Show notes
This week on the Wednesday Dose! Close Friend of the show, legendary tattoo artist, punk-rock outlaw, former bank robber and federal prisoner Shane Enholm returns to Dopey with a frightening update: after surviving hepatitis C and end-stage liver disease decades ago, he has been diagnosed with cirrhosis again.
Shane retraces a life built around heroin, prison, tattooing and survival—from having an ounce of fentanyl inside federal prison in 1990 to being forced onto methadone after his release. He talks about becoming a prison pull-up champion, the FBI operation that ended his smuggling connection, the shame directed at people receiving medication-assisted treatment and why service—not recovery righteousness—ultimately helped him stay off heroin for 22 years.
The conversation turns emotional as Shane remembers musician Bruce “Spider” Middleman, his close friend and former partner of Katey Sagal. Shane recalls reviving Spider after one overdose, watching him immediately ask to get high again and discovering his body after the fatal overdose that followed.
Plus: getting kicked off Instagram over a message to a teenage tattoo apprentice, quitting unfiltered cigarettes after 46 years, the dangers of today’s fentanyl and tranquilizer supply, pain treatment, drug legalization, Keith Richards, Mick Taylor and whether Shane may eventually need a liver transplant.
The episode opens with a wild collection of listener stories involving a stolen handgun used in a convenience-store robbery, smoking crack during an unexpected 69 and getting robbed at gunpoint by a dealer named Dead Man.
PLUS A GIANT WEIRD LOOKING PENIS ON FIRE ISLAND! and more.
