Former Bonneville High star had baseball career crushed by addiction
Dustin Hawkins in his younger years as a professional baseball player. The South-Ogden native became addicted to drugs while playing baseball around the country, but years later, has cleaned up his act and is teaching other addicts how to overcome through an exercise program he created called WAR, or Workout Addiction Recovery. (KEllY KEITER/Standard-Examiner)
South-Ogden native Dustin Hawkins became addicted to drugs while he was playing as a professional baseball around the country, but years later, has cleaned up his act and is teaching other addicts how to overcome through an exercise program he created called WAR, or Workout Addiction Recovery. (KEllY KEITER/Standard-Examiner)
South-Ogden native Dustin Hawkins became addicted to drugs while he was playing as a professional baseball around the country, but years later, has cleaned up his act and is teaching other addicts how to overcome through an exercise program he created called WAR, or Workout Addiction Recovery. (KEllY KEITER/Standard-Examiner)
South-Ogden native Dustin Hawkins became addicted to drugs while he was playing as a professional baseball around the country, but years later, has cleaned up his act and is teaching other addicts how to overcome through an exercise program he created called WAR, or Workout Addiction Recovery. (KEllY KEITER/Standard-Examiner)
South-Ogden native Dustin Hawkins became addicted to drugs while he was playing as a professional baseball around the country, but years later, has cleaned up his act and is teaching other addicts how to overcome through an exercise program he created called WAR, or Workout Addiction Recovery. (KEllY KEITER/Standard-Examiner)
SOUTH OGDEN — In becoming a professional baseball player, Dustin Hawkins relied on his greatest natural asset — his speed — to keep him in the game.
“I was really fast,” said the 34 year-old Hawkins, who from 2002 to 2005 played in the Houston Astros minor league farm system.
Sadly, during those same years Hawkins was introduced to a lifestyle of alcohol, tobacco and speed — of the drug variety — which eventually put him out of a game he had excelled in since Little League, and a talent he used to capitalize on in receiving a baseball scholarship to Wichita State University where he earned a bachelor of science degree in Exercise Physiology.
It was later, after baseball, Hawkins added to his education a masters degree in business administration from the University of Phoenix.
Although he had little home run power, the former Bonneville High standout, says he did have the ability to bat leadoff and swipe a base or two for the minor league baseball teams he played for in Lexington, Ky. and Salem and Martinsville, W.V.
But the fun of being young, traveling, and playing baseball for a living, introduced Hawkins to a lifestyle he was not accustom to.
And over time, he said, that lifestyle began to impact his performance on the field, although because of his addiction he failed to recognize until it was too late.
Rather than happening quickly, Hawkins described his fall from his addictions as if something was stealing from him on the “back end,” where he was able through the use of drugs still feel the euphoric rush of the game.
“I was thinking more about (speed, drinking and smoking) than baseball,” he said.
“Some people can do it and get away with it,” Hawkins told the Standard-Examiner.
And then there were those ball players who refused to live like he did.
“Not everybody lived like I did,” Hawkins said, who now avoids even watching the game he once loved.
And then in 2006, he was released by the Astros organization.
“My performance that last year was brutal. It was more about me getting high,” he said, “and baseball wasn’t even around anymore.”
But despite leaving the game, he took with him some of the bad habits he had been introduced to, eventually costing him thousands of dollars, and addictions that lead to the use of amphetamines by day and opiates by night, Hawkins said.
“Amphetamines by day, opiates by night,” he said in repeating the process he was going through.
And then Hawkins turned to his spiritual side for strength, becoming active in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
“It was hard to get into,” he said.
So, the South Ogden native combined his spiritual rebirth, with a cross-fit exercise program.
“After a year, I started feeling happy,” he said of the emotional up-and-down torment his addictions had created for him.
In feeling happier, it was then that Hawkins in 2010 established WAR (Workout Addiction Recovery) at the Ogden Athletic Club.
It was a free course, that quickly grew from three students to 15 students, Hawkins said, allowing him to quit his day job with the Huntsman Cancer Institute in Salt Lake City, and cash out his 401 K to initially invest in his own workout gym, which goes by the same name of his workout regiment, WAR. The gym is located in South Ogden.
“Addiction is an epidemic,” Hawkins said, who stays busy working out with others, many of whom who are not athletes.
“My belief is the mind works best after exercise,” Hawkins said, who uses exercise in helping with his own personal therapy.
“That takes discipline, so does life,” Hawkins said, who is now married, and has children who are interested in sports.
“I am actually thankful that I struggled with addiction,” Hawkins said of what has led him to the point where he is at in life.
For more information about WAR or to enroll in Hawkin’s fitness training program visit www.workoutaddictionrecovery.com.
Contact reporter Bryon Saxton at 801-625-4244 or bsaxton@standard.net, or follow him on Twitter at @BryonSaxton.