Golf Prospect w Full Ride to UCLA. Meth Took It All w/ Danny Dalton | The Hopeaholics Podcast #350

Danny Dalton grew up in Huntington Beach playing golf when Tiger Woods was the standard everyone chased. He was good enough to earn a full scholarship to UCLA. He lost it junior year and spent the next decade filling the gap with cocaine, then meth, then heroin. This episode covers the whole run. The UCLA golfer who shot course records and still couldn't get out of his own way. The meth use that progressed to the needle at 33. The night he looked in a mirror and saw Gollum staring back. And the second day of treatment when a stranger walked into the room with the same name as his deceased father.

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0:00 Cold open
0:18 Intro
0:47 Danny Dalton, welcome to the show
1:09 Golf: how Danny got into it late and why it took over
6:35 progressive alcoholism begins
7:11 Full athletic scholarship to UCLA
9:12 The gene: addiction running through the family
14:45 Growing up with Tiger Woods as the benchmark
15:05 "I didn't realize how insulated I was until I wasn't"
19:03 Losing the scholarship junior year, somehow graduating anyway
21:56 Course records / sponsors: pro-level golf he couldn't hold onto
24:14 Cocaine, then meth
25:09 The needle at 33
32:33 First meth charge at 36: parents finding out
32:59 Nine charges with the law
33:21 Heroin: the thing that took him all the way down
34:48 Four years of isolation + his father dies
35:49 "I looked in the mirror and saw Gollum"
36:13 The shot that almost killed him
37:18 Threw everything in the trash and walked to the beach
38:01 Detox on his mom's couch, then court
39:17 Court-ordered 90 days
39:38 Day 2 in treatment: breaking down in church
41:13 A stranger named Tom Dalton walks in — his dead father's name
43:08 "That's why you have a gift"
44:29 Losing his treatment community, starting to slip again
45:23 Why he stays in recovery: it's for the next guy
48:33 Chad on his own hard year
51:12 The two words he says every morning
57:35 The recovery side has to come first
1:02:41 What Danny does today