Dopey 598: Leah Lost the Love of her Life to a Fentanyl Overdose, Stealing Crack from Cops, Phish Business and Hippy ShenanigansDopey 598: Leah Lost the Love of her Life to a Fentanyl Overdose, Stealing Crack from Cops, Phish Business and Hippy Shenanigans
Dopey: On the Dark Comedy of Drug Addiction
Timestamps 00:00:15 – “Dopey Afternoon” 00:01:29 – Oro Recovery 00:02:53 – Dave’s loose crown and ongoing dental nightmare 00:05:18 – September Iron Maiden shirt and DopeyCon 00:06:40 – A dog eats weed, chocolate and espresso beans 00:10:07 – Mountainside 00:12:30 – Braeburn and Reframe and Reclaim 00:14:53 – Lauren’s bell-ringer and “dragon’s breath” voicemail 00:19:41 – Zach on grief, suicidal addiction and an ordinary sober birthday 00:22:02 – Long Island Center for Recovery 00:23:20 – Patreon reactions to Hunter Biden 00:26:42 – Workit Health 00:27:30 – Meth psychosis, owls and a bizarre marriage proposal 00:31:22 – Recovery Unplugged 00:33:18 – Leah joins the show 00:35:33 – Brian and the lost Shakedown Screet memorial page 00:40:20 – Growing up with a police-officer father 00:42:46 – Taking acid at Tool and getting lost in Camden 00:49:45 – Weed, hippie culture and hiding red eyes with pool water 00:54:11 – School drug tests and learning to deceive her parents 00:58:31 – Failing out of college and discovering psychedelics 01:00:46 – Are the Grateful Dead a jam band? 01:03:05 – Dave’s complicated relationship with Phish and Trey Anastasio 01:07:43 – Acid, college and the beginning of opioid use 01:10:00 – Four oxycodone pills as a birthday present 01:14:32 – Perc 30 addiction and her first recovery meeting 01:19:06 – Two pregnancies, abortions and using opioids for emotional pain 01:23:53 – Breaking up, Suboxone withdrawal and selling cocaine 01:28:29 – Joining the “magnificent hippies” and going on tour 01:33:09 – Fake Molly and surviving tour by selling water 01:35:27 – Living in Golden Gate Park and trimming weed 01:39:58 – Culinary school, restaurant work and returning to opioids 01:42:21 – Moving from Perc 30s to heroin 01:44:17 – Treatment at Caron and four years sober 01:48:41 – Meeting Brian through the recovery community 01:51:03 – Moving to Atlantic City and experimenting with psychedelics 01:58:05 – Kratom, LSD and the thinking that preceded relapse 02:00:25 – Drinking again after four years sober 02:05:06 – COVID shutdown, pressed fentanyl pills and daily use 02:09:51 – Atlantic City heroin, crack and the Chicken Man 02:12:04 – Reversing each other’s overdoses with Narcan 02:14:27 – Smoking crack while driving and getting arrested 02:16:50 – Slipping the handcuffs and stealing back the crack 02:19:05 – Seven felonies, eight misdemeanors and returning to treatment 02:21:24 – A final summer with Brian 02:23:44 – Leah finds Brian dead after her own overdose 02:25:54 – Crack, shock and arranging Brian’s funeral 02:30:37 – Brainspotting therapy and processing traumatic grief 02:33:03 – Bedbugs, housing instability and another relapse 02:35:27 – Another overdose death and getting sober again 02:37:41 – The relapsing sponsor and another dead roommate 02:40:07 – Leah’s recovery today 02:42:27 – Farming, sober friends and becoming a grief facilitator 02:46:44 – How Brian’s death transformed Leah 02:50:20 – SafeSpot overdose-prevention hotline 02:51:18 – Spotify reactions to Hunter Biden 02:58:31 – Closing and “Good So Bad”
3:02:45•4 Sept 2026
Love, Fentanyl, and Hippie Shenanigans: Leah’s Wild Road to Recovery
Episode Overview
- Strict, shame-based control in adolescence fed Leah’s secretive drug use and early obsession with weed and counterculture.
- Tour life and psychedelics felt joyful and free, but every return home pulled her back into heavy opiate use.
- COVID shutdowns and pressed fentanyl pills rapidly escalated her and Brian’s habits into daily fentanyl and crack with frequent overdoses.
- Finding Brian dead after he’d Narcan’d her the night before pushed Leah into intensive trauma therapy and forced her to confront grief without drugs.
- Multiple relapses and another partner’s overdose led her to rebuild life around farm work, therapy, and sober friendships while preparing to facilitate grief groups.
“Through processing the loss of Brian, it’s sort of like unearthed and brought me down to bare bones and brought me into right relationship with who I am and what life is.”
What emotional and inspiring tales of recovery are out there? This episode follows Leah, a self-described hippie, as she pieces together a wild, painful, and strangely hopeful journey through drugs, love, and loss. You’ll hear Leah talk about growing up under a police officer dad’s microscope, sneaking weed through school drug tests, and getting pulled into 1960s counterculture through the Beatles and the Grateful Dead.
Her story shifts from psychedelic road trips in a Subaru Outback, sleeping in Golden Gate Park and trimming on raw land weed farms, to serving food while secretly spending every dollar on Perc 30s. Things turn sharply when she meets Brian, the deadhead behind the meme page “Shakedown Screet”. They fall hard for each other and build a life around recovery, acid, and music.
Then come pressed fentanyl pills, Atlantic City dope, crack runs, repeated overdoses, and two chaotic arrests including one where she slips out of handcuffs in a police station to grab back her crack. It’s darkly funny and completely grim at the same time. The heart of the episode is Leah finding Brian dead in their living room after he’d saved her with Narcan the night before.
She talks honestly about flashbacks, brain spotting trauma therapy, relapsing again with another man who also dies, and the slow, messy work of staying alive without numbing out. Now she works on a farm, sees a therapist who’s in recovery, connects with sober friends from the Phish and Dead scene, and is training to facilitate grief groups.
Her take on loss and identity hits hard: she says Brian’s death "brought me down to bare bones" and closer to who she really is. If you’ve ever wondered how anyone keeps going after that kind of heartbreak, this conversation might give you a bit of company along the way.
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