'Dr. Drew' tries to talk common sense about sexuality to young people
'DR. DREW TRIES TO TALK COMMON SENSE ABOUT SEXUALITY TO YOUNG PEOPLE, The News-Times, 01 Apr 1997
--------------------------------------------------------
By Ellen Gray
Knight-Ridder Newspapers
Brice, 19, from Prescott, Ariz., thinks he has a problem.
He's been sleeping with his girlfriend for seven months, and while the sex started out great, well - lately, he's been a little bored.
"I'm looking for a way to spice it up,'' he tells the hosts of MTV's "Loveline.''
Turns out Brice has a particularly pungent fantasy - one he's willing to share with a national audience, but one, frankly, that can't be shared here - and he's looking for advice on "how to break the ice'' with his girlfriend.
Comedian Adam Carolla wants to know more about the "fantasy,'' whose nature seems to push the limits for even late-night cable television, but fortunately for those with weak stomachs, a cooler head prevails. That head belongs to Carolla's co-host, Dr. Drew Pinsky, a board-certified specialist in both internal medicine and addictions, who quickly suggests that Brice's problem isn't really about sex at all, but about intimacy.
"If you have a connected relationship, you don't have to be reaching for gerbils and stuff,'' Pinsky, whose show-biz handle is "Dr. Drew,'' tells the caller, moments before he and Carolla decide to dump him rather than learn any more particulars.
That's the way things often seem to go on "Loveline,'' a Los Angeles-based radio show that since December has also been an MTV series airing five nights a week at 11:30.
Part advice show, part "Politically Incorrect'' for the sexually inquisitive, "Loveline'' features guest stars (on the night Brice called, it was Tamala Jones from "Booty Call''), a great deal of inane (and occasionally not so inane) chatter from Carolla, the odd movie clip and a fair amount of down-to-earth advice from Pinsky. At 38, the doctor's been in the on-air advice business since his fourth year of medical school at the University of Southern California, when he was recruited to help radio DJs at KROQ-FM answer callers' questions.
Nearly 15 years later, he somehow manages to remain centered, night after night.
It can't be easy.
"About once every two weeks ... I get a feeling in my stomach that I somehow connect to all that pain,'' Pinsky confessed in a car-phone interview conducted as he shuttled between his two medical day jobs, one as an internist ("My average patient age is about 65''), the other as chief of medicine at a psychiatric hospital whose addiction service he runs.
"I usually defend against that with anger,'' he said, although "Dr. Drew'' seldom sounds really angry on the air. What he often sounds is disappointed.
"There's this tremendous emptiness out there,'' he said of many of his callers, including 19-year-olds bored with sex. "We have a culture where surviving impaired parenting is the main problem.''
It's not a problem Pinsky expects to go away anytime soon.
"More than 50 percent of live births are to teen-agers right now,'' he said, predicting that 20 years from now, "half the adult population of the United States'' is going to be suffering the effects of bad parenting.
It's not surprising, then, that this father of 4-year-old triplets sees his role as being the "cool parent'' on "Loveline.''
Likening the show to a ``Trojan horse,'' he said, "Adam is what they come to watch ... They get me.''
Knowing that few teens and twentysomethings would come to someone as "conservative'' as him for advice without some lure, Pinsky makes no apologies for the glitz surrounding him.
"I have to trust the entertainment people to bring the audience to me so I can talk to them,'' he said. Even the guest stars don't faze him.
"It's fun for us,'' he said, particularly seeing someone "drop the celebrity veil for the first time.''
Nicollette Sheridan, he said, "walked out like a diva walking onto 'The Tonight Show,''' but "two calls into it, she dropped it'' and got involved in the discussion. "The contrast was striking,'' he said.
"I really enjoyed Tori Amos. Her heart, and her head, and her insights were in the right place,'' he said.
Many of his co-host's insights seem to come from a different place altogether.
Asked about the steady stream of fairly homophobic messages Carolla is sending, even as "Dr. Drew'' seems to be trying to reassure people that gay is OK, Pinsky acknowledges the gap.
"I'm trying to confront that when Adam does that,'' he said. "I'm trying to advocate tolerance.
"Coming to a mature homosexual presentation can be a very healthy thing,'' Pinsky said, noting that many of the show's callers are young people who haven't fully faced their sexual orientation yet.
"I'm encountering a lot of ambivalence,'' he said.
He could be talking about "Clark,'' 22 (not all callers are identified by their real first names). Interviewed on camera from the House of Blues (yes, you're on MTV), he chooses to place a large cushion in front of his face while talking about being "gay but not out'' and about his lack of interest in sex.
As Carolla teases Clark about the subterfuge, blocking his own face with a pillow, "Dr. Drew'' keeps asking the same question, over and over.
"How do you feel about being gay?''
And after several false starts and side trips, Clark finally 'fesses up.
"I feel sorry.''
"How can you feel comfortable with your sexuality if you're ashamed of it?'' the doctor demands as "Baywatch'' star Traci Bingham chimes in, "There's nothing wrong with being gay.''
Carolla gets the last word.
"My advice to you is, if you're ever going to have good gay relations, eventually you're going to have to poke a hole in the pillow.''
The limits of television's new rating system are shown in sharp relief by "Loveline,'' which carries an MTV-assigned TV14 (although a network spokeswoman, noting the show's 11:30 p.m. ET time slot, says the target audience is 18- to 24-year-olds).
And although MTV vice president John Miller, the executive in charge of "Loveline,'' won't discuss its Nielsen ratings other than to say that they're "good,'' the show's been renewed for a second season.
Does Pinsky think that "Loveline'' is suitable for 14-year-olds?
"I think 15, 16 is really who needs it,'' he said, admitting that he has his own misgivings about the rating system. "I stand up in front of my TV'' several times a week, he said, to prevent his own children from seeing something a show's rating hadn't led him to expect.
"You sexualize a child early, and it's abusive,'' he said. But a 16-year-old, he said, probably isn't going to be talking frankly to parents about sex and drugs even if he or she still needs advice.
When his own children - two boys and a girl - are 16, he said, "I hope I'm still doing something like this. Because I know if I start talking with them, I'll get nowhere.''
--------------------------------------------------------
LOVELINE
11:30 p.m. ET Monday-Friday
MTV
--------------------------------------------------------
(c) 1997, Philadelphia Daily News.
