You're listening to the micro version of the Savage Lovecast at savage.love.

If you're stuck in a relationship quandary, or if you're looking for sexual harmony,

while there's nothing you can't pass on the Savage Lovecast.

Hey everybody, it's Dr. Brock.

Now, I've been a guest on this show many times, and it's usually Dan, who's introducing

me, but today we're doing things a little bit differently.

I'm going to be introducing myself.

My name is Brock Gastro.

I'm a professor of medicine at the University of Washington, and now I'm going to introduce to Dan too. So please welcome the host of the award-winning Savage Lovecast, the author of the long-running sex advice column Savage Love, Dan Savage.

Hey, Dr. Brock. Thank you for having me on my show. Now, Dan recently underwent surgery to repair a torn rotator cuff, which is a relatively big surgery, which has a kind of a long, arduous recovery process.

So, Dan, thank you for being with us despite this, and welcome to your show.

Thank you, Barack.

I am here through the power of painkillers and also your willingness to pinch it for me and

do most of the lifting here, the heavy lifting of the intro while I lay back in this chair

and let the opioids do their work. Yeah, so how is it going? I'm okay. I'm doing okay. Thanks

everybody for all your well wishes. I've been getting a lot of emails at Savage Love and notes from people, DMs on social media wishing me well.

I appreciate it.

I'm just really mystified that these drugs that I'm thrilled to have access to,

because the pain in the first 24 hours is so extreme and it lingers,

that anyone can ever get addicted to these drugs to opioids, because the effect, at least for me, is so unpleasant. I, you know, every once in a while, I've experimented with drugs. I was on Molly, and I thought I could be on Molly all the time. That wouldn't be so bad. Where I was a little tipsy and thought, if you could be just a little tipsy all the time, that wouldn't be so bad. But there's never a moment on this drug where you're like,

if I could be on opioids all the time, that wouldn't be so. No, it's, they're awful. Yeah, I mean,

these opioids are really sort of powerful and somewhat unpredictable drugs. I mean, they do different things to different people

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