Dr. Drew ignorantly asks, "how would you feel if international travel also required other vaccinations?"

There’s a lot research out there about what actually works and what doesn’t. Shit like rapid detox and psychopharmacology, along with pretty routine therapy and mental health support tend to be tops.

They also tend to be less present in your celebrity, weekend retreat style rehab centers than things like yoga cleanses, warmed over 12 step programs, and religion. Which don’t have a very good batting record.

Even discounting the reality TV show Dr. Drew seems to have been mostly involved in the latter.

6 Likes

Re: Doctor Ruth:

Your use of the past tense (stuck, didn’t) worried me so I checked. She’s still alive according to Google at 92 years old.

Where do Doctors Hibbert, Zhivago, Doom, No, and Doolittle fall on your list? Before or after Drew?

6 Likes

The care is pretty good quality for the era, but, if one is being treated for an extended period, the theme music can become wearying.

8 Likes

I don’t recall seeing this mentioned in the topic, but you must get your pets vaccinated to travel to some countries as well.

3 Likes

Doctor Doom is the most trustworthy of all doctors. Only Reed Richards would say otherwise.

8 Likes

That’s very interesting. I do recall thinking upon the original post (“at least 50% in the bottom of their class”) that more likely over the class there would be those who excelled here and did less well there and it would probably inform their career paths.

If celebrity doctors were any good, they wouldn’t be in the media.

This is yet another example of rich white Americans being horrified that they might be limited or expected to do anything in any way that they don’t want. It is a hard belief to eradicate as humans take it to be an assault on status.

4 Likes

10 Likes

Yup. I’m old enough to have had the smallpox shot for travel. I’ve presented that yellow booklet at plenty of borders. It’s basic safety, any shot they’re going to be looking at you certainly should have had anyway and thus it’s a total non-issue. (Other than having to put a fake one in the booklet because some African countries hadn’t gotten with the times and were demanding smallpox shots in 1982. If you didn’t know to fake your booklet you would have to pay a bribe at the border. For those of you who don’t know the timeline–that’s long enough after eradication that only a few virologists and the like had current shots by then.)

4 Likes

Maybe, but I suspect it was also the fact that grades in med school bear perilously little relationship to effectiveness in actually practicing medicine. The skills that it requires to memorize and regurgitate are vastly different from those required to interact with flesh-and-blood human beings who, generally, have not read the manual and don’t understand the symptoms they are “supposed” to demonstrate to have whatever illness they actually have. A very common occurrence in clinical rotations is: Attending: “Patient has disease x.” Third year med student: “That’s not possible! They have not had symptom y and their lab test a is normal!” Attending: “and that is why you are still a student.”

10 Likes

Dr. Pepper and Jim Beam are a great combination for getting plastered

2 Likes

Maybe, but I don’t have a lot of confidence in my local hospital, which seems to be staffed with former B students from med school in [other countries] and the like. The hospital has an F rating. Maybe they are all great doctors but couldn’t find jobs at better hospitals? Dunno.

2 Likes

FTFY. With that ‘that’ position it would be ‘you’re’ not ‘your’. Should I requote your welcome?

1 Like

I suppose Doctor Moreau would be considered more of a vet, but I assume rabies and distemper shots would be required for any visitor to his island.

3 Likes

I disagree. Either word order works. And my version absolutely does not demand a ‘you’re’ where it is ‘your’ (the contrast between the two forms is obviously deliberate).
But commas around the word ‘perhaps’ in my version would have been even clearer. I’ll grant that.

Don’t start down that road, please. Next thing you know there’ll be posts conflating masks and muzzles.

2 Likes

I actually spent three years managing a rehab facility: in general, the only thing you can say about what works and what doesn’t work is that the patient has to want it to work, and most don’t. I personally would advocate for a harm reduction strategy, , i.e. if you can’t learn to abstain, learn to use without wrecking your life, but addiction medicine is heavily infiltrated by Alcoholics Anonymous, Narcanon, and various organizations associated with Scientology, all of who have saturated the field with a ‘abstinence or complete failure’ approach, with nothing but pseudoscience to support it.

Random fact: one such pseudoscience org, the now defunct Synanon, provided new director George Lucas with access to hundreds of ‘volunteer’ extras who could pull off the ‘sickly fanatic with a shaved head’ look for his film THX-1138. Didn’t even have to provide costumes or makeup: those people just looked like that, straight from cult headquarters.

5 Likes

I’m.glad to have been wrong I’m my assumption of her demise. She was always a hoot and her segments with Letterman were always highlights.

2 Likes

If you’re Latverian, he’s got your back 100 percent. The rest of the world, not so much.

3 Likes