Fighting Cops, AA at 16 & Relapsing After 21 Years, Ketamine, Edibles - The Jimmy Cash Story

This week on Dopey! Viral comedian and school custodian Jimmy Cash joins Dopey to tell a funny, painful, and unmistakably Dopey recovery story.

Jimmy grew up in Worcester, Massachusetts, surrounded by addiction and Alcoholics Anonymous. His father—a high-school janitor—died from an overdose when Jimmy was nine, while his mother cycled through addiction, recovery, and relationships with other janitors. After watching The Basketball Diaries as a child, Jimmy became obsessed with getting high before he had even tried a real drug.

By his teens, Jimmy was smoking weed, drinking, taking psychedelics, using cocaine and ketamine, getting arrested, and fighting with police. He recalls punching a cop who was kindly driving him home, attacking the weak knee of a college RA—or at least being accused of it—and causing a coked-out disaster at an IHOP that ended with him breaking the handle off a police car and being beaten in custody.

Court-ordered AA eventually became genuine recovery. Jimmy got sober in 2003, built a family, became a custodian, and pursued his lifelong dream of stand-up comedy. His janitor videos went viral, leading to national attention and an appearance on The Kelly Clarkson Show.

But after more than 20 years without drinking or using, divorce, career pressure, grief, isolation, and insomnia left Jimmy sleeping on his younger sister’s couch. He began “nibbling” cannabis edibles, quickly recognized that he was getting high, and made the humbling decision to return to AA and pick up a new 24-hour chip.

Plus: a listener steals a car and escapes police through a freezing pond, questions about the experimental opioid compound SR-17018, a precipitated-withdrawal horror story, spicy reactions to the Roy Donk episode, drugged dogs, dead parrots, Phish fans, and DopeyCon business.

All that and more on this weeks new MASS edition of Dopey!