The Dr. Drew and Adam Book

by Pinsky, Drew; Fine, Marshall; Carolla, Adam

• ISBN13: 9780440508366
• ISBN10: 0440508363
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1998-10-01
• Publisher: Dell Books

Summary

Here's the ultimate guide to life for the millennium, packed with advice on love and sex and everything else you're too embarrassed to talk about--sometimes X-rated, always real --for today's generation, today's relationships, and tomorrow's world. As the hosts of the late-night radio program and MTV sensationLoveLine,straight-talking physician Dr. Drew Pinsky and comedian Adam Carolla have become the duo you depend on for answers to questions about relationships going sour, truly embarrassing sexual problems, the dilemmas of finding the right partners... or dumping the wrong one. In this first-of-its-kind guide, Dr. Drew gives you answers you can trust. Adam strips off the sugarcoating with wisecracking candor. Worried about masturbation? Virginity? Sexual etiquette? HIV and AIDS? You'll find real advice and more, including. . . the secret guys need to know to understand women sexually. . . how to help a friend who is threatening suicide. . . how to have good sex, maybe even great sex--or at least sex that won't make you pregnant or endanger your health. . . . PLUS Dr. Drew's primer on STDs. . . Adam's rules for who is not allowed to have sex. . . the Gay or Lesbian Aptitude Test. . . sidebars, quizzes, myth busters, and more. . .

Author Biography

Adam Carolla has had years of comedy training and performance experience with the Groundlings and Acme improvisation groups in Los Angeles.  He has worked as a stand-up comedian at the Comedy Store and the Improv, and as a writer for TV's <i>Animaniacs.</i>  Besides the nightly <i>Loveline,</i> he is heard several mornings a week as "Mr.  Birchum the shop teacher" on KROQ's top-rated morning show.<br><br>Dr. Drew Pinsky is a board-certified internist in private practice.  He is program medical director of chemical dependency at Las Encinas Hospital in Pasadena.  He is president of the Pasadena Medical Society and editor of the Los Angeles County Medical Association magazine.  He and his wife are the parents of triplets.<br><br>Marshall

Excerpts

The Difference Between Genders


Q: Is there a secret guys need to know to understand women sexually?

Adam: I hate to sound crass but the reason they call it pussy is because, well, it's like, you can handle a cat like you handle the vagina--here's the deal.  A cat is really a vagina with paws.

If you approach the vagina like you approach a cat, see, a cat will let you know immediately.  If you goose the cat or you smack the cat, it's out of there.  Take a cat--and I don't get an erection or anything around cats, it's just an analogy--you can't go against the fur grain.  You can't just grab its head.  That's why a cat never hangs out with a kid, because a kid grabs the ear and starts bending it in weird directions--and the thing is out of there.

First off, you have to approach a cat slowly or you can't even really approach it.

You can't go running up to it.  It's out of there.  Same with the vagina.  You can't charge at the vagina--you have to move in slowly.  Put your hand out, let it sniff it a little bit, make sure everything is cool.  Then even move in and wait for the vagina to come in to you a little bit, you know what I mean--sort of work rhythmically, no poking, no roughhousing, no going against the grain, don't change things up all the time, establish a little patter.  The cat will let you know by starting to lean in a little bit.

Dr.  Drew: People ought to practice on cats.

Adam: They really should.  People are going to take this the wrong way and think we're doing weird things to cats.

Dr.  Drew: Use only your hand when practicing on a cat.

Adam: A cat will let you know by purring, by becoming more relaxed, more settled in your lap.  Let's say it's on your lap and you're doing something it doesn't like you can feel it sort of tense up a little, getting ready to bolt off the lap.  And women are the same way.

In fact, I was thinking: Men should approach the vagina like a cat and women should approach the penis like it was a big black Labrador at the beach.  Throw that stick, let it jump for it, let it go back, and then when it comes back, roll it down on its belly and grab it by the scruff of the neck, shake it around a little bit, grab its ears and sort of tug on them.

Dr.  Drew: The question is, how do you get the Lab and the cat together?

Adam: That's the thing.  The Lab will overpower the cat, knock it over.  The cat will try to avoid it.

Dr.  Drew: The cat's not happy.  And this is the soul of the interpersonal experience right here.  A black Lab and a large Persian cat.


Q: Do men and women approach relationships differently?

Dr.  Drew: Absolutely.  Because they approach sex differently.

Q: What's the difference?

Dr.  Drew: Women have an emotional experience and connection through sex that they can't easily let go of.  They're bewildered when a man can.

Men have a more visual, external experience to their sexuality.  You don't see a porn industry for women--you see it for heterosexual and gay males.  It's only men who are driven to consume that visual experience.  For guys, the purely sexual experience can be gratifying.  To a guy, sex is more often about the physical act.

For a female, there's a little more involved in the decision to have sex.  The way they experience it is something totally different.  They tend to experience it as an emotional, connected, intimate experience.  Women have trouble accepting that, for a man, it is often a mechanical, visual, detached experience.  They really need to understand that there's a biology operating here that doesn't motivate men toward higher good.


Dr.  Drew on a Key Difference Between Men and Women

According to a story told about President Calvin Coolidge, he and his wife were visiting a government-run farm one day and they decided to tour the facility separately.  As Mrs.  Coolidge passed the chicken coop, the guide explained to her that the rooster copulated dozens of times each day.  To which she replied, "Please tell that to the president."

When the president was being shown the same coop, the guide felt obligated to repeat Mrs.  Coolidge's remark about the fact that the rooster had sex dozens of times a day.  Coolidge asked, "Is it with the same hen every time?"  Told no, he responded, "Please tell that to Mrs.  Coolidge."

The point is that even with millions of years of evolution behind us men still have the instinct to spread their genes to as many females as possible and can do it with a wide number of women, usually without problems.  But to the female, accepting those genes--and bearing a child--is such a commitment that that the female wants some longer-standing connection with the male in order to take on that responsibility.  Men's relationships can be rapidly changing and unstable; the female wants something more secure and supportive.  Emotional differences aside, that's one of the genetic differences between the two genders.


Q: I've been going out with this guy for a while.  We seemed to be getting along really well, but he tells me he only wants to be friends even though we have great sex.  What should I do?

Dr.  Drew: This is at the core of male/female view of sexuality.  You hear so often that the man can be totally detached emotionally while having sex, while a woman can't believe that he couldn't be sharing some kind of an emotional experience when she's having one.  And you know, if he says he only wants to be friends, believe him.  He's telling you the truth.  And he's not going to suddenly fall in love.


Q: Why can't women approach sex the same way as men?

Dr.  Drew: Because women want something more.  But they're being told that they don't need anything else.

It is the fundamental idea that they experience physical intimacy the same way.  That's what our society tells us.  That was the message of the sexual revolution: We are equal, it's all the same.

And it's not the same.  It is NOT the same.

The sexual revolution--particularly the fact that women could have sex without fear of pregnancy, thanks to the birth-control pill--was never thought through in terms of teaching young women how to create stability in a relationship and find fulfillment in a relationship; it was all about having sex in the same way men have sex.

Women's brains are set up differently.  But the whole women's movement maintains there's no difference between the sexes, which is a mistake.  Women are the ones who get sold short.  They expect they can be the same as men in relationships.  But they have different needs and those needs have to be protected.

Women shouldn't expect to be able to behave like a man or to be gratified when they do.

For men, it's usually a mechanical act; it can be very unemotional.  The biology points toward genetic diversity, to multiple partners.  With a man, the commitment is to the physical encounter.

Adam: My take is a little different.  It's not so much that all men think about is sex but that they think about themselves a lot.  And part of thinking about yourself is thinking about you getting it on.  To me, that's about yourself.  I mean, it's not just all about sex, sex, sex.  It's about you and someone else.  It's about you and business, you and someone else having sex.  This is why guys make worse parents.  And it comes out in terms of sex, but really, when you think about it, guys are just doing their thing.

Dr.  Drew: It's usually an aggressive, outwardly projecting thing.  Outside the home, outside the self.  It's a projection outward that women don't naturally, biologically, do.

Adam: A man can make a career of one-night stands.  Sure, there are a lot of decent guys out there, but even decent guys still think about having sex regularly and that sex doesn't necessarily attach to a relationship.

Here's all you need to know about men.  Why does it seem like every young rock musician and movie star gets himself into trouble with the ladies? Because he can.


Q: Why can guys be satisfied with one-night stands and porno, and women can't?

Adam: Women like visual aids, too.  But for them, they're just that--aids.  For the guy, they can be the whole experience and he can be happy with it.

Here's how guys think.  If you show a guy a picture of Cindy Crawford, his first impulse is, "This is a great-looking woman."

His second impulse is, "Boy, I'd like to have sex with her."

Then somebody tells him, "Well, you can't because she's too smart and too rich and she lives too far away."

So his next impulse is, "If I can't have sex with her, I sure would like to see someone else having sex with her."

It's almost like a reductive thing, trying to get the closest approximation to the physical experience.  What he's thinking when he sees some other guy with Cindy Crawford is, It could be me.

But for women, the closest thing to the act that's gratifying are the feelings attached to it.  When women masturbate, they think about being with a person and the feelings attached to that person.  It's not a visual experience.  That's why women don't masturbate in front of a VCR.

Dr.  Drew: Women consistently find themselves in terribly painful circumstances as a result of doing what a man wants in order to snare the man into a relationship.  Almost without exception, these relationships end with the women feeling severely compromised.

Women can't understand how men can engage in physical intimacy without having an emotional experience.  Women usually have a very intense emotional experience when they have sex.  But women aren't prepared for that by our culture.  They're told they should be like men, that they should be able to have multiple partners and anonymous sex without feeling bad about it.  And when they feel bad, it confuses them; they think there's something wrong with them--when, in fact, they should trust those feelings.


Adam's Tips on Living Together for the First Time

I believe a relationship is good for a certain number of days.  So when you live together, you use those days up all at once.  You can see each other twice a week for four years--or live together for six months.

Things you never noticed before suddenly become glaringly apparent.  You don't notice those things when you only see each other on the weekends, but when you start living together--watch out.

One problem is that women see a relationship like a soap opera.  They don't want to miss a single day.  But a guy isn't into it every day.  A guy might think he loves pizza--but let him eat it everyday for two weeks and see how committed he is to pizza.

So here are a few tips.

FOR GUYS: Think of a relationship like a car: There's always maintenance that needs to be done or things start to fall apart.  Whether it's an '87 Honda or a Lamborghini, you have to keep on it.  If you don't replace the timing belt, then the piston is going to break the connecting rod and then you've got real trouble.

You've got to watch a relationship like a doctor watches a tumor--you've got to monitor it all the time.  You can't let it take over.  If you leave it alone, before you know it, all you can do is put a bullet in it.  You have to be on high maintenance.

There's a whole side that has to do with responsibility.  That means staying on top of the basics: cleaning, shopping, paying the bills.  If you don't, it only adds fuel to the emotional stuff.  If you ignore those things, she's got a whole new reason to be pissed off.

FOR WOMEN: You have to realize that, when they start living together with you, guys are out of their natural habitat.  At the zoo, if you see a monkey or a polar bear, the zoo makes a feeble attempt to mimic their habitat.  Now, to the animals, there's a certain advantage to being in the zoo.  They're fed at a certain time, they don't have to worry about being eaten by a hyena.  On the other hand, they're not out there swinging from tree to tree.  

So you've got to be like the zoo keeper and feed them their food and make them think they're back in the jungle, even if they're in a cage.

Which means this: when you move in together, don't put on the full-court press.  Don't say, "I know you've played softball every Thursday night for the past eight years.  This has to end."  That's like taking the tire swing out of the monkey cage.  The last thing you want is the monkey up in the cage shaking the bars.  The softball game is the guy's tire swing.  Don't pull the drawstring on a thing that already feels confining.  


Celebrity Input from Actor French Stewart

Q: I give my girlfriend oral sex all the time, but she won't do it to me.  What can I do?

French: As a rule, there's a certain give and take that's usually expected.  But also, as a rule, I think it's best not to make somebody do something that they don't want to do sexually.  You can stop if you're doling out your end if you want.  But anytime you start getting into talking somebody into doing something they obviously don't want to do, I think it just goes bad.

Adam: Yeah, especially when it's one of those service industries.  Look at it this way: You want a massage from somebody.  But they're tired, they don't want to do it--maybe they have carpal tunnel syndrome.  Now, if you force them to give you a massage, how good is that massage going to be?

French: Absolutely.

Adam: Women don't provide this service for a host of reasons.  And sometimes it's because they were traumatized at some age, and sometimes it's because they are just not thoughtful partners.  But a lot of times, they think they are going to screw it up and they're self-conscious.  We talk to women all the time who say, "I'd like to do this, but I'm kind of embarrassed.  I'm scared he's not going to like it.  I don't have much experience doing this and I don't feel comfortable because I don't know what I am doing." To which the correct response is always, "Listen, you can do no wrong.  No one is going to laugh at you; effort is all we're really asking for here."

French: I think talking honestly about what you're thinking will usually solve a lot of your problems.  If you can actually talk to somebody, and it sounds so cheesy, but usually you can get to the bottom of what's going on and then make your call.  I think you just have to ask her.

Dr.  Drew: You have to question her very carefully about what the problem is.  If she just finds that totally abhorrent or distasteful, you may just have to accept that.  People shouldn't be forced to do things they really find unpleasant.

Adam: And give her an option.  You don't have to try to trick somebody into something.  You can say, "Hey, this is something that I really enjoy and it's a part of the experience.  What do you say?"

French: I find that when you go to the Dairy Queen, if you don't put in an order, you don't get your parfait.


Q: If men and women are different, are all women the same and all men?

Adam: Here's my feeling.  I think females h

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Excerpted from The Dr. Drew and Adam Book: A Survival Guide to Life and Love by Marshall Fine, Adam Carolla, Drew Pinsky
All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.