Dopey: On the Dark Comedy of Drug Addiction

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Episode summary
This week on Dopey's Greatest Hits! Dopey legend Jessa Reed returns for one of the strangest, funniest and most honest conversations in the archive. Jessa talks about becoming uncomfortable with public attention, feeling trapped by other people’s versions of her and disappearing from podcasting after years of sharing her life.
She describes contracting Lyme disease at the beginning of the pandemic, losing much of her memory and vocabulary, contemplating suicide and eventually recovering through an unconventional treatment involving Antabuse. She and Dave explore nervous-system regulation, people-pleasing, boundaries and rebuilding an identity after your mind and body fundamentally change.
Then Jessa revisits her unbelievable meth years: growing up around addiction, discovering crank, doing stand-up while high, nearly dying, communicating with aliens, drinking meth pee and manufacturing her own fake teeth. She explains how a Christmas visit with her recovering father helped her recognize that meth had finally become “stale.”
The conversation eventually turns toward her complicated relationship with twelve-step recovery. Jessa explains why she stopped identifying as an addict, cautiously returned to psychedelics and feared that telling the truth about her experience could give someone else permission to relapse. Dave and Jessa discuss recovery dogma, California sobriety, acceptance, gratitude, consciousness, manifestation and whether dreams—or aliens—might be trying to tell us something.
Before the interview, Dave reads an anonymous listener’s powerful account of a one-night relapse and explains how sharing the truth can transform shame into connection.
Plus more.



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Summary
This week on the Wednesday Dose! Close Friend of the show, legendary tattoo artist, punk-rock outlaw, former bank robber and federal prisoner Shane Enholm returns to Dopey with a frightening update: after surviving hepatitis C and end-stage liver disease decades ago, he has been diagnosed with cirrhosis again.
Shane retraces a life built around heroin, prison, tattooing and survival—from having an ounce of fentanyl inside federal prison in 1990 to being forced onto methadone after his release. He talks about becoming a prison pull-up champion, the FBI operation that ended his smuggling connection, the shame directed at people receiving medication-assisted treatment and why service—not recovery righteousness—ultimately helped him stay off heroin for 22 years.
The conversation turns emotional as Shane remembers musician Bruce “Spider” Middleman, his close friend and former partner of Katey Sagal. Shane recalls reviving Spider after one overdose, watching him immediately ask to get high again and discovering his body after the fatal overdose that followed.
Plus: getting kicked off Instagram over a message to a teenage tattoo apprentice, quitting unfiltered cigarettes after 46 years, the dangers of today’s fentanyl and tranquilizer supply, pain treatment, drug legalization, Keith Richards, Mick Taylor and whether Shane may eventually need a liver transplant.
The episode opens with a wild collection of listener stories involving a stolen handgun used in a convenience-store robbery, smoking crack during an unexpected 69 and getting robbed at gunpoint by a dealer named Dead Man.

PLUS A GIANT WEIRD LOOKING PENIS ON FIRE ISLAND! and more.


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Summary
Dave recounts a family expedition through the Balloon Museum, Little Italy, and the black-market handbag scene on Canal Street before reading an incredible listener story from the early-’90s Grateful Dead tour.
Despite barely caring about the band, Tom follows the tour for its parking-lot wonderland of drugs, hippies, and chaos. Completely broke, he finances the trip by repackaging truck-stop speed and selling it as ecstasy. Along the way, he encounters Persian heroin, a motel-wide fireworks war, a filthy grilled-cheese dealer carrying bundles of New York heroin taped to his stomach, and an extraordinarily forgiving Nebraska police officer.
All that and still more on a tiny teaser of the tuesday show - listen to the full ep only on PATREON! www.patreon.com/dopeypodcast

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Episode summary
Dave celebrates Labor Day with a replay of one of the most polarizing early Dopey episodes: “The Structured Episode.” Before the classic show, Dave runs through the growing DopeyCon lineup—including Hank Azaria, Brandon Novak, Hamilton Morris and possible appearances from Joey Diaz, Jeff Ross and Artie Lange—and shares a spectacular listener voicemail involving blue ketamine, Stinky Pete and an alarming box of dildos.
Then Dave and Chris attempt to impose actual structure on Dopey using handwritten topics, Siri and a series of timers. It immediately collapses into exactly the kind of rambling that made the show what it was. They investigate drug songs, play everything from the Velvet Underground to James Brown, revisit Chris’s teenage DXM obsession, compare nitrous stories, discuss inhalants and eventually stumble into an unexpectedly meaningful conversation about AA, growing in recovery and what might happen if Dopey ever became successful.
All that and MORE! On a heart felt brand new yet 10 year old episode of that good old dopey show!

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Episode summary
Leah Martin—farmer, Deadhead, Phish fan and recovering addict—joins Dopey for a story that begins with the Beatles, weed and an acid trip at a Tool concert before descending into Perc 30s, heroin, crack, fentanyl and absolute chaos.
Leah recalls failing out of college, selling drugs, taking half-gram lines of cocaine while driving and joining a crew of “magnificent hippies” who followed Furthur across the country. She lived in Golden Gate Park, trimmed weed in California and supported herself on tour by selling water—only to return home between runs and fall deeper into opioid addiction.
After getting sober for four years, Leah met Brian through the recovery and jam-band community. They fell in love, moved to the Atlantic City area and eventually relapsed together during COVID. What followed included pressed fentanyl pills, crack runs, repeated overdoses, approximately ten Narcan reversals apiece and an unbelievable arrest in which Leah slipped out of her handcuffs, stole her confiscated crack from the police evidence bag and fought the cops—earning seven felonies and eight misdemeanors.
The story turns heartbreaking when Leah recounts waking up after her own overdose and finding Brian dead in their living room. She talks honestly about grief, trauma treatment, another relapse, more overdose deaths and finally building a sober life through therapy, community, farming and helping others process loss.
Plus: a dog eats weed-infused chocolate espresso beans, Lauren explains bell ringers and “dragon’s breath,” Zach shares a powerful recovery message, Dave reacts to the Hunter Biden episode comments and more more more on a brand new yet seriously old school new episode of that good old Dopey Show!


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