Dopey 561: CLASSIC DOPEY From Fake AIDS to Real Crack: The Completely Deranged Life of Hairy Tongue Will

no inserted ads: www.patreon.com/dopeypodcast This Week on a super classic episode of Dopey! Dave is visited by local Long Islander - Will P. AKA Hairy Tongue Will. Dave opens the show drinking Ryze mushroom coffee while talking about how cold his recording room is. He announces that Dopey will be releasing five episodes per week throughout December, including replays, Patreon teasers, deep cuts, and new interviews. He gives sobriety shoutouts — notably Lauren’s three-year milestone and Maddie Veitch from Leftover Salmon celebrating her own recovery marker. He encourages listeners to email in clean-time milestones for future episodes. Dave then goes through a lengthy run of Spotify comments left on the Darrell Hammond episode. The comments range from people complaining about the “This or That” game, others defending it, jokes about possums, encouragement about psychedelics, questions about whether Darrell is truly sober, praise for the episode, frustration with the interview pacing, random remarks about Lime Drive and “Mike’s Amazing Stuff,” plus multiple requests for stickers. Dave reads each comment and jokes along, sometimes offering to send merch. Ads for Mountainside and Link Diagnostics follow. Dave talks about how Mountainside is central to the history of Dopey and how Link Diagnostics offers drug testing services that help people “stay positive and test negative.” Dave then plays an LSD voicemail from Henry in San Francisco, who took two hits of acid alone in college. Henry becomes one with his bicycle, panics at a house fumigation tent he interprets as a circus, fears he’ll be mutated by pesticides, runs home, listens to the Butthole Surfers, sees Aztec gods appearing from shifting ceiling patterns, and eventually rides it out. He is now 15 months sober and credits Dopey Nation for support. Next he reads an email from Jerry, who describes crazy addiction history including fighting cops on PCP, overdoses, ventilators, and robbing heroin dealers. Jerry discovered Dopey by typing “heroin” into the podcast search bar while newly out of rehab in 2018. His biggest complaint is that Dave has never watched Joe Dirt .The episode opens with your intro, then the bulk of the show is Hairy Tongue Will’s massive, chaotic, detailed telling of his addiction, near-death runs, arrests, relapse cycles, dead friends, and eventual recovery. Will describes the early Long Island chaos with Richie, Mike, and Lenny—everyone strung out on heroin, crack, coke, and whatever they could get. He recalls the first serious turn: showing up to a house where Lenny was passed out after a three-day crack run, realizing “the demons are taking over.” Mike and Richie spiral deeper, and Will keeps managing to “hold it together” thanks to jobs, work ethic, and a strange electrical-job stabilizer that kept him semi-functional. He details years of DUIs, probation, manipulating drug tests, smoking crack constantly while still working 16-hour electrician shifts, and thriving socially because coworkers lived vicariously through him. He normalized chaos, missing only “one no-call/no-show every two weeks,” which he considered acceptable. Will then dives into his first short attempt at stability, living in a basement apartment. His probation officer surprises him the day after a holiday: the apartment is filled with beer cans, bongs, baggies. He fails the test, is sent back to rehab/jail cycles, and explains why Long Island addicts often choose jail over treatment. He describes his surreal time in jail—being sent to the Montauk Lighthouse on work crews, eating egg sandwiches and black-and-milds with the guards, becoming “the useful guy,” actually feeling respected and purposeful. Back outside, he tries again, fails again, collects DUIs, cycles through companies, loses jobs, hustles side work, and repeatedly relapses. A wedding night leads to another DUI. COVID hits while he’s in jail. He gets out, starts working nonstop, earns money, piles cash in a closet, stacks crypto, reads self-help books, sleeps on a mattress on the floor, becomes obsessed with success and control. Then he meets a girl in Tennessee. He drinks again “successfully” only when he flies there. He builds a double life—working himself numb, drinking out of state, convincing himself he’s different. Eventually, on a work trip, he gambles, wins big, drinks an old fashioned, and secretly cooks his boss’s cocaine into crack. This reignites the obsession. Will starts traveling the Northeast and Midwest, repeatedly pulling crack-seeking missions: gas stations, high-crime neighborhoods, asking strangers, “I’m looking for some hard.” He builds drug contacts in Bridgeport, Dayton, Maine, Virginia, wherever the job sends him. He smokes in hotels, hallucinates blood on floors, changes rooms repeatedly. He recounts the deaths of friends: Mike, whose father turned their home into a sheet-walled trap house with dealers and bikers living inside. How Mike died with his father selling sneakers off his dead son’s body. Richie, who got sober then died of fentanyl after nearly two years clean. Will’s life collapses further—obsession, resentment toward God, jealousy, terminal uniqueness. He becomes a “demon,” wanting to die like his friends. He terrifies his girlfriend with delusional FaceTimes, nine-day runs, psychosis. She moves in without knowing the truth and becomes trapped in codependency. He stays high for 26 straight days, manipulates her with antihistamine allergy episodes to cover his psychosis, hides crack pipes around the house with ring cameras everywhere. He finally admits some truth, gives her $5,000 to escape, but she stays another nine months. He tells insane stories: Pretending he’s a trust-fund baby to get free crack Getting shot at by a dealer after a misunderstanding over “two grams” vs “two ounces” Driving through wooded roads barefoot at gas stations Dealers trying to jump him Becoming a mule for a recently-released dealer (Ace) Near misses, violence, and pure street insanity Eventually, during a pickup, he gets chased, prays for police lights, and his car breaks down. Cops descend. He gets a mountain of charges (“five decades worth”). He thinks he’ll die in prison. Bail reform gets him released. He immediately uses again for 17 more days. A sober lawyer tries pushing him toward St. Christopher’s. Will resists, manipulates LICR, relapses again, cancels his own insurance, tries to die, and after weeks of chaos his mother gets him re-approved. He enters St. Chris, still delusional, still dangerous. There he breaks. He admits suicidal thoughts, gets a guard stationed outside his door, hears the blunt truth— you’re the worst-off guy here and you did this to yourself. It lands. Will begins working the program: spiritual direction, grief groups, codependency, meetings, kitchen duty, everything. He reconnects with his mother in sobriety. He attends court in suits provided by the facility and ultimately receives an unexpectedly generous plea deal. He comes home early, tries to run his own program, stays sober for months, but on Mother’s Day runs into an old acquaintance who shows him a Newport box with a pipe inside. He relapses immediately for three days, misses Mother's Day entirely. That night, suicidal again, he receives a series of calls: first from Jordan, then from his tough sponsor, who gives him clear direction—go to a sober house, go to daily groups, go to nightly meetings, call people, build structure. Will frauds his urine to get in, but once inside, follows every instruction. He stabilizes. He recounts being 18 months sober now, having been at meetings nearly every night, with a recent slip in commitment due to chasing an “intimate partner godshot” that didn’t work out. You reassure him that it’s fine and that balance is part of recovery. More or less thats the whole thing! On a brand new fucko, crackead episode of that good old dopey show! Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.