ChrisMiss 2026 - Remembering Chris - Overcoming Grief with Annie

SUMMARY:

This week on Dopey, Dave marks eight years since the death of his original co-host and close friend, Chris O’Connor. After celebrating members of Dopey Nation—including brothers Brian and Matt, Laren, Steve Schneider and Jessica—Dave reflects on recovery, character defects and the strange experience of hearing Chris again every week through the Total Dopey Replay.

The heart of the episode is an intimate conversation with Chris’s former fiancée, Annie, who is now a surgeon, a wife and the mother of two young children. Annie looks back on finding Chris after his fatal overdose, the trauma that followed and the years it took before that memory stopped feeling frightening and became simply, painfully sad.

Dave and Annie discuss the life Chris never got to live, whether he wanted children, the secrecy surrounding his relapse and the possibility that nobody close to him knew he was using. Annie explains why she ultimately walked away from a planned career treating substance use disorder and why Dopey may offer comfort to some people while remaining too painful for members of Chris’s family.

Annie shares a powerful analogy she received shortly after Chris died: in the beginning, grief is the only room in the house. As life continues, you add new rooms—relationships, children, work, friendship and purpose. The grief room never disappears, but it is no longer the only place you can go. That realization leads Dave and Annie to an unexpected connection: recovery from addiction can also be a form of grief. You may never erase the loss or forget the feeling you once chased, but you can build a life large enough that it no longer consumes everything.

PLease listen to this very special ChrisMiss Episode.