Selling Fake Ecstasy on Grateful Dead Tour, Persian Heroin & $1 Grilled Cheese

0:00Hey hey hey hey! It's time for JoE. And I want to sing a song for you. And Chris can show you a thing or two. You have to fun now with me and all the gang. Learn it from each other. And I want to sing a song for you. And I want to sing a song for you. And I want to sing a song for you. And I want to sing a song for you. And I want to sing a song for you.

1:01Good morning and welcome to Dopey. Podcast about drugs, addiction and dumb shit. My name is Dave. I'm listening to a... I'm listening to a fucking... I'm listening to an audiobook about the Beals and its red and English voice. I think I should move to England. I think I should move to Liverpool. I would just... I'd get an English accent in a day. I just listen to it for an hour and everything I'm thinking. I mean bleed in podcast isn't doing as well as me like. I just... I just think English shit is the best. I think English... Whereas Canadian shit is the worst. English shit is the best. Is there a diametrically... Is there a diametrical opposition between the arrogance of England and the passive aggressive mess of Canada? And where does South Africa and Australia fall in the mix?

2:03In New Zealand of these English speaking countries. If you have any comments, please send in emails and voice mails to Dopey Podcast at gmail.com. And I don't know. I feel like we're running out of Dopey stories. I mean I have hundreds of pages of Dopey stories that you guys have sent in. But I need nuance. I need the fresh shit. I need that fucking fresh Dopey shit. It's 6.26 in the morning for me on Monday. And yesterday I took... I took my family. I took my fam. In England do they say fam? I think fam is one of the worst things in modern recovery fam. What's going on fam? What's going on? Recovery fam. But in England, I took my fam to the... To the city today. We went to... I'm going to stop. We went to... They do these new... They're not that new anymore.

3:03These kind of Instagram based museums. And I took my fam to an Instagram based fucking immersive museum at South Street Seaport yesterday. The balloon museum. And for the real Dopey listeners, you might know that we did this once years ago. But they made a new balloon museum at the South Street Seaport. And we had a pretty good time. We behaved like tourists. And we went to the balloon museum. And then my 16 year old is obsessed with the Canal Street fake bag world on... You know, fake Louis Vuitton and Prada shed on Canal Street. It's been there forever. As an actual New Yorker, I put my nose up or down or wherever he's supposed to put your nose to this kind of stuff. My 16 year old loves it so much. So we went over there and we haggled for a fake Louis Vuitton bag.

4:04And then of course my eight year old needed one too. And somehow Linda co-signed. So I wound up buying fake Louis Vuitton bags for my kids, which... Just not a good look. Didn't make me feel that good. In fact, I refused to do it. I was starving. I was exhausted. I was like, I'm not hungry. We went to... It's all... I want to say Senegalese people selling the fake bags. And it's a black market. And every sense of the word, everybody is selling the bags are black. The bags are illegal. The cops come. The people run. But it's also like very vibrant. There's a ton of people there. It's crazy. And I love haggling. And if you're a true haggler, you know you can't give in. And haggling is that if you are to haggle, you have to be prepared to walk away. And considering that I don't really want a bag for me or for them, I'm always willing to walk away.

5:05So we went over there. It was total chaos. It's like if it was buying drugs, I wouldn't be willing to walk away. And I had extra money. I had a price. Like it's not like... It's not like black market, drug buying, the bag market. I'm sure there are people that are as obsessed with the bags as maybe as drug addicts are with the drugs. I doubt it. Anyway, so we left. We had dinner. We went to have a lovely dinner in little Italy. And then I sat there and I kind of came to this conclusion that I could go back and I can get them the bags. After they were both just miserable because we've, you know, they're not spoiled kids. But everybody wants to get what they want. And there's a horrible experience to go somewhere and try to get something and then not get it. Only because your dad was too cheap to come up with ten more bucks during the haggle. So we went back. I rehagled. I outhagled. I let Nora outhaggle somebody and she didn't cheat. She landed at the price, the max price that we agreed on.

6:07And then for Susan, I haggled down another five bucks, which I felt really, really good about. But then another Santa Glee's guy goes, there's five dollars taking out of your pocket. And I was like, oh boy, but I felt like it was a great victory. And then we went home and it was a, it was a lovely family day in Manhattan. And today is the dopey Tuesday. What does this have to do with drugs addiction and dumb shit? It doesn't have anything to do with it. Today is the dopey Tuesday show and for the dopey Tuesday show, we do like, I don't know, 15, 20, free minutes. And then we switch over where you guys, if you're not patrons, you wait till tomorrow, where we have a brand new dose of dopey. And for the patrons, you go to www.patrion.com slash dopey podcast and you listen to today's show, which is a catch up with dopey legend. We had her on the replay last week, the one and only Kimber King. I want to shoot Coke for Christmas, Kimber King.

7:07And I think she's going to come to dopey con and she is the special guest on the Tuesday after the teaser is over. All right, we're going to do all the stuff we do, but I'm going to start with this email. It says, hey, Dave from dopey, he misspelled stopey, but he makes the effort to not say dopey day. So I appreciate that so many things I want to cover. And luckily, they are all grateful dead or at least grateful dead adjacent to set the scene. I went to college up in northern California. Sonoma County to be exact, which is just north of Marin County, starting at the very end of 1989, because the prominent culture of the area was still very much leftover hippies. I quickly found a solid group of friends who had similar hobbies to me, aka drugs and music hanging around in the woods while being chronically under employed. It was honestly a magical time. I had a lot of fun and really no problems related to sad fun for anyone yet. The circle of friends I adopted were mostly children of proper hippies who had moved north for a more rural lifestyle.

8:11And that circle of friends included a couple kids, members of the dad and a couple kids whose parents were Mary Prangsters. Oh my god, the dad were a big deal in that area at the time. And despite my friends' association with the band, I had no, and if you didn't know, the Mary Prangsters were like legendary acid takers in the mid 60s who were like Ken Keezy's crew. And Ken Keezy wrote the book or the play. Is it a book or a play? One flew over the Cookews nest, which of course became a super famous movie with Jack Nicholson and Danny DeVito. And he started stealing LSD or he had started stealing LSD from a psych hospital and put this head parties and they all took LSD and they became the Mary Prangsters. Alright, back to the story. I had absolutely no interest in that music. My taste leaned into much more aggressive music at the time. Let's put it this way. The first show I ever saw little feet open for the band and when their set was over, I started packing up to leave.

9:15To me, the old fat guys on stage were the grateful dad. I honestly could not tell the difference in the look or the music between them. I guess during between those bands. During the time, I guess he thought the band and little feet were the grateful dad too. You hear my fucking chair creaking makes me crazy. During that time, I started experimenting with heroin. Black tar was around, but you mentioned Persian heroin that the dead was using and I wanted to chime in with my experience with that during the time. One of my friends who was a seasoned heroin enthusiast had a connection in San Francisco for Persian heroin, which I got to try a few times. The Persian was a light brown, almost pink powder that was aromatic and kind of sweet when smoked on foil. This dude reads a lot of high times, I think. But I'm with you, I'm with you Tom. This guy's name Tom and I enjoy this kind of drug description. My friend was more advanced user than me and he would shoot it, which would require breaking down the powder in an acid.

10:22He used lemon juice, which brings me to Monkey Man, which you played a couple weeks ago and you were guessing on the meaning of some of the lyrics. I want to add some clarity on those. I'm a cold Italian pizza. I could use some lemon squeeza, which is of course from the Rolling Stone song, Monkey Man, not the Toots and the Maytals song. Of course, I did not write the song, but I believe my interpretation to be pretty solid. Cold Italian pizza is a reference to the pizza connection, which was a historical heroin smuggling ring in the late 70s and early 80s that used pizza parlors, pizza parlors, such a great word, such a great phrase. In New York, New Jersey and Chicago as fronts to sell heroin and laundromoney. From what I understand, they would put the dope in pizza boxes with old pizzas in there for a stealthy way to distribute the goods. I'm hungry. I could go for a cold Italian pizza right now.

11:24The ring was basically the aftermath of the French connection. Once that got busted, the same chemists and labs in France produced the heroin, but the Italian gangsters took over smuggling and distribution. There are a couple of really good books and a documentary on the subject, which I recommend. The lemon squeeze lyric refers to using lemon juice as an acid to break down heroin into a water soluble form for injecting. European heroin is like that to this day, although lemon juice is problematic for this because it can have bacteria in it. The health conscious junkies use a sorbic acid or vitamin C for this task. Nikki Six talks about grocery shopping when he was super strong out and his car was full of those plastic lemon full of filtered juice used for the same reason. I love this email, by the way. A couple of years later in 91.92, I went with a couple of friends to drive these girls we met at a dead show to Michigan.

12:29They agreed to pay for gas, so I got into the truck with maybe 20 bucks to my name. After we dropped them off, my buddy, who is a proper dead head, suggested that we catch up with the tour for some Midwest shows, which sounded like a great adventure to me. So as much as I was indifferent to the music, I was very much, I very much found my bliss in the parking lot scene. It was a wonderland for me. We drove to Chicago to meet up with friends who had been on tour since the start. Because of these friends' connections, sometimes at the shows, they would have tickets waiting for us at Will call. I would always sell or trade that ticket so I could hang out in the parking lot, getting high and trying to hit on hippie girls. My go to line in the lot was, hey, I'm from California. Want to make out? It was shocking how often that worked. As my buddy, the salesman always told me it's a numbers game. Since I had no money at all, I came up with a hustle.

13:29The truck stops in the Midwest, sold trucker speed over the counter. I believe it was effigrin. So I would crush that up and put it in empty gel caps. I bought it a vitamin shop. I would tuck my hair into my hat, put on sunglasses and walk around selling it as ecstasy. The funny thing is that at that time ecstasy was in pill form, but for some reason, people wanted to believe so badly that I would sell 10 caps of that a day. Once I got my 200 bucks for the day, I would take off my hat, change my clothes, and then go out and party on the lot. I did that for at least six stops and was able to fund my tour in a reasonably comfortable way. I saw a lot of crazy shit on that tour, but one of the highlights was being in a motel room, maybe in Iowa. Where the entire hotel was filled with deadheads like six to 10 a room, multiple floors and it was around the 4th of July. So the entire motel devolved into a huge fireworks fight. Hippie shooting bottle rockets and Roman candles at each other from the balconies for hours in sanity.

14:33The craziest part of this memory is I don't think the cops ever showed up to shut it down. In that motel was also where I discovered the filthy fat guy who sold one dollar grilled cheese that we for some reason, but let's stay in our room had a few bundles of New York bag heroin taped to his belly. That was the first and only time I ever did East Coast powder heroin. I still had maybe one or two bags or partial bags on my person when we got pulled over in Nebraska, me driving without a license, long hair and dirty. And the cops just let me wake my buddy up so that he could drive, which was also insane to think back on. I now regret not appreciating the music and going in to see the shows, but I had a great time anyway. I appreciate the Lord's keep doing the Lord's work Dave. Keep your heads up dopey nation toodles and that's from Tom. What a fantastic story Tom you totally get doby socks.

15:33We also have new beanies about to arrive. The samples are coming on Wednesday. I'm very excited new beanies are coming. We're going to we have a new sock design that Britta made that's really, really cool. So that's all coming. And now I'm going to bore you, but I can't help myself with the the Patreon comments from last week's show. And last week on the show we had Christopher R who brought the fucking he brought the dopey and the recovery. And I'm going to read the Patreon comments and then I'm going to read the Spotify comments. And if anyone wants super high quality dopey socks or stickers sending some fucking shit. All right, Andrea Dave, I'm excited to hear your bad choices. This is why I start my day with dopey the laughs make my day. Thank you Andrea James D. D. Hart Dave your hilarious dude every few minutes you would say something to the effect of. I want to hear about the drugs or tell us more about the drugs are okay, but what about the drugs? And I totally feel you is like pulling teeth. It was, but it was it's like why should I cares so much about drugs?

16:34He had a tragic heart breaking story of recovery. All right, and speaking of which Northeast Ohio Bob says, man, what a heart breaking story. I just want to give the guy a hug. I feel like God gave him his grandma to take care of his up to take care of for a definite reason. I hope he comes to a better understanding of him also his voice sounds so much like raise very touching show. Thanks Dave and thanks Christopher for sharing. Thanks Bob. It did have a little ray quality to it. A Kyle Rodinski says love intolerance is our code. There's a fucking lawnmower. These mother fuckers is the line I related to most in two in this episode. This was great yet heartbreaking. Thanks Dave and Christopher for reminding me that gratitude can get me through tough times in sobriety. Yeah, if you're not a fucking what you'll call it patron. I would go back and listen to Christopher join patreon go back listen to Christopher dopey con is coming.

17:34Save 15 bucks on the ticket and go to www.patrion.com slash dopey. Anyway, Shoshana says when you have no self esteem ego gratification goes a long way that really resonated with the young version of me. This was like a dopey version of soft white underbelly. This was an intense and sometimes funny story, but it's inspiring to hear him tell his survivors tale isolation and disconnection from community as people age is rough for anyone let alone a person with his lived experiences. I hope you can still find the strength and determination to keep reaching out connecting and being of service to others. Roza Schlupfer says ikia you say bonna to vada. Your dolly eek thank you Rosa Jeremy Dushal says thanks Dave Melanie says please do an Anthony more dain episode they simply don't make closets in my size I love that.

18:34Jules says great show gay stuff is always good it's true Betty says if you remember the 80s you weren't doing it right and a valisex says the story of his childhood and growing up breaks my heart this man has real resilience he did. Betty for James says this is a program of honesty but don't be that honest fuck you boy does that resonate in treatment we could share all sorts of fucked up substance abuse stories but talk about sex and group sessions off limits and that pisses me off. Another heartbreaking story in Dave you were great at helping him share thank you thank you Betty Ford she goes on she or he Betty for James I think it's a James I think it's a guy sleep apnea sucks but mine doesn't seem to be. Result of Dave's combination of factors L. O. A. J. said a razor made me laugh I want the dopey dope opening from my wake up alarm I'm sure there's a way to do that maybe you can set it up on apple oh give me a break. Jules says Keith Richards top three what clearly Keith is number one Steve Jones number two we're not going to get Keith I think we could get Steve Jones I don't think we could get Keith.

19:45So if we make Steve Jones the number one he feels really good about coming on and to be honest I think Bob Dylan is my number one who's also not coming on but nobody nobody could top Bob Dylan for me for dopey I'm just I want to get the juice out of him I want to get it out of him Jeremy Jeremy Dutiel says this episode got me so up in my fields man Jeremy getting emotional man my heart goes out to Christopher what a terrible struggle this man had his entire life it's true been a while since I heard that level of pain and hurt in someone's voice I commend the man for still trying at life no matter what Dave this was an incredible interview a story that was at least for me just a bit more inspiring than the normal dopey episode. It truly gave me a lot to think about I'll probably be revisiting this one day thanks Jeremy and then LHNY says I didn't know about the patreon bonus full episode and there's one comment from Mr. Jason who says heartbreaking story I think Mr. Jason took pity on me because there were no Spotify comments he says heartbreaking story I loved hearing about how it was the service to his brother and grandmother that turned things around for him that's a great reminder for all of us.

21:03All right listen join patreon you can get the whole episode today with Kimber I'm not going to do a teaser. Kimber came on it was banging we did a lot of emails voice mails she revisits some serious dopey she updates us on her life so if you want to hear me and Kimber go join patreon at www.patrion.com slash dopey podcast the dopey contickets are about to be gone so I'd buy those fucking tickets now and send in a dopey story. Where the fuck are you guys at stay strong dopey nation to all you fuckers who aren't patrons and for the patrons stick around and fucking toodles. I'm doing a cover of good so bad because it was on the first episode I ever listened to and it made me want to get clean. I tried to record this a lot of times and I'm missing dopey zoom right now because I don't want to stop until I fucking get it right. God help me here we go.

22:21I want to take a walk around the world. I wonder if it'll do me any good. Until I get some money in my pocket then I guess I'll just have to walk around my neighborhood. And I want to be good so bad. I want to be good so bad so bad yeah I want to be good so so bad.

23:21I'm glad the size is all I ever had. And I want to take a ride up in the sky and watch the arrow plays just pass me by. And I want to see a lighter take a die just to show all of these people what it means to be alive. And I want to be good so bad. I want to be good so bad so bad yeah I want to be so it's all bad.

24:28I want to be good so bad yeah I want to be good so bad. I want to be good so bad so bad. But the size is all I ever had. Okay I fucked up at the end there but I'm missing Dopey Zoom right now. So that's going to be my last take. I really hope that's okay I'm going to listen to it and fucking join the Dopey Zoom.

25:33Thank you, Tutels.