The Doctor's in the House : Radio: On 'Loveline,' scholarly Dr. Drew dispenses advice on sex, drugs and heartache to teen-agers, and tolerates his crass disc jockey pal.

By RENEE TAWA

Aug. 22, 1993 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

SOUTH PASADENA — Shhhhhh, it’s time for Dr. Drew, that antidote to teen-age Angst, the disembodied authority figure to the calls of the wild.

Adrien Norton, 13, is ready to listen to the voice of a man she doesn’t know but whose word on matters of sex and drugs she takes as gospel. She is sprawled on the living room floor of her family’s Arcadia apartment, fueled by Pepsi and pizza, flipping her flowing chestnut hair and talking a mile a minute with friends Danielle Fox and Elisa Sencer, both 13.

Dr. Drew Pinsky is the adolescent’s answer to Dr. Ruth on alternative rock station KROQ-FM’s (106.7) late-night advice show, “Loveline,” the top-rated radio show for its time slot. The show is a live-wire mixture of bawdy guests, in-studio antics, crude sexual banter and, when Pinsky can slip in a word edgewise, sound medical advice to scared young callers who ask about AIDS, sex, suicide and drugs.

Pinsky, 34, who describes himself as a square South Pasadena physician, plays ultimate straight man to bad boy disc jockey Jim (Poorman) Trenton, who provides the crass comments.

Even though the two men are close friends off the air, Poorman’s raucous chatter makes Pinsky so uncomfortable that he sometimes turns off his headphones in disgust, flees from the broadcast booth and wonders whether he’s doing any good.

But he keeps returning to the booth, five nights a week, to dispense more sober advice. On Monday’s show, he steered a 14-year-old girl toward counseling and urged her to file a police report, after she said she got drunk and had sex with four teen-agers at a party.

A couple of years ago, a young pregnant woman called and wondered why she was bleeding profusely. He urged her to call an ambulance immediately, and the woman eventually gave birth to a healthy child whom she named “Drew.”

It’s a far cry from Pinsky’s day job as internal medicine chief and medical director of chemical dependency at Las Encinas Hospital in Pasadena. He also has a private practice in internal medicine in South Pasadena.

So, what’s a nice South Pasadena physician doing on a raunchy show like this?

Pinsky puts up with the show’s shenanigans because he believes in “Loveline” as a place for young people to turn to on their own turf, free of charge, paperwork and embarrassment. The show gives Pinsky a chance to answer questions about serious medical concerns and to preach abstinence or protected sex. Or, simply--as in the case of the recent 18-year-old caller who said he had no friends--to offer solace.

“The reason I am lucky enough to be welcomed into this environment and listened to by these kids is because I tolerate the impish child (Poorman),” said Pinsky, whose own radio tastes tend toward classical music and news stations.

Still, people wonder. Back in Arcadia, Adrien and her friends sigh in exasperation at Dr. Drew’s voice, seemingly so out of place, with its solid, measured tone and weighty pronouncements. Dr. Drew is cool, the girls agreed, and they would not hesitate to turn to him for advice. But . . . “I wonder if Drew ever smiles, his voice is so monotone,” Elisa mused.

Adrien wondered, “What was he like in school, was he all smart, or--”

“Or was he like the geek person?” Danielle interrupted.

“--Or did he have, like, a social life when he was young?” Adrien finished.

Pinsky’s patients and professional colleagues sometimes throw their own questions at him privately. Why do you do it, they ask him. The undertone is subtle but unmistakable: How can we take you seriously as a physician when you let that crazy radio business go on?

The questions gnaw at Pinsky. Is he is cutting through the zaniness and reaching anyone at all? After nine years as Dr. Drew, he is still “ very uncomfortable “ with the show’s tone, which, he says in an interview, borders on salacious and exploitative.

Pinsky’s voice is filled with anguish at the thought; he drums a pen anxiously against his desk at Las Encinas Hospital as he worried about “Loveline,” which has drawn national exposure from CNN and “Entertainment Tonight.”

Teen-agers tune in for Poorman, who presides over on-air genitalia piercings, porno star interviews and sexual banter. Recent callers include: an 18-year-old girl who is having sex with her younger sister; a 14-year-old girl who is engaged to a guy but misses her female lover; an 18-year-old boy who pierced his tongue at home.

Celebrity guests--who have included comic Pauly Shore, actor Jason Priestley and the band Beastie Boys--chime in with advice, as sort of peer counselors. The show draws about 109,000 listeners a night from 10 p.m. to midnight, Mondays through Thursdays, and 8 to 10 p.m. Sundays.

Pinsky, the father of 9-month-old triplets, tentatively hopes that his triplets will tune into such a show when they’re old enough.

“If somebody else is doing the show 14 years from now,” he said, his tone light, “I would shut the door--”he covered his ears and laughed “--and I would go, ‘Go! You gotta hear this stuff.’ It just has to happen.”

There wasn’t anything like “Loveline” around while Pinsky was growing up in Pasadena. His father was a family doctor; his mother, a homemaker, and he had a sister six years younger. At private Polytechnic High School, Pinsky was student body president and captain of the football team, but described himself back then as “pretty nerdy and ill-kempt.”

The worst thing he did as a boy, he said, was try to sneak the pressed wood top of a pencil box out of shop class because he didn’t have one. He still remembers how he was too paralyzed with fear to ask a girl he liked to dance in junior high school.

“I remember thinking, ‘God, if I had something like this when I was 14, it would have made things a lot less painful,’ ” Pinsky said. “I would have listened; I would have called.”

While growing up, Pinsky followed his father around on house calls and decided early on that he wanted to be a doctor, although he toyed briefly with the notion of singing baritone in Verdi operas. While in medical school at USC, he met Poorman through a mutual friend and joined the show on a lark in 1984.

Around the same time, Pinsky met his future wife, Susan, in a Laguna Beach bar to which he escaped while studying for his medical board exams. Susan, a swimsuit model with green eyes and blond hair, rejected his advances.

“She absolutely machine-gunned me down,” recalled Pinsky, who is 6 feet tall, with short, neatly trimmed hair and round, wire-rimmed glasses. “I had to leave, I was so devastated.”

The two met again later on “Loveline,” while Susan was working for the station’s promotions department, and married in 1991.

Susan Pinsky doesn’t mind her husband’s moonlighting. Those kids need him, she said.

“I would appreciate (the show) if I were 16 again,” she said.

The couple live in a two-bedroom Pasadena home with a rustic garden that attracts bobcats and other animals. The family room is cluttered with a big-screen TV, Sesame Street toys and Mickey Mouse dolls. Two cats are underfoot.

On a recent evening, Pinsky sped home in his black Nissan 300ZX. He kissed son Jordan, threw son Douglas in the air and took daughter Paulina onto his lap. He laughed when Paulina tossed a piece of French bread on the floor and worried about Jordan, who accidentally had poked himself in the eye.

“This is the chaos we live with all the time,” he said happily.

On weekdays, Pinsky leaves home about 6:30 a.m., before his kids get up, heading for the elegant, English Tudor-style grounds of Las Encinas psychiatric hospital. One recent day, his job included trying to stop a female alcoholic who wandered the 27-acre, oak-shaded grounds in her underwear and attending to smokers with bronchitis, heroin addicts with skin infections and aging alcoholics with pneumonia.

Pinsky tries to make it home for dinner about 6 p.m. He has a few hours for walks and bathes with the triplets before he has to be at KROQ in Burbank. For his first seven years, Pinsky was an unpaid volunteer; in 1991, after the show expanded from only Sunday nights, he signed a three-year contract for a nominal salary.

In letters faxed to the station and read on the air, most young people heap praise upon Dr. Drew. But one recent fax advised Pinsky to lighten up.

“He’s like a nagging wife,” the fax said.

Somebody, said Pinsky, has to be the designated adult.

“It’s not a popularity contest,” he said evenly. “I’m a physician. That’s the role I have to play. Poorman’s their buddy. I’m trying to figure out what’s the best thing for these kids. . . . Even if I find something that Poorman says is funny, I’m not going to be cracking up, because I worry about what the impact of that is.”

Said Trenton: “We’re a team, like Johnny (Carson) and Ed (McMahon). . . . There are other doctors that could supply the same information, but the chemistry wouldn’t be there.”

One night last week, the show’s conversation turned to sleep habits. Trenton remarked that he liked 12 hours nightly and added a crude reference about his urination habits.

Pinsky turned away from the microphone and, with a thud, dropped his head in laughter onto the console. No one heard him.