When he’s not sharing wellness tips on his show “Health Uncensored,” Dr. Drew is weighing in on Hollywood’s latest medical trends.
The board-certified physician and TV host sat down with PauseRewind to cover a variety of topics.
CELEBS AND GLP1s
I’m very concerned aboutI’ve seen a couple of people die of GLP-1s so they are not benign. And I think people are starting to understand that gastroparesis and gallbladder disease and muscular wasting are common from this disorder, from this medicine. Muscular wasting is not a benign condition. Sarcopenia, or loss of muscle mass, is the number one contributor to complications of aging, and if you want to, if you’re trying to manage your health and longevity, you’re working against it.
I’m worried that it’s creating a new kind of eating disorder. It looks like that to me. And whenever physicians say, this is the greatest thing ever, thus saith the Lord, watch out. Remember they said that about oral opiates. That’s how we got into the opioid crisis. Nobody should ever experience pain. Anybody in pain should get 90 Vicodin or whatever they want when they walk out the door, because pain is what the patient says it is. Pain controls what the patient says it is, and anyone who disagrees is opio-phobic and old fashioned and interested in patient suffering. I was sanctioned for that, and I was reprimanded for that, and I fought it for over a decade. And guess what? I was right. Lo and behold.
I’m not against GLP-1s, they have their place. Like every medicine, there’s no such thing as a bad molecule. There’s just a bad application, or over enthusiastic application, or lack of risk reward considerations.
HONEY BOO BOO IN NURSING SCHOOL
Dr. Drew shared a throwback clip of Alana Thompson (aka Honey Boo Boo) as a little girl on his show in her “Toddlers & Tiaras” era on Instagram recently. Thompson has since gone on to attend nursing school, an example, in Dr. Drew’s opinion, of someone overcoming the pitfalls of early fame.
They are my inspiration. And I didn’t expect Honey Boo Boo to be in the category with so many of these folks that I’m just totally inspired by. Honey Boo Boo was not sick. I deal with really, really sick people, and when they’re really sick and they end up better than they ever knew they could be, or, you know, professional training and stuff, I mean, it just gives me absolute joy. Honey Boo Boo was in a circumstance as a child star, particularly child reality star, where the outcomes can be bad, and to see the outcome go so good is delightful. And I would argue I had not thought about this till this moment, the number one impact on children of addicts, in terms of their outcome, whether it’s addiction or thriving in life, is parent in recovery. So I would argue that Mama June’s recovery, which is quite good, is having a huge impact on her kids.
HGTV STAR AND “TEEN MOM” ALUMNA CHELSEA HOUSKA DEBOER
She was one of my favorite[s] to deal with, her baby daddy, her boyfriend, however, I had some, I don’t know how much it went on TV, but I had some very intense moments with him, and was gravely concerned about the way she clung to him until she got better. She literally got better. And of course, Randy, her dad, is a major contributor, big supporter, and, you know, stayed behind her. And of course, you know, a sustained parental figure just makes a huge difference.
CHILD STARS AND ADDICTION IN HOLLYWOOD
I’ve been thinking a lot about this lately, and I actually have the only published research data on celebrities, because I did a radio show every night where celebrities showed up. And I started doing psychological questionnaires on several 100 of them, and we were able to publish some papers on the narcissistic quality in many celebrities and the childhood injuries in many of them. And how the bid to be a celebrity was an attempt to solve those injuries from childhood. That’s the adult version of it. The children. It’s a little different.
Danny Bonaduce set me straight on this decades ago. He said, “Look, I’ve been around a ton of child stars. Some of them turn out great. The ones where the parents are not good is where things go bad.” And so as always, you know, either it’s because the parent is acting out their own needs through the child subliminally, or there’s an absent parent, or there is actual abuse. The parent has far more impact than anything else. And in fact, in Danny’s case, he was severely abused, and he always mentioned that the actor that played Mr. Kincaid, The Partridge Family’s manager, really saved his life during all that.
And the other thing that people don’t think aboutis the sets, particularly on sort of scripted programs, they’re consuming, and they’re intense. And some of these kids come from broken families, and this becomes their surrogate family. The relationships are very, even for adults, it’s weird, you know, you’re with these people every day, and they disappear. All of a sudden, show gets canceled. Everybody scatters, and you never talk to anybody again. When “Loveline” ended, I was I was disoriented. It didn’t occur to me that everybody was gone. And if you’re a child for whom you have only that as your lifeline, and it’s gratifying, that’s intense, that’s a trauma, that’s an abandonment. And then you have them in adult environments, so you’re sort of adultifying or parentalizing these kids, not good. That’s its own kind of trauma.
There’s quite a number, and some of them find their way out, and some of them find their way out through curious means too. But bless their heart, it’s how they do itI do not judge people. I understand everyone has their own journey and their own way of finding meaning.
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