LSD in a Fresh Tattoo, a Ball Pit of Crack Pipes & Twelve Norcos Before Jail, the tattoo episode — with Ryan Roi

This week on Dopey! Fresh off a packed DopeyCon 7, Dave is feeling the familiar post-DopeyCon blues and thanking the Dopey Nation for another incredible gathering. Plus, Recovery Unplugged gets a shout-out for arranging the filming, Papa Smurf gets his flowers, and Britta makes the drive from Pittsburgh despite losing her power steering—with drug-of-choice name tags in tow. Then Betty Ford James writes in about being made to feel unwelcome at an AA meeting, finding a potential sponsor who subsequently ghosted him, and building his recovery through Recovery Dharma, therapy, and Dopey. Dave weighs in on sponsorship and asks for your sponsor stories before catching up on listener comments.

Then we go back to Dopey episode 47, with Dave, Chris, and Brooklyn tattoo artist Ryan Roi! Chris accidentally books the wrong Ryan, but gets exactly the right guest for a conversation about cocaine, whiskey, acid, and spectacularly bad tattoos. Ryan remembers getting an eyeball tattoo while tripping on LSD and rubbing an acid sugar cube into the fresh tattoo. His overnight Christopher Street shifts bring explicit tattoo requests, a hormone deal that turns into an ecstasy-fueled tattoo session, and a basement so full of crack pipes he compares it to a McDonald’s ball pit.

Chris tells the sprawling story behind his misspelled “Melissa” tattoo: an older girlfriend, homemade hooch in court-ordered rehab, running away, and a drunken motel tattoo courtesy of a guy named Knockout. A speeding stop shortly after Chris takes twelve Norcos lands him back in jail, where he gets the Orange County tattoo that Ryan eventually touches up. Plus, women tattooing their names on Ryan’s legs, Chris eating an ounce of mushrooms at a Phish show, Dave’s Fourth of July acid trip with orange-juice bong hits at the original Woodstock site, and the original offer to pay for Dopey tattoos.

Along the way, the guys talk about sobriety as a psychedelic experience, the impossibility of getting high “just once,” and why Ryan had to leave a tattoo shop to get sober—and become the artist he wanted to be. All that and much much more on this Monday’s Dopey Total Replay!