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Billy Strings sits down for one of the rawest, heaviest, and most honest conversations ever recorded on Dopey. In this replay, Billy talks openly about growing up in chaos, losing his dad to heroin at age two, his mom’s crack and meth addiction, violence in the home, poverty, hunger, couch-surfing, and the wild, psychedelic, musical household that shaped him. He walks through the exact moments his childhood shifted from love and music into danger, raids, labs, dealers, and watching addiction take over everyone around him.

Billy tells stories about tweaking with his parents, smoking meth for the first time with his mom, first acid trips, playing guitar for 48 hours straight, metal bands, coke, crack dreams, and the insane scenes he lived through as a kid and teen.

He talks about leaving home at 13, being homeless, trying coke and meth after swearing he’d never do hard drugs, the traumatic first time he did heroin, panic attacks, confronting childhood sexual abuse in therapy, and getting sober from alcohol nine years ago.

Billy also goes deep on losing his mom in 2024, learning she died from meth intoxication, how he found out through the death certificate while on tour in Australia, the confusion, denial, anger, heartbreak, poems she left behind, and the letter from his biological father he discovered after her death — the first time he ever saw his father say he loved him.

He shares what Trey told him about Al-Anon, how he’s been listening to meetings, how his understanding of addiction has completely changed, and his desire to help kids growing up in houses like his.

This is Billy Strings telling his story exactly as he lived it — no hiding, no sugarcoating, and no shame.

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