know, I'm smarter for it. Right. He'll teach me in the process. I'm losing. And I don't know if I'm being selfish or what's going on. Now, he wants to continue working. He doesn't want to sell his half of the business. But his girlfriend, really, I mean, he's only coming in two or three times a week now.

Why? I don't. Hold on. Let me ask you this. First off, why would your wife, I don't think my wife, and I don't think your wife, I'm talking to Drew, would want me putzing about the house all day? Right. They'd like her, him, go away a little bit. Yeah.

Maybe she has some weird travel plans or something. I mean, I don't get it. The guy, I understand if the guy's, you know, Muie Thai boxer and he's getting into his 40s, he's getting busted up or, you know, he's traveling abroad all the time. But the notion that the guy's just getting up early as landscapers do, you get started early. You're usually home by three, four in the afternoon.

What's five days a week? I mean, maybe you scale it back to four days a week. Big whoop. What's the problem? Yeah. What are we missing, Jeff? Well, she's up there in age two. Now you notice I said girlfriend.

I didn't say wife. He's wanting to travel and do all these kind of things. I don't know if she's having some personal issues. She hates me and I hate her. That's kind of a weird thing. All right. You know what? I think that develops over time.

Jeff, you know what I would explain? I would have a conversation with the guy, the introvert, and telling me he's going to have to take it. take his flower off the wall a little bit and man up a little with his girlfriend. And I would say this. This business, to me, is important. And especially as a guy, sorry Huffington Post, but there are subtle differences. We get a lot of our self-worth, pride, sense of self out of work, out of our career.

Yep. We really, it's really an important thing for us. Yep. It's not as important for some women and everyone's wired a little bit differently, but in general, guys really get a lot of the way they feel about themselves over their work. So if you'd like me to stay home full time, I can do that, but I'm probably going to be a little bit depressed and I may resent you a little bit for forcing my hand. But I do understand you have wishes too. So why don't we meet in the middle? Which is kind of what they're doing.

He's working part-time. We'll go on that trip. Go ahead and plan that trip. We'll go on that trip. And I'll cut back my work to part-time. But as a dude, I feel like I still got some years left to me, and it's important to me. And by the way, it shall be important to you because you don't want to see me moping. You want me to feel good about myself.

Right. I'm not going to be very fun to be around. And just like if I forced you to do something you didn't want to do, I wouldn't get a good version of you around this house all day. That's how I would explain it to him and tell him he has to explain that to her that way. Or I can just give her buzz. Absolutely not. She needs to hear from him.

Otherwise, it's just going to continue and get, you know. Yeah, I agree. And people need to. I used to tell this to our young Loveline listeners who are begging their girlfriends for anal sex all the time, which is you don't understand, look, here's how women work. It's how men work, too. But I'd say women especially. You force them to even go to a restaurant.

I've had this happen before, you know, where I've just done the fucking proclamation. I went barbecue, you know. The wife says, I went sushi. And I've done the, for the love of Christ, I've been on the fucking road the whole year. I'm paying. I want some barbecue. You can eat sushi when I'm out of town next weekend. Can we eat some barbecue?

And then what you get is you get the person pouting on the other side of the thing, looking at the menu going, eh, right. It's not much for me to order here. Actually, Lynette's pretty good about that. But you force somebody into the proverbial restaurant they don't want to eat at. They'll look at the menu and go, there's nothing here. There's nothing here for me. But both eat shaving cream.

But no. Yes. But let me say this. So you think you've just won a victory? Yeah. With your barbecue and anal sex? I like to use the sauce as a lubricant. It's water soluble.

They go together always. Yeah. Now, I don't use the, I don't, I don't use the Kansas City rub. Not the spicy. Not the Kansas City rub. I use the sweet and tangy. Vinegar. Yeah.

Molasses base. The rub? No, no. That's a little rough. Listen. The hard way. A lot of a holiday. Special occasion.

No, I'm saying, I used to say, like, you're going to talk this chick in anal sex. She's going to do it, and then she's going to be pissed at you. And then you're going to walk around with this person. You're going to live in this apartment with this person that's pissed at you. Don't fucking do it. And it's a two-way street. Ladies, don't get the guy to whatever. I look, if it's quit drinking so much, that's one thing.

But if it's retire prematurely, you're going to have a guy who's home but pissed. And by the way, up there at age is not 60. Yes. Thank you, Drew. Mahalo. Welcome to Pluto Fo. If you knew the name of the movie you'd like to see, just stream it for free on Pluto TV. Where all your blockbuster favorites are landing all summer long.

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