Dopey: On the Dark Comedy of Drug Addiction

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This week on the Dopey Dose! Dave opens the Wednesday Dose of Dopey with gratitude, recovery reflections and a reminder that it is possible to restart your day at any moment. A Canadian listener recounts ceremonially burying—and urinating on—his remaining cocaine while tripping on acid, while Northeast Ohio Bob remembers the drug-fueled chaos of Nelson Ledges Quarry Park.

Then Stephanie Wittels Wachs joins Dave to discuss her new book, Last Day, and the death of her brother, beloved Parks and Recreation writer and comedian Harris Wittels. Stephanie remembers growing up and experimenting with weed, mushrooms, acid and whippets alongside Harris, his obsessive love of Phish and the moment his casual drug use became an urgent dependence on pills and heroin. Harris admitted spending $4,000 a month on pills while his career was exploding, entered treatment twice and died from an overdose shortly afterward.

Stephanie explains how losing Harris transformed her into an advocate for harm reduction, overdose prevention and drug-policy reform. She and Dave discuss SafeSpot, Kimber and Stephen Murray, supervised consumption sites, the shame that forces people to use alone and the importance of keeping people alive without demanding that they become sober on someone else’s timetable.

The conversation closes with an honest discussion of grief, therapy, purpose and gratitude. Stephanie describes how writing and caring for her daughter gradually helped her build a larger life around the permanent loss of Harris.

All that and more on the brand new Wednesday Dose of Dopey!

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On the teaser! Dave celebrates eleven years of recovery, asks whether Dopey qualifies as art and reminds everyone that DopeyCon is coming October 3. He reads a listener’s Rolling Stones dream, considers the impossible mission of getting Mick Jagger or Keith Richards on Dopey and discusses potential episodes involving Anthony Bourdain, Mark Lanegan and legendary rock journalist Nick Kent.

Dave also reads the overwhelming response to the recent Patreon episode about his own history and the possible Dopey documentary. Finally, he previews his intense Los Angeles conversation with Christopher, who describes growing up as one of eleven brothers amid abandonment, violence and abuse—before sharing his larger story of addiction, sex work and redemption exclusively on Patreon.

All that and somehow still - MORE!

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Episode summary:

This week on Dopey Total Replay! Dave circles back to Dopey Episode 42—the first appearance of his lifelong friend Devan. Before the replay, Dave celebrates eleven years in recovery, reflects on acceptance, gratitude and friendship, makes amends for sharing too much about a sponsee, and responds to listeners inspired by the Hunter Biden interview.

Then Dave, Chris and Devan revisit their teenage years in New York City, including Dave and Devin’s first acid trip at a Grateful Dead show, the pug that looked like an alien, a disastrous baby-powder fight and their organized campaign to steal CDs from HMV. Chris remembers Surfer Mike, addiction before the drugs and his dangerous childhood experiments with model rockets. Finally, an Australian listener tells the insane story of an overdosed friend who was dumped in a phone booth—only to wake up hours later and call the people who left him there.

All that and MORE on the total replay episode of the good old dopey show!

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Episode summary

Hunter Biden joins Dopey for an unusually raw conversation about trauma, grief, addiction and recovery. He explains why alcohol initially worked for him, how drinking progressed from manageable binges to vodka hidden around the house, and how the death of his brother Beau preceded his descent into crack addiction.

Before Hunter arrives, Dave contemplates his recent resentment problem after an argument over Susan’s ice cream, reads a letter from a listener currently using cocaine and vodka, and shares stories involving LSD dropped into someone’s eyes, a handful of Xanax swallowed during an arrest and a first meth experience that turns into full-blown DEA psychosis.

Following the interview, Dave reveals that the Santa Monica studio looked like an “OnlyFans crack den.” After listening to the conversation, the studio operator disclosed that he was only five days free from crack and alcohol. Hunter embraced him in what everyone recognized as a genuine recovery god shot.

All that plus much much much more!!!!!! 

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Summary

Dopey Greatest Hits: Actor and storyteller Ned Van Zandt returns to promote his one-man show, Lost in Dell Valley, and revisit his astonishing life in addiction and recovery. Ned describes being recognized in jail by the leader of the Texas Aryan Brotherhood, who traded him protection and OxyContin for acting lessons using scenes from Lost and Prison Break.

The episode then replays Ned’s original Dopey appearance: doing heroin with Andy Warhol’s circle, living at the Chelsea Hotel alongside Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen, eating Burger King with Sid on the day Nancy died, and being in their room hours before her murder. Ned explains why he believes Sid was innocent and identifies the drug dealer he suspected may have been involved.

Ned also recounts driving a cab while addicted to heroin, getting slashed during a robbery, buying drugs on the devastated Lower East Side, descending into meth addiction in Long Beach, and knowing dealers who smuggled exotic birds. After nearly 13 years clean, one glass of wine led to a cocaine overdose four days later and another seven-year run. His final arrest, time in jail, and a trip to treatment in Hawaii ultimately gave him another chance—although he arrived with Valium, Vicodin and OxyContin sewn into his clothes.

Today, Ned has nearly 20 years clean, works at Transcend NYC, and performs all 19 characters in Lost in Dell Valley.

Way More on the New Episode!

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Summary / show notes

This week on Dopey Wednesday! We open the Wednesday show with DopeyCon updates, listener comments and a voicemail from Oskar in Sweden. After leaving rehab with no intention of staying clean, Oskar returns home to ten grams of heroin, begins injecting with a friend and saves that friend from a potentially fatal overdose using naloxone.

Poet/writer/'clinician' addict Zach Frank returns to discuss anxious attachment, fear, resentment and the difficulty of responding thoughtfully when emotions take over. He remembers passing out on heroin while running a bath, flooding his mother’s house and destroying his brother’s Xbox before the damaged ceiling collapsed in front of his grandmother.

Zach then takes Dave inside the jam-band drug scene. On his way to a Dominican Republic festival, he convinces a cab driver to find cocaine, stops at a pharmacy for a huge box of Xanax, absorbs liquid LSD through his palm, urinates in the ocean fully clothed and later smokes a “silly stick”—a joint containing marijuana and DMT—during a Disco Biscuits set.

He also describes his final festival before recovery: obtaining cocaine and Xanax, taking ketamine and powerful MDMA pills, and eventually reaching complete spiritual exhaustion. He calls his mother crying, returns to New York and enters treatment.

Dave and Zach discuss the painful gap between becoming abstinent and genuinely feeling well, the first moments of peace that make recovery worthwhile, and why addicts sometimes need to hold on through weeks or months of discomfort. They celebrate Dave’s 11 years sober and compare the Knicks’ championship comeback to the seemingly impossible transformations found in recovery.

The episode closes with listener comments and Dave’s heartfelt—and musically questionable—tribute to Dolly Parton.

All that and MORE!

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Dave reveals that filmmaker Jason Cabello is making a documentary about Dopey—and recently followed him to California for a still-secret mission. Jason also sits down with longtime friends Brad and Jeremy to investigate the real history of Dave’s addiction and the creation of Dopey.

Before the documentary preview, Dave remembers musician Mark Hudson, announces the DopeyCon Theme Song Challenge, runs through the growing DopeyCon lineup, reads listener updates, celebrates recovery anniversaries, and receives an exceptionally detailed complaint about his disgusting habit of eating into the microphone.

The teaser ends with Brad boldly claiming that Dopey wouldn’t exist without him—and Dave promising Patreon listeners the resentment-filled story behind it.

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Summary: 

Dave checks in from California with Jeremy for a conversation about modern weed, absurdly powerful dispensary products, Jeremy’s torn Achilles, the Knicks championship and Dave’s potentially revolutionary Katz’s “Karubin.”

Then Dopey replays Episode 43 with author and Refuge Recovery founder Noah Levine. Noah talks about growing up around Buddhism, trauma and drugs; taking mushrooms at ten; becoming addicted as a teenager; attempting suicide in juvenile hall; and discovering meditation while locked inside a padded cell.

Chris wrestles with psychedelics in sobriety, prepares for a ten-day silent meditation retreat and asks whether it’s possible to mindfully shoot heroin. Noah also delivers an all-time Dopey story involving cocaine, stolen Rolexes, a brakeless car, an e-brake turn in the rain and a burning getaway vehicle.

Afterward, Dave and Chris discuss fallen spiritual teachers, sex, hypocrisy and abusing positions of power. They finish with a listener’s insane story about introducing a Chinese exchange student to the “American tradition” of buying heroin—and accidentally abandoning him at Outback Steakhouse.

AND MORE!!!!!

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This week on Dopey! Viral comedian and school custodian Jimmy Cash joins Dopey to tell a funny, painful, and unmistakably Dopey recovery story.

Jimmy grew up in Worcester, Massachusetts, surrounded by addiction and Alcoholics Anonymous. His father—a high-school janitor—died from an overdose when Jimmy was nine, while his mother cycled through addiction, recovery, and relationships with other janitors. After watching The Basketball Diaries as a child, Jimmy became obsessed with getting high before he had even tried a real drug.

By his teens, Jimmy was smoking weed, drinking, taking psychedelics, using cocaine and ketamine, getting arrested, and fighting with police. He recalls punching a cop who was kindly driving him home, attacking the weak knee of a college RA—or at least being accused of it—and causing a coked-out disaster at an IHOP that ended with him breaking the handle off a police car and being beaten in custody.

Court-ordered AA eventually became genuine recovery. Jimmy got sober in 2003, built a family, became a custodian, and pursued his lifelong dream of stand-up comedy. His janitor videos went viral, leading to national attention and an appearance on The Kelly Clarkson Show.

But after more than 20 years without drinking or using, divorce, career pressure, grief, isolation, and insomnia left Jimmy sleeping on his younger sister’s couch. He began “nibbling” cannabis edibles, quickly recognized that he was getting high, and made the humbling decision to return to AA and pick up a new 24-hour chip.

Plus: a listener steals a car and escapes police through a freezing pond, questions about the experimental opioid compound SR-17018, a precipitated-withdrawal horror story, spicy reactions to the Roy Donk episode, drugged dogs, dead parrots, Phish fans, and DopeyCon business.

All that and more on this weeks new MASS edition of Dopey!

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Summary:

On this Dopey Greatest Hits, Dave revisits one of the wildest, funniest and most vulnerable conversations in the show’s history with filmmaker, actor and recovery advocate Brian Whisenant.

Before the interview, listener Nick tells an insane angel-dust story involving a police checkpoint, the Seven Dwarfs, friends slapping each other unconscious, urinating in a fish tank—and later, shitting his pants while driving a taxi before immediately returning to work.

Then Brian opens up about growing up gay in Mississippi, being groomed and sexually assaulted at 15, coming out to his deeply religious mother and turning to cocaine and crystal meth. His addiction eventually leads to homelessness, chemsex, predatory dealers, being filmed while high, a sex sling, IV meth use and a terrifying seven-day psychosis that ends with him restrained in a hospital.

Brian explains the complicated relationship between sex, technology and meth addiction—and why returning to a healthy sex life can be one of the hardest parts of recovery. He also describes the unlikely moment involving Taco Bell, Johnnie Walker and a bottle of wine when he finally realized he was a drug addict and asked for help.

Years later, Brian returned to the same hospital where he had once been restrained—this time as a treatment professional helping others. He also discusses finding recovery in Narcotics Anonymous and transforming his experiences into the short film Wrath Mercy.

All that plus waaaaaay more on a brand new old school greatest hits listen!

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