David Manheim | Heroin Recovery, Grief, & Building the Dopey Nation

From interviewing Coldplay while high to losing his best friend and co-host to a fatal relapse, David Manheim reveals the raw, unfiltered truth about heroin addiction and the grit required for long-term recovery. As the creator of the legendary Dopey podcast, David spent two decades navigating the "frantic energy" of a career at MTV and the legendary tables of Katz’s Deli while battling a severe substance use disorder.

In this moving episode of Recoverycast, David discusses the "war stories" that defined his early life, his experience on 150mg of methadone, and the crushing weight of parental shame that eventually led him to seek help. He opens up about the devastating loss of his co-host, Chris, and how that tragedy transformed the Dopey community into a global "Dopey Nation" focused on healing through humor and connection. We dive deep into why traditional recovery often feels watered down and how David found a lifeline through 12-step spiritual principles and radical honesty. Whether you are navigating your first day of sobriety or looking for ways to maintain long-term recovery after a loss, David’s journey offers a roadmap from the depths of addiction to a life of purpose and fatherhood.

Find mental health and addiction treatment near you: https://recovery.com/
Check out the Dopey podcast: https://dopeypodcast.com/

David shares the daily routine that keeps him sober today—from sponsorship to meditation—and explains why "hitting the dopey" (sharing the dark truths of addiction) is often the first step toward light. Subscribe to join our community and hear more powerful sobriety stories that prove you are never alone.

⏱️ Chapters:
00:00 – The Origin of Dopey and the Loss of Chris
05:41 – High School at MTV: Internships and Infiltration
11:24 – The College Spiral: From Stoner to Art School Heroin Use
16:46 – Stealing from MTV and the Bottom Falling Out
21:10 – Living in Public Housing on $100k a Year
24:26 – Fatherhood, Visitation Shame, and Kicking Methadone
29:34 – The Moment of Clarity at 41 Years Old
34:57 – Launching Dopey: Turning War Stories into Connection
42:27 – Handling the Grief of a Best Friend’s Fatal Relapse
52:07 – Spiritual Maintenance: Staying Sober for 10 Years

❓ Questions the Video Answers:

How can humor help in addiction recovery?

What are the signs of high-functioning heroin addiction?

How do I cope with losing a friend to an overdose?

What is the "Dopey" podcast and Dopey Nation?

How do I transition from methadone to total sobriety?

Can I still be funny and creative without drugs?

What does the 12-step program look like for chronic relapsers?

How do I handle the shame of being a parent in active addiction?

Why is raw honesty more effective than traditional treatment?

What is a "moment of clarity" in recovery?

How do you maintain sobriety after 10 years?

What was it like interviewing rockstars while high at MTV?

#AddictionRecovery #DopeyPodcast #SobrietyStories

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

What really happened was Chris wound up dying. You know, he wound up relapsing and dying. I couldn't handle it. Like a lot of the fans definitely preferred Chris to me because he was like, he was a better person than me. I was like the villain on the show. And I would also eat while we did the show, which was disgusting.

SPEAKER_00 0:17

Dambolical. Horrible.

SPEAKER_01 0:19

Musophonia is real.

SPEAKER_02 0:27

Hi everyone, and welcome to today's episode of Recovery Cast. We are joined today by David Manaheim, creator of the Dopey Podcast, a pioneer in the world of raw and unfiltered recovery telling. After two decades of heroin addiction and a career split between the frantic energy of MTV and the tables of Kots' deli, he has built a global community by proving that humor and honesty are the ultimate tools for long-term sobriety. David, thank you so much for joining us today.

SPEAKER_01 0:58

I think that's the best intro anyone's ever given me.

SPEAKER_02 1:00

You're welcome. I read it really well. It's good to see you. Last time I saw you was in New York. We got to go to DopeyCon last year. You came to DopeyCon. Yeah, it was the greatest. I honestly didn't know what to expect. So I like went for work. We set up a booth, a recovery.com booth, to like let people know about how they can find treatment and stuff. And it was one of the coolest experiences I've ever been a part of. I cried, I laughed my butt off.

SPEAKER_01 1:25

Thank you. I'm so glad you came and I'm so glad you had a good experience.

SPEAKER_02 1:28

It was awesome. Also, just that was my first time in New York too.

SPEAKER_01 1:31

What'd you think?

SPEAKER_02 1:32

I fell in love with the Chelsea area, and that's where you grew up, right?

SPEAKER_01 1:37

Yeah, I I grew up on the street that we do DopeCon.

SPEAKER_02 1:41

Really?

SPEAKER_01 1:41

I grew up, it's on Ninth Avenue where we do DopeyCon, but I grew up on Eighth Avenue there. And when we were first looking looking for a space, everything was really expensive. And my dad, my dad like gives money to that church, and he's like, I bet you they'll give it to you cheap over there. And they did. So we just did it there.

SPEAKER_02 1:58

And it was a cool spot.

SPEAKER_01 2:00

Everything in Chelsea makes me feel very safe.

SPEAKER_02 2:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:04

Like we do a lot of this show in my dad's apartment, and it dumbs down any kind of anxious factor, which is good. Jamie Lee Curtis came to my dad's house this week and it was bizarre, but very cool.

SPEAKER_02 2:16

Does your dad get to like meet the guests?

SPEAKER_01 2:18

He was in Florida.

SPEAKER_02 2:19

He was very gosh, I would have canceled a Florida trip for that.

SPEAKER_01 2:22

He was gone. And when I told him that she was coming, he thought I was lying.

SPEAKER_02 2:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:27

Then part of him was asking why I hadn't told him earlier, and it's probably because I didn't want him to come back for it. But yeah, it was crazy.

SPEAKER_02 2:34

That's super cool. She's amazing.

SPEAKER_01 2:36

She is a trip. And very I'm, you know, she supports us, and I'm very grateful for it.

SPEAKER_02 2:40

Yeah, absolutely. You've had a uh a lot of really, really amazing guests on your show. Really enjoy listening to that, and you've been on forever, too.

SPEAKER_01 2:48

Forever.

SPEAKER_02 2:49

Forever. Ten years of yapping.

SPEAKER_01 2:52

Yeah, it's funny because it's like it's actually what I always wanted to do. Yeah. So like I don't get tired. I'm only doing more.

SPEAKER_03 2:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:00

Like since December, I started putting up five shows a week because I'm insane. Because I have I have issues. But I like it.

SPEAKER_02 3:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:07

It's fun for me. Yeah. So I do it. And it's like, it's it's an experiment in like the shows I used to listen to, I listen to every day. The I only listen to one podcast right now, and it's probably up like six days a week.

SPEAKER_02 3:21

Yeah. I oh gosh, that's incredible. I mean, the time it the time that goes into that, we put out one a week, and that's that's a lot.

SPEAKER_01 3:28

I used to put out one a week, and the upside is it's one and it's really special. But the downside is if you have an interview you don't love for it, it's like watching a plane crash from Monday to Saturday or whatever. And it's like, but if you have one every day, you know the next one's coming.

SPEAKER_02 3:48

Oh, that's killer. Yeah, that's awesome. And you just like always knew you wanted to have some type of like talk show, just to be able to like speak and like host and do that. When was that first? Like, do you have an early memory of like just chatting in front of the mirror?

SPEAKER_01 4:03

No, I I have a memory, but it's not, it wasn't like chatting in front of the mirror. Oh, that's what I did. It was like, no, it for me, it was like my mom would get up really early and she had a clock radio on top of the fridge, and she would look there's an AM station in New York, uh, 1010 wins, and there was some old, old show called Rambling with Gambling, and it was some and I would listen and I and my mom would be chilling, drinking coffee. I remember just thinking, this seems very relaxing to me. Yeah. And then I was like, maybe I could be a weatherman. I was thinking, and I remember saying that to my dad one morning, and my dad was like, Wow, there's a lot of science.

SPEAKER_02 4:41

You'd have to like you actually have to be a meteorologist. You don't have to. I think I think you do.

SPEAKER_01 4:46

There's a lot of weather people that weren't, but then, but then I think like in news crews, they were like, This guy isn't legitimate if he's not a meteorologist. So, and my dad like basically psyched me out of becoming a weatherman because he made me feel inferior around science. Yeah, you're never gonna be a meteorologist. What? And then I was like, he's probably right. And I'm not that interested in the weather. I like the idea, the relaxing part of it. I I fell in love with Regis because he was chill and funny and made fun of people, but still made them happy. I like I liked that. I always so I was always like, and I got into TV like you did. Like I would watch it like that. Yeah. And then I became a drug addict, but I still wanted to do TV. Yeah. I had some bullshit jobs. And then a friend of mine was a PA at I think MTV Unplugged. Oh no, I'd be worked at MTV when I was in high school. When I was in high school, I got an internship at MTV.

SPEAKER_02 5:41

Coolest TV show on the planet. Or like the coolest TV station on the planet.

SPEAKER_01 5:47

It was like that. It was in our high school, you don't graduate, you you do, you you graduate at 11th grade, but then you're 12th grade, you have to do an internship.

SPEAKER_04 5:56

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 5:56

And we couldn't figure out what we were gonna do. Me and my very, very close friend couldn't figure out what we were gonna do for an internship. So this other guy, his father was a sound guy and he had a hookup at MTV. So we went to MTV and and interns have to like log video and all this stuff. And I was like, I want to get on TV. Yeah. So I took my friend and we just started like knocking on producers' doors and like fucking around. And at the time, like Kurt Loder did MTV News, and we would like to sit in his office and he would just smoke weed and we would sit there and hang out with him.

SPEAKER_02 6:29

He was like the adult in the room for me. Like he was like the calm one when I was on TV.

SPEAKER_01 6:34

Well, he gave it a lot of integrity. And at the time, that was when the first season of The Real World came out. So we met them and stuff. And I was like, in my mind, I was very much like, okay, if you show up at something, you can infiltrate, I could infiltrate fairly easily. And I always had that in my head. But then I went on and I became a stone, like a crazy stoner, and I got into music, and then I returned to TV production in my early 20s, and I did the exactly the same thing. I like I got a PA job and I started knocking on the producers' doors. And very soon after that, I started hosting stuff. And soon after that, I got to to kind of run a little music show. And when I was doing that, that's when the bottom fell out on everything else.

SPEAKER_02 7:21

You're a senior in high school and you've got an in-et MTV with production. And it starts with video logging and you can work your way up and you sense like I kind of want to do something else. Like, what what's that next step then?

SPEAKER_01 7:35

Well, in that situation, I just I wanted to like not go to school and work at MTV. But I was probably in a codependent relationship with my friend Devin. And it was me and Devin were on this dumb high school reality kind of it was like a magazine show about high school at MTV. And we did two segments that got aired. That was my whole MTV career in the first the first go-around. And Devin wound up going to school at this really good college in Ohio called Oberlin. And I wound up going to school at Ithaca College. But I was like, I remember talking to him and I was like, let's not go to school. Let's go back to MTV and and plant a flag. And he's like, Are you crazy? Yes. And and well, I was like, so I really wanted to do that. The show we worked on, though, got canceled. And when the show got canceled, the internship was over. And then also a funny story was as a kind of requirement for the coursework, you need to get a signature from your supervisor to prove that you did the internship. We forgot to get the signature. And I was like, what do we do? And Devin was like, we should just forge the guy's signature.

SPEAKER_03 8:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:44

And I was like, I was like, I don't know if that's really a good idea.

SPEAKER_03 8:47

Who checks?

SPEAKER_01 8:48

And that's what he said. He's like, nothing's gonna happen. Yeah. So we forged the guy's signature and they find out and they catch us. And they Devin had like a 95 average and 1500 on his SATs. And I was like, not a good student. And they wanted to kick me out of the school for forging the signature. And it was one of those kinds of things that just kind of defined that I was not on the up and up. Gotcha. And anyway, in the end, I wound up going to school for TV production. And shortly thereafter, I became a total stoner. And then I kind of didn't care about anything. I I actually got into music at that point. I joined a band.

SPEAKER_02 9:28

Oh, sick. Is that the harmonica band or no? That was earlier on.

SPEAKER_01 9:32

There were several harmonica bands. That was my final harmonica band in college.

SPEAKER_02 9:36

The last one. Yes. So when did you start smoking pot?

SPEAKER_01 9:39

Was that the first I drank when I was in high school? But the first time I drank, I blacked out. I drank like 17 screwdrivers. I projectile vomited. And then the next day I was like, I really went through something.

SPEAKER_02 9:51

Yeah, that was an experience.

SPEAKER_01 9:53

Um, but but I couldn't, like I had like if I I could never handle alcohol. Like it made me sick. I threw up. It didn't make me feel good. In high school, I smoked weed for the first time, but it wasn't like on the table to be a stoner. Yeah. Like it was not anywhere near me. I was like, oh, I like this, but it was not in high school. I I was like in a group of kids that didn't drink or smoke. I was in a really nerdy school. Like the kids that were on drugs were not like us. It was not something that I even considered in high school. But I went to college and I felt very much alone. And I kind of felt like the description of the alcoholic, uncomfortable in my skin, neurotic, worried about everything. And I was in a band and I had a friend who we were in a cultural anthropology class together, and he smoked weed since he was like 14 or something. And I said, Maybe we should smoke weed when we study for the test, because that's like what you do in college.

SPEAKER_02 10:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:52

And and his name was Zev, and he had a pipe.

SPEAKER_02 10:54

Z of the anthropology.

SPEAKER_01 10:56

Yeah. And he was a jazz studies major. Wow. I was like, this kid is cool. And he had a wooden weed pipe that he made himself that was in the shape of a Z. And we smoked weed out of his Z pipe. And then the next day I was like, Don't we have to get high before the test? So we remember how we felt when we studied. And I and I and then from then I probably smoked every day from that day until I was 41.

SPEAKER_03 11:23

You know what I'm saying?

SPEAKER_01 11:23

Yeah. Totally.

SPEAKER_02 11:25

I remember when I started that first six months was great. I was like, why am I like killing it in school right now? Why am I just doing so good at everything? And then it just became like a daily habit that I feel like killed any ambition I had.

SPEAKER_01 11:37

Were you a serious hot smoker?

SPEAKER_02 11:38

Like every single day, multiple times a day. From when? I mean, there were definitely breaks, like head kids and stuff, but from like honestly, from like 16 to like 2 maybe around 30.

SPEAKER_01 11:52

So you were like a proper high school stoner.

SPEAKER_02 11:54

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:55

Yeah. Yeah. I was like a like I it was such a nerd school that I was not that.

SPEAKER_02 11:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:00

I bloomed late and and the late blooming really spoiled, spoiled the fruit.

SPEAKER_02 12:04

I'm a small town, very close to here, not a lot else to do. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:09

So dazed and confused kind of. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 12:11

So then for you, it kicks off a little bit later. How long then until smoking weed becomes something else?

SPEAKER_01 12:21

What was probably very fast. I actually probably did acid before I smoked pot.

SPEAKER_03 12:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:26

And um, I was really into the idea of counterculture. I was really into the idea of like rock and roll mythology and then kind of that outlaw, like drug culture, mostly like literary and art style. Like I was into that. I became an art history major. Like I stopped being a television major. I became an art history major. I became a photography major. I did all the psychedelics I could do. Very little else. But then we got busted in college. We were selling weed and we got busted in Ithaca, but Ithaca was a private school that I couldn't afford and I had horrible grades. And I had applied. I had applied to transfer to a state school that was an art school. And I we got busted, me and Zev actually got busted with weed, and um we both got suspended, but we both had gotten accepted to SUNY Purchase, which is an art school in New York in New York State school system. And we both transferred without getting suspended from the first school. And when we got to purchase, we just started selling acid and per and like I tried heroin and purchase. Purchase was like crazy art school. I didn't do hard drugs, but there wasn't a day I didn't smoke weed and psychedelics were everywhere. After that, I had tried coke randomly and it didn't really hit. And then I started doing my television production stuff, and I it was a job in East Lansing, Michigan. I was like a scout for a talk show that I wasn't the host of. I was the scout. It was a college talk show called uh The Flip Side with Gottfried, this famous comedian was the host. And I can't Godfrey, not Freed. It's Gilbert Gottfried, but that guy is this comedian in New York called Godfrey.

SPEAKER_03 14:12

Okay, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:12

Not Gilbert. So I come back home. Gilbert? No, I I knew Gilbert because Gilbert's a Katzes regular. Okay. And also Gilbert lived in the buildings I grew up in. Stop. And I would see Gilbert on the street and I'd be like, Gilbert Gottfried, and be like, hi, hello.

SPEAKER_02 14:26

It's like you just hear him coming down the street.

SPEAKER_01 14:28

Other Godfrey. Godfrey. I came home from a trip and I had a guy living with me, a very close friend living with me in my apartment in Manhattan, and we were doing coke here and there, a lot of bud still. When I came home, there was this delivery service, like a drug delivery service in my house, selling coke to a bunch of the kids from my art school. Like somehow they knew that my friend was there. They were all there. I wasn't there. I came home from the airport. They're all there buying Coke from this kid who's a delivery service. And I said to the kid, You're making all this money in my apartment. What are you going to give me for it? And he gave us two bags of heroin. And we did the heroin that night.

SPEAKER_02 15:08

And that wasn't your first time, though.

SPEAKER_01 15:10

It wasn't my first time, but it was my first time where I really liked it. And I even liked it. I was still high the next morning. And I felt so good. And from there, I had this knowledge that there was this drug that could make me feel exactly the way I felt like I needed to feel.

SPEAKER_03 15:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:30

And I started really succeeding in TV. That's when I got that show and I interviewed all these rock stars that I was totally enamored with. Like we interviewed Bob Weir from The Grateful Dead. We interviewed uh The Flaming Lips, Ween, a Beanie Man, Karis One, like Pavement, like a million very, very big acts. I signed a three-year contract. And it wasn't like looking back, it wasn't a lot of money, but at the time it was a fortune of money to me. And I felt like I had made it. And I did no work. Like I didn't prepare for the interviews and I got high for them. So you can find these interviews of me interviewing these famous people. The interviews are the worst interviews that have ever been done. And I was high. And I signed a three-year deal, and I don't think I made it out of the first year. And from there, spiral city. Like I didn't work again for like 15 years or something crazy. Oh, really? Actually, I had one job. I was producing a show before MTV didn't know that I was such a horrible drug addict. And they took me back to produce a show for them. And that and I was like shooting heroin in the MTV offices. And the end of that job was me stealing every CD off the off the desks at MTV and selling them. And that was that was the end of my MTV career.

SPEAKER_02 16:46

You went out like that, or you're like, I'm a still a CDs, but I can't come back after that.

SPEAKER_01 16:50

I feel like they fired me. I I finished the special.

SPEAKER_02 16:53

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 16:54

And in this, in the time it was called MTV, it was MTV2. It was MTV 2 Presents Handpicked Volume 2. And the bands on it were Nora Jones, John Mayer, fucking Coldplay was Coldplay. Yes. I interviewed Coldplay in that time. Yeah. And I was so strung out. And and I would always hire my friends to do the shooting. So me and my friend from high school, who is a total ne'er duel, John Wetterow. Shout out to John Wetterow. He's never gonna see this, but who knows? I love John. John takes me to, I feel like it was long it was it was uh Jones Beach. Coldplay was playing. I'm there to interview them, and they have like basketball courts and they're all eating steak and they're offering us beers and they're all chilling, and we interview them for like 20 minutes and they gave us tickets. Like I think we had probably front row tickets kind of thing. And I said, and John's like, let's go see the show. And I'm like, no, no, dude, you gotta drive me to Brooklyn so I can get heroin. Stop. And he's like, I'm not going to Brooklyn. We're gonna watch Coldplay.

SPEAKER_00 18:01

You're yellow.

SPEAKER_01 18:02

I was like, I'm not, we're not doing it. And I made him leave, and he's still angry at me about that.

SPEAKER_02 18:06

You gotta take him to a cold play concert.

SPEAKER_01 18:08

Nah. Nah. I feel okay about that. I feel okay about my John Wetterows. My John Weterow men's are totally covered. John Wetterow, and this is real inside baseball. First DopeyCon in that venue that you were at, we needed a sound crew. John Weterrow gave us a sound crew. They come, they get high while we're doing DopeyCon. John Wetterow comes halfway through the show, gets high with them during DopeCon in the venue. So John Weterrow gets no more.

SPEAKER_02 18:43

We meet people where they're at, but don't meet us there.

SPEAKER_01 18:45

I love John Wetterow. And and he's the fact that he has this much mythology in my life. Yeah, I feel very good about it.

SPEAKER_02 18:51

Yeah, that's incredible. Do you feel like being in that like interviewing rock star rock star like lifestyle, even if they weren't doing it, kind of like perpetuated or made you feel like this is fine to be doing drugs and like going to work?

SPEAKER_01 19:08

Sort of. I think it was more like aspirational. Like if my favorite bands were all drug addicts, like how could I not be?

SPEAKER_02 19:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:19

It was more like that.

SPEAKER_02 19:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:21

You know, and and it's funny because I always forget that I got to interview Coldplay and that I was high and then I was in withdrawal by the end of it.

SPEAKER_02 19:28

Well, no wonder you forgot.

SPEAKER_01 19:29

I appreciate you bringing it up. Makes me feel gives me some credibility.

SPEAKER_02 19:33

Yeah. When you're doing this, is this like a you have it seems like you've always got some like road dog with you. Like you've got like a buddy you're kind of doing your stuff with, but outside of that, is this like open in your work environment? Do people around you know what's happening or feel like it's affecting your work? Like, oh, this guy, or is it kind of just something you're like maintaining?

SPEAKER_01 19:50

I was pretty open. Like I was very open about my weed smoking.

SPEAKER_02 19:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:55

We had a bong in the edit room. Like I was h I I was very, very publicly high, but nobody knew I was on heroin except for like my friends, my editor, who was my very close friend, who actually came up with the idea for dopey down the road. I didn't tell like my family I was on heroin, but it was pretty obvious that I was not sober.

SPEAKER_02 20:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:18

We'll say that.

SPEAKER_02 20:19

And I think if, yeah, I can I can I've had people in my life where I was like, I did not know you were addicted to heroin for that period of time. I literally just thought you were high all the time and you just got higher and than usual.

SPEAKER_01 20:30

I don't know, but well, weed is a great camouflage for anything else because you look altered and nobody really know unless you're nodding out and your eyes are totally pinned. Yeah. It's like should have picked up on that. It's a decent camouflage.

SPEAKER_02 20:43

Yeah. Where does it all come to a head then with work, with substance use?

SPEAKER_01 20:48

For me, it's like it came to it came to a head when I ran out of money. I was working at this company called Burley Bear, and it was owned by Lauren Michaels, and I was totally strung out on heroin and I ran out of money. And I was living in public housing, and my rent was only $300 a month, and I was making like $100,000 a year, and I ran out of money.

SPEAKER_02 21:10

Dang. So what was your like daily cost for at that point?

SPEAKER_01 21:14

It was probably $300 a day. At that point. And I had this moment where I either had to tell work that I had a drug problem or tell my parents that I had a drug problem. And I checked myself into a free detox in Manhattan at a Beth Israel, and I decided to tell my parents. And because I told my parents, work could fire me. If I didn't realize that at the time, if I had told work they had to send me to treatment, but I didn't know that. So instead, I went to the shittiest free detox with all the fucking crazy people. Instead of I would have probably gone to some really nice place.

SPEAKER_02 21:49

I'd probably be like I feel like that happened that has to happen to so many people. We all have like stories. It's because like nobody talks about it. You don't really know where you're supposed to go. And I'm not like sharing it with everybody. I don't have a lot of input. It's yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:02

Well, it's scary. It is scary. I was young. And if I had gone to my boss and said, I have a drug problem, he would have known what to do, but I didn't do that. And I was like this like wild, living, adventurous guy that they enjoyed. Cause because again, like all of the like the high-end guests, it wasn't like they weren't lining up to do the show. I would go after them the same way I go after dopey guests. So they were excited that I would pull shit off. So they did they didn't really question my methods or my style. It was more exciting to have somebody so nuts that did all this stuff work for them. And in the end, it was just like I turned up in that free detox. And then, you know how people talk about like the series of bottoms. Yeah. For I mean, I was probably 25 when I went there and I bottomed for 10 years. You know, in the end, I was on 150 milligrams of methadone living in Los Angeles, hadn't worked in forever, was still doing heroin, still doing benzos, still smoking weed. And it's like, it took me a long time to even understand my story.

SPEAKER_02 23:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:13

But as I look back at it now, I didn't have any shame when I was 25. And I had a friend's sister who told me I had this deep hubris and I didn't really understand what she meant. And I didn't have any any shame when I was 25. But when I was 35, I got a phone call from my mother who told me she had leukemia. And I was living in Los Angeles and she was living in Manhattan. And I had this feeling, which I had never really had before, which is I can't stay here like this. Yeah. So I kicked the 150 milligrams of methadone for about a year. And then my girlfriend and I moved to Vermont to be close to my mother. And she died pretty quickly after that.

SPEAKER_00 23:58

I'm sorry.

SPEAKER_01 23:59

And my girlfriend and I broke up and I moved to New York City. And I got, I started, I had worked at Katz's when I was in high school. But I went back to Katz's and my mom died while I was there. But I didn't get sober. I kept smoking weed. I met this woman and she got pregnant. And somehow in the course of the pregnancy, that same kid who had lived in my apartment that had the drug guy over there, he had come back into my life. He actually introduced me to my daughter's mother and he brought me this heroin again and I started using. So my second serious shame moment was after this woman who's now my partner and my daughter's mother found me with a needle in my lap after we had had our daughter. During the pregnancy, I wound up starting to relapse. I didn't do it every day. No, she didn't know. And it was real insanity. I was waiting tables at the deli. We were living in Queens. I was working harder than I had ever worked. I had never had any real responsibilities. And now I had this woman who is basically a stranger who was pregnant. I I had whatever, a year off methadone, a year off heroin, but I'm still smoking pot. And then my friend shows up with heroin again. And I start, I start doing it exactly the way I did in the first place, which is once a week, twice a week.

SPEAKER_02 25:21

And then all of a sudden, like you cross the threshold, you start the goalpost moves.

SPEAKER_01 25:25

Exactly. And when when our first daughter was born, I left the hospital to get high. Like I didn't stay the night and I told her I wanted to clean the apartment. And maybe within six months, she found me shooting up and she said, You gotta go. And she left me and she moved to Long Island, and then I was on my own. And and that was kind of the beginning of real shame because I would, I would, I never wanted to miss visitation and I never did. And I never wanted to miss um money, whatever that's called. Support. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 26:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 26:00

And I never did. However, every time I went out, I was high. And I wasn't allowed to see my daughter without my father. And ultimately, that became the shame that propelled me to get sober because I saw myself with my dad, and I was this 36 or 37-year-old child. And it was like the first time, I guess when my mom died or my mom was dying, I was like, I'm in a bad place. Yeah. And this time I was like, this is even worse. And those were really the seeds. You know, in time when I got sober, I didn't see it at first. Now I'm starting to see those were the seeds of my recovery. Yeah. And but I didn't get sober then either. I I like wound up getting off of my heroin habit went insane in that time. I started doing $300 a day again. And and I started like doing crazy things, like just living in a way that didn't make sense. In the end, I wound up literally walking into a brick wall, breaking my nose, getting a black eye, going to visit my daughter. And my daughter's mother being like, the fuck is wrong with you? And then explaining that I couldn't, like I it wasn't working out. So she's like, Well, you need to go to treatment. And I wound up going to treatment. And that's where I met Chris in that treatment. And uh, and I still didn't get sober. Like I left that treatment. My daughter's mother said, I'm not gonna let you have visitation without your father until you can show me a year on a hair follicle test. And I said, Okay. And I stopped using and I got and I got the year. You know, I I drank a few times.

SPEAKER_03 27:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 27:40

Um, but I'm not a drinker. I drank a few times, I got the year, and then I got my c I got my custody. So every every week I had my daughter for two days and I was really happy and it was great, but I didn't have any real recovery.

SPEAKER_02 27:54

And she was sober, was abstinent, right? Absolutely, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 27:58

And Hurricane Sandy happened and I started smoking weed again. You get trapped, you yeah. I I and I was so happy. And that was a little period that I loved because I was smoking pot. Like I wasn't smoking all day. I was waiting tables, smoking pot in the afternoon. We made this uh web series at the time called The Last Jewish Waiter, which was about a waiter. Yeah, it was about a waiter who hates waiting tables, but he wants to have a talk show. So he he does the talk show while he waits tables. Yeah. And I was like basically stoned for it. And it was so fun. And then I started doing pills again. And all I really wanted was Linda, my daughter's mother, and and Nora, my daughter, to be with them. That's all I was obsessed with it. And Linda was like, I'll give you another chance. And we went on this trip to Lancaster, Pennsylvania, to a really shitty amusement park called Dutch Wonderland. And and I wound up, Linda wound up catching me take Xanax on that trip, and she lost her mind. And she was like, You need to get another year and start over. And I fucking lost it. And and it was one night, which she tried to give me another chance and I fucked it up. But it was one night I was in my kitchen in August, and I'm like writing her this letter saying, just give me one more chance, you know. And I said, just give me one more chance. I can smoke weed and be a good parent. That was the the gist of the letter. And I saw myself doing it and I was like, What is this? And and then I like had this kind of my that was my I love that you were so real with yourself in that second.

SPEAKER_02 29:36

Like you're you're writing that out, and is it as you see it?

SPEAKER_01 29:40

You're just like, Yeah, I I was I was 41. Yeah, I was 41. Uh, I'm in, I'm alone. Like I was so close to getting what I wanted. Like I I hadn't done any steps in my I I'd been in a you know, not in in one fellow, one 12-step fellowship and didn't do the work. And I'm writing this letter to beg me smoke weed, and I'm a waiter and I'm in a subletted apartment, and I'm like, wait a second. It was like some moment of clarity. And then I wound up going to a meeting the next day.

SPEAKER_03 30:10

Really?

SPEAKER_01 30:10

And uh, I'm sure I mean I've told this story before, but there's some kid getting 10 years who was like handsome and fit and had like tattooed sleeves and shit. Yeah. And I'm like, this fucking this fucking guy. And I went up to him after the meeting to tell him how annoying I thought he was. I love that. I don't know why. Like, I don't know what possessed me to do that. And he was cool. He was just like, he was like, he like laughed. Like he knew I was trying to be funny. Yeah. And he's like, Oh, well, how much time do you have? And I said, Nothing. And he goes, Well, did you use today? And I said, No. And he said, Well, maybe today can be your first day.

SPEAKER_02 30:54

This podcast is brought to you by recovery.com. Recovery.com is a place where anyone can find mental health or addiction treatment options specific to them. You can filter by location, price, insurance coverage, therapy type, mental health condition, levels of care, and so much more. Recovery.com is the best place to find mental health or addiction treatment for anyone, anywhere.

SPEAKER_01 31:19

And he said, Well, maybe today can be your first day. And it was like it's crazy. Like it's crazy that, and here we are, and that was my first day. And then I just started going to meetings and I just did did the stuff.

SPEAKER_02 31:31

Yeah. What was it about attending meetings this time that was different than previous times?

SPEAKER_01 31:36

I think I was really open.

SPEAKER_02 31:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 31:38

Like I think the shame had opened me up. I sat in this meeting. It was in Manhattan, it was in a big church, and I was 41. And I said to myself, if I'm lucky, I'll live to be 82. And this is halfway of my life. And my life is pretty much better than it's ever been, and it's not good. You know, I'm a waiter. I fucking have this subletted apartment. I have this kid that I can only see twice a week with my dad supervising me. And I was like, and and I hadn't like I had gone to NA and I didn't really take suggestions. It wasn't as it wasn't as simple to me as AA. It just wasn't. And in AA, they just, or maybe I wasn't listening. And when I read how it works, it changed my life. Or when I heard them read it, rarely have we seen someone fail who has thoroughly followed our program. And I hadn't thoroughly done anything except drugs. And I and I had failed.

SPEAKER_03 32:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 32:37

And I wanted to not fail. And I and I I remember saying to myself, this is it, let's say this is halfway in my life, and I have nothing to show for it. What could follow the program accomplish? Yeah. And I and I did all this stuff. You know, I I I called the people, I got a sponsor, I started working steps. And around then is when I started talking to Chris again. I started calling him every day because he was a horrible drug addict and he had like a year and a half. And I was like, does does this AA really work? And he's like, it's working for me. And and and he was really into the last Jewish waiter. And he was like, he was like, I want to do something like that.

SPEAKER_03 33:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 33:20

And I knew that like I needed to do something fun. And I started a dumb clothing company that totally failed. And I had a band that wasn't good and wasn't fun to be in. And I remembered that guy, my editor back in the day, had suggested doing a podcast about drug stories. And I didn't know what a podcast was, even when he suggested it. And I said to Chris, well, why don't we do a podcast about drug stories? And Chris had great drug stories. And he was like, Okay, well, what do I do? And I was just like, just come to my apartment and I know what to do. Even though I really didn't, I just said, I know what to do. And all I wanted to do was imitate the Howard Stern show. Yeah. Imitate like a tiny bit of the Howard Stern show where I would make fun of Chris and he would tell crazy stories. And I knew that that would work. And we he would he lived in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, and we had committed, he came in and he was like, Well, what do we do? And I said, Well, we're not gonna buy any gear because if we buy any gear, we're not gonna do it. And you have to come every month, right? You know what I mean? It's like having like a tennis racket and then we're playing tennis. And I was like, uh, you have to come every month and we'll record four shows. And he was like, We made a pact, like, and I'm sure we both had made a lot of pacts up until that point, but for some reason the pact stuck.

SPEAKER_03 34:40

That's awesome.

SPEAKER_01 34:40

And we were like, We're not gonna stop doing this. And he, I mean, he didn't really edit the episodes, but he did more editing than I did. He would put music on the front and the back or the front at the time, and we just started releasing them.

SPEAKER_02 34:53

That's incredible, and that started in 2016.

SPEAKER_01 34:57

It was the end of 2015. I guess we released the first one in 2016, but I had four months sober. It was a total blur. Even like we have a lot of people listening and stuff, but I still don't feel the listener when I do the show. I feel it's like nobody's listening. And when me and Chris did it in the first place, it nobody was listening. So it was like, and and but I think also me and him, yeah, we didn't have so much shame around it. I don't know why. Like, I don't like we the things about Chris and I, we were both raised in good families, and the reason that I thought the show was so good was because we knew better, and like that was funny.

SPEAKER_02 35:37

Yeah. So when you guys started Dopey, like the the the humor of it was like this like main part. Why was it important for you two to focus on that in the grit rather than like the miracle, like beautiful aspect that some people choose to highlight more?

SPEAKER_01 35:54

We didn't, I mean, like I wasn't interested in doing neither of us were interested in doing anything besides like the show about drugs addiction and dumb shit. Yeah. You know, and like we didn't plan that wasn't like the plan was to do a show that was just war stories.

SPEAKER_03 36:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 36:10

And the show was gonna be called war stories. And then, you know, that was what it was gonna be. It wasn't gonna be anything else but war stories. And there was a podcast called War Stories about about the military, you know? And uh, so we we had to come up with something else, and I loved the the word dope. Like I grew up in the 90s and and cool shit was dope, and and like in the 60s, drugs were called dope. And and then I imagined like like my grandfather would call an idiot a dope. And then I remember I was walking home from Katz's on Clinton Street, and there was some kid in the street wearing a black baseball cap with gold, like real gold letters on it that said dope. And I imagined my grandpa being like, look at this fucking dope. And uh and so I told I told Chris that story, and Chris was like, Oh, maybe we should call it two dopes talking about dope. And I was like, No, let's call it dopey. Dopey. And then and then the first time I said hello and welcome to Dopey, the podcast about drugs, addiction, and other dumb shit. And Chris was like, You need to do that every time.

SPEAKER_02 37:20

That's it.

SPEAKER_01 37:21

And I was like, I don't want to do it every time, but now, but now I do do it every time.

SPEAKER_02 37:25

And how did it go from like two guys just sharing war stories to having people come and share their stories?

SPEAKER_01 37:32

Because how many stories did we have? Yeah, you know like we ran out of stuff, right? We we but Chris never really loved having guests, and I imagined it being kind of the way it is now, but I think 40 episodes in, it's like pretty obvious we're gonna run out of shit, you know?

SPEAKER_02 37:50

We're sober now though.

SPEAKER_01 37:51

Yeah, but it's like it's like I would, and then it's also like I would have been happy just like talking about like what we were eating and like where we were going, and like, but Chris, and then we always realized we had to. There was a phrase that we kind of came up with, which was hit them with the dopey. And hitting people with the dopey was like a fucked up drug story. And we would be like, Oh, we didn't even hit them with the dopey in this episode. And that's when we also would push the audience to send in stories. And so it became like basically in every story, we would read a story or play a voicemail from an audience member. And I think like the audience really felt a part of the show because we kind of forced them to be.

SPEAKER_02 38:32

Yeah. You've really built like a really awesome community with Dopey and all of the listeners.

SPEAKER_01 38:37

Yeah, I mean, that happened more. I mean, I think that happened because we didn't focus on the miracle of recovery and we focused on drugs, addiction, and dumb shit, and and and so many drug addicts like felt connected to us. But what really happened was Chris wound up dying, you know, he wound up relapsing and dying. We didn't set up, there's a lot of stuff we didn't do because both of us were fragile and sensitive, and like I couldn't handle it. Like a lot of the fans definitely preferred Chris to me because he was like, he was a better person than me. I was like the villain on the show. And and I would I would tear him down constantly. He was super sweet, he was brilliant, and he and I was 10 years older than him, yeah. And I was like, so I was like a dick. And uh I I was scared that people and people like would always give me shit for interrupting people, and I would also eat while we did the show, which was disgusting.

SPEAKER_02 39:33

Diabolical, horrible, horrible, inventing ASMR over there.

SPEAKER_01 39:37

Horrible, horrible. Mesophia is real. Yeah. Uh and we I'd get emails about that all the time. You're killing me. It was horrible. And uh, but when he died, the audience, you know, felt like they we had lost some other people in our community, but when Chris died, it fucked everybody up. And they started a dope nation Facebook page, and all of a sudden the community kind of grew its own legs, yeah, kind of out from just being separate. They were together. And then during COVID, they started something called Dopination Zoom, and now they do 25 Zooms a week. I have nothing to do with any of it, they just do it.

SPEAKER_02 40:18

That's awesome.

SPEAKER_01 40:19

Yeah, it's pretty crazy.

SPEAKER_02 40:20

When he relapsed, did you did you know that he had relapsed or that he was struggling again?

SPEAKER_01 40:28

No. What had happened was there was a series of deaths in the community. It started with this guy named Dave Marshall, and Dave Marshall was a friend of his who was a great dopey fan. He he owned a CrossFit gym in rural Connecticut. They played dopey in there. He set up our Facebook page, his sister made merch. He died. And I that was the first person I had ever experienced dying around addiction, and I had been on drugs forever.

SPEAKER_03 40:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 40:53

Then this kid named Andrew, who was a he would send in voicemails and emails, and he was a great character. He said he wanted to intern on the show, and I met him in Manhattan, and like the next day, his father wrote me that he had died. And it was like, it was just brutal. Then um the guy who was in my apartment, you know, the receiving the drug dealer at the time who introduced me to me and introduced me to my wife, and he was one of my very best friends. His name was Todd. We had him on the show like five times. He died in June of 2018, and I was destroyed. When when Todd died, I like we had just had our second daughter, we had just bought a house, and I cried my eyes out, and um and it fucked me up. It totally changed everything. And and me and Chris were doing the show, and I couldn't do it the same way because all of a sudden, some of the stuff that I thought was so funny wasn't funny anymore. And around that time, Chris was in graduate school. He was engaged to this woman who who's now a doctor in California. She was in medical school in Harvard. He was working in a sober living and he was sober coaching. He was very busy. And he started losing interest in dopey. And I figured he was very busy. So, like that was natural. But somebody, one of his friends wrote me, I think there's something going on with Chris. And Todd had just died. And I confronted Chris and I was like, Are you all right? You know, and he and he spends an hour on the phone with me telling me about all the pressure he's under and this and that. And I gullibly believed him, you know, and uh, and I kind of I kind of felt guilty that I had even confronted him in the first place. Like that's how how like gullible I was, or whatever. And he wound up using, and I didn't know he was using, and we were fighting a lot. We had stopped doing the show in person. We had we had a couple more episodes we did in person. And then like one of the great inspirations of Dopey was this comedian who was on the Howard Stern show named Artie Lang. And Artie like basically invented Dopey on the Howard Stern show. Like he was just the funniest, worst drug addict ever. And I legitimately stalked him for the first three years of the show. Like I went to where he recorded his podcast. I would bring him sandwiches from Katz's. I got his phone number. I went to his comedy shows. Like, I stalked him. And finally he was like, fine, come, we'll do a show. So me and Chris met and we took a bus from Port Authority in Manhattan to Hoboken in New Jersey. We recorded it with Artie. The we left. The me and Chris got a ferry from Hoboken back to Manhattan. And I was like, Do you want to go get dinner? And he was like, No. And Chris never would pass up on eating like in Manhattan and like chilling. And uh, and that was that was the last time I saw him. Like he uh we wound up having one more really long conversation. He was fighting with his girlfriend. He was telling me how crazy she was. And I was like, dude, if you want to quit doing the show, just fucking tell me now. And he was like, No, all I really want to do is the show. And we had this like beautiful, like it's almost like out of a movie, like, I love you. I want to do this kind of thing.

SPEAKER_03 44:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 44:17

And in the morning, in the middle of the night, I got a text from his girlfriend, which was, I'm worried about Chris. Please check on him. At 6'11 in the morning or something, I texted him, Are you okay? I think he texted me back at 612. And he was like, he's like, I'm fine, not good, but I'm alive. I'll call you later. Those were his words. Four hours later, me and Linda and our baby are going out to take a walk, and I get a call from the girlfriend that she found him dead. And I didn't even believe it. You know, it's so, so crazy.

SPEAKER_02 44:53

I feel like the uh people can be struggling, and even though we know that they struggled with the same thing that we did, to like just to not see that, to not see that happening.

SPEAKER_01 45:05

Yeah, I don't I don't I still like if somebody tells me they're not using, like, who am I to be like, yes, you are?

SPEAKER_02 45:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 45:14

It's like, get the fuck out of here. You know what I mean? Like, and and and there was nothing that I could have done, I don't know what I could have done differently. I never felt guilty. Like I was there. I asked him if he was using, I was always there. Like I never had that feeling.

SPEAKER_02 45:29

How did his passing then kind of change the makeup of Dopey? The community kind of like blossomed on its own, but what did that then mean for you?

SPEAKER_01 45:40

Yeah, I mean, it was Linda was like, you can stop doing the show now, you know, you got it now. Yeah. Well, I was I was so, but she she knew how obsessed I was with doing the show. And I wasn't gonna stop doing the show, but I didn't know how to do it. I had a friend who I also met in rehab years ago who was a TV producer, and I was like, Can you please help me? Uh and he was like, Yeah. And so for for it was it was for a long time, I wouldn't record anything unless he was on speaker phone, my friend, because I was so like nervous and out of sorts. And then I just kind of got into it and I just I just figured Dopey was made up of a few components. Like one of the components was drug stories. If Chris wasn't alive, another component would have to be an interview. So I figured this would open up a path to a different kind of show. And then the third component had to be hanging out. And I tried to make those the components of the show. And like the and I basically I said to myself and to the audience and to and to Linda, like, I'll stop doing it if it sucks or it's not fun. And in the beginning it sucked and it wasn't fun, but I was like not ready to be done with it. It's gotta be the both of them. Well, in the beginning, I think it was. I think after he died, it definitely wasn't fun and it sucked. You know, and and I think we did like three or four interviews. Like we did an interview with Dr. Drew. Like Dr. Chris had been treated by Dr. Drew, and we had him on the show together. So we did an interview with him afterwards. We did an interview with his friends at his wake, which was fucking great episode, but very hard. Yeah. We did, and then and then I started bringing in people kind of from my life and from his life. But the show between 143 and like 250 were not the best episodes. There's a couple of okay ones.

SPEAKER_02 47:39

It's this huge change.

SPEAKER_01 47:41

It's crazy. It was a crazy, crazy experience.

SPEAKER_02 47:45

I really feel like there's the side of it like you creating Dopey and keeping it going, and then the listeners and how they then take this new chapter of Dopey. And everything is just like a global force now. Um, it's really cool to see where you've taken it and bringing in new people. What is it about the raw honesty do you think that like connects people in a way that like traditional recovery might not? Like what you feel in like a recovery room as opposed to the conversations that you're leading?

SPEAKER_01 48:17

I think it's funny because I think traditional recovery is about raw honesty. And I think if you're actually engaged in traditional recovery, that's the whole thing. It's just when it gets watered down through these different mechanisms of media or or or or status quo or corporate culture.

SPEAKER_02 48:34

Like you can have that raw honesty, I think more with yourself there in like standard treatment. And then the watered down part is how you feel you explain it to the world or present it to the world.

SPEAKER_01 48:45

I feel like the the raw, the real truest recovery is you and a sponsor and your fellows. Yeah. And and in those relationships, the raw the better, the more healing comes because you're you know you're only as sick as your secrets. Yeah. So where you're not supremely raw and honest, you it's arguable you're not really in recovery. Go check those areas. You know what I mean? Because you're trying to put on a different kind of show. Interesting, though. I haven't really thought about that.

SPEAKER_02 49:13

What has been the most surprising thing like a listener has shared with you?

SPEAKER_01 49:18

I don't even know.

SPEAKER_02 49:18

I was like, can you be surprised anymore?

SPEAKER_01 49:21

No. I mean, because I also probably have early onset dementia, and I don't know, I don't know anything that anybody's ever told me at this point.

SPEAKER_02 49:29

I remember what I wore yesterday.

SPEAKER_01 49:30

I I feel like there's so many things that are like as I still work at Katz's, I have two kids. I make now five shows a week because I'm insane. Yeah. I and like there have been a lot of like crazy things with the listeners, but I I it kind of like gets away from me. Like, okay, there's like probably 40 people with dopey tattoos. Like, I think I think the people who tell me that they got sober from listening to the show. I think I also really deflect from those kinds of experiences because I don't think it's healthy for me to feel like I had that much of a positive impact on anybody.

SPEAKER_02 50:10

Oh, that's really humble of you to say.

SPEAKER_01 50:12

But it's weird.

SPEAKER_02 50:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 50:14

You know.

SPEAKER_02 50:14

Do you feel sometimes like in the podcasting space, like it does feel really intimate? Like we yeah, I get there's cameras here, but sometimes it feels like most of the time it feels like I'm just like chatting with somebody about their life and like we have a really cool, deep conversation, and I don't acknowledge that like other people will watch this. So when somebody says to me, or I get like a DM that's like that episode you had and what you said was absolutely incredible. And I shared it with somebody and just like meant the world. I'm like, I can't believe somebody heard that. It's like, well, duh. But like it is, it's incredible. It's really, it's good to hear. It's kind of one of those like grounding experiences, too. And like how somebody's story is what got me to share my story, and somebody else's story encouraged to say those things is what got me to ask for help.

SPEAKER_01 51:01

Yeah. I mean, it's the best, you know. It's like, it's like for me to be totally honest, it's like drugs. When someone tells me they got something good from the show, it's like I'm high. Like I feel so good about it.

SPEAKER_02 51:12

That's that dopamine hit.

SPEAKER_01 51:13

Yeah. And and but that's like something to watch out for at the same time. But I I totally forget that I'm ever doing the show and I'm always doing the show. And and whenever anyone says something nice to me about it, I feel so good, but I'm also very quick to be like, you know, we're just doing this thing kind of thing.

SPEAKER_02 51:33

It's a cool thing though. Thank you. Um okay, last question. Now that you're several years sober, what how what's your sober date? Do you have?

SPEAKER_01 51:40

I think I mean I it's it's either August 13th or August 15th. At first I picked Friday the 13th, but then somehow I turned it to the 15th because both of my daughters are born on the 15th.

SPEAKER_02 51:50

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 51:51

But it's it's around there. It's around there. Uh 2015.

SPEAKER_02 51:55

So, okay, so almost 11 years now. So we got like 10 and a half years. Uh successful podcaster and a father. How do you handle the ordinary challenges by main and like that help you maintain your sobriety today?

SPEAKER_01 52:07

Well, I I love that question because I do exactly the same stuff that I did when I first got sober. Like, and I do more of it now than I probably did then. Cause I'm I'm at this place in my recovery where it's like we were talking about before we started about harmonica playing, and like that I had gotten to this level of harmonica playing when I was in high school and I never got better because I didn't really practice. And like I heard early on in recovery that it's the only solution is spiritual, you know. So like I'm 10 and a half years sober, and I would say most of the way through, I don't think I prioritize spiritual principles. And I try to prioritize spiritual principles now. And when I have something go wrong, which I have something go wrong every day, to try to lean into program and like just the the little things in program, like practice acceptance, practice open-mindedness, be honest. My routine though is a total AA routine. I get up, I pray, I exercise, I meditate, I call three alcoholics a day, I go to meetings probably three or four days a week, I sponsor people, I have a sponsor, like I'm in that. Like I'm 100% in it. Yeah for now, like if today, and I and I know that the further I get away from that basic 12-step recovery, like I don't do as well. You know, the the harder I lean into 12 step for me, and I know I sound like a fucking crazy coot, like I the harder I lean into 12-step recovery, the the better everything else is.

SPEAKER_02 53:47

Yeah. If you want to be a blues traveler, you gotta practice.

SPEAKER_01 53:50

You got yeah, there's no, there's no other way. And it's like, and it's the same with the podcast. You know, if I practice different things, I'll get better at it. It's the same with marketing, it's the same with business, it's the same with relationships, it's the same with parenting, it's the same with everything fitness, whatever.

SPEAKER_02 54:07

Well, David, thank you so much for joining us today. Thank you for sharing your story here and sharing other people's story on your podcast. Thank you. It's amazing. Uh, tell people your handles where they can follow you.

SPEAKER_01 54:19

Dopey. Dopey. Dopey podcast.

SPEAKER_02 54:22

Yeah. Uh, thank you all for joining us. We'll catch you on the next episode of Recovery Cast.