Smoking Meth and Stealing Pigs With His Mom, Smuggling Heroin in Prison, IV Everything and the long road to recovery|: Garet McLendon

This week on the 600th episode of Dopey! Dave celebrates the show’s unofficial 600th Friday episode from the increasingly unreliable Dopey studio at his father’s house—and considers either dismantling the whole operation or hiring Ray as the new engineer.

The episode begins with recovery anniversaries from the Dopey Nation. Mr. Jason celebrates one year sober and reflects on repeatedly returning after relapse, while Haley marks five years free from drugs after beginning at age 12. Hippie Earl delivers a classic Dopey voicemail about shooting heroin for the first time after having his wisdom teeth removed, mixing it with Percocet, Klonopin and alcohol, destroying his car and waking up with no memory of being arrested. Seventeen years later, he is celebrating a year completely sober.

Dave also launches the latest Dopey versus Phish beef, announces that Hamilton Morris is officially coming to DopeyCon, discusses the DopeyCon theme-song challenge and reads listener reactions to last week’s Jeff Garlin interview—including stories about food addiction, recovery and Dave’s allegedly improved listening skills.

Then Dave sits down with Garet Mclendon for one of the wildest and most complete meth stories ever told on Dopey.

Garet grew up in California’s Antelope Valley with a mother addicted to methamphetamine. By his early teens, he was smoking and selling speed, dropping out of school and getting high alongside his mother. Together, they stole three enormous pigs, loaded them into Garrett’s 1977 Toyota Celica and sold them at auction—only for his mother to short him on his share of the money.

From there, Garet’s life descends into stolen cars, homemade meth pipes, purple crank, mobile meth labs, prison riots and increasingly elaborate criminal schemes. He trades half a gram of meth for a Toyota, steals an enormous boulder for a drug connection, receives 168 traffic tickets and eventually organizes drug drops into prison using runners, duffel bags, trash cans and body-cavity “plugs.”

In prison, Garet injects meth for the first time. Once released, he combines meth and heroin in goofball shots and becomes trapped in a cycle of addiction, homelessness, incarceration and treatment. Everything finally begins to change when his friend Levi—nine months sober—embraces him inside a treatment facility and tells him, “I really hope you stay.”

Garet did stay. Thirteen years later, he has rebuilt his relationships, established a career in construction, helped create Mindset Recovery and become the present father his daughter always deserved. His story culminates in an emotional moment when his daughter asks him to continue their tradition and buy the dress she will wear to her college graduation.

It’s an outrageous, cinematic and ultimately beautiful episode about addiction, belonging, incarceration, fatherhood, service and the possibility of building an entirely new life.

All that and much ore on this brand spanking new episode of the good old dopey show!