Using dark comedy, “Dopey” promotes recovery and pushes back against the stigma associated with addiction.
The NPR weekly radio/podcast series This American Lifefeatured a segment on its February 1st broadcast about Dopey, a podcast about addiction and recovery heard by more than four million listeners.
The podcast began as a forum for creators and hosts Dave and Chris—as well as guests ranging from Marc Maron and Dr. Drew Pinsky, to My Fair Junkie author and The Fix contributor Amy Dresner—to share “war stories” about their struggles without judgment and with a degree of humor.
But with the overdose death of Chris in July 2018, Dave has shifted the focus of Dopey to promote recovery while continuing to address the stigma of addiction.
As a result, the podcast has grown both in terms of the number of fans—also known as the “Dopey Nation,” who have helped to boost downloads to more than 1.2 million to date—and as a community for listeners in all stages of recovery, as well as family and friends, to come together.
As Vice noted, the roots of Dopey began in 2011, when hosts Dave and Chris—who do not give their surnames—met at Mountainside Treatment Center in Connecticut while undergoing treatment for substance use disorder.
The pair became friends, and after acquiring and losing various periods of sobriety, they decided to launch a podcast about addiction that focused on what Dave called “the last bad thing”—tales from their past including “using stories, open-ended drug discussion and debate over addiction philosophy,” as the pair wrote on the podcast’s website.
Dopey soon caught on with listeners, who submitted their own recollections. The result was a podcast where those in every stage of recovery could share their experiences and gain support.
Then in 2018, Dopey Nation was rocked by the news that Chris had been found dead of an overdose. He had been sober for five years at the time of the incident, working as a manager at a sober living facility and studying to earn his doctorate in clinical psychology.
In the wake of Chris’s death, Dave was determined to carry on with Dopey, but as he told Vice, “It’s apparent now more than ever that Dopey‘s main focus will be addicts living in recovery. Chris’s legacy will live on through these episodes, and the lives he touched all around the world.”
The new approach has also brought a wealth of new guests, including Jamie Lee Curtis, Beautiful Boy author David Sheff, and musician and recovery advocate Bob Forrest.
For Dave, continuing the podcast means giving individuals in the grip of addiction a place to go, to listen, and to share.
“[They] are not just showing up for Dopey, they’re showing up to support one another,” Dave said.
Even medical people are treating you like a second-class citizen. Is this really about ringworm or is this reminding you of what it’s like to be a person with addiction?
So one day I see this pink round patch on my forearm. It itches. I immediately start Googling eczema and psoriasis. Nope, looks nothing like that. But it does have that distinctive red ring so I look up pictures of ringworm and voila, there it is, my new friend.
When I was smoking meth and shooting cocaine, I never got sick. I never got staph or scabies despite lying around with a bunch of gutter punks. But at six years sober, out of nowhere, I get ringworm. I don’t deal with children. Colonel Puff Puff, my cat, doesn’t have it. What the fuck is going on?
Despite its grotesque and misleading name, it has nothing to do with worms. Ringworm is a type of skin fungus akin to athlete’s foot and jock itch. Trying to make light of the situation, I tweeted: “I was super depressed and smoking again but suddenly I got ringworm and that cheered me right up.” I was hit with a bunch of questions like “Is that the one that makes you skinny?”
No dear, that’s a tapeworm, but thanks for the concern.
I’d heard ringworm was very contagious so I went straight to urgent care where they confirmed it was indeed ringworm. I was prescribed a cream that burned like the fires of damnation and told to “keep it covered” at night to protect the Colonel. (When the Colonel last got ringworm, it cost $2,500 for multiple lyme dips, shavings, and numerous vet visits to get rid of it. It’s a persistent motherfucker.)
I went to the pharmacy, pulled up my sleeve, and told the pharmacist I had ringworm.
“I don’t know how I got it,” I said, annoyed.
The pharmacist pulled up the leg of her capri pants and said, “I got it working here! I was really stressed out because I was getting married and my mom had a stroke and boom.”
We both laughed and then I took my supplies home, hopeful things would soon return to normal.
Once I informed my friends of my condition, nobody would touch me. Friends and neighbors wouldn’t come into my apartment nor let me into theirs.
“We love you and your ringworm,” they’d chant from the other side of the door. I was beginning to feel very leper-like even though it was one fucking red ring. My sponsor told me I could still go to meetings but I didn’t want to take the chance of giving it to anybody…(except maybe a few specific people).
Two nights after following the urgent care doc’s protocol, the ringworm seemed to be getting worse. I saw a new circle sprouting up and there was a clear red rectangular demarcation from the band-aid. Kill me.
Panicked that I would soon be a walking petri dish of ringworm, I went to my primary care clinic as a walk-in patient. This clinic treats a lot of homeless people and has quite a few tents parked permanently outside with adjacent grocery carts packed with stuffed animals and recyclables and blankets. People are allowed to shower in the downstairs bathroom and it often gets crowded in the waiting area. But once I told the receptionist of my “condition,” I was quickly escorted to an empty room and quarantined.
Four long hours I sat in that room, my phone dying, sneaking out to smoke and feeling more and more depleted and well, just gross. A triage nurse came in briefly and told me that the urgent care doctor had made a huge error by telling me to cover the ringworm. It had created a tiny greenhouse, capturing the moisture and providing the perfect breeding ground for the ringworm to reproduce. Perfect.
Finally, I was taken to another area to see a doctor. As I waited, I looked at the white cabinets. Two were locked. Where were the syringes, I wondered.
Wait, what? An enormous urge to use had come over me. I wanted to get high, call my ex, die…. It’s just ringworm, I tried to tell myself. Calm down. Why the sudden impulse to use?
“You’re disgusting and poor and getting old and nobody loves you,” my head said.
Thankfully interrupting my horrible inner dialogue, the doctor, a big ruddy guy in his mid-30’s who looked like an ex-linebacker, came in and shook my hand. I cringed inside.
“I hear you have a rash,” he said.
“I have ringworm,” I corrected him, hanging my head in shame.
“Okay, let’s take a look.” He put on gloves initially but then took them off.
“You have one ringworm,” he said. “The rest of the redness and that other circle is contact dermatitis from the bandage. You’re allergic to something in that bandage.” He touched the irritated area with an ungloved hand.
“Oh.” I was near tears.
“I’m going to give you another cream and just wear long sleeves if your cat sleeps with you. Better yet, take him to the vet to get him checked out. This stuff is everywhere. It’s really a reaction to your own flora. Do you do yoga?”
“No.”
“It’s very common among wrestlers because of the mats and sweat and body contact.”
“No wrestling and unfortunately no body contact.”
“You could have gotten it anywhere. If your immune system is compromised from stress or HIV or chemotherapy…”
“Stress is my hobby these days,” I said. “Everything feels itchy, doc, like especially my head.”
“Do you want me to check your scalp?”
“Please.”
I took down my bun and into my dirty hair he plunged with bare hands. I felt ashamed but grateful that somebody was touching me.
“You’re good,” he said.
“Thank you for making me feel like a human being. Really…”
He smiled.
But as I drove to the pharmacy, I still felt depressed and still felt like using. Why?
The answer, as usual, came in a phone call from my friend, addictionologist and psychiatrist Dr. Howard Wetsman.
“I understand people being scared about the ringworm because of its name and reputation. But what you’re experiencing is being shunned and isolated. People are treating you like your presence can hurt them. Even medical people are treating you like a second-class citizen. Is this really about a skin fungus or is this reminding you of what it’s like to be a person with addiction?” he asked.
Whoa.
“When we’re isolated or feel ‘less than,’ the dopamine receptors in the reward center actually stop being available. You can’t feel your own dopamine as well as before. We need those receptors to keep up dopamine tone, and without that we’re back to feeling restless, irritable, and discontented. And that only goes to one place, right?”
“Yeah I really wanted to use and it freaked me out.”
“When you’re an addict and your dopamine tone is lowered, your brain goes ‘we gotta fix this fast.’ It doesn’t care if it’s an éclair or heroin or death…”
“That’s why I’ve been smoking…”
“Nicotine will give you dopamine for sure. But let’s talk bigger picture. When we go to treatment and we’re told to sit down and shut up, when we’re treated like stupid people who abused a substance that everyone else was smart enough to stay away from, when we’re told to wait three hours sitting on broken plastic chairs for someone who doesn’t give a shit, the deck is stacked against the treatment working. No healthcare system that systematically lowers people’s dopamine, much less one that treats addiction, will succeed,” he told me.
“It’s the same in the rooms,” he continued. “The reason the 12 steps work is because you don’t have to feel ‘better than’ to not be ‘less than.’ The two messages you should get from an AA meeting are that you are never alone again and you aren’t less than anyone. But when people don’t sponsor with love, when some old-timer wants to be the boss, when it’s all about some guy with more time being right instead of helping, you lose those messages. That’s not a problem with the message; that’s a problem with the messenger. Don’t let the messenger fuck up the message. You aren’t less than anyone!”
I sign every copy of My Fair Junkie with “fuck shame” and I don’t think I really knew why until just now.
For more on dopamine and feeling “less than,” check out Dr. Wetsman’s youtube talk.
In a world where nothing is in my control and living with a head that constantly tells me I’m not doing enough, exercising every day makes me feel like I’ve checked a box.
Last year, my mom fell and broke her hip. During the surgery, she had a mild heart attack and a pulmonary embolism. Since that fall, she’s become wheelchair bound and has started showing the signs of early dementia. She’s now in assisted living, being bathed by caretakers. On the other hand, my father has a girlfriend, writes screenplays, teaches kids to read, swims, and delivers food to the elderly (even though he is the elderly). My parents are the same age: 81.
What could cause such a difference in their physical states?
Exercise. My dad always exercised while mom was very sedentary.
The Dreaded E-Word
I know, the dreaded “E” word. I take after my mom in this area: I’ve never been an athlete, I pretended I was sick for most high school P.E. classes, and I’m extraordinarily uncoordinated. I hate group classes and I loathe tight name-brand exercise gear. Gyms scare the shit out of me and I have no idea what I’m doing.
But two years after my break up, I was still considerably underweight and what little muscle I’d had was long gone. I could pass in clothes as modelesque but naked I could have been a dummy for an osteology class. (“And here, students, you can see the sternum and entire rib cage….”) I was eating, but stress (about work, life, my mom) kept me from putting on any real weight.
And then boom. Out of the blue, I’m contacted by Doug Bopst to ask if I’d like to be interviewed for his new book, The Heart of Recovery, coming out March 12th. Sure, I lied. What does Doug happen to do? He’s a fucking trainer! Doug kicked opioids and lost 50 pounds in jail through—you know it—exercise.
“When we stop using drugs, we have to replace them with healthy coping mechanisms,” Doug says. “Fitness is a great tool and should be a staple in everyone’s recovery.”
He took pity on me and started training me via Skype (he’s in Maryland and I’m in LA). He also sent me a list of foods I should eat. Sometimes deliveries randomly showed up at my door. Over the next year my living room became littered with resistance bands, a stability ball, dumbbells, a yoga mat. I was living in a mini 24-Hour Fitness but with a cat.
At the beginning, I complained. A lot. He ignored me. I constantly wanted to skip days (and we were only training three times a week) because I was “tired” or “depressed.”
“I train machines, not wussies,” he’d say, knowing it would motivate me.
“Fuck you!” I’d text back. “See you at 5!”
A Stronger Body…and Mind
It’s almost a year later and now I insist we train everyday. There are exercises I could barely do that I bust out so easily now I have to check that I’m doing them right. I can carry a 24-pack of water, a 12-pack of yerba mate and two bags of groceries by myself in one trip from the car. It feels good to be stronger. And yes, I’ve gained some weight. In a world where nothing is in my control and living with a head that constantly tells me I’m not doing enough, working out every day makes me feel like I’ve checked a box. I’m making progress, I’ve done something.
Addicted to drugs for 20 years, my body was a vessel to get high and something I abused. Nothing more than that. Sure, vanity (and uppers) kept me slim but I could give a shit about health. Now at 49 years old with six years clean, gravity is taking its toll, and friends and family are falling ill. Staying healthy and mobile has, for the first time, become a real priority.
I wanted to know what my buddy, best-selling Kindle Singles author and long-distance runner Mishka Shubaly, had to say about exercise. Like Doug, Mishka credits exercise as his main tool in getting sober.
“The mental benefits of exercise are scientifically proven and well-documented… and I’ll leave it to a medical doctor or scientist to quote statistics,” he said. “What I appreciate about exercise is this: exercise is hard. When you exercise, you get the persistent feeling that you are fighting back—fighting back against your alcoholism, your addiction, your depression, your anxiety, your obesity, your anorexia, your sloth, your abuser(s), your poverty, your unemployment, your shithead boss, your shadow self, everything and anything that you feel is holding you back, holding you down. That shift in perspective—from fleeing to fighting back—man, that is incredibly powerful, that turns your entire world around.”
Couldn’t agree more. You want me to pump out 10 more diamond push-ups? Just mention my ex and I tap into a whole new level of strength and power.
And Doug and I have fun. We laugh as I lose my balance and literally fall off screen. He has to mute me if he’s in public during our training sessions since I swear so much. (Hey it hurts!!)
Also, I needed to be accountable to somebody. I needed somebody to hold my hand and help me get well and fit. And as an addict/alcoholic, self-discipline is not my forte. Now the results motivate me. I can see the physical changes: a rounder booty, some definition in my arms. And of course, I get a brief reprieve from my frequent unwanted visitor, depression.
Mood Follows Action
Don’t get me wrong, I have no plans to do an Ironman triathlon. But as a sedentary writer, moving every day feels like a necessary part of my recovery.
“One of the first things my first sponsor told me was ‘mood follows action.’ This quote has been a game changer for me, applicable not just in sobriety, but in life,“ ultra-endurance athlete, best-selling author and podcast host Rich Roll told me. “I use it daily with respect to fitness, which has transformed my life wholesale. When we come into the rooms we are broken. Our self-esteem is shattered, our sense of what is possible decimated. Much like the steps, with fitness you see results when you put in the work.”
“But the trick for me — an alcoholic through and through — is to remember that it isn’t a replacement for the steps,” Roll adds. “Fitness isn’t my higher power. But it is an incredibly powerful and essential ingredient in my sober equation.”
If you’re still not convinced that exercise is for you, here’s some science to back it up and push you to dust off those running shoes.
Post-doctoral Fellow at the Center for Neural Science at NYU and neuroscientist, dancer, and science writer Julia Basso reports in a research paper that “We show that the three most consistent cognitive/behavioral effects of a single bout of exercise in humans are improved executive functions, enhanced mood states, and decreased stress levels.”
Cool. So we all know that exercise can de-stress you and get all those endorphins going but which cognitive functions are we talking about? Well, according to Basso, “….Executive functions including attention, working memory, problem solving, cognitive flexibility, verbal fluency, decision making, and inhibitory control receive the most benefit from acute exercise.”
In closing, I’ll leave you with words from my two masters. Doug says, “If Amy Dresner can get into a workout regime, anyone can. Her transformation this last year has been life-changing, not only for her, but for me, too. Watching people in recovery see the power of fitness is something I live for.”
And Rich says, “If it was up to me, I’d add daily physical movement as the 13th step.”
Has exercise played a role in your recovery? Share your story in the comments.
Anger can be an addiction: it’s energizing and makes you feel powerful. When I was using and even afterwards, I used my rage to control, bully, and manipulate people.
“Anger is a short madness.” – Horace
I just got off a rage bender. Two full weeks of terrifying my friends and family. Days of driving around and like some deranged queen in Game of Thrones ordering (to absolutely no one): “Destroy her.”
“I’ve never heard or seen you like this,” I kept hearing. Yep. Because this was an old part of me I thought I’d gotten rid of, or at the very least, tamed. Boy was I wrong.
At first I thought it was a bout of agitated mania from a little med fiddling. “This definitely feels chemical,” I kept saying to everyone as I continued to engage in behavior that fueled my rage: talking about my archenemy, reading about her personal and legal problems, feeling righteous indignation and then, more divinely, vindication as her fall escalated.
That’s where my old buddy Dr. Wetsman caught me. “Do you think you’re using your ex-colleague’s demise as a drug?” he asked.
Long pause. “Yes,” I answered sheepishly.
“Okay. Well every time you get a dopamine spike from your schadenfreude, guess what happens after?”
“A crash.”
“And then,” he concluded, “you’re left scrambling to find more dopamine.”
Ahhh, so that’s why I was craving cocaine, sex and cigarettes. Cocaine, really? At almost six years sober, having become some fucking pseudo-icon of sobriety that I never asked to be thanks to my book, I was shocked that getting loaded was still on the table. But there it was: romantic imaginings of bags of crystalline white powder and syringes with clean steel tips twinkling in the twilight.
Here’s the thing about anger: it’s energizing. Anger can make you feel powerful. When I was using and unfortunately even afterwards, I used my rage to control, bully, and manipulate people. And once I’m this angry, it just bleeds over. First I’m pissed at her, then him, and now all of them and you. The storm has been unleashed and my mind can come up with evidence that anybody has fucked me over. Isn’t that our superpower as addicts?
“Your amygdala mobilizes the bodily forces you’d need to run or win a physical fight with someone. So, your adrenaline courses and blood flows away from your reasoning center of your brain, the prefrontal cortex, and to your arms and legs, which makes you better equipped to punch or run.”
We all love a nice dose of adrenaline, right? It’s like shitty coke. So I’m getting high off my anger and the drug dealer is right inside of me. Anytime I wanted another hit I could dredge up some old scenario where an ex-colleague (or anyone, really) viciously screwed me over, and boom! Out came another surge. But aside from stomping around and spitting fire, there’s a real downside to this “drug.”
According to Alkon, when the amygdala is activated, a chemical reaction takes place that releases cortisol which helps to mobilize the aforementioned physical response so you can fight back. “However, there’s a problem if there’s no need for any sort of physical response from you, which would burn off the cortisol. If you’re just standing there fuming, the cortisol simply pools. So, effectively, you’re being poisoned by your anger. Over time, this is associated with very detrimental physical effects, including lowered immune function and heart disease.”
So resentment really is the poison you drink expecting the other person to die. Here was the science. And I realized something weird: the more I talked about it, the angrier I got. I didn’t “get it out.” There was no catharsis. Why?
“It’s a myth that ‘venting’ your anger is a way to diminish it,” Alkon told me. “The more anger you vent, the angrier you get. Darwin was the first to observe that the expression of an emotion acts to amplify the emotion, and modern research has confirmed this.”
Great! So I was on some rage loop, fucking up my immune system and giving myself heart disease. But how to stop? I knew the anger was just the top layer, the mask of something deeper and more painful that I was trying to avoid.
Liz Palmer writes “Angry is just sad’s bodyguard.” And of course she’s right. Underneath the rage was hurt and ultimately sadness. But who wants to feel that way? Who wants to listen to LP’s “Lost on You” and scrawl heartbreaking poems in blood? Not I. I’d much rather do weighted squats and listen to Tool and talk about how I will “fucking bury you.” You might think 115 pounds of desert Jew isn’t that frightening. But I learned early on in my childhood how to be verbally brutal. I’m sure growing up watching Scorsese movies and idolizing mobsters didn’t help either. But I assure you crazy and angry is a terrifying combination, even if you are a featherweight.
My sponsor urged me to find compassion for my ex-colleague. Nice dream, dude. That was NOT going to happen right now.
So then I decided to attack this emotional monster via the body. I called Nathaniel Dust, my breathwork wizard, and booked a private session. Waiting for our time, I caved and bought a pack of cigarettes after almost eight months off of vaping. Well done, fuckhead. I smoked one and it felt–I’m not going to lie–great. I immediately felt calmer. Oh sweet dopamine, there you are! I walked into Nathaniel’s place smelling like an ashtray with palpable anger radiating off me.
“Where are those cigarettes?” he demanded. “They’re going in the trash.”
“Purse,” I answered petulantly. $10 down the tubes….ugh.
I knew I was in trouble. If I let myself cross the line back into smoking, what was next? Tinder? A drink? Sober border patrol was obviously asleep on the job.
There are those few lines in the Big Book which I always thought were bullshit: “If we were to live, we had to be free of anger. The grouch and the brainstorm were not for us. They may be the dubious luxury of normal men, but for alcoholics these things are poison.” It was true and I was living it.
“My former colleague and friend fucked me over,“ I said, “and she should pay.”
Nathaniel laughed. “Are you really going to be a victim your whole life?”
And then my tears came.
“There’s the real shit,“ he said. He hugged me while I howled in his arms like a small child. “Now get on the table, lady, and let’s do some breathing.”
I cried and screamed and cried and shook and then it was over. I felt some relief. I vowed to stop talking about my enemy or reading about her. In the end it was none of my business. Whatever payoff I thought I was getting was costing me dearly.
So I guess my point is this: we shouldn’t prevent ourselves from getting worked up just because it’s not the “spiritual” thing to do. Whatever with that. Scientifically we want to stay calm so we don’t jack up our adrenaline and cortisol or, for those of us who get high off anger, we don’t want to chase that big dopamine spike that always ends with us crashing down.
So embrace the AA platitude of “let it go,” if only for the sake of your physical and mental health, serenity, and…oh yeah, your sobriety.
I could say a hundred things about every incredible woman I encountered over the weekend and it would not hold a candle to the inspiration I felt. The only catch? The price of admission.
One year ago, Harvey Weinstein and men like him were purged from their high positions in industry jobs due to allegations of sexual assault, misconduct and worse. Across the nation, dominoes fell while survivors locked arms and commiserated. Crooked Rehabs and their rapey cult leaders were dethroned or taken to prison along with Bill Cosby—their paternal halos were tossed back into the stream that raged forward without them. Me Too and Time’s Up have gained momentum as women insist on equity and diversity in every corner of our lives whether it’s work, rehab or the Olympics.
On Friday, September 14th, hundreds of women redefined recovery for themselves with a fresh, feminist lens at She Recovers, a conference held at The Beverly Hills Hilton. She Recovers was founded in 2011 by Dr. Dawn Nickels, a warm, honey-haired overly credentialed sober badass from Victoria, Canada who has accumulated decades of 12-step recovery and one prescription drug relapse after she lost her mother to Leukemia. With years in AA, Dr. Nickels saw a missing piece of the Big Book that excluded women. She wanted to offer an alternative for women who long for that missing piece.
She Recovers is branded around the idea that we are all struggling to recover from something—not only drugs and alcohol. This expanded view of recovery has the potential to reach women who have survived sexual assault, abuse, cancer, heartache, self-harm, homelessness, eating disorders and all kinds of suffering. The weekend was dedicated to healing. The only catch? The price of admission.
I received a few emails from Dr. Nickels confirming the schedule of events and I was really excited to attend. Not only did the line-up include comedians and authors I’ve long loved like Cheryl Strayed, Janet Mock, Amy Dresner, Sarah Blondin, Tara Mohr, Mackenzie Phillips, Laurie Dhue and others, but there were several workshop panels offered with helpful, vital topics like “Changing our Relationship with Food” (Shelly-Anne McKay), and “Money as Power” (Allison Kylstad), “Standing our Ground” (Darlene Lancer), and even “Finding Forgiveness” (Ester Nicholson). The mind, body, spirit approach to recovery was factored into the weekend to include fitness classes like Yoga by Taryn Strong, Pilates, meditation, and an early morning run.
I drove to the Beverly Hills Hilton and arrived after registration opened at around 3:30 p.m. After getting off the elevator, I stepped into a conference room that was turned into a temporary mini-marketplace. Tables and fashion racks displayed oceans of lotions, soaps and mood lifting supplements, dark chocolate and yoga pants. Postcards and stickers offered the promise of energy shifts and emotional well-being. I figured if I was going to focus on recovery all weekend, I wanted a mental lubricant in the form of a dopamine supplement. I was being marketed to like a mofo and the rhetorical trope was tailored to fit. The buy message on tap was this:
You are perimenopausal and you are raging. Your sleep is shit and your relationships are strained. You are horny. You are prickly. Take the gummies and no one gets hurt.
I snatched the vegan, non-GMO dopamine-enhanced gummy bears and pocketed the chocolate for later.
Around the corner, a half-dozen aggressively kind, smiling women sat behind long plastic registration tables handing out laminated passes. They directed me to where the opening reception was held.
The Beverly Hills Hilton is a fancy place. And She Recovers attracts fancy women.
According to their website and other sources, the bulk of paying attendees are the wealthy, white feminist elite ages 30-69 with a household income of 80K and over. Registration costs $500, not including the rooms or the parking.
I asked Dr. Nickels how she planned to engage younger women, women of color, other-abled and the LGBTQ community. She replied, “The thing that we are most proud of related to LA is that we awarded 40 scholarships. We have been attracting WOC and members of the LGBTQ to our community – especially LGB – but we recognize much more needs to be done. We also need to work harder to include other-abled women to join us. We were very fortunate to have already made close connections with some amazing WOC and thus our program exhibited much more diversity than we had been able to do in NYC. Janet Mock is a powerhouse – and we loved having her – but despite efforts to do so, we didn’t have any success making direct contact with influencers in the trans community in LA to ensure that the trans community knew about our event.”
Given the steep cost of the weekend and the fact that registration for the conference was sold out, I wondered if presenters were paid or not, so I asked around. Those who answered requested anonymity.
Some presenters were not offered payment, but their registration fees were waived. The speakers and presenters who were not paid were happy to be asked but some were disappointed they were not offered the opportunity to have a book signing. Two of the speakers were paid high fees (between 16 and 20K) to speak. Those who were not paid used the weekend to promote their materials and businesses; they also wanted to share their experiences and connect to other women in recovery. So, who gets a seat at the table? Follow the money and you can see that She Recovers prioritizes celebrity.
This is where AA (and other 12-step programs) and She Recovers part company: AA has no red carpet; AA doesn’t cost money to attend and speakers are not paid at meetings. AA is an anonymous program that does not acknowledge celebrity or participate in the cult of personality—at least not as outlined in the traditions. While it has its own shortcomings, AA welcomes everyone.
Outside on the grass, several women stood in small clusters by a table of pastel colored macaroons. One of them was Shelly-Anne McKay, a delightful woman from Sasquatch Canada who led the panel on our relationship with food. Another woman told us she had just arrived from France. Others chimed in from the Bay Area, Washington and Oregon. When I asked the group what they were recovering from, the ones that replied stared up at the cerulean late afternoon sky and said, “Everything.”
I asked Shelly-Anne McKay what brought her here. She replied: “I love the She Recovers philosophy that every woman’s path to recovery may be unique. Not everyone finds solace in AA.”
I should tell you now I’m 23 years sober in AA and have studied the Big Book (the basic text of Alcoholics Anonymous). It was written by and about men. The language is old-timey and urges men to check their overinflated egos, to give up “golf fever” and to dive into service instead. The narrative of the shattered, broken self is a theme that is relieved by the belief in a higher power. The one chapter to women, “To Wives,” is heteronormative and sexist, designed to pacify neglected women and encourage them not to make waves.
She Recovers was designed for wave-makers.
Back in the ballroom, the first keynote speaker was wave-maker Cheryl Strayed. Interestingly, Strayed is not in AA and does not consider herself an addict (to my knowledge). But before she spoke, Paula Williams took the stage.
I was concerned for Williams the same way I am for any person with no public speaking experience who collapses under the pressure of adrenaline and stage fright. She seemed mortified to be center stage and she spoke to that. In that moment of terror, I fell in love with her rawness. Williams constructed an art installation — definitely my favorite thing in the mini-marketplace room — called “Shame Booth” (also the name of her podcast) where a person could sit alone inside a vintage phone booth and confess their secrets into a silent ear piece and then leave. Segments of their voices are recorded here: Shamebooth Audio. The only piece of that secret they took home was a new pair of strangely oversized white briefs with the big red words “No Shame” on the butt. And yes, I got my granny panties.
Cheryl Strayed brought the house down with her seasoned message that illuminated the question: how do we do the thing we cannot do? Her personal stories contained humility, resilience and heart. I’m very familiar with her content because I teach her memoir and essay collection “Dear Sugar” to my nonfiction students at UCLA extension. The crowd was enthralled as Strayed discussed the suffering she endured due to her mother’s illness, the aftermath of her grief, and the hopefulness she offered as a reprieve to that grief. She answered questions that were not really questions for a long time. At some point while listening to her, I realized that — whether we were addicts or not — the room vibrated with undeniable hopefulness and willingness to carry that which we thought we could not carry; but in the end we find that we can, we have — and we will.
I could say a hundred things about every incredible woman I encountered over the weekend from Friday evening until Sunday afternoon and it would not hold a candle to the inspiration I felt. I only wished there had been some scheduled time for us to all connect and mingle in one place away from the speaker/workshop/formal dinner format. The schedule was jam-packed and felt a bit rushed. The highlight for me was Saturday night: The Gala Dinner.
I never know what to wear to formal events, so I brought a couple of options. I decided that nothing says Formal Gala like clear stripper heels with red rhinestone hearts in the middle and shiny black Bad Sandy (from Grease) pants. A petite brunette with tattoos on her arms was looking around. She looked as lost and overwhelmed and alone as I felt so I asked her if she wanted to find a place to sit with me.
The dinner honored celebrated change-makers and wave-makers who dared to break the silence of addiction and alcoholism like Betty Ford and the woman who started a movement to disrupt sexual violence, Me Too activist Tarana Burke, but the speaker who got a standing ovation (which seemed to befuddle her) was My Fair Junkie author and comic Amy Dresner.
The opulent ballroom fell silent as Dresner walked up to the podium wearing a vintage Indian jumpsuit with billowing legs. She did a funny dance and squatted.
“I was attempting 70’s super model but I’m way more Genie, don’t you think?”
After explaining how neuroscience proves we can burn new pathways of stability in our minds by taking consistent, disciplined action, she said, “If you’re waiting to take the action, you’ll be waiting forever.”
Dresner’s journey of addiction to recovery was a beacon of inspiration and the best part of the weekend. Her talk embodied all that She Recovers hoped to convey because her story contained universal, gritty humor and you can’t package that. Her message was the very thing I craved the whole weekend. She told us the worst thing that ever happened to her was definitely the best thing that ever happened to her, but she could only see that after experiencing jail and street sweeping. The room erupted in laughter.
Dresner ended by telling us that after getting three years sober for like the 14th time, she asked her dad, “Are you ashamed of me? When you talk to your friends do you feel ashamed?”
“My friends wish their kid was as unbreakable as you,” he said.
Then, looking out at the 500 wet faces, she told us: “Remember, that’s what all of you are: unbreakable.”
I just felt like shit and slept as much as I could. I showed up to work. I kept my commitments. I spoke when asked to, but I felt more than unhappy. I felt like I just didn’t care.
(The Fix does not provide medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment, nor does anything on this website create a physician/patient relationship. If you require medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment, please consult your physician.)
I just came out of a six-week depression. That might not sound very long, but when you’re in hell it feels like forever. Good news: I didn’t bone any 25-year-old strangers; I didn’t cut myself; I didn’t get loaded; I didn’t smoke or vape although I really, really wanted to. I didn’t even eat pints of Ben and Jerry’s while binge-watching I Am A Killer. I just felt like shit and slept as much as I could. I showed up to work. I kept my commitments. I spoke when asked to, but I felt more than unhappy. I felt like I just didn’t care. I didn’t return phone calls. I didn’t wash my hair. Suicidal thoughts bounced around my head, but I ignored them like I do those annoying dudes with clipboards outside Whole Foods.
I’ve suffered from symptoms of depression since I was 19, so it’s an old, old friend. What really annoys me was that some (dare I say many?) people think at five and a half years of sobriety, you shouldn’t feel depressed. What I kept hearing from AA fundamentalists was:
“It’s your untreated alcoholism.”
“Listen to these tapes about prayer and meditation.”
“You’re not connected enough to your Higher Power.”
“You’re not going to enough meetings.”
“You need to do more service.”
Thankfully my sponsor, who has a foot in the medical world, did not say something along those lines.
One of my big problems with AA is that it looks at every mental problem through the paradigm of your “alcoholism.” If you’re suffering, you should look to the program for relief. Nobody would tell you to “drive around newcomers!” more if you had diabetes or kidney failure, but if you’re feeling down, that’s what you’re told to do. As it turns out, AA is not completely off the mark: “Addiction is a not a spiritually caused malady but a chemically based malady with spiritual symptoms,” addictionologist and psychiatrist Dr. Howard Wetsman told me. “When some people start working a 12-step program, they perceive a spiritual event but their midbrain is experiencing an anatomical event. When they’re working a program, they’re no longer isolated and they no longer feel ‘less than,’ so their dopamine receptor density goes back up [and they experience contentment],” he explained.
But what if your program hasn’t changed or feels sufficient and you still feel depressed? What if you’re working your ass off in your steps and helping others and you still feel like shit?
“Well, low dopamine tone experienced as low mood can be brought on by fear and low self-esteem (the untreated spiritual malady part of alcoholism/addiction) but it can also be brought on by biochemical issues,” Wetsman added.
Huh?
So was I experiencing the chemical part of my “addiction” or was I having a depressive episode? Perhaps my whole life I’d been confusing the two. Of course, all I wanted, like a typical addict, was a pill to fix it. But as I’ve done the medication merry-go-round (and around and around) with mild to moderate success, I was hesitant to start messing with meds again. I didn’t have a terrific psychiatrist, and SSRI’s can really screw with my epilepsy. And Wetsman was talking about dopamine here, not serotonin. Hmmm…
Dr. Wetsman has some interesting stuff about brain chemistry and addiction on his vlog. He mentions something called “dopamine tone” which is a combination of how much dopamine your VTA (Ventral Tegmental Area) releases, how many dopamine receptors you have on your NA (Nucleus Accumbens), and how long your dopamine is there and available to those receptors. Stress can cause you to have fewer dopamine receptors and fewer receptors equals lower dopamine tone. He’d explained to me in previous conversations how almost all of the people with addiction he’d treated had what he described as “low dopamine tone.” When you have low dopamine tone, you don’t care about anything, have no motivation, can’t feel pleasure, can’t connect to others. In addition, low dopamine tone can affect how much serotonin is being released in the cortex. Low midbrain dopamine tone can lead to low serotonin which means, in addition to not giving a shit about anything, you also have no sense of well-being. Well, that certainly sounded familiar.
Dr. Wetsman has a very convincing but still somewhat controversial theory that addiction is completely a brain disease and that using drugs is the result, not the cause. I really suggest you get his book, Questions and Answers on Addiction. It’s 90 pages — you could read half of it on the john and half of it while waiting at the carwash. It explains in detail why most of us addicts felt weird and off before we picked up and why we finally felt normal when we used. Again, it’s all about dopamine, and it’s fucking fascinating. No joke.
In his vlog, he explains that dopamine production requires folic acid which you can get from green leafy veggies (which I admittedly don’t eat enough of) but it also requires an enzyme (called methylenetetrahydrofolate reductase or MTHFR for short) to convert folate into l-methylfolate. Certain people have a mutation in the gene that makes MTHFR, so they can’t turn folate into l-methylfolate as effectively, and those people are kind of fucked no matter how many kale smoothies they drink.
But it’s not hopeless. If people with this genetic mutation take a supplement of l-methylfolate, their brain can make enough dopamine naturally. Of course once you have enough dopamine, you’ve got to make sure you release enough (but there’s medication for that) and that you have enough receptors and that it sits in the receptors long enough (and there’s meds for that too).
So this all got me wondering if maybe my MTHFR enzyme was wonky or completely AWOL. Dr. Wetsman urged me to find a good psychiatrist (since I’m on Prozac and two epileptic medications) or a local addictionologist in addition to taking a genetic test for this mutation. In his experience, patients who had a strong reaction to taking the l-methylfolate supplement were frequently also on SSRIs. They either felt much better right away or really really shitty. But if they felt even shittier (because the higher serotonin levels work on a receptor on the VTA which then lowers dopamine), he would just lower their SSRI or sometimes even titrate them off it completely. And voila. Success.
It’s all very complicated, and this whole brain reward system is a feedback loop and interconnected with all kinds of stuff like Gaba and Enkephalins (the brain’s opioids) and Glutamate. But you guys don’t read me for a neuroscience lesson so I’m trying to keep it simple. The basics: how do you know if you have too little dopamine? You have urges to use whatever you can to spike your dopamine: sex, food, gambling, drugs, smoking, and so on. What about too much dopamine? OCD, tics, stuttering, mental obsession and eventually psychosis. Too little serotonin? Anxiety and the symptoms of too high dopamine tone. Too much serotonin? The same thing as too little dopamine tone. Everything is intricately connected, not to mention confusing as all hell.
Being broke and lazy and having had decades of shitty psychiatrists, I decided to go rogue on this whole mission (not recommended). I mean I used to shoot stuff into my arm that some stranger would hand me through the window of their 87 Honda Accord so why be uber careful now? This l-methylfolate supplement didn’t require a prescription anymore anyway. What did I have to lose? I did however run it by my sponsor whose response was: “I’m no doctor, honey, but it sounds benign. Go ahead.”
I ordered a bottle. A few days later I heard the UPS guy drop the packet into my mail slot. I got out of bed, tore open the envelope and popped one of these bad boys. A few hours later I started to feel that dark cloud lift a little. Gotta be a placebo effect, right? The next day I felt even better. And the next day better still. I didn’t feel high or manic. I just felt “normal.” Whoa. It’s been weeks now and the change has been noticeable to friends and family.
Normal. That’s all I ever really wanted to feel. And the first time I felt normal was when I tried methamphetamine at 24. It did what I wanted all those anti-depressants to do. It made me feel like I knew other people felt: not starting every day already 20 feet underwater. I found out later that my mother and uncle were also addicted to amphetamines which further corroborates my belief that there is some genetic anomaly in my inherited reward system.
When I emailed Dr. Wetsman to tell him how miraculously better I felt, his first response was “Great. I’m glad. The key thing is to take the energy and put it into recovery. People go two ways when they feel amazingly better. One: ‘Oh, this is all I ever needed. I can stop all this recovery stuff.’ Or two: ‘Wow, I feel better. Who can I help?’ Helping others in recovery will actually increase your dopamine receptors and make this last. Not helping people will lead to shame, lowered dopamine receptors and it stops being so great.”
So no, I’m not going to stop going to meetings or doing my steps or working with my sponsor and sponsees. Being part of a group, feeling included and accepted, even those things can create more dopamine receptors. But sadly I’m still an addict at heart and I want all the dopamine and dopamine receptors I can get. However, I also know that enough dopamine alone isn’t going to keep me from being a selfish asshole…. But maybe, just maybe, having sufficient dopamine tone and working a program will.
