The Most Depressed, Addicted Generation in History with Dr. Drew

Hey, everybody. Today on The Charlie Kirk Show, Dr. Drew joins us for an in-depth conversation on marijuana, COVID, opioids, the scientific method, practicing medicine, and why young people are the most depressed, suicidal, alcohol-addicted, and drug-addicted generation in history. Email us as always, freedom at charliekirk.com. Subscribe to our podcast, become a member at members.charliekirk.com. That is members.charliekirk.com. So check it out right now, members.charliekirk.com. Get involved with Turning Point USA at tpusa.com.

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Go to noblegoldinvestments.com. Charlie, pleasure to be here. Thank you for having me.

Thank you for having me. So my take on it is people try to always paint you into a cartoon character. And of course, what goes viral is never what you said.

It's what somebody said you said. So my actual opinion about this is a little bit complicated. Let me just start out by saying there is no such thing as a good drug and a bad drug, a good or bad chemical. It's just a molecule.

Now, the human relationship with a molecule can be complicated. It can be both good and bad. Fentanyl, catastrophic if you're an opioid addict. Fentanyl, save you from profound suffering if you have cancer pain. Both good and bad. Or an epidural.

And it can be both. You need fentanyl for an epidural. There you go. Epidural or morphine or whatever, you name it. We're starting to look at hallucinogenic therapeutic value. Are there no risk there? No massive risk there.

What is the risk reward? And in this country, by the way, COVID was a great lesson in us forgetting risk reward. It was easily predictable.

We can talk about this later. But it was profoundly predictable that lockdown would have massive mental health consequences. Take a nine year old and tell that nine year old as our mayor did in this city, and tell him or her shelter in place. Hide under your bed every night championing that as though an incoming nuclear weapon was coming. And if you crawl out from under your bed, you're going to kill your family.

In the meantime, the thing you need the most to be nourished is cognition, cognitive development and social development. We're going to restrict you from access to that for two years. You don't think that's going to have mental health consequences?

Pretty easy to predict that. So back to cannabis. So cannabis is a complicated drug, both good and bad. The real issue these days that people need to worry about is the concentration of the cannabis is so profound. It's approaching 100% in many situations that we're starting to see things that I really didn't actually believe happened from cannabis. It's rather common right now to see psychotic episodes, manic psychotic episodes, they sort of appear like that. Something like 25% of these drug induced psychosis patients go on to have permanent thought disturbances. And it's become increasingly common. I actually for a long time didn't believe that it was a significant issue.

But now it's clearly causative in these higher concentrations. Of course, addiction is an issue. Does everybody get addicted?

No. My daughter is a recovering cannabis addict, nearly destroyed her life. She has not missed a meeting in the last two and a half years. She goes to regular meetings because of this condition. And she needs to do so. Otherwise, her drive to use this drug will kick back in and take over.

So I, you know, there's many other complexities to this, but I'm hoping for questions from you. Well, Dr. Jerome told that marijuana is not habit forming and not addictive. Right. So here's one of the craziest aspects of that discussion is, well, maybe it's psychologically addictive. Look, you could either stop something or you cannot. And if you cannot stop something, there's nothing psychological about that. That is a biological event. We know exactly where it occurs.

It's in the shell of the nucleus accumbens in the medial forebrain bundle. It tends to only happen to a genetically predisposed individual. But once that kicks in, you now have a disorder, an illness that is a disorder of motivation where all usual motivations shrink. And the motivation to use the substance emerges as the ultimate priority. And cannabis can trigger that in some people, not everybody. Charlie, I'm not interested in bumming people's high or telling people they should never use a substance.

I'm not interested in that. I'm interested in helping people when they can't stop. And that is a growing population. And look, making it legal. The biggest problem making it legal kind of surprised me was the actually market effects. So the market influence of legalization has caused the producers to develop better, better, better products.

That's how the market works. And that is having more and more and more consequences. We need to begin having real conversations about that and helping people that have issues with it.

Yeah. And I guess a happy middle ground should be things that are highly addictive typically come with some form of government regulation and informed consent. Vast majority of the American population has no idea, as you mentioned, potential schizophrenic paranoia, anxiety, depression. A new study last week of CNN of all places published that even casual marijuana use once a month could increase your risk of heart disease and blood clotting in the heart. You know, PACs, PVCs, all these sorts of things.

Yeah. That, well, I mean, arrhythmia is not surprising. Almost any substance can cause rhythm disturbances. But the issue of is does it cause coronary artery disease is now back on the table.

I have to say I have not seen, I've worked with and treated and known as friends a lot of chronic marijuana users and I'm not, it's not like cigarettes. Whatever it's going to be, it's not going to be like cigarettes. So the question is does it impact it at all? So the other thought that some people say is that the marijuana today is laced with other things. It's stronger.

It has, you know, much heavier THC type components. And it's also that's the issue. Yeah. It's more.

Can you can you just build that out even further? Because a parent might be listening saying, oh, I did, you know, pot back in 1975. Not a big deal. No, that is not what your kids are using. The cannabis you use is not the cannabis your kids are using. As I said, it is approaching 100 percent. And adolescents are a special population, right? I mean, it's increasingly clear that not only does it interfere with the social emotional development of children, there are brain changes associated with it. And it appears that some of these may be permanent and there's grave concerns about that.

How much do you have to use to get that? We don't know exactly. But I will tell you what, kids go to great lengths to hide what they're doing from their parents. I have never met and I hope maybe I'm not maybe I'm meeting one in Charlie for the first time, but I've never met a 15 year old that was absolutely always honest with the parents.

I've not met that 15 year old, not in the modern era. And so they are hiding things from you. And one of the things they universally hide is experimentation with substances. And if you are finding evidence of substance use, meaning they are getting so far down the road and so sloppy with their hiding of it, that you are finding paraphernalia, you're finding things in their backpack, you find things in their room. This is not a parenting problem any longer. This is a medical psychiatric problem.

You need to get help if you are finding evidence of it. The parenting part is to make the kids super clear what the consequences will be of their using. And as someone that worked in this field for a long, long time, the clearer and the more severe, the better the outcome. Now, it doesn't mean they'll never use drugs, but you want to get them through adolescence. I mean, look, I have a daughter who's a cannabis addict and I got her through adolescence.

She didn't use anything, straight edge. And then college, well, that whole other story. Thank you, Columbia University. But, you know, all your job as the parent is to be the person that establishes the laws, communicates the laws, and then drops the acts where the laws are violated. That's it. It's not about you. It's not about them.

You're the executioner. Try not to put a lot of emotion into it, but you must deliver the consequences when the violations occur. So, Dr. Drew, what is the average age now that a child is trying potential, you know, I don't want to say hallucinogenic marijuana, but just, you know, powerful marijuana? Yeah, it's in the early teens. I mean, kids are getting exposed to everything in the early teens. Pornography, cannabis, alcohol, it's happening earlier and earlier. And, of course, the earlier, the more profound the effects on the brain. Not on everybody, but the potential for really serious effects is there.

And certainly when it comes to all the pornographic images that rain down on them at age 10, 9, we have no idea yet the consequences that is having. So, Dr. Drew, the Wall Street Journal has come out and they say that we can now treat COVID like the flu. Your reaction? Shocking, right? I mean, I'm not even sure.

Well, it's interesting, right? In most cases, it's not even the flu. It's more like just a viral, you know, cold is what we would call a cold. The reality is, though, that COVID does cause something we're beginning to conceptualize as a spikeopathy, meaning the spike protein seems to be the pathogenic property.

And if enough spike protein circulates, it seems to cause injury or inflammation to arteries, particularly small arteries. And that seems to be how one of the potential mechanisms whereby COVID does its thing. But what is driving me crazy, a lot to be said on that front, because one of the issues there is, well, then why did you create a vaccine against the very substance that causes the most serious parts of the illness? And why demand that vaccine continue? That's odd, but different issue. The issue is whether or not it's the same as the flu, which it really is now. Nobody's hospitalized for COVID any longer. What drives me crazy is that when I raise issues about risk-reward, such as, you know, should a 24-year-old or a 32-year-old male be getting this vaccine given that there is a one in 5,000 or say one in 15,000 risk of myocarditis and a zero risk of COVID, should they be getting the vaccine?

What is sort of splayed out in front of me invariably is data. The most current would be from 2022, two years ago. We are in JN1 right now. That was XBB.1.5. This is a different illness. The CDC just told you this is a different illness. Why would people mandate something that has no risk and yet has real risk from the vaccine? Now, I saw something yesterday where Peter Hotez put out a thread.

It was actually I appreciated it because it was a very clear thread about his thinking. And his insistence is that you can still change viral load in the community with suppression with a vaccine. Again, data is very, very sketchy on this and that he is predicting the virus will transmit and will mutate into something more serious. Therefore, we have to stay on top of it.

So it's a really odd thinking for which there is really no good evidence. And the CDC is telling us that a little bit here, a little bit. Yet they're continuing with their vaccine push.

Yeah. But the good news is only 10 to 15 percent of people are still taking the booster and taking the vaccine. So I guess almost no one gets hospitalized now for COVID. Is that because there has been built natural immunity over time? That the virus is lessening in its, for lack of a better term, ferocity or impact?

Because people were being hospitalized for something a year and a half ago. Yeah. Yeah. All the above.

All of the above. And I would say that, you know, look, we know that natural immunity is the most potent and the most persistent. People argue about whether neutralizing antibodies against the spike protein is really the issue. But look, it is how our immune system works. It's how viruses work in pandemic settings. This is, it gets less. It dies out. This is what happens. Could it, because there's worry that this is some sort of biological agent, could it continue to mutate in some kind of unforeseen way? I guess so.

If people want to tell us that this was actually for sure manipulated by mankind, let us know so we can understand your thinking in terms of worrying about mutations in a direction that just don't tend to happen in nature. That would be very interesting. But of course, no one says that. Let's talk real risks and real safety for a second. Right now, banks are juggling debts under the radar. Commercial properties, cars, credit cards, they're owed on.

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That is noblegoldinvestments.com. So, Dr. Drew, as someone who cares deeply about medicine and helping people, just kind of you reflect on the last four years. We're coming up on the four year anniversary on 15 days to slow the spread. It has been, dare I say, a profound revolution in medicine and not a good one.

Dr. Drew. No, no, no. It exposed a lot of things that, frankly, I was not aware of. The first thing that shocked me was when my peers were sending people home to come back when they were blue.

I've never heard of such a thing. Really, it was such a dereliction of duty. I was shocked that at least follow patients, at least stay with them, offer them something, even if it's just a steroid or an oxygen or something that you stay on top of the case. Instead, people were told by what I didn't understand was essentially their employer. So it turns out that somewhere around two thirds of physicians are actually employees and their jobs were jeopardized should they use their brain to do what was in the best interest of the patient. I didn't realize how much really it was the electronic medical record and the way we train physicians had become essentially box checkers. I'm struggling with a medical record right now. Every time you go to break, I'm trying to order a prescription for a patient because the pharmacies won't take calls in California.

Now you have to do it on an electronic system. It's going to take me all hour to get one prescription filled for a patient. Because of all the boxes I have to check out and check in with my office and make sure the boxes are checked on the records, it is not the practice of medicine any longer. So we become discouraged from using critical thought, discouraged from putting the patient ahead of everything else, protecting the patient-doctor relationship. These things are all sort of gone and physicians are employees and I should have seen it coming. I mean, I fought against what the insurances were doing. It was egregious how they were controlling the care of patients, but now it's gone all the way where physicians are actually employees.

And they were told during COVID to stand down essentially, which they did, which was shocking. And then the fact that physicians started jumping into camps where you were not allowed to talk about certain things, it's contrary to science. It was the exact opposite of the scientific method and the exact opposite of how progress happened in medicine. I mean, in my day, at least twice a week, we'd sit in a room and criticize each other and propose provocative ideas and come up with new things in the literature and question what was out there.

No, it was, thus saith the Lord and no question. And then the latest thing that I've seen is the medical literature appears to be adulterated, which is just a shock to me that the data only goes one direction. And I keep hearing story after story of people, excellent researchers with extraordinary records and pedigrees, unable to publish data in the major journals if it in any way runs contrary to the prevailing wisdom, which is, again, the opposite of the purpose of medical literature. Science is a back and forth. It never just goes one way. That's why you have to read the medical literature because it goes back and forth over time, and then a consensus emerges over time.

Medicine, biology is a probability equation. It's not a yes or no or black or white proposition. It's a series of probabilities, and because of that, the data reflects that, and it doesn't all go one way. If you see it all go one way, you know there's something wrong. The other thing is physician impression, clinical experience has been completely marginalized.

That always sat at the head of what we did. In other words, here's what my impression has been. The literature seems to run contrary to that. I wonder if my impression is wrong or if the literature will catch up with what I'm seeing clinically.

And I would say at least seven times out of ten, the literature was wrong and catches up with the doctor's clinical experience. So about, just really quick on this, Dr. Drew, has anyone ever apologized for what they did? Are you aware of that? Apologized?

Ah, it's laughable. Well, one of the health directors in Alberta, Canada, came forward and apologized, and I saw somebody else in Canada apologize. And here and there, things happen. I personally have tried to apologize wherever I've gotten things wrong, because I get things wrong.

I get things wrong all the time. One of my most egregious transgressions, I was talking to, oh, my aging brain, I'm going to blank on her name right now. The female, oh well, she's well known. She was talking about women empowerment, freedom fighter, and she has been raising issues, Naomi Wolf, raising issues about irregular menses and bleeding issues in women. And when she first came on my streaming show and said that, I went, Naomi, everything affects women's hair periods.

Come on, relax. I'm sure it's true, but who cares? That was such a sexist attitude that was so male-centric. I really had to slap myself when I started thinking, well, not only was she right, and it had major effect on things like fertility and whatnot. And lo and behold, some people are questioning the LNP's now being distributed as well as certain aspects of the spike protein in the uterus, in the ovaries.

And there's some data there and some concerns there. It's like, okay, well, I should have been listening, because if I'd listened to women's complaints, I might have started to look down the road to see if there are any biological issues there. Now, I don't know whether it's a big deal or not, but the fact that I didn't listen is reprehensible, and I apologize. I apologize for being that male-centric.

Well, we will get an apology from Fauci or from any of the leaders at the top. The globalists are making it very clear that another pandemic could be just around the corner. They want us to live in fear, to be willing to sacrifice our freedoms.

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C-site for details. Prescription may be required. Recently, I informed somebody that there's a new Hippocratic Oath or has been where do no harm is no longer in the Hippocratic Oath. People don't know that. Doctor, can you elaborate on that for the audience? Because if it was really the case, why would they deploy an experimental mRNA gene-altering vaccine on the population?

Dr. Drew. So I don't know that do no harm is gone, although I know there are alternative oaths that people are taking. It would be hard-pressed for someone from my generation not to at least emphasize do no harm. I think the issue is it has two things have seen, whether that's true or not, seem to have diminished in their priority. In my career, I've been a physician for over 40 years. I've got to think about this. How long has it been?

In about 40 years, I've been in practice. And two things were paramount. A, do no harm. Number one, that was numero uno, do no harm.

I don't think that is numero uno any longer. And number two, the ability to make a risk-reward analysis has almost been eliminated from the thought process, which is shocking to me. I remember during COVID talking to peers going, one death is too many. It's like, yeah, of course you don't want somebody to die. But if one person, if they were in a pandemic, it's defined by excess death. There are going to be deaths. I'm sorry.

It is too many. But we can't establish our risk-reward analysis as zero deaths, safety oubralis, this whole thing of safety oubralis. Listen, everybody, I've become obsessed lately with the French Revolution.

The echoes are extraordinary. And I want you to remember Robespierre, in his excesses, he was the head of a committee entitled the Committee for Public Safety. When things go off the rail, it is often in the name of safety. So safety oubralis is not a healthy place. Life is full of risks, and it's about assessing the risk-reward.

And so risk-reward itself has been taken off the table. On top of that, the idea of pharmaceutical agents of any sort, whether it's a vaccine agent or whatever you want to call it, being risky, I don't understand what's happened. I was raised by a family practitioner. My dad was a family practitioner, and he would never let me take pharmaceutical agents. I remember the first time I took an antibiotic, I was 15 years old.

And I remember when he gave it to me, he was like, all right, here we go. Your pediatrician wants you to take this, so I'm going to do it, but who knows what the consequence will be. We've lost track of that. We think of medicines as only good, and that is never the case. Never, never. It's what is the risk of this medicine versus the potential reward.

The average American gets two, let's just say, schedules of antibiotics a year, and antibiotics are usually, they start on kids as young as 18 months to 24 months now. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. And let's listen. Let's talk about psychotropics for a minute. I mean, the over-util – we get that – we get psychiatric meds so wrong, we're both over-prescribing and under-prescribing simultaneously.

How do we do that? It's amazing. That is – Crazy. I want to – yeah, someone in the chat just said my 14-year-old already has – 14-month-old already had three antibiotic prescriptions already, not to mention creating super pathogens in response to the overindulgence of antibiotics and what it does to the gut and what it does to the ability to have a healthy gut microbiome. So, doctor, in the next segment, I want to talk about the Wellness Company. I also want to talk about how there is some hope of a new community of people that have a heightened sense of awareness around health and wellness, I being one of them. After we were live and propagandized by the CDC, I decided to take things into my own hands and to change my diet and to change the books I read. I think there's a growing community of people that do not want to just be controlled, that just want to be propagandized. There's a growing group of people post-COVID that care far more about their health, far more about what they put in their body than they did before COVID. It's not a majority of Americans, but it's young moms. I mean, the amount of young moms that are – let me just say asking questions about vaccines, asking questions about antibiotic regimens, asking questions about the food they feed their kids is growing.

It's in the millions. Dr. Drew, are you seeing a similar trend? Oh, yes. Listen, I personally experienced it in the sense that I'm open to at least evaluating things I would have been very dismissive of just three or four years ago, very. Now I'm open-minded about a lot of things that I would have just completely thought was wild, frankly. But yes, I'm not alone.

I'm so glad you brought this up because that is wonderful news. I've sort of shifted my own focus into sort of fitness and diet to try to help promote and motivate people to really look after that. I mean, we are in sad shape in this country, number one.

There are some that are doing a great job, but the majority are not. And then number two, I've sort of given up on protecting the patient-doctor relationship, which I fought hard for. By the way, I fought against the opioid epidemic, the over-rescribing of opioids, that was just a catastrophe. And I fought against that. And I'm telling you something, if you want to talk about this, the playbook they used in that epidemic, exact same playbook with COVID, exact same playbook.

It was uncanny. But anyway, as a result now, I am interested in empowering patients. And so I got involved with the wellness company in terms of giving access to people to get things they should have without having to go to an urgent care and spend 1600 bucks or wait two weeks for a doctor's appointment.

There are better, cheaper ways to do this. And that's what we're doing at the wellness company. So talk more about that.

And then I do want you to make the connection between opioids and COVID. I think that's super interesting. But we have a wellness company promo code around here somewhere. I want to make sure our audience is aware of it. I think it's TWC.Health slash something. I don't know what it is, but we'll find it in a second.

But talk more about it. It's been a great group. They've exceeded my expectations right there. I've been skeptical of everything these days. So I walked in slowly and I'm like, oh, we're going to do some good here. We're going to give people access to things that they can trust, that they can use on their own, that they can have a telehealth backup at a reasonable price if they want it.

It's all stuff that just makes sense, but in these gigantic systems where the patient is the last priority, how could it possibly be any different? So it's opportunity. And thankfully, there's motivated people there who really want an organization they can trust.

And I would say check them out. TWC, I think, what, TWC.com? Is that where they are right now? Yeah, TWC.Health. Whatever it is, you go to my website.

Yeah, doctor.com slash TWC. It's all there. And it's interesting to me that there are people motivated and there are organizations trying to meet the needs of the motivated population. And please, everybody, one day I hope TWC will do a health and fitness piece as well. But there's stuff out there for you with that, too.

There's ways to do it inexpensively and to get motivated and to follow dietary plans. You just got to do it. You got to pay attention.

And it's time, everybody. And by the way, on the top of that, the mental health part, I'm about to get involved with delivery of mental health through the internet, through the telehealth and whatnot, because we've done a terrible job. Look, here's the one thing that I want to say, and you'll like this, Charlie, is that when Sigmund Freud first came to this country, the reporter put microphones in his face and said, Dr. Freud, what do you hope to accomplish?

I guess they were taking notes back in those days. Here in America, he said, well, what I hope to do is establish the difference, understanding of bona fide mental illness and ordinary misery. We have lost track of ordinary misery in this country. Ordinary misery is good.

It builds character, resiliency, problem solving, building a self that is able to feel competent in the face of ordinary misery. And for me, just as a little aside for you all, if you have trouble functioning for more than two weeks or you're having dangerous symptoms, like you're overdosing on drugs or you're having suicidal ideation, then you have a medical problem and you need medical care, psychological, medical, psychological services may be a part of it. These are medical conditions with medical management, and that's what I hope to be a part of solving in the future.

I love it. Okay, I want to just, we have the website TWC.Health slash Charlie. That's if they want to check that out. So can you please elaborate on this? The opioid thing.

I think it's super interesting. If I lived through that, please go through it. Okay, here's how it worked. And you see if you can name the players that were reflected in COVID that did the same thing.

First of all, you needed a philosophy, a philosophy that developed in a discipline. In the case, what happened was, there was an opioid epidemic in the 1890s and 1900s and the Harrison Narcotic Act addressed that and physicians were put in jail. They say as many as 10 to 20,000 and that stopped opiate prescribing for 75 years to the point where cancer patients were now surviving in severe pain and we weren't prescribing opiates.

Appropriately, a group stepped forward and said, this is ridiculous. We must reestablish opiate use for these pain patients. Then that same group coalesced into something called pain medicine and they decided there should never be any pain ever experienced by anybody in the United States. This was a calling and several physicians in the pain management world became evangelists.

Not religious evangelists, evangelizing on the topic of no pain. Then pain became the fifth vital sign and the VA adopted that as their policy and the Joint Commission on Hospital Accreditation, the regulator, stepped in because of this discipline. And by the way, academia was completely captured by it.

Sound familiar so far? Think of who the evangelists were for, lockdown. And they captured academia, then captured the regulators and then you were forced as physicians to fall in line. Now people like me fought like crazy against it and let me tell you, they were killing my patients hand over fist. I was sanctioned by the Joint Commission, by the Department of Mental Health, by the California Medical Association for what? For allowing my heroin addicts in withdrawal to be a little uncomfortable. They were trying to demand I give them, get this, opiates.

Heroin addicts in withdrawal in a treatment center demand that they get opiates because their happy face scale when their fifth vital sign was assessed was a little unhappy. It was, this is mind boggling and we will look at it with the same incredulity that we looked at Dr. Birx running around the country, evangelizing for lockdown. Regulators capturing lockdown and then the excesses of the regulators closing the beaches, closing the outdoor areas, closing the skate ramps. This is an insanity that captured us and as I explained earlier, of course had negative consequences on our mental health. I am not saying, and by the way don't accuse me of accepting it, it's always never what I say as people say I'm thinking. I'm not saying lockdown should never have happened. I'm saying the evangelizing and the excesses should never have happened. And the lack of risk reward analysis in all aspects of this pandemic as policies were stepped forward and the disempowerment of the physician and the patient, that was not even a consideration.

What your doctor said didn't matter. It was what we say, thus saith the Lord, safety Uber Alice and we know what's best for you and untoward harm. Look, whenever social evil is done, it's always in the name of good. Watch out people, study your history. To play that out though, Dr. Drew, I guess the only good of the opioid mania is that there have been reforms.

For example, you know where I'm going with this. Well, there are reforms, but even that has excesses now. No, I couldn't get an opioid for a family member who needed it and they give you one pill at a time. And I got to go back to the pharmacist and I got to fill out nine forms and I can't pick it up.

She does and she can't leave the house. Anyway, please, the reform. It's disgusting. It's again, whenever the regulators get involved in medicine, this is why I'm with the wellness company. Whenever the regulators get involved, the excesses hurt patients. Let doctors practice medicine for God's sake. Let them do their job.

We are the only ones that actually always have the best interest of the patient in mind. And if we are so poor at our job that we need that kind of regulation, send us back for more training. I always said that. I loved my training. I'm going to take more training. Fine.

Send me back. But for you idiots with your box checking to just sit in judgment in a cubicle in Chicago while I'm in Southern California, that is terrible and disgusting. And so, yes, the excesses now are deeply concerning to me as well. Yeah, some bureaucrat at the AMA who's never actually had to... The AMA has so little to do with medicine. Listen, the FDA, I taught medicine for many years. Never once did I say, what does the FDA think about this ever?

The FDA determines the standards for the companies to bring their products to market. What we do with them is entirely up to us. The AMA is a lobby group that does certain things in Washington. Really, most doctors don't belong anymore because they're not effective. They don't really represent us.

That's it. Those are those two agencies that people put as somehow affecting medicine. No, they're not involved with medicine. They shouldn't be involved with medicine. Medicine is our professional societies. I'm with the Board of Internal Medicine, the Board of Addiction Medicine, Surgeons with the American College of Physicians, the American College of Surgeons. These set our professional standards. These are the people for whom our standards are maintained. Nobody even knows those exist because it's too boring, frankly.

We watch each other very carefully. Yeah, the American Medical Association has been totally captured. I mean, it's distant from the actual frontline doctors that are doing the good work.

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Promo code Charlie. So, Dr. Drew, I guess to finish that comparison, though, public opinion has moved against the opioid manufacturers. They want the families associated be held accountable. Will we see similar sort of yearning for justice for the let's just call them the covid schemers? I think that is there as we speak.

People are are some people are anyway, but I it's so complicated. This is one was a really rough and it's and it's I'm actually bothered by how much the drug companies were held accountable for the opioid crisis, as though they were the only perpetrators and bad players. As you've said about covid, I don't see any apologies from the Joint Commission or the V.A. for making pain the fifth vital sign and just stepping up and go. That was an insanity.

That would your pulse is not as important as your pain assessment. That is freaking ridiculous. And we apologize for that. Never.

By the same token, pain management continues on in its excesses. You know, I had a thing, Charlie. I went to the White House for an opioid symposium. It was in the Trump administration was in the East Room and cabinet level officials were there.

It was amazing. It was really it was and people were trying. How are we going to solve this problem? And people don't know what happened that day. That day, the prescribing pandemic stop because not of anyone in that room except Jeff Sessions. Jeff Sessions came in and said, you know, I see what's going on here. I know how to stop this kind of thing.

You watch me in four months. This thing is going to be over. And what did he do? He put a half dozen physicians in prison and it stopped. That was the end of it. Was that the right thing to stop? Well, in the eyes of the law, it was because these people were.

No, I'm just saying that Ayyubara is sending a message that we're going to go after the rank and file as much. The reason the main reason the opioid thing got going in the first place was they find physicians outside of malpractice civilly and criminally for under prescribing of pain medicine. That was happening in North Carolina, Florida and California.

And that was in the 90s. And that was when all of us froze. We stopped prescribing opiates.

We didn't know what to do. And so we sent everybody to the pain management world. And that that's how physician behavior changes. That was the Harrison Narcotic Act. They put 10,000 in prison.

Boom. For 50 years, we didn't prescribe another opiate or very rarely. And so it does when doctors get into excessive behavior or not doing their job properly.

Yeah. Legal consequences changes the entirety of the profession. Jeff Sessions was right. But of course, now it's become excessively the other direction, but not because of that. It's because of the regulators getting in the way. And the DEA, of all people, has gotten way over their skis in terms of helping us or hurting us from being able to treat people in suffering. So one thing you learn as a physician, you go in, one of the things you go into is reduced suffering and opiates reduce suffering. They do. And, you know, chronic pain is a very special situation.

There's evidence that buprenorphine, Subutex, Suboxone works very well in chronic pain. And yet they're regulating that, too. We should be using that liberally. So, Dr. Drew, I want to finish with this topic that is applicable to our younger listeners and younger audience. It is a fact that Gen Z millennials are the most suicidal, alcohol-addicted, drug-addicted, hopeless, miserable, porn-addicted—I could continue—generation in history. I know this is a massive question that warrants an entire hour.

Why is that the case? And what needs to be—what can be done societally, culturally, and politically to at least make some progress with these awful metrics? You know, I have trouble being happy myself when the next generation, which is the millennial generation, is suffering so much.

It really bothers me more than anything. In fact, I like visiting certain parts of the country where I see millennials out and doing things and working and starting businesses. Like, I noticed in southern Florida and Tennessee, it's like I can fill my lungs with air when I see them enjoying their lives, which is exactly what they should be doing. Number one, fun has been eliminated from their lives. We've got to encourage them to have fun. And we have to help them understand that things are not as bleak as the press and their academic settings have led them to believe that we are still that country where there is opportunity, there is dynamism. I know plenty of millennials that are doing extraordinarily well.

But you've got to go do it, and you have to start somewhere. They feel – look, I think even in their sort of – it really, I think, may have started in their interpersonal life. I've not really said this out loud, but I'm beginning to think that – you know, I noticed when they were in college, that age group, they were so beaten down by being told they were toxic. The men were beaten down and told there was something wrong with them that they became fearful of interacting with female peers. They didn't know how to. They didn't want to be seen that way.

They certainly wouldn't do it with a beer in their hand. And they lost the opportunity for some of the usual milestones for the development of the skill to date and learn people and have fun with people and enjoy your time together and not be – I read something on BuzzFeed today where it was listing these – the word complaint doesn't quite capture it – these experiences of young men and how depressed they are about their ability just to go out and interact with people they'd like to interact with. And I think it kind of starts there. I think that's really where we've got to get them back into having fun, being okay, dating, hanging out, making out, whatever it is. Be careful.

Ask for consent. I understand things are different. That's good. It's a good thing.

But to be so fearful that you're alone with your pornography is so destructive. And then COVID put a final nail in that coffin. We have to get them back out and then we have to get them engaged. We have to help them find a passion and get back engaged with it. They've been beaten down by academia. They've been beaten down by the social circumstances. They've been beaten down by the economy. And they've been told that the American dream is over. And we have to switch – we have to literally market to them a different way of looking at life and maybe elevate their peers that are enjoying themselves and are doing well and tell them those stories and use that to inspire them. This is kind of a superficial way of looking at this, but I don't know.

There might be something in it. No, I agree with all of that. There's a massive existential despair that is occurring in the West that is profound and is wide-ranging. Unfortunately – so, Doctor, I'm going to ask you to generalize. Unfortunately then the solution is a lot of SSRIs or – No. I hope not.

I hope not. Like I said, ordinary misery is a good thing. And maybe this generation will have huge upside in terms of struggling with these issues. And by the way, if I were coming out of something like what a millennial is probably experiencing, I'd be pissed. I'd be furious.

You led me to believe this was not a possibility. You treated me in a certain way. They should be furious. I would love to see them get angry.

You told me that I couldn't come out from under my bed for two years. That's disgusting. They should be furious about that. And I hope they're inspired by that anger and sort of get back engaged in things. And yes, there are spiritual problems they have to deal with. Yes, substances are a major problem.

They need to contend with that. The microdosing is not going to be your answer. Engagement is the answer, not a chemical. And I hope that we can reduce some of the use of SSRIs and things. Again, if you're having trouble functioning, there's going to be more mental health stuff that does require some real medical intervention. But let's do it on a limited basis and let's get people a spiritual life, an interpersonal life. What did Freud say back to him?

Love, play, love, work and play, love, work and play. Let's get back to the basics and, you know, and address the medical problems where they may occur. I mean, they're real, but find ways, you know, we are understaffed in terms of available psychiatrists.

We don't have psychiatric beds for people that really need it. It's why they're in the streets. It's a whole other topic. Another hour for us to talk about. But that's not really what we're talking about.

We're talking about the millennials and getting them back. Excellent job, Dr. Drew. Thank you so much. Check out his Rumble channel. Thank you. You bet. Thanks so much for listening, everybody. Email us, as always, freedom at charliekirk.com. Thanks so much for listening and God bless.