We're Out of Time
Meet the Youngest Radio DJ In History with an Inspiring Story Shadoe Stevens
Tue, 11 Mar 2025
Get inspired by the incredible story of Shadoe Stevens, who became the world's youngest DJ at age 11. Listen to his journey on the "We're Out of Time" podcast with Richard Taite as they discuss overcoming struggles with addiction, finding success in the entertainment industry, and, most importantly, success as a family man. For all things Richard Taite, the We're Out Of Time podcast, and Carrara Treatment Wellness & Spa: https://linktr.ee/richardtaitehttps://www.1callplacement.org/For more on Shadoe Stevens:https://www.mentalradio.net/ http://www.shadoeart.com/Key moments from this conversation with Shadoe Stevens & Richard Taite. Intro 00:00How did Shadoe become the youngest Radio DJ in the world? 02:11When did substances enter Shadoe's life? 04:00When did Shadoe first explore a life without drugs, and what led him back to substance use? 06:57Substance use and a psychotic break? 13:02Why has laughter been imperative to Shadoe's recovery? 16:10Meditation- why it's the most important discovery Shadoe has made in life? 18:49What is the impact of substance abuse on the family, and how did Shadoe meet his wife? 26:14Why does Shadoe know that the love for his family is his greatest success? 31:30Shadoe shares advice for parents who have a child struggling with substances. 39:49What inspired Shadoe's passion project, Mental Radio? 42:18
Chapter 1: How did Shadoe become the youngest Radio DJ in the world?
find these things that you believe in, the greater your ability to turn your will and your life over to the care of this something that you can't begin to comprehend.
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Chapter 2: When did substances first enter Shadoe's life?
Everyone, I wanted to introduce you to somebody who I saw in probably one of my first AA meetings ever. Shadow Stevens, the legend, the voice of television and radio. When I was younger and just an absolute icon, man, like most beautiful voice, most talented man. Please stop, stop, stop. No more, no more, please.
I was telling you before this, you started talking to me and the only thing I could think of, I couldn't hear what you were saying. And the only thing I could think was, oh my God, he's got such a beautiful voice. And that is cute. So you kind of like a pretty girl, right? Like she can be as smart, as sharp as a tack, right? And you just can't hear her. So it's kind of like that. Sucks for you.
Chapter 3: What led Shadoe to explore a life without drugs?
Well, thank you. Yeah, it's good to be here or anywhere for that matter. Let me ask you a question, man. You were such a massive success. One of the biggest voices in America. How did drugs and alcohol fit into that? And were you using while you were working or was it just an off the clock thing?
Well, this is a long story. I don't know how much you want to hear of it. All of it. I'll tell you in a nutshell. I grew up in Jamestown, North Dakota. I'm the oldest of five children. And my parents didn't drink or smoke or use drugs or curse or fight in front of the kids. My dad was very entrepreneurial.
He owned clothing stores and toy stores and go-kart tracks and firework stands on the 4th of July. And all of the kids would run a different firework stand. When we had fireworks displays, they were at our house. It was Norman Rockwell, and I had go-karts, I had motorcycles, I worked early, I was very aggressively enthusiastic, and I built a radio station from a kit in my house when I was 10.
And when I was 11, I was discovered by by a local radio station and they put me on the air as the world's youngest disc jockey and I did rock and roll on Saturday morning on KEYJ and then I stayed doing radio most of my high school part-time you know in the summers and went through five years of college didn't didn't want to drink
Drank once, projectile vomited, thought this is like my dad says, why do you want to drink? Makes you loud and stupid. So I didn't until my fourth year of college. I discovered doctor prescribed prescription of Desbutol. Desbutol was a brilliantly subtle combination of a wide variety of intoxicants, mainly alcohol. meth and a barbiturate.
So it gave you the energy and it allowed you to stay thin and get a lot done while taking the edge off at the same time. It was widely abused and is no longer available. But that was the gateway. So now I have an acceleration that made me, because I was always busy. I worked full-time in radio and I went to school full-time.
And by the time I got to the University of Arizona, I was working full-time at the radio station and doing school and doing plays and getting a lot done. Guy says, you want to try some weed? I said, you should try it. I mean, it's a plant. It's not like it's heroin.
So they had it all set up and it was a great big hookah and the hookah had these tubes and there was black light posters and they dimmed the lights and they turned up the sound system and it was a great sound system. I remember the music when I first got high, it was Minnie Riperton. Suddenly I was elevated into the ceiling and
and I was moving at one with the universe, and I saw it in colors on the left and on the right, and I understood, oh, no wonder you can't explain this. It's like trying to explain the color blue to a blind man. It's experiential. And I was really thirsty. And that night, I bought my first ounce. And within a month, I bought my first pound. Then I moved to Boston.
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Chapter 4: How has laughter played a role in Shadoe's recovery?
Funny, the funny. Horrifying. Don't do the funny. Please don't do it. Well, you know, in retrospect, it is actually kind of funny. So then I get a prescription doctor in Los Angeles because I had a lot of responsibilities, you know, a lot of people I'm responsible for and I had to keep going. And I saw him for many years, but it was elevated little by little. And I always wanted to be up.
I wanted to be working. I want to be trying things. I want to be doing art. I want to be writing. I want to be productive all night into the next day, you know, five day runs. And along the way, I had an LSD experience that was out of the body. And I thought, I've got to find a way here without drugs. And so I started studying drugs.
Chapter 5: Why is meditation important in Shadoe's life?
comparative religion and quantum physics and out-of-body experiences and the occult and meditation. And I learned to meditate and I started and I gave up drugs and alcohol. And for a year, things got better. And then a guy came in and I had left radio and went into production and I had my own company called Shadow Vision and it was a production company and we were doing things like
the blues brothers, um, movie and fast times at Ridgemont high and 48 hours. You did those. I did all that. Those are fantastic movies. Yeah. They're great movies. And we were really on a roll. And, and then I started doing, uh, television commercials. Um, But about that time, about the time of the Blues Brothers, a guy came in and he laid down an ounce of Peruvian flake.
And it was crystal pure, and it was pretty. And he said, have as much as you want. And I thought, I have really been good. Clearly, I can pick it up or put it down, stop anytime I want. What would a little needle line hurt? Well, I did two because you have two nostrils. And then I do two more to balance the hemispheres of my brain. And pretty soon I'm arcing and we're getting a lot done.
And we worked through the night and through the next day and through the next night. And we worked and worked and got a lot done. I think we did 50 commercials. And then I bought my own ounces, and that opened up the door. And now I'm back 100%. And it was me and the team, because I had this great team. I was doing television commercials, the Federated commercials. I love those.
I forgot about those. Those were the best. Yeah, there's a video on YouTube called Bludgeon Advertising that we did years ago. And it's the whole story of Federated and me. And in this campaign that I created, and we did 1,100 commercials. This was going really well, and they were getting really fun, but I was losing it. As it was growing, I gained a lot of weight.
I gained actually 50 pounds, but... Because they didn't stop eating either.
The only person I've ever known who got fatter while on cocaine was Sarge.
I know Sarge and I have a lot in common. Okay. And I got big too. And people would say, you're big boned. So I knew, I knew. But there's video. So we did this thing called Fear and Loathing in Big Sur. And what I did is I bought motorcycles for all the guys. So we all had motorcycles and we put them in a big truck with all the equipment, the cameras and the lighting and everything.
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Chapter 6: What is the impact of substance abuse on family?
And we had a sober driver. and headed off for Big Sur. And we had an RV, and in the RV, we were loaded up with cocaine and magic mushrooms from the Amazon, and I mean, on and on. I'm just like, we were well-packed. And we got up there, and part of that was to open stores in Sacramento and Fresno.
So we'd do live appearances, and Fred would show up, and people would stand in line for two hours to meet Fred. Fred Radin? Yeah, that was my character. Fred rated for better. It was all alliteration. It was like Fred rated for federated, Fred and Freda rated for federated, Fred and Freda rated, my dog Veer for federated. You know, so listen fast and I don't have a lot of time to talk.
I've been irritated, furious, frustrated.
You know, it's like... Dude, he should do a commercial for something for us. Like, seriously, he's a genius. So go on. You don't understand what these commercials were like. I mean, at a time where, you know, you'd have my dad doing commercials, 993-9999, right? Custom craft carpets. And then the next on television would be this guy, Cal Worthington, and his dog, Spawn. So, and then federated.
So those are the three commercials that you would see all the time.
Well, the difference, the difference is that your commercials were good. Well, we never, no commercial ever went longer than 10 days. We did five to seven, eight commercials a week. Turn them out. We meet on Monday. We would figure out the writing on Monday. We would get it prepared on Tuesday. We would shoot on Wednesday. We would edit on Thursday and turn them in Friday for six years.
The victim is suffering from a false misapprehension.
I will have order in this court. My client was denied her rights to selection and freedom of choice.
I was a victim of under choice.
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Chapter 7: What advice does Shadoe have for parents of struggling children?
I had guns because I thought people were trying to kill me. I could hear, I could hear whispers outside the window, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And I put sheets over the windows and the doors. And I put quilts over the sheets and the windows and the doors because you can see silhouettes through sheets. And then I realized you can see around the cracks around quilts.
So I put nails at one-inch intervals. And I sat with my 12-gauge short barrel double-odd buck. And I thought, either there's somebody out there or I've gone insane. I need to confront my destiny. And I went outside and I sat beneath the window with my 12-gauge and waited. And I heard a rustle in the bush. And then I jumped up screaming, No, you die, mother... And I chased them through the brush.
And they got away. So I went back to the bathroom to celebrate. Locked the door. Put the towel under the door. Ran the tub. Had another hit. And then rocked back on the floor in convulsions. And when I came to, I thought, I should take a breather. Not I should stop, I mean, because stopping wasn't clearly an option. When I got a... My doctor saw me and...
Chapter 8: What inspired Shadoe's passion project, Mental Radio?
And I had a physical and he said, if you're lucky, you're going to die. I don't think you're going to die. I think you're going to have a heart attack or a stroke any minute. And you've got to stop or you're going to lose your ability to talk. You're going to lose the left side of your body. Something awful is going to happen any minute. And you got to stop.
And I knew he was right, but I couldn't. I was humiliated. I was so ashamed of what had become of me. I thought, I'm insane. What's wrong with me? I can't do that. And I didn't. So countless convulsions later, I had an overdose in my studio. And my guys that worked for me came and found me at 4 in the morning, and they got afraid.
And they called my family, and my family ganged up on me and talked me into going into recovery. I went to Betty Ford, and there was no room. So they said, come back in a few weeks. I went, please, come back in a few weeks. No. And they said, well, let's make a call. And they found me a... a room in Scripps in La Jolla. And that's where I went. Worst day of my life.
I'm sure that I would never laugh again. I'd never be creative again. I was like going into a mental hospital. And then I talked to the counselor in admissions, and he said, you know, this isn't a mental hospital. You can leave anytime you want, but clearly things aren't going well for you, and maybe you should give it a day. Okay. So I did. And then my roommate turned out it was just like me.
He was a wannabe up all the time, crystal meth coke user. He was ready to leave. It wasn't working for him. And then we talked and we laughed. And he made me laugh. And that was my key. I laughed my way into sobriety. I sat there. We had a lot of opinions. And I say this when I share stories. We had a lot of opinions for you alcoholics because, you see, we were the elite of the mentally ill.
We were drug addicts. And they weren't talking about drugs. They were talking about steps or something that made no sense at all. And I couldn't relate to. So the counselor comes in a couple of weeks in and he said, you know, you guys should try listening. We were voted least likely to succeed because we had so many opinions about this whole program thing.
And he said, this is the only thing that's worked. It's worked for millions of people, but you got to do it. And maybe you should figure out, listen to how it works. And then he turns and he said, you've got some anger issues. So if I were you, I'd get a sense of humor.
If you don't have a sense of humor about who you are, what you've done, where you've been, and where you're going, you're in for a rough ride. This life gets tough. You better be able to laugh at yourself. And for me, a bill went off in my head. And I got up the next morning, half hour before everybody else, and started meditating.
Tell me about the meditating, because that's what you're doing now.
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