Starting Standup in Maine with David Walton

#34 Drug Use for Grownups

• David Walton • Season 1 • Episode 34

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David tracks the messy evolution of his act, from joking about kratom and morphine drips to nearly launching a debate show on illicit substances. Along the way he revisits a live “Armchair Expert” set that almost tempted Dax Shepard off the wagon, questions why certain highs are illegal, and brainstorms a future lineup that jumps from psychedelics to tennis and gambling. 

Book mentioned: Drug Use for Grownups by Dr. Carl L. Hart

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David:

Welcome to Starting Stand-Up. My name is David Walton. This is a podcast about my journey to become a stand-up comedian, but it's a mess. The whole thing is a mess and that's okay. It's okay to be a mess, it's okay to screw up in public, and I'm learning that. And I'm feeling way more, way better about just being a mediocre podcaster Because, at the end of the day, I am increasingly feeling connected to you, the listener. I'm feeling increasingly ready to just bare my soul to you, you complete stranger. No, I just don't care anymore About most things, and it's a little scary, but it's also really fun and freeing. And so today's episode is going to be about something I love so dearly. It's a huge, huge part of my life. It makes me happy, I find it fascinating, and that's just illegal drugs. It's something that I've tried to make funny. It's widely considered a hack subject, a very difficult subject to make funny on stage, but I don't care. And so let's go Ready, let's start some stand-up. I'll tell you a quick story.

David:

The first podcast all the equipment I'm recording this podcast on was gifted to me, not gifted was bought by Wobby Wob. Wobby Wob excuse me is the producer of a podcast called Armchair Expert hosted by Dax Shepard Maybe four years ago. Dax, who directed me in a show I was on, called About a Boy, we became fast friends. I love him. He's obviously extremely funny, talented and successful man and he's sober, and he was always fascinated with me because I was undeniably not sober but seemingly able to handle everything that he wasn't able to handle, and so we both would spend the majority of our free time just talking about all the insane stuff he'd done with his life, all the trouble he'd gotten into. I would tell some stories that were less hardcore, but clearly we both had twinkles in our eyes for stories of basically doing things that aren't good for you but are still worth it. And at one point I went on his podcast and I don't remember exactly what I said. It was a live show in Santa Fe, exactly what I said. It was a live show in Santa Fe and I started talking about drugs and I started talking about how they were misunderstood or that everyone's kind of just foolish about them, that we categorize them all into this one big evil thing like don't do drugs, just say no. But ultimately there are obviously substances that have improved lives, and I think my thesis in general was that drugs are good. His response was that he had never been more tempted to go off the wagon than after I said those things. And so a conversation started about doing a show about drugs. It morphed into something called the Drug Store.

David:

I made a couple pilots, but basically the premise was that I was pro-drugs, my wife was anti-drug, and we would debate and bring drug people on to kind of discuss who was right you know, to remove myths and each episode would be about a specific drug. Um, I worked hard on this. We did a lot of versions and ultimately it was a massive lift because it was like it was just a lie because my wife loves drugs no, that's not true, but it was just like we were forcing something. That's not true at all, for the record. But she's very open-minded. She never was upset with my enjoyment and experimentation, and so we were kind of lying about it just to like satisfy this premise of a podcast pilot. I bring this up because I really enjoy talking about drugs. My friends who know me would probably be annoyed. My family would be annoyed at I'm kind of a know-it-all. Because of this podcast I did so much research about every single drug and not only chemical makeup, but how to do it properly. You know how to do it like an adult, how to do it safely, how to do it responsibly. And it was weird because basically I was like all right, I'm doing research for this podcast, let me see what Kratom is about.

David:

Kratom K-R-A-T-O-M if you haven't heard of it, is a plant that grows in Southeast Asia and it has a really very pleasant effect. It's sort of quasi-legal. You can order it from Idaho right now. I'll put a link in the bio. No, I'm just kidding. I'm not going to start pushing Kratom, but it's one of these things that you know is misunderstood. It's not truly mainstream, so some of you might know what it is, but you mix it into a glass of water and you chug.

David:

It will have anywhere from a kind of amphetamine kind of upper feeling, or the one that's really amazing is this sort of combo where you feel, let's say, you feel like you've had a painkiller and an upper like maybe a little bit of cocaine, so you're so, you're kind of in this pocket where you're relaxed, but you're alert and you feel the warm and fuzzy, almost like an opiate. I've never done heroin, but I've certainly had a morphine drip. After surgery, I had a fentanyl drip and it was glorious. I mean, I completely understand why people love it. Everyone is so sort of gets their skirt in a bunch about heroin, of course, but if you've ever pressed the button for a morphine drip in a hospital, you've had heroin. You've had that same effect. So everyone can just relax. Anyway.

David:

The point I'm trying to make is my stand-up routines are generally wanting or gravitate. There's a there's a gravitational pull to drugs, sex, alcohol, and when I started out I was doing that stuff and it was kind of I would listen back and it was lame. And now, six months later, I'm kind of like, well, how do I enjoy this? I mean, why am I trying to write things that I don't enjoy talking about? So this is all to say that there's going to be a lot more drug talk on this show, because that's what I like to do. Oh yeah, I'm just kidding, I'm not doing cocaine right now, but I'm not doing any drugs right now. I'm not doing anything right now.

David:

I had one idea for this podcast who knows what will happen, but maybe we can do a hybrid but it was this idea that I would do an interview on a drug, an illegal drug. But I would have done it very properly and I would conduct an interview on this drug. Now, when I say a drug, I'm talking about like, okay, I'm going to do an interview on LSD, I'm going to do an interview on mushrooms, I'm going to do an interview on cocaine, I'm going to do an interview on kratom, I'm going to do an interview on marijuana the big boys, right. And at the end the thing was you had to guess what I was on and I would tell you in the big, like you know, reveal would be this was the dosage. This is how I did it.

David:

Now, the problem with this idea is you wonder if your door is going to get knocked down by the fbi or the dea. I rather you wonder the ripple effect on my children. You wonder if your door is going to get knocked down by the FBI or the DEA. I'd rather you wonder the ripple effect on my children. I don't know how many sleepovers we'd be having after that. And yeah, like, why would I want to put that out there in the world? And I'll give you a little bit of a taste of why.

David:

I just think people are idiots. I don't think people know what's really going on with these things. I just not idiots. I think people are ignorant. There's just so much ignorance about it, and I don't think drugs should be illegal for legalization of everything I don't know. I've never heard a good argument for why we allow cartels to dominate an insatiable need to get fucked up. Now it's a tricky one to get your head around right. How on earth are we gonna make cocaine legal? Can you imagine driving up to northern Maine and next to every cannabis shop is just a blow shop. I think it would have to be very different than cannabis. You know, I now that I think about it. I don't think you can make cocaine legal. But if there's still a black market trade for cannabis and you basically have 17 cannabis legal stores around you and there's still black market cannabis use, I mean, of course cocaine is going to have black market.

David:

I would read Carl Hart's book If you're curious about what I'm talking about. I would buy on Kindle or in the flesh Drug Use for Grownups by Carl Hart, who is the head of neuropsychopharmacology at Columbia. He is a tenured professor at an Ivy League school and is very open with the fact that on a pleasant Saturday night he and his wife will line up a little rail of heroin to enjoy together. It's a fascinating book. Epidemic and all the kind of oblique and very obvious racism and other forces that have shaped your your perception of drugs and the evils of them. I encourage everyone to read Drug Use for Grownups by Carl Hart. It's fascinating.

David:

You know, as we build this podcast into whatever the fuck we're going to build it into, you know there's a there's a part of me that really wants to expand into other areas of interest, not just stand up. You know you could take lop off, stand up and just call starting and everything is just about starting a new interest or starting a new little quest. And this podcast, which I really do enjoy, can become something else and I'll lose people and gain people. Maybe the podcast becomes a podcast about drug use, tennis, backgammon, sex, spirituality and AI and friendship and golf, with a little bit of skiing and venture capital and working out and relationships and personal development and marriage and child rearing and death and mindfulness and gambling. I think that's a great pitch for a podcast.

David:

Let me know what you think in the comments. I love you. Let me know what you think in the comments. I love you. Well, aren't you a sweetheart for making it to the end? If you know another sweetheart who would enjoy this, go ahead and text it to them.

David:

You can also support the show by just subscribing or downloading or even leaving a comment. If you feel tremendously generous, you can also just text this to your friend who's a DEA agent. They might be curious about who I am and where I live. And anyway, in the meantime, I really do. I genuinely hope you have an incredible day, the rest of your day and such a fun week. And it's summertime and it's all about having fun and having so much connection and picking up a just a 30 rack of dcl's delicious coors lights and consuming them when you wake up on many, many summer weekends, just to take a little bit of the edge off of the night before. This is not medical advice, but I do think that it's very underrated to have a light, light lager at breakfast, wishing you so much love, so much peace, so much adventure and fun and connection, and I'll see you next week. Bye for now.