The Hopeaholics
The Hopeaholics
Addicted to Hope
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My Baby Passed In The Car Because I Blacked Out w/ Carolina Ayala | The Hopeaholics Podcast #348
1 hour 17 minutes Posted Jul 28, 2026 at 12:00 am.
Cold open: the night Crystal died
Welcome / What is the Happier Life Project
The gap between treatment centers and what happens after
Treatment, psych wards, jails, prison
Getting pregnant, giving son to CPS
Getting custody, relapsing, returning to smoke meth
Rock bottom in 2021: not wanting to be alive anymore
Losing faith in God, 12-step, everything she held onto
Outside the crisis hospital, too scared to go in
Finding RA International's peer support center in Temecula
The idea for the Happier Life Project
Divorced parents, alcoholic stepdad, being the oldest
Gifted programs and nothing in the adult world making sense
First joint at 12 as a freshman in El Paso
Following friend into gang life
The four runaways: Jasmine shot in the head, Cynthia murdered and burned in the desert
Why she stayed on the street instead of going home
Meeting her husband at 12, marrying at 15
Moving to Arizona with a Mormon family to clean up
Husband falls out of car going 55mph
The miscarriage that wasn't: Danielle is alive and 31
Leaving her husband and daughter on her first birthday
The guilt cycle: couldn't face going back, so she never did
Daughter goes to a Mormon colony in Mexico
Federal charges at 19, domestic violence, psychiatric holds
Trying to kidnap her daughter and failing
Arrested at eight months pregnant for cocaine trafficking
Crystal born, alcoholic mother-in-law tried to sell her
Crystal's Death
Prison for child endangerment
Blood alcohol, no drugs found, what the DA had threatened
Planning to jump off the 15 freeway / bail raised to $250K
Not qualifying for the substance abuse program because the charge wasn't drug-related
No contact with anyone under 18, including siblings and daughter
Two beers, blowing a .08
Back in on violation / introduced to meth in prison
What meth did that nothing else could
First time in treatment
Guilt, shame, and unaddressed grief
$20 worth of meth, sentenced to five years in state prison
Cooper Fellowship: three years sober, the longest stretch yet
CBT: the first thing that actually made sense to her
The pre-cycle nobody ever addressed
This time in recovery is different
Almost not coming back to the rooms after the last relapse
What actually matters today: the daily work, not the time
Crystal's birthday, deciding to honor her for the first time
Psychic medium speaks with Crystal
Chad and Natalie / walking through pain vs. sitting in it
The Happier Life Project: where to donate, how to find them
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My Baby Passed In The Car Because I Blacked Out w/ Carolina Ayala | The Hopeaholics Podcast #348 Chad and Natalie sit down with Carolina Ayala, founder of The Happier Life Project, a recovery community organization built to give people the peer support she never had. She was drinking, using, and married by 15, and had watched two of her closest friends get killed before she was old enough to graduate. One night she drank too much, blacked out, drove home, and didn't take her daughter C...
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