I had a doctor in New York City that just wrote me prescriptions. Dr. Michael. No last name. Oh, I don't mean I’m protecting his identity. He never told me his last name.

Even before the pandemic, Dr. Michael worked out of his apartment on Second Avenue. That's odd.

I'd go to see Dr. Michael, and I’d knock on his door, and he'd always answer the door like this. He'd go, "My wife, Minerva, is sleeping." Like, really paranoid. But he wasn't saying, "So keep your voice down." It was as if he was saying, "I didn't just kill my wife Minerva."

So then we'd go into his kitchеnette. To call it a kitchen would bе a great exaggeration. And we'd have our appointment. I'd go, "I want Klonopin." And he’d go, "Okay." And as he was writing it out on the pad and tearing it off, he’d go, "Oh, what's it for?" And I’d go, "I have anxiety." And he'd go, "Oh, then you need it." And then Dr. Michael, he'd always go, "Hey, you want a flu shot?"

Aw... He wanted to be like a real doctor. I go, "No, Michael, you already gave me two flu shots this month, man. I feel crazy. I feel super sick." Then he'd go, "Do you want a B12 Shot? You want a vitamin shot?" So he always wanted to give me a shot of some kind, because he had, like, a thing.

I mean, look, a guy named Dr. Michael that works out of his apartment is gonna have a thing.

Michael’s thing was, he wanted guys to take their shirts off in his apartment. You're all uncomfortable now, but I'm way over it. And also, if you think this story ends with me being like, "And I said, 'Absolutely not, '" you're about to be so disappointed.

So we had this little, like, charade. I'd roll up my T-shirt sleeve and Michael would come in with the syringe, and he'd go, "Um, I'm gonna need the whole shirt off." I'd be like, "Thirty Klonopin, two refills..." Wapow! And then the sexual harassment would stop, to be fair. So maybe that was his whole thing. It was just getting guys to take their shirts off. Or maybe there was something about me with my shirt off that stops sexual harassment.

You know, that story has two morals. One, now you know that. You didn't used to.

The other moral is this. You should get vaccinated and get a booster and all of that. But... these days, when you hear people be like, "Just trust doctors..." Anytime you hear someone say, "Trust doctors," just remember, somewhere, in a kitchenette... sits Dr. Michael. And if he's so trustworthy, why is Minerva always sleeping?

So they took my prescriptions. They take my prescriptions. Now this was all at four o'clock in the morning when I first checked into rehab. Let's flash forward 12 hours now to 4:00 p.m. that same day. I'm in my hospital room, in the detox hospital at this rehab. I had to go to detox for like four or five days when I first got there 'cause of everything in my system.

I'm in my hospital room. I've been in rehab at this point for 12 hours. I have not gone to sleep during that time. And my total time awake to this point is 50 hours.

Now, the doctors are trying to give me a bunch of medication to calm me down. But by this point in my life, my tolerance for sedatives was superhuman. No matter what they give me, they cannot subdue me. I'm like the great Rasputin, they cannot bring me to my knees.
Just then, a legitimately good doctor walks into my hospital room. If you have only been seeing Dr. Michael for the past few years, a good, legitimate doctor is terrifying. It's like an exorcist.

This guy walked in like, "Hi, I'm Dr. Henry Ford Askew." I was like, "No. Two names. No. Oh! Hey. You want my shirt off, huh? You like this? You like stuff? What kind of a doctor are you, huh? Is your wife dead?"

I scream at this doctor. I go, "Where's my Klonopin?" "We cannot give you your Klonopin." "Why not?" "We are a rehab. I cannot give you a Schedule II narcotic under Pennsylvania state law." And I said, "Pennsylvania state law? Well, what if we go to a pharmacy in New Jersey?"

You see, I thought he was telling me about a predicament that we were both caught up in. Like, he was like, "Look, I would love to give you these pills. You are clearly a super-chill young man, bobbing and weaving in a hospital gown and a pair of New Balance sneakers for the past 12 hours but this pesky state of Pennsylvania." "Oh-ho-ho, doctor, what if we go to a pharmacy in New Jersey?" "Oh, my God, no one has ever thought of that. You're the first drug addict here to have a scheme. Let's go in my car. You're clearly ready to leave the grounds."

That was at 4:00 p.m. Three hours later, 7:00 p.m., I finally go to sleep. They give me enough of this drug called Librium, and I drop. They put a nurse in my hospital room to make sure I stay asleep 'cause I had been trouble.

I'm not sure what it was exactly that got them so worried. But it might have been when I said, "I'm gonna pretend to go to sleep. And then when you're all like, 'He's asleep, ' and you leave my room, I'm gonna run the fuck out of this rehab." Something about saying that out loud, twice, to two different staff members had raised a few eyebrows.