Dave Manheim, host of the addiction podcast Dopey, talks about heroin addiction, relapse, recovery, and the moment sobriety finally stuck. In this Soberness episode, he shares how decades of drugs, lost careers, and broken relationships led him to Alcoholics Anonymous.

This conversation doesn't romanticize addiction. Dave talks about shooting heroin while working in television, losing custody of his daughter, living on methadone for years, and the strange moment that finally made him consider life without drugs. It wasn't a dramatic intervention. It was a simple question at an AA meeting.

IN THIS EPISODE:

HOW WEED LED TO A 20-YEAR HEROIN ADDICTION
LOSING A TELEVISION CAREER TO DRUGS
WHAT RELAPSE REALLY LOOKS LIKE
WHY SOBRIETY DIDN'T STICK UNTIL AGE 41
HOW AA HELPED BREAK OBSESSIVE THINKING
FINDING SPIRITUALITY AFTER YEARS OF CHAOS

For more content from Cat Greenleaf, check out her socials below!

https://www.instagram.com/catgreenleaf/

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MORE EPISODES YOU'LL LOVE: E. Jean Carroll Tells All | Trump Paid Me $100M for Abuse and Defamation: https://youtu.be/TLU8NO2cOm8

What Sobriety Really Means with Heavyweight Host, Jonathan Goldstein: http://youtu.be/u6P7J5KToQE

He Didn't Know He Belonged—Until Al-Anon with Philip Galanes: https://youtu.be/84tWDAZAebE Submit your story: https://soberness.com/

ABOUT SOBERNESS: Soberness—the concept—is freedom from f**kery: The f**kery of addiction. The self-inflicted f**kery. And the f**kery that shows up uninvited. Soberness—the podcast—is where celebrity raconteurs spill what broke them, what saved them, and what still f**ks with them today. From Talk Stoop creator and host Cat Greenleaf, Soberness is recorded at the Algonquin Hotel's iconic Round Table in Midtown Manhattan. Once home to Dorothy Parker and her Vicious Circle of drunken critics and wits, the Gonk is a legendary hotbed of brilliance and bad behavior. A f**kery free-for-all. In other words, it's a perfect fit.

ABOUT CAT GREENLEAF: Cat created and hosted NBC's long-running series Talk Stoop—the celebrity interview show filmed on her Brooklyn front steps. Yep, the one with the bulldog that dominated NYC TaxiTV and USA Daytime in the 20teens. Over nine years, she hosted hundreds of guests, racked up four Emmys, launched countless adventures—and had so much fun. Then she got fired. No fun. After losing her job, she thought she'd never to go back to journalism. With no other marketable skills and no idea what to do next, she entered an epic dark night of the soul. Looking for light, her family moved to the beach in Coney Island. There, Cat got serious about her own sobriety and began bringing recovery meetings to incarcerated and formerly incarcerated women and men. That work inspired her to found the nonprofit Restorative Housing Organization. RHO is dedicated to training formerly incarcerated men and women to renovate undervalued NYC waterfront properties, which are then rented to Section 8 tenants. She loves it. But once a journalist, always a journalist. So when she weirdly got name-checked on Hacks last season, she took it as a sign.Soon after, she heard her old friend, musician Steve Earle, talking openly about his sobriety on a radio show —a thing she didn't know people were even allowed to do. And she realized she wanted to be the one talking to Steve Earle about sobriety on a show! Soberness was born in September 2024.