Say Goodbye to On-Air Sex Advice: Dr. Drew Is Leaving 'Loveline'

KROQ’s call-in radio show Loveline has been on air for 30 years, dishing out advice about love, sex, and addiction to callers in need of impartial and constructive guidance. The show’s long-time and regular host Dr. Drew Pinsky, a certified internist, addiction specialist and major media personality, has announced that he’ll be leaving Loveline after 30 years of regularly hosting the show.

Last month when Dr. Drew’s cohost Mike Catherwood announced his departure from the radio show after six years to pursue other endeavors, the Loveline tides shifted in a big way. Dr. Drew’s announcement of resignation effectively ends Loveline’s 30-year run, as there are currently no plans to continue the show in his absence. In an official statement, Dr. Drew assures his audience that he is not leaving radio and that the enduring Loveline brand will perhaps make a return one day.

Dr. Drew said he is leaving his Loveline post to concentrate on other projects such as his other radio show with Catherwood on 790-KBC Los Angeles Dr. Drew Midday Live with Mike Catherwood and his Adam and Dr. Drew podcast, which will now air five days a week. Adam Carolla served as cohost alongside Dr. Drew from 1995 to 2005, with Stryker taking over for a few years before Catherwood hosted from 2010 to 2016. The Dr. Drew and Mike Catherwood Loveline is the version I know best and, in all seriousness, hold close to my heart.

I started tuning into Loveline regularly because of the sheer frequency with which it airs (Sunday to Thursday from 10 p.m. to 12 a.m.), but listening to Dr. Drew and Mike eventually became a conscious decision I made. The radio show often synced up with the nights my neighbor and I would spend driving aimlessly through the canyons that surround my house in Southern California, and before we knew it, we started meeting up with the distinct motive of tuning in.

Initially we listened to Loveline for our healthy dose of absurd sex stories, like this one girl’s story that involved trip to the hospital to literally pry her boyfriend out of her, or a woman’s preference for anal sex that resulted in a disturbing fecal incontinence problem. The show has a similar appeal to reality television in that it exploits the misadventures of other people for the sake of entertainment. There are, however, truly didactic moments on the show. Eventually, I grew fond of the chemistry between my nightly hosts and more so the vehemence with which they delivered their advice.

As a former drug addict, Mike would often draw on his personal experiences to assist callers who were dealing with addiction. He is also more animated than Dr. Drew, allowing his emotions to influence his impetuous answers. In a calming and grounded tone of voice, Dr. Drew relied on scientific fact and his experience as a specialist to balance out the commotion that Mike often created. Together they established a equilibrium that stripped away the bullshit their callers were telling themselves and consequently galvanized them to improve their situations.

My biggest takeaway from Loveline was Dr. Drew’s relentless push toward therapy. In any given Loveline segment, you could be sure that a caller would launch into some complicated explanation of the problem at hand, to which Dr. Drew would almost always reply, “Have you gone to therapy?” Issues concerning codependence, drug addiction, alcoholism, or abusive relationships always point to the necessity of therapy, and Dr. Drew’s immediate jump to that response became a guiding force in my life. He made it clear that professional help is the only answer to assuaging certain sex-related and mental health issues. To be happy in a relationship, you have to start with yourself, and Dr. Drew made it very clear that there was no way around that.