'Dopey' podcast helps save Detroit area-native from drug addiction

Don “DJ” Rentz once thought he had everything he needed: all the drugs he wanted, a place to use them and no one bugging him to stop.

It was loneliness that showed him otherwise. And it was a community that spanned the nation that brought him back from hell.

“I’d gotten to a place where my body was so destroyed that it would often take me 45 minutes to an hour to find a vein on my body to inject into," he said.

“All the veins in my hands were shot. My feet. I was injecting into my groin — at the end, I was even injecting into my neck. And there was just nowhere else to go.”

A Grosse Pointe native, Rentz, 34, began abusing drugs at 16 and has struggled with it ever since. But with the aid of a recovery podcast that’s been a lifeline for thousands, he’s regained control of his life, is on a healthy path and has found a way to give back to those who helped him get sober.

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Rentz led a relatively normal teenage life until a car crash left him seriously injured. Headed home from hockey practice on Jefferson Avenue on a cold winter night, he fishtailed and crashed into a telephone pole, suffering a significant neck injury that resulted in crushing headaches. The headaches were so bad that his doctor began prescribing opiates.

“It started with Tylenol with codeine, and then it became Vicodin, and then the Vicodin became Percocet. And then the Percocet became OxyContin,” he said. “The OxyContin, finally, became a fentanyl patch, which is typically reserved for folks who are in hospice … you know, terminally ill, people who are never going to have to get off a drug like fentanyl, because it’s so addicting.”

After three months on fentanyl, the headaches persisted, as Rentz and his parents saw neurologists and sought answers.

“I started seeing a sort of homeopathic doctor,” he said, “and they said that it may be wise to go off all medication just to get a baseline of where things were at. Just before Thanksgiving of 2005, they pulled me off all narcotics, and I experienced drug withdrawal for the first time. And from then on, I was an addict.

“I was 17.”

While still in the withdrawal period, during a doctor's office visit, Rentz swiped a prescription pad and began writing his own prescriptions.

“It was my senior year of high school,” he said. “And I knew, obviously, that this was severe, but I had also become mentally and emotionally dependent, and I was so desperate that I just did it. And it worked for a couple of weeks, until it didn’t and I basically got caught.”

Luckily for Rentz, the doctor himself was a recovering addict. He agreed that if Rentz went into treatment, he would avoid pressing charges. So, in the early weeks of 2006, Rentz was sent to an adolescent treatment facility in Saginaw.

“It was more like a juvenile detention/behavioral modification-type place,” he recalled. “I lasted about a week and then was able to get on the phone with my parents and convince them to come pick me up. The first chance I got, I told them I was going to a 12-step meeting and instead, I went to CVS pharmacy and got a refill for one of the scripts I had written. Only a day out of treatment and I was using again.”

By the next month, he’d landed a job as a stock boy at a privately owned pharmacy, stocking prescriptions and empty pill bottles. His third day there, he emptied a 1,000-count, industrial-sized container of Vicodin into his backpack, took them home, and poured them into a shoebox.

“And the next day at school,” he said, “I was wearing a button-up shirt with a pocket on one side and the pocket was full of Vicodin, and I was just kind of popping them like Skittles throughout school. And my parents noticed that something was up. The next day was my 18th birthday. I was getting ready to walk out of school to go to this job, and as I’m walking out, my mom comes walking in — and she’s holding the shoebox that I had the pills in. She told me to follow her, and she took me to the drug counselor’s office. My dad was already there in his suit; he’d come from work, so I knew this was serious.

“Basically, if I had shown up at work that day — the police were there (at the pharmacy) waiting to arrest me and charge me as an adult. Potentially one felony for every drug, which would have been 1,000 felonies. I’m sure there’s a maximum, but you get the idea.”

Luck was on Rentz’s side once again. The drug counselor had gone to high school with the head pharmacist, who agreed not to press charges if Rentz sought treatment.

“So, the night of my 18th birthday, I was checked into Brighton Hospital, which is one of the staple treatment centers in the state. That would be my first of three times at Brighton,” he said. “But that time, the thing that stuck out the most to me was that there were a lot of younger people, like me. They were talking about heroin, and how good it felt. And so I left treatment there with the notion that I had to try heroin because it sounded even better than what I had been doing … and what I had been doing felt pretty good.”

Powerlessness

Rentz described heroin as “an incredible rush.”

“It feels like pure euphoria pulsating through your body," he said. "It generally starts at the top of your head or at your toes, and it’s just this warmth. Like this warm hug all over your body, and then you’re feeling super euphoric. And it usually feels like a relief, as well. It’s like any stress or tension that you had, any worries you had … they all disappear. Almost without exception.”

From heroin, he progressed to what’s known as a “speedball” — heroin and crack cocaine mixed together and injected.

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“When you do them both at the same time,” he said, “the crack hits you first. That also feels like extreme euphoria, but you feel like Superman. You feel such intense power. Like you’re going to jump out of your skin, but in a good way. And the heroin takes you from up there down to this warm, sedated feeling, and it leaves you feeling that way. If you do the right combination — if you do them in the right amounts — that’s the ideal effect. You’ve got all this dopamine triggered and you’re so happy and your worries just kind of disappear."

Then, of course, came the dark side.

Rentz worked his way up to spending between $100 and $150 a day to maintain his habit. He lost multiple jobs, multiple relationships, and at times experienced homelessness.

“Sometimes things were going really well,” he said, “and I felt like I’d be able to control it. They say that addicts have a built-in forgetter, and that means we forget how bad things got. There’s this weird fallacy in addiction where it’s like we’re able to convince ourselves that maybe it wasn’t that bad, or there’s no way I’ll go back to where I was with the information I have now. Just this idea that can be controlled.

“In the 12 steps, they talk about powerlessness, and that’s what they’re talking about. I am powerless over drugs and alcohol, because once I put it into my body, I crave more, I need more, I’ll do illegal things to get more; I’ll hurt people or lie or cheat or steal.”

Rentz spent five years in the 2010s living in New York City before losing a long-term relationship due to his drug abuse. He returned to Michigan, living independently in Harper Woods. He weaned himself off methadone and heroin, but found himself in a dilemma.

“I had finally gotten to a place I’d always wanted to get to,” he said. “I had a place where I could use drugs safely, in this basement apartment, and no one was bothering me anymore — meaning anyone who I cared about or who cared about me had essentially written me off, so I could use with impunity. I had gotten a job where I was actually making pretty decent money. And so for the first time ever, I basically had all the drugs I wanted, a place to use them, and nobody bothering me. These were three things I’d had at various times throughout my using career, but never at the same time.

“I felt like if I could have those three things, together, all would be well. I’d be happy. And I realized that I was never as unhappy as when I got all three of those things, because it was incredibly lonely.”

This was when he reached the point of injecting into his neck because he’d run out of useful veins.

“And when you’re an IV (intravenous) drug user,” he said. “It’s not quite the same feeling to snort it or smoke it or eat it. Because when you inject, you’re going for this rush that you can’t get any other way.

“But because I couldn’t find the veins, I was basically just shooting into my arm (muscles). And I was getting terrible abscesses. ... On my left forearm, I had this tremendous abscess, and I just continued to shoot into it. It was so incredibly disgusting. I had track marks and open sores, and I felt completely hopeless.”

That, he said, was when he knew he had to reach out to Dave.

A different kind of podcast

In 2016, recovering addicts Dave Manheim and Chris O’Connor launched a podcast called “Dopey,” a goofy, lighthearted show about the humorous side of addiction that leaned heavily on listeners telling stories about the dumbest or funniest things they’d done while on drugs. Recovery was not much of a focus, but the show had a sort of painfully freewheeling kind of dark comedy. It quickly amassed a large following that developed into an online support community referred to as the Dopey Nation.

In the show’s 100th episode, which aired Oct. 1, 2017, O’Connor mused about a possible future relapse for the hosts.

“If we relapse, what would happen?” he asked.

“You know what,” he said, “if one of us gets injured and we have to take pain meds …”

“I do not foresee a relapse coming for me,” said Manheim.

“Me neither,” said O’Connor.

In early 2018, O’Connor suffered an injury during a vacation with his girlfriend and received a painkiller prescription, which quickly opened the door back to heroin and other substances. In late July of that year, after recording their 142nd episode, he suffered a fentanyl overdose just shy of his 34th birthday. He was in the midst of pursuing a Doctor of Psychology, to help others like himself.

After two and a half years of the “Dopey” podcast, O’Connor’s death cut like a knife. Episode 143 is a deeply difficult listen, rife with grief and urgency. As recently as this month, “Dopey” listeners continue to leave messages on his obituary page, thanking for him for what he gave and lamenting his loss.

After O’Connor’s death, the show began to focus more and more on recovery, on the benefits of getting clean and staying clean and helping its listeners establish healthy life habits. “Dopey” will celebrate its 400th episode in the coming weeks, with as many as 60,000 listens weekly, over 4.5 million total downloads and countless celebrity guests ranging from Jamie Lee Curtis and Michael Imperioli to Andrew Zimmerman and Danny Trejo. An annual DopeyCon gathering draws large numbers in person and virtually, and a new Dopey Foundation nonprofit has been established to aid listeners of the podcast.

“The Dopey Foundation was basically born out of (seeking) a way to officially help people,” said Manheim. “There were two things: Since we were helping people, I figured, why not set up a foundation that is just dedicated to helping addicts and their families? That was a much more streamlined way to actually help anybody and keep the show independent of it.

"The second thing was, I live on Long Island. It’s a pretty affluent town, and it’s a pretty small town. Every shop door in the town had a Narcotics Anonymous flyer on it, but I can imagine that people who had a drug problem may be intimidated by a flyer like that. And I know that people also feel like ‘Dopey’ is so approachable. Listen, I think Narcotics Anonymous is great, but I wanted to create a more approachable place for addicts, where they don’t feel like they’re going to The Place Before Jail.”

The podcast itself has longtime sponsors from the recovery community, including rehabilitation facilities that have sponsored around 30 listeners, funding their treatment, an effort the Dopey Foundation plans to continue as a service platform.

One of the listeners sponsored for a rehab retreat was Rentz, in 2020.

A new chapter

“Chris had a friend named Ted,” said Manheim, “and Ted had grown up with DJ. When me and Chris were making the show, in the first year, we heard about DJ’s story. And DJ came down to my apartment, and me, him and Chris recorded together. It was a great, great episode; people still talk about it. Alo House Recovery, which is now Oro House Recovery, had become our main sponsor, and as far as scholarships, they offered a really, really comprehensive scholarship for our listeners.”

Rentz, at this point injecting directly into his arm muscles, reached out to Manheim for help.

“I sent him a photo of my destroyed arm,” Rentz said, “and he texted back pretty quickly and said, ‘Are you willing to go to treatment?’

“This was early March of 2020,” he continued. “COVID was just starting, and it looked like I was going to be getting laid off from my job. And I knew that the money was going to run out, I wasn’t going to be able to work anymore, and I wouldn’t be able to support my habits. So when he asked me that, I waited for about 15 minutes, and then I responded that I’d be willing. Three hours later, I was on the phone with (someone) from Alo.”

Alo House Recovery opened its doors in Malibu, California, in 2010 as a luxury inpatient treatment center. In 2021, the name was changed to Oro House Recovery; “Oro” means “gold” in Spanish, and the name reflects the intent to provide the gold standard of recovery treatment.

“We love Dave and ‘Dopey’,” said Oro co-founder Evan Haines. “We feel like we’re kind of kindred spirits in the wilderness of this mystery that is addiction. ‘Dopey’ is this kind of ragtag community which just has so much heart to it. They’re heroes of ours, and we’re on this path together. I love what Dave has continued to do with building this community. I think it’s just such a contemporary example of what our attitudes about addiction, addiction treatment and recovery can be.

“Over the years, we’ve always tried to help as much as we can. (Co-founder) Bob Forrest and I, they should probably keep us off of the telephones, because somebody calls and it just breaks our hearts that we can’t help everybody because we have rent and staff to pay. So when we’re looking at scholarships, we generally look for someone who’s really willing, who really, really wants it. Willingness is one of the biggest factors when it comes to positive outcomes, and it’s not always there with people.”

Rentz received a six-month, inpatient scholarship, which included medical detox and learning sober living.

On March 19, 2020, the same week COVID-19 lockdowns began across the U.S., and four days after Rentz’s 31st birthday, he hopped a flight to California and began treatment.

“It was the best treatment center I’ve ever been to in terms of the quality of the staff and my therapist and the programming,” Rentz said. “And their 12-step program is incredible.”

When Rentz’s six-month stay ended, Manheim reached out to him with a job offer. Given Rentz’s background in business development and sales, Manheim believed he was the right person to secure new advertisers for the podcast.

“I felt so indebted to the show, and also excited to be a part of it in that way,” Rentz said. “I worked really hard at it and got 20 new sponsors over the next year.”

“DJ is a dreamer, and he’s a hard worker,” said Manheim, “and he has a lot of really great ideas. He wanted to help, and we definitely needed the help, so he came on as our de facto head of sales and did awesome.”

The first sponsor Rentz procured was Pink Cloud, a company with an app that that helps addicts with recovery, finding meetings, tracking sobriety and working through the 12 steps. Founder Jason Varughese was so impressed with Rentz that he also invited him to work in sales alongside his work for “Dopey.”

“It’s a huge blessing to be able to be associated with both and make that my job,” Rentz said.

Despite the progress made at Oro House, six months after leaving, Rentz had a brief relapse earlier this year.

“I moved back to Detroit to be with this girl that I had started dating,” he said, “and that’s when I relapsed. I think it was mostly because recovery had been the most important thing in my life, but I got complacent. Things got good — I attracted this girl into my life, got a really good job (with Pink Cloud), and both of those things happened in January 2022. I put my recovery on the back burner. I think those things took me away from my main priority.

“And in addition to that, I had recently gotten off one of my psych meds, and the timing couldn’t have been worse with so much life change going on. And being back in Detroit put me in the vicinity of a place where I used to use, and it was easy to make bad decisions.”

His three-week relapse ended with him going missing from a local hospital for 12 hours and his girlfriend breaking up with him. Two days later, he was back on a plane to Palm Springs for 30-day treatment and a stint with a recovery program. He has remained sober since.

“Never give up,” he said. “I’ve been up and down quite a bit, and fallen on my face a million times and relapsed a bunch. But I’ve found that if I don’t give up, you know, I still have a chance. I have a chance to succeed. And I’m confident that I will succeed. Recovery just takes a lot of work.”

Contact Free Press arts and culture reporter Duante Beddingfield at dbeddingfield@freepress.com.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: How a podcast saved an addict, and then gave him a chance to give back