Dopey: On the Dark Comedy of Drug Addiction

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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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Summary / show notes

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: 

Episode 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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