Dopey: On the Dark Comedy of Drug Addiction

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Summary:

This week on Dopey! It’s DopeyCon 7—the Game Show Edition! Dopey Nation gathers for a night of ridiculous games, filthy comedy, music, remembrance, and recovery. Hank Azaria, Hamilton Morris, James Frey, John Joseph, Zac Clark, Alexis Haines, Rachel Slocum, Abby Fickley, Janine Coulter, Gabby Egan, and more join the madness as Dave attempts to hold together the first-ever Dopey Feud.

Plus, Anthony Varela tells a catastrophically inappropriate Cialis-at-a-wake story, Tony O’Neill reads about heroin, the Brian Jonestown Massacre, and a sword-wielding Anton Newcombe, and Dave presents his dad with the Dopey Medal of Freedom—while officially reducing his responsibility for Dave’s heroin addiction to seven percent. Linda delivers a beautiful tribute to the community and the people we’ve lost, Zac speaks about keeping recovery’s door open, and Rachel Angel and Trinity perform “Mud Pies.”

Before the festivities: a listener empties a rich guy’s entire house while he’s fishing in Alaska, Odell’s dope-sick road trip ends with an ant attack and a pants-free meeting with a Detroit dealer, and Montana sends a powerful recovery update from prison. All that, construction noise, Stashword, Artie Lange, and much more on a chaotic, heartfelt, thoroughly Dopey celebration.

Live-event audio is rough in places, as Dave explains before the recording.

ALL THAT AND MORE ON OUR 7th LIVE DOPEYCON!!!!

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This week on Dopey’s Greatest Hits! Mrs. Robinson brings a life story packed with cocaine, Quaaludes, OxyContin, porn, and recovery. A former teacher and advertising executive who entered adult entertainment at 50, she tells Dave how a conversation at a COVID-era bonfire—and her son telling her to “go get the bag”—helped launch an entirely unexpected career.

Then comes the serious Dopey: drinking at 11, taking her father’s Quaaludes, growing up around violence and pounds of cocaine in Pittsburgh, and falling in love with prescription opioids while treating endometriosis. She describes teaching on ecstasy, getting caught snorting OxyContin off her classroom desk, and believing she was sober because she wasn’t drinking—even while she was using pills and cocaine.

Mrs. Robinson also shares how a woman she sponsored saved her life during a suicide attempt, what happened when she attacked her psychiatrist in treatment, and the moment she finally surrendered and began building lasting recovery. Plus, her ex-husband’s devastating relapse, raising children through addiction and mental health struggles, using her OnlyFans income to help pay for family treatment, and dealing with judgment from people in recovery.

PLUS! Axel calls in with a wild South Florida voicemail involving Valium, stolen Abercrombie clothes, pills, police digging up a marijuana plant, allegedly being framed for school bomb threats, and getting sent to Argentina. All that, recovery, family, freedom, explicit adult-industry shop talk, and much more on Dopey!

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Episode summary

This week on Dopey Wednesday, the incredible Margaret Cho returns for a live conversation with Dave, hosted by our friends at Workit Health! Margaret gets brutally honest about weed, opiates, benzos, and the kratom habit that left her feeling like she was constantly kicking. We hear about two seizures in one Thanksgiving, another that sent her face-first into boiling fondue, an overdose in Amsterdam, and the horrifying moment a doctor who was also a fan told her she was dying.

But this episode is also about what came next: recovery, meditation, community, and Margaret’s beautifully simple interpretation of the Third Step—“fuck it.” Dave and Margaret discuss kratom, 7-OH, kava, harm reduction, recovery in the public eye, drug dreams, and finding ways to handle disappointment without getting high. Plus, making music with Jane Wiedlin and why Margaret says sobriety is more fun than drinking and using ever were.

PLUS! A listener gets busted sneaking kratom in rehab, a law student takes 18 kratom capsules before trial practice and lands a clerkship, Dave navigates the post-DopeyCon malaise, Dopey Nation weighs in on Justin Crompier, and Margaret takes us out with “Grippy Sock Vacation.” All that and much more on a brand-new episode of that good ol' Dopey Show!

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Episode description:
This week on Dopey Tuesday! Dave comes down from DopeyCon with strange feelings, a meeting, and an EMDR session that nearly puts him to sleep. Trinity wins the Theme Song Challenge by just four votes, and a longtime listener asks whether the Kevin O’Leary interview means Dopey has officially jumped the shark. Dave reads the letter and answers the question of who gets to decide what belongs on the show.
PLUS: Cheryl celebrates one year sober with an absolutely insane voicemail: three car accidents in roughly two weeks, a totaled Miata with her 85-year-old grandfather inside, a condemned house with rats crawling over her, a blackout hit-and-run, and a crash through three fences into a prison yard. Somehow, she survives it all—and today she’s sober.
Then Steely Dave writes about surviving three fentanyl overdoses in 24 hours, including one in a Georgia jail cell, and the four years on Suboxone that he says saved his life. Dave also gets into AI thumbnail complaints, new Dopey beanies, and a thank-you to Transitions in Kentucky.
Finally, returning guest Peter Rosenberg opens up about divorce, fatherhood, sex addiction, and the constant search for validation. Dave recognizes something familiar in Peter’s story—and asks him to lay it all out.
Hear the full Peter Rosenberg conversation on Patreon!!!!!

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Episode Summary

This week on Dopey! Fresh off a packed DopeyCon 7, Dave is feeling the familiar post-DopeyCon blues and thanking the Dopey Nation for another incredible gathering. Plus, Recovery Unplugged gets a shout-out for arranging the filming, Papa Smurf gets his flowers, and Britta makes the drive from Pittsburgh despite losing her power steering—with drug-of-choice name tags in tow. Then Betty Ford James writes in about being made to feel unwelcome at an AA meeting, finding a potential sponsor who subsequently ghosted him, and building his recovery through Recovery Dharma, therapy, and Dopey. Dave weighs in on sponsorship and asks for your sponsor stories before catching up on listener comments.

Then we go back to Dopey episode 47, with Dave, Chris, and Brooklyn tattoo artist Ryan Roi! Chris accidentally books the wrong Ryan, but gets exactly the right guest for a conversation about cocaine, whiskey, acid, and spectacularly bad tattoos. Ryan remembers getting an eyeball tattoo while tripping on LSD and rubbing an acid sugar cube into the fresh tattoo. His overnight Christopher Street shifts bring explicit tattoo requests, a hormone deal that turns into an ecstasy-fueled tattoo session, and a basement so full of crack pipes he compares it to a McDonald’s ball pit.

Chris tells the sprawling story behind his misspelled “Melissa” tattoo: an older girlfriend, homemade hooch in court-ordered rehab, running away, and a drunken motel tattoo courtesy of a guy named Knockout. A speeding stop shortly after Chris takes twelve Norcos lands him back in jail, where he gets the Orange County tattoo that Ryan eventually touches up. Plus, women tattooing their names on Ryan’s legs, Chris eating an ounce of mushrooms at a Phish show, Dave’s Fourth of July acid trip with orange-juice bong hits at the original Woodstock site, and the original offer to pay for Dopey tattoos.

Along the way, the guys talk about sobriety as a psychedelic experience, the impossibility of getting high “just once,” and why Ryan had to leave a tattoo shop to get sober—and become the artist he wanted to be. All that and much much more on this Monday's Dopey Total Replay!

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This week on Dopey! Dave’s friend Anthony from the beach brings a lifetime of hardcore Long Island Dopey: childhood exorcisms, crack, heroin, bad checks, pistol-whippings, and getting shot in his father’s church van—with ten bundles of dope hidden in the dashboard and a kitten along for the ride.

Growing up with a preacher father, a painful family breakup, and a frightening stay in a psychiatric hospital at thirteen, Anthony found acceptance in weed, deli work, and the nickname “Stoner.” Then cocaine turned into crack, crack turned into heroin, and years disappeared into rehabs, shelters, hustles, and the conviction that he could always land on his feet. Along the way: stealing his mother’s wedding ring, selling the car she bought him, smoking crack on the ride to rehab, and shopping for treatment like he was booking a resort vacation.

Anthony tells Dave about a massive heroin habit, a robbery crew that missed the $5,000 in his pocket, living in his father’s church parking lot, and watching his car hood fly off on Sunrise Highway—then continuing straight to the dealer. After surviving throat cancer and returning to drugs, a cocaine relapse with his girlfriend Maggie brought terrifying paranoia, imaginary pursuers, and another attempt to cast out demons with his dad.

But the story doesn’t end there. Anthony shares what finally changed: wanting to stop, getting honest, working the steps, going to therapy, rebuilding his relationship, and returning to school to become an addiction counselor. Today, the victories include a wedding on the horizon, matching bedding, seasonal dish towels, and spoons that haven’t been used to cook drugs.

PLUS! DopeyCon preparations, a kratom company’s sponsorship offer, Wiley’s bloody-rig-and-fire-pit meth voicemail, a listener’s desperate struggle with alcohol, an ephedrine experiment gone wrong, and the Kevin O’Leary backlash. Dave reads the love and hate and considers what it means when the show he makes is also “our show.”

All that AND more! On this New New New SUPER CLASSIC NEW episode of that good old DOPEY Shoe - errrr Show!

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This week on Dopey’s Greatest Hits! As DopeyCon approaches, we return to the first DopeyCon at the Church of the Holy Apostles for a sprawling night of drugs, addiction, dumb shit, music, comedy, and recovery.

Brandon Novak shares the extremes of his heroin addiction—including letting a man shave his asshole for ten dollars—and the very different life he’s built helping people through his sober houses. Andy Roy joins him for skateboarding chaos, a Washington Square Park encounter with David Lee Roth getting arrested, throwing a forty-ounce bottle at a food truck, and the intervention intended for Bam Margera that became Andy’s opportunity to get help.

PLUS! Chloe LaBranche delivers dark rehab comedy, Maia Szalavitz talks harm reduction and the surprising connection between Katz’s and needle-exchange activism, and Smiling Joe brings decades of addiction and recovery experience—including stealing a box of enormous silk bloomers to sell for heroin money. Erin Khar remembers finding black tar heroin hidden in her sweater while desperately sick at the Plaza Hotel, and MC Serch tells the story of finding recovery after his wife’s ultimatum, plus a weed-smoking disaster involving a terrified producer stranded on the Triborough Bridge.

Along the way: messages from Marc Maron and Artie Lange, music from the Dopey family, memories of Chris from his former partner Annie and Joe Schrank, Chris’s mushrooms-and-Jesus story, a chaotic trivia game, Linda’s moving account of coming to understand Dopey, and Alan facing a very suspicious appearance from “New York City Sarah.” All that and much more on DopeyCon 2022!

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Episode summary

This week on the Wednesday Dose of Dopey!, Photographer and adventurer Justin  Krompier, known on Instagram as Just Passing Through, shares his journey from suburban New Jersey opioid addiction to building a life around recovery, creativity, and the open road.

Justin traces his early relationship with prescription medication, his fascination with drug culture, and the college painkiller habit that eventually became heroin addiction. Along the way: padding his student-film budget to buy pills, getting paid to participate in cosmetic testing, offering dealers gas instead of money, getting robbed at knifepoint in his pajamas, and crushing up his remaining pills while a police officer approached his totaled car. In an eerie connection, that last incident mirrors the overdose story he had already turned into his senior thesis film.

After a relapse at the Peach Music Festival, a Christmas visit from his cousin helped Justin finally recognize his addiction. Watching Wild also awakened the possibility of a different life. He returned to treatment, embraced a twelve-step fellowship, and slowly rebuilt—delivering pizzas, working at UPS, and developing his photography between shifts. A trip to Yosemite and Big Sur eventually inspired him to leave UPS, build out a van with help from his recovery community, and pursue the adventures he once believed were impossible.

All that and MORE on this week's Dopey Dose!

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This week on the teaser! Heart Attack Doug returns, and Dave asks him about the year he spent drinking after roughly 16 years sober. Doug had stopped going to meetings, filled his time working on his house, and one night bought a case of beer while snowblowing. He hid cans in snowdrifts, drank for about a year, and eventually returned to recovery. There was no dramatic rock bottom: he says he felt miserable, dishonest, and disconnected from his family and spiritual life.

Dave and Doug also get into the reaction to the Kevin O’Leary interview, what belongs on a Friday episode of Dopey, and whether sex, love, and gambling addiction fit the show. Then they read comments on Ray’s episode and preview the DopeyCon theme song challenge.

GO TO PATREON FOR FULL THEME SONG CONTEST!

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THIS WEEK ON THE DOPEY TOTAL REPLAY! 

With DopeyCon less than a week away, Dave opens with news about Presley Gerber’s death at a Santa Monica recovery residence, recalling the time he got heroin brought into his own treatment facility. He also discusses reports about cychlorphine, a potent synthetic opioid identified in a San Francisco teenager’s death, then reads listener reactions to the Nick Reiner replay.

The show returns to episode 46 with Dave, Chris, Caitlin, and Colin. Chris’s attempt to date his hairdresser turns into an argument about scalp massages, roommates, and what actually happened. Caitlin tells the story of losing her boyfriend after a Deer Tick concert and spending the night on a Bronx football field between two strangers who helped her get home. Colin recalls Chris arriving in Great Barrington determined to get sober, the relapse that followed, and the friends who got him back to treatment. Then Colin tells his own blackout story: hiding under a log during a police raid, sheltering in a barn, and waking up beside a wrecked golf cart with a DUI charge. They finish by debating whether Dopey needs more structure, six months into making the show.

All that and a bit more on the old/new version of episode 46!

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