Dopey: On the Dark Comedy of Drug Addiction

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This week on Dopey's Greatest Hits, Dave looks back on one of the most unforgettable interviews in the show's history with Miami nightlife legend Ingrid Casares. Before the classic conversation begins, Dave recaps the incredible success of the inaugural Dopey Recovery Short Film Festival, from a nearly sold-out crowd and appearances by James Frey, Kevin McEnroe, Aaron Carr, Ray Brown, Pete the Plumber, and more, to his early morning appearance on Good Day New York. He thanks everyone who attended, promises an even bigger festival next year, hints at a future DopeyCon in the same theater, reads listener emails and Patreon comments, debates Tesla versus ska music, and shares plans to keep releasing daily episodes while his family heads out on vacation.

Then comes one of Dopey's all-time greatest recovery stories.

Ingrid Casares tells the unbelievable story of growing up in Miami, discovering cocaine in the early 1980s, repeatedly trying rehab before she was ready, stealing an ounce and a half of cocaine from a college dealer, becoming a drug mule between Miami and North Carolina, freebasing across the Southeast, surviving terrifying cocaine paranoia, and eventually finding recovery.

She explains how sobriety led her into the music business, introduced her to Sandra Bernhard and Madonna, and eventually helped launch the legendary Miami clubs Liquid, Bar Room, and Joy, helping transform South Beach into an international nightlife destination. Along the way she shares stories involving Sean Penn, Whitney Houston, Donald Trump, the Versace era of Miami, celebrity excess, relapse, prescription opioids, alcohol, and ultimately finding lasting recovery after decades of chaos.

It's one of the wildest cocaine stories ever told on Dopey—and one of the most honest conversations about relapse, reinvention, fame, and recovery.

 

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This week on The Wednesday Dose of Dopey! We talk the spiritual axiom, stress, anger, and trying to stay connected when recovery feels stale. He reads an intense email from Justin about quitting 7-OH, including brutal withdrawals, relapse cycles, and the strange misery of coming off something marketed as harmless.

Then DJ Fat Tony returns to Dopey to talk about his new book, Recover Me, and the deeper recovery work he found after nearly 20 years sober. Tony opens up about trauma therapy, childhood sexual abuse, sex addiction, toxic relationships, Grindr, shame, ego, meetings becoming “The Tony Show,” and how he had to step back from meetings to actually work the program again.

Dave and Tony dig into sex addiction, apps, cruising, recovery addiction, resentment, prayer, honesty, father wounds, and why real recovery has to keep evolving. They also celebrate Tony’s global campaign to reclaim the word cunt, because of course they do.

All that and much more on this Wednesday Episode of Dopey!

 

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Full Episode at www.patreon.com/dopeypodcast

Summary

 

This week on the free Tuesday teaser of Dopey, Dave and Ray welcome editor Britta before reading Patreon comments from last week's Doug episode and laughing about everything from personal trainers to Doug's famously "accentuated shaft."

 

Then the mood shifts as Dave reads an incredibly honest email from Carson, a young trans man struggling with addiction, alcohol, trauma, eating disorders, loneliness, and recovery. Ray responds with compassion, encouraging Carson to seek help and reminding listeners that no one has to do this alone.

 

After that... the conversation heads behind the Patreon paywall, where Dave promises to spill the rest of the story.

 

Join us at Patreon.com/DopeyPodcast for the full episode.

PLUS MORE!

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This Dopey Replay goes back to Episode 34, a classic early Dave-and-Chris-only episode packed with old-school Dopey chaos. Dave opens by reflecting on the early days of the show, Chris’s role in shaping it, and how tiny the original Dopey Nation was back then. Before the replay, Dave plays a voicemail from Eric about doing huge lines of coke in the courthouse bathroom before a DUI hearing, then reads comments from Patreon and Spotify about the previous replay.

 

The original episode is pure OG Dopey: Dave and Chris talk about wanting listeners to email them so they’ll do Facebook Live in disguises, read old listener names, and dig into stories from active addiction. Chris shares stories about drinking and driving, puking into his shirt so a state trooper wouldn’t see, shooting coke paranoia, translating his Japanese girlfriend’s emails, and burning his arm in boiling water while drunk.

 

Dave tells some of his all-time early Dopey stories: working children’s parties while completely loaded, including showing up as a Power Ranger and then as a disastrous Big Bird with bare hairy legs; getting high while trying to host music TV interviews; insulting Bob Weir by only asking about Jerry Garcia; and finally the infamous Ibogaine story, where he arranged for Ibogaine to be shipped from Europe to Canada, smuggled it back across the border taped to his leg, tripped at home, met a “loser alien,” and still got high the next day.

You'v e heard me tell these stories hundreds of times - but this is the first time...

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This week on Dopey, Dave opens the show with a meditation on the Rolling Stones’ “Monkey Man,” junkie music, Keith Richards, Mick Jagger, and the impossibility of legally buying an MP3 in 2026. He also gets hyped for the first Dopey Short Recovery Film Festival, talks about bringing big ideas into reality through recovery, and reminds listeners to reach out for Narcan, fentanyl test strips, treatment help, stories, and voicemails.

Then Dopey Nation delivers some truly insane listener stories: Danny B writes in about smoking crack and accidentally pulling a red-hot cherry through his stem into the back of his throat; JD D. Hart tells an all-time bath salts story involving paranoia, hiding drugs in his ass, a stuck vial, friends rescuing it with surgical gloves, and somehow winding up with hepatitis A, E, and C; and another listener shares a meth-fueled poop-in-a-bowl story that ends with shattered glass and hard poop in the basement.

Dave also reads Patreon and Spotify comments on the Mishka Shubaly episode, including reactions to resentment, God, Trump, Mark Lanegan, liquid meth, the Bailey Dopey theme song, and whether Mishka came off as brilliant, annoying, or both.

Then Dave sits down with beauty creator, recovery advocate, and Moda Smile founder Dean Moda for one of the most powerful and intense interviews in Dopey history. Dean talks about growing up in Brooklyn with Trinidadian and Panamanian parents, being gay, getting bullied, discovering weed, FIT, early sex work, squatting in Bushwick, and eventually being unknowingly introduced to crystal meth during a traumatic hookup that ended in sexual assault.

Dean shares how that night opened the door to years inside New York’s chemsex scene, where crystal meth, sex, shame, danger, and trauma became impossible to separate. He talks about meth psychosis, paranoia, hallucinations, PCP-laced joints, treatment attempts, relapse, Greenhouse Treatment Center in Texas, Crystal Meth Anonymous, and the moment he finally understood that one hit would always lead to more.

It is a brutal, funny, honest, deeply vulnerable story of trauma, addiction, identity, survival, and recovery — plus somehow, teeth whitening.

PLUS MORE MORE MORE!

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