\n<\/p>\n
\n\tTales of alcohol- and drug-fueled-debauchery are as common in music as playing guitar, whether it be onstage antics (Jim Morrison, Ozzy), the trashing of a hotel room (Rolling Stones, Rick James, Sid Vicious, countless others), or a \u201clost weekend\u201d in the case of John Lennon. Many of these real-life experiences end tragically, but when the musician survives and finds sobriety, the war stories don\u2019t go away. In fact, there\u2019s wisdom in leaning in to their retelling.<\/p>\n
\n\tEnter David Manheim, host of the Dopey <\/em>podcast which has become essential listening for those in the recovery community. Twice a week, Manheim provides vital insights and comic relief from guests recounting their darkest addiction moments. Most are people with no claim to fame, and those are often the most interesting guests, though Dopey <\/em>has featured a range of music names and notable personalities from the entertainment world. Among them: Motley Crue manager Doc Mcghee, guitarist Steve Stevens, radio host Matt Pinfield and comedians like Artie Lange and Hank Azaria, the latter of whom will appear at Saturday\u2019s DopeyCon, celebrating the pod\u2019s 10th anniversary, to be held at the Church of the Holy Apostle in New York City\u2019s Chelsea neighborhood (tickets are still available for purchase).<\/p>\n \n\tManheim speaks music fluently, having grown up in New York immersed in the ska scene of the 1990s. And his hosting skills were also honed in the area, working for Broadway Video, Lorne Michaels\u2019 media company, which allowed him to interview artists like the Flaming Lips, Ween, Beanie Man, KRS-1, and Bob Weir on camera. \u201cI did a show high on heroin mostly,\u201d says Manheim matter-of-factly. A stint at MTV2 followed before the bottom fell out and rehab beckoned. It was there that he met Chris O\u2019Connor and they dreamed up Dopey<\/em>. Sadly, his cohost died of an overdose in July 2018. The Dopey community has memorialized him with the sign-off \u201cToodles for Chris.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tManheim, who splits his time working at Katz\u2019s Deli as a social media director, has now been clean for 10 years. He spoke to Rolling Stone<\/em> about the ties that bind addicts and listeners. \u00a0<\/p>\n \t\tEditor\u2019s picks<\/p>\n<\/h2>\n \n\tWhat\u2019s your connection to music?<\/strong> \n\tDo you see a connection between the glamorization of drug experiences that you read about in books and actually getting into using?\u00a0<\/strong> \t\t\t\t\tDavid Manheim\u2019s tattoo <\/span><\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy of the Dopey Podcast Archives<\/p>\n \n\tHow did you end up with a job on television?<\/strong> \t\tRelated Content<\/p>\n<\/h2>\n \n\tHave you found a common thread with all of the musicians you\u2019ve interviewed as it relates to addiction?<\/strong> \n\tI\u2019m sure this has come up a lot with musicians: Were you a better songwriter when you were fucked up than when you were sober?<\/strong> \n\tListeners compare your interviewing skills to Howard Stern\u2026<\/strong> \n\tAnd you\u2019ve have Artie Lang on Dopey<\/em>, too?<\/strong> \t\t\t\t\tChris O\u2019Connor, Manheim\u2019s former podcasting partner, died in 2018. <\/span><\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy of the Dopey Podcast Archives<\/p>\n \n\tThe tragic story of Chris was told in great detail on another podcast, This American Life<\/em>. When do you find yourself thinking of him?<\/strong> \n\tWhat did you bond over in rehab?\u00a0<\/strong> \n\tWhere do you land on cannabis and its place in recovery as an exit-drug? \u00a0<\/strong> \n\tWhat\u2019s the genesis of DopeyCon?<\/strong> \n\tHow do you book your guests?<\/strong> \t\t\t\t\tDavid Manheim and Chris O\u2019Connor met during recovery and started \u2018Dopey.\u2019 <\/span><\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy of the Dopey Podcast Archives<\/p>\n \n\tWho\u2019s on your wish list for future guests on the Dopey<\/em> podcast?<\/strong> \n\tWho is a good ambassador for sobriety?\u00a0<\/strong> \n\tHow so?<\/strong> \t\tTrending Stories<\/p>\n<\/h2>\n \n\tThat\u2019s like the Dopey<\/em> ethos: to share stories that are so insane and horrific, but they\u2019re told in such a way that makes them less scary.<\/strong> \n\tDoes it connect to the Alcoholics Anonymous model of speaking in front of a group of fellow addicts?\u00a0<\/strong> Tales of alcohol- and drug-fueled-debauchery are as common in music as playing guitar, whether it be onstage antics (Jim Morrison, Ozzy), the trashing of a hotel room (Rolling Stones, Rick James, Sid Vicious, countless others), or a \u201clost weekend\u201d in the case of John Lennon. Many of these real-life experiences end tragically, but when the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":25201,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[3151,15239,10768,12782,3740,1623,261],"class_list":{"0":"post-25200","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-addiction","9":"tag-dopey","10":"tag-entertaining","11":"tag-helpful","12":"tag-podcasts","13":"tag-stories","14":"tag-war"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25200","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25200"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25200\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/25201"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25200"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25200"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25200"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
I wanted to be a musician. I started playing in bands in New York, and then I went to college and became a total stoner almost immediately. And as soon as that happened, the cross-pollination of smoking weed every day, playing music, and reading about musicians, it led me to the Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test<\/em>, which led me to Kerouac, which led me to Burroughs, and all of the drugs that follow.<\/p>\n
I do.\u00a0In my life, I grew up in Manhattan, but I started doing drugs in upstate New York. I got kicked out of college and wound up at SUNY Purchase, which was an art school, and somebody came through with heroin. And I did it there.<\/p>\n
I didn\u2019t play [music] anymore and I started doing drugs and then I wound up working at Broadway Video which had a subsidiary called Burly Bear, and I made a music show there. \u2026 We did weird bits where, this is when TRL<\/em> was starting to be big, we\u2019d go down to MTV and I would wear a Spider-Man mask and my friend wore a Halloween <\/em>Jason mask and we protested with signs that said \u201cMTV is the tool of the devil.\u201d I was high for all of it and wound up not being able to keep up with the drug habit, and with the rent. I got fired for breach of contract because I went to detox, and didn\u2019t tell my employer. Then I got one last TV job at MTV2 producing a show called Handpicked Volume 2<\/em>, which was like the breakout show for Coldplay and John Mayer and Jason Schwartzman was the host, and I was totally fucked up on heroin.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n
Everybody has a different story, and not everybody has the same view towards sobriety or even recovery. Roddy Bottum [from Faith No More] was saying that he occasionally smokes weed. Ivan Neville has been on a few times and always talks being abstinent. And DMC is sober a long time, but he didn\u2019t work a recovery program at all. So it\u2019s the path of consequences and then making some kind of measured change. But the change isn\u2019t always the same.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Absolutely. It\u2019s an interesting question because everybody says, \u201cI\u2019m just as creative sober as I was on drugs.\u201d But then you go back and you look at the records and were the sober records ever as good as the high records? I don\u2019t know.<\/p>\n
I actually lied my way onto the Howard Stern Show<\/em>.\u00a0It was Sept. 22, 1999. I wanted to be famous. And I wanted my Broadway Video show, called Shuffle<\/em>, to be popular. And I was such a Stern fan. I figured Howard would put me on if I brought in my hot girlfriend to get naked or I took off all my clothes and wore, like, a sandwich board on 34th Street saying Howard is the greatest. Or I could appeal to his ego and come up with a lie, which I did. I invented an award \u2014 the Shuffle<\/em> Entertainer of the Millennium Award \u2014 and I said that Howard beat out Jay Leno and Adam Sandler in our audience vote. So he invited me to come give him the award. And the night before, I did all sorts of drugs \u2014 heroin and coke and ecstasy \u2014 and I walked up to K-Rock from my apartment at five in the morning and I gave him the award. And he believed it. He thanked his agent and he thanked Robin. And then Robin looks at me and she goes, \u201cHe\u2019s high.\u201d And then he kicked me out. But it was still amazing. I have the recording of it.\u00a0Now I want to make amends for lying to them \u2014 to go over there with pastrami sandwiches from Katz\u2019s.<\/p>\n
My friend Chris, who died while we made the show, he and I went out to Hoboken to interview Artie, and the two of them were high. I was the only sober person and that was the last time I saw Chris alive.<\/p>\n
Every day at some point because I\u2019m so obsessed with making the show. And every episode, I end with saying \u201cToodles for Chris.\u201d Also twice a year, we do Chris shows \u2014 tributes on his birthday and on the week that he died.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Everything, but it\u2019s the same reason that the show worked so well, which was we both came from these good families, and it was very obvious that we knew everything that we had done and why it was wrong. Like we could see it in our parents\u2019 eyes. So when we talked about our lives, it would be as these ridiculous drug addicts that were raised by these totally morally upright, educated people. So I think that was like the deepest connection. And then just like we had a way of making each other laugh. He was incredibly smart and he made me laugh a lot, too.\u00a0<\/p>\n
I love cannabis. I just can\u2019t smoke it because I\u2019m too much of a drug addict. But I don\u2019t I don\u2019t have an issue with people smoking weed.\u00a0It\u2019s an amazing detox drug. And I wouldn\u2019t suggest anybody get off heroin without weed, unless weed is not good for them \u2014 because there\u2019s a bunch of people that get very paranoid when they smoke pot. But I never could have gotten off heroin without cannabis.\u00a0Heroin addiction is soul sucking. And when you finally get off of it, you\u2019re really sick for a while and something like bud can make you feel better in the short term. I don\u2019t think cannabis in the long-term is great for alcoholics and drug addicts in recovery unless they can\u2019t work out abstinence. I love being abstinent.<\/p>\n
It was an idea that me and Chris had a million years ago, and then we never did it. And after he died, I wanted to do it almost for Chris. The fans put together a Dopey Nation fan page on Facebook because they wanted to grieve Chris together. Then during Covid, they started doing Dopey Nation Zooms every week. And now they do 25 Zooms a week that have nothing to do with me. And we\u2019ve sent like 50 people to rehab, and there\u2019s like 50 people with Dopey<\/em> tattoos. I\u2019m proud of all those things. We\u2019ve been doing DopeyCon at the Church of the Holy Apostle, which is the oldest and biggest soup kitchen in the city. It\u2019s a beautiful place. This is the fourth year and we always get interesting people to participate and people travel from all over the world to come. It\u2019s pretty cool.<\/p>\n
We try to get contributions from the audience as much as possible \u2014 whether it\u2019s music or art or friends of friends \u2014 and then you have sober influencers. I need two guests a week so I\u2019m constantly looking and reaching out.<\/p>\n
Steve Jones.\u00a0Flavor Flav. Charlie Sheen.\u00a0Robert Downey Jr. Courtney Love. Keith Richards, obviously. Pete Townsend. Trey Anastasio. Billy Strings. Paul Simon, so he can talk about the crazy ayahuasca journey he took in his forties that changed his perspective. My number one dream guest is Bob Dylan.<\/p>\n
Marc Maron is great because he\u2019s so human and doesn\u2019t act like he\u2019s holier than thou or sanctimonious. He acknowledges what recovery did for him and that he\u2019s still a person who\u2019s capable of a myriad of emotions. Margaret Cho is an amazing ambassador for sobriety. Jamie Lee Curtis, Robert Downey Jr\u2026. \u00a0they\u2019ve been through the mill. Even Charlie Sheen at this point is an incredible ambassador for recovery.\u00a0<\/p>\n
His stories are just so out there and detailed. He takes so much pleasure in the insanity and debauchery. He also acknowledges how totally out of his mind he was in the \u201cwinning,\u201d Tiger Blood period. And you get a feeling of deep humility and gratitude [in the new Netflix documentary, aka Charlie Sheen<\/em>]. And maybe he\u2019s just acting, but I feel like you look at him, he\u2019s been through it and he knows what happened. And I get this feeling that he\u2019s changed. He\u2019s the ultimate Dopey<\/em> guest, right?<\/p>\n\n
I think when people close the door on their drug stories or war stories or whatever you want to call them it\u2019s because they feel shame around it, or they\u2019re afraid that it\u2019s going to give somebody the wrong idea. I know for me, when we started the show, the stories Chris and I told each other were so crazy, but they were also super entertaining and they bonded us. And then instantly there was an audience who bonded to it too. It\u2019s about the general joy of telling a good story that\u2019s funny. It\u2019s about having survived. And it\u2019s also like, we\u2019re not the only people this happened to. That\u2019s really powerful because it\u2019s the only place you\u2019re going to hear this kind of a story.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t think so. AA saved my life 100 percent, but there\u2019s a little twist. AA is all about trying to apply spiritual principles to your day-to-day. We always said that Dopey <\/em>was like the meeting after the meeting, or the meeting before the meeting, where you can laugh and actually make friends.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"