The Doctor Is in the House

“A little Pasadena trivia that not a lot of people know, but Las Encinas was originally a tuberculosis sanitarium.”

Drew Pinsky — known professionally as Dr. Drew — and I are sitting in the backyard patio of his tony Pasadena manse, our view a panoramic vista of the Lower Arroyo basin. The famed addiction medicine specialist-cum-juggernaut media maven, who broke ground as the long-running host of KROQ-FM’s call-in show Loveline , is waxing nostalgic about his days at Las Encinas Hospital. Pinsky spent three decades on staff in the facility’s department of chemical dependency services, overseeing treatment for patients suffering from the disease of addiction. It was this experience that helped inform the creation of Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew, the landmark VH-1 reality series that sparked a national conversation about the ethics of addiction medicine played for small-screen fare and made Dr. Drew a star.

“A lot of silent film stars, this is where they spent their last days,” notes Pinsky of Las Encinas. “Later, it was taken over by a group of psychiatrists and in the 1930s, ’40s and ’50s, it was the psychiatric facility for Hollywood.”

Seated around an outdoor table, our soundtrack is the gentle rustling of leaves and the hypnotic swish of the swimming pool’s waterfall. Susan, Pinsky’s wife of over 30 years and the mother of their three grown children (triplets), walks the length of the pool’s edge, checking for lizards beneath the cushion of a chaise lounge. Reptiles are common in this part of the Pasadena hills, and several tiny ones dart across the grass. Then we spot a bunny. The scene is a perfect reminder of why Pasadena is one of the most serene pockets of L.A. County and why Pinksy, who grew up in the City of Roses, continues to make it his home.

“I've done all these things here — all my businesses, my podcasts — not just because I love Pasadena, but because I’ve always told people I need to be left alone here to practice medicine,” says Pinsky. He no longer practices full-time, but when he did, he confesses, “was really a bad workaholic.”

“Whatever we did outside of my practice, it had to be in close proximity.”

Pinsky has always held a keen interest in psychiatry, with an unwavering passion for what makes humanity tick. He talks at length about hot-button topics ranging from cannabis use amongst teens (“We are seeing more psychotic episodes”) to the neurological impact of hallucinogens.

“I worry about the deleterious effects of any Psilocybin,” says Pinsky. “I've treated people who were in rock bands in the ’60s and did a fair bit of acid. They ended up so impaired that, as a young adult, I had to put them in a nursing home.”

Pinsky comes by his profession honestly. Born into a family of doctors, Pinsky’s father, Morton, the son of Russian-Jewish immigrants, spent 50 years in private practice as a family physician in the San Gabriel Valley and was a staff member at Huntington Memorial Hospital.

“My father was not a nihilist, but he was extremely cautious with medicine,” says Pinsky. “He would hammer into my head how dangerous medications are.”

Pinsky’s mother, Helene, was an opera singer and film noir actress from an upper-class family in Philadelphia. Pinsky is what you get as the next step. He inherited his father’s proclivity for medicine and his mother’s talent for music.

“I sing opera,” Pinsky says. “I’m a baritone. I sing all the Verdi stuff. I like singing Offenbach’s Tales of Hoffman .” No stranger to the stage, during his senior year at Polytechnic School, he played the lead role of Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof .

Ultimately, Pinsky followed in his father’s footsteps. He graduated with a degree in biology from Amherst College and received his medical degree from the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California. Pinsky became chief resident of Huntington Hospital and opened a private internal medicine practice in South Pasadena.

But it was his tenure at Las Encinas that laid the foundation to Pinsky’s future.

“When I first arrived at Las Encinas as a moonlighting resident, I was just fascinated,” he says. “Because I was a biologist and dealing with the whole issue of [drug] withdrawal, I spent a lot of time there. We saw a lot of Hollywood celebrities. And nobody knew. We were the most discreet place ever. It still is to this day.”

Were it not for KROQ-FM, a little terrestrial radio station on Los Robles Avenue in Pasadena, Pinsky might have remained as under-the-radar as that rehabilitation center.

“I was a third-year medical student, and I got this call from a friend,” Pinsky recalls of that fateful moment in 1984. “He knew that I lived on Euclid, which is just a block and a half away from the station. And he goes, ‘Some guys are starting this show late at night called Loveline and they want you to come on and do a segment called ‘Ask a Surgeon.’ It’ll be fun. Use big words.’”

Pinsky showed up toting gynecology and infectious disease textbooks from class, sat behind a microphone, and answered a flurry of phone calls from young people across America.

“I was blown away that young people were bringing their most significant health issues to FM radio,” he says. “And just to contextualize this history, this was before most people had heard of AIDS. At that point, it wasn’t even called AIDS — it was referred to as GRID, or Gay-Related Immune Deficiency.”

Loveline became a wild success, syndicated nationally and broadcast live from SoCal four nights a week until its final episode in 2016. Pinsky also co-hosted, along with Adam Carolla, Loveline ’s attendant weekly talk show that ran for five seasons on MTV. Then came Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew , which charted the treatment of celebrities diagnosed with alcoholism and drug addiction at the Pasadena Recovery Center. A slew of spin-offs followed, including Sober House and Sex Rehab with Dr. Drew , and Pinsky was the go-to host for MTV’s Teen Mom reunions, during which he moderated testy exchanges that would have made Jerry Springer proud.

A slate of best-selling books and podcasts followed — Pinsky records almost everything in his home studio, with Susan as his go-to producer. From there, he dials in as a recurring featured expert on every major news network and is a frequent guest on the Howard Stern Show . In an iconic 2009 segment, Pinsky confronted stand-up comedian Artie Lange on his drug use.

“ I consider myself a Stern superfan,” says Pinsky. “Howard is a never-to-be repeated phenomenon. But terrestrial radio? That’s sort of done. It just doesn’t have the cultural impact it used to. Those early days at KROQ were like lightning in a bottle.”

Pinsky currently serves as chief patient officer of the chief medical board of Wellness Company, an online resource for tele-health and products such as a travel emergency kit stocked with prescription antibiotics.

Asked if he’s thinking about retirement, Pinsky doesn’t flinch. “That word just doesn’t exist,” he demurs with a shake of the head. “I honestly wouldn't know how.” drdrew.com