The Addict Who Won The Bachelorette: Zac Clark On Getting Sober & Staying That Way

**Zac Clark** (0:00)
Like, I am in so much pain, the only thing giving me that relief is injecting heroin. Zac Clark.

**Rich Roll** (0:07)
Host of The Zac Clark Show.

**Zac Clark** (0:09)
The winner of The Bachelorette. Mental health advocate.

**Rich Roll** (0:12)
CEO and founder of Release Recovery.

**Zac Clark** (0:15)
Here I am, newly married, great job, house, dog, but I'm miserable, and I have no desire of stopping. And no one knows, I kept it to myself. This is the most painful moment of my life.
And this medicine she's giving me is completely wiping out that pain. And that was a feeling that I was going to remember and go chase as hard as I could.

**Rich Roll** (0:43)
Zac, it's great to have you here. This might be the most overdue conversation in the history of this podcast. I can't believe we haven't done this years ago.

**Zac Clark** (0:53)
I am excited and I woke up this morning saying it's exactly like how it's supposed to be. Yeah.

**Rich Roll** (1:01)
What is the mission that you're on?

**Zac Clark** (1:04)
Me?

**Rich Roll** (1:04)
Yeah.

**Zac Clark** (1:08)
It's a loaded question. I think there's two answers to that question. One is there is this bizarre contract I have with the world where I spent 27 years hurting people.
I hurt a lot of people and a lot of things that I'm not proud of. And there is a sick, maybe not sick, I don't know the right word, but there is a driver in my life that never wants to return to that person and wants to make restitution for that stuff.
And I'm aware that that fuels a lot of my behavior on a daily basis. I'm not always proud of it because it can create competition, it can create comparing out, it can create some things that aren't great. But ultimately, if I put everything in the middle of the table, it's worked for me. And that goes into trauma, my relationship with my parents, my relationship with my family, there's a lot, there's a lot of ex-wife, all these people that I harmed. So that's the personal mission.

**Rich Roll** (2:18)
Does that come from a place of hardness? Like it sounds like a form of self-punishment, as opposed to a heart-centered, you know, desire to serve people and be in the solution.

**Zac Clark** (2:30)
On bad days, it's self-punishment. On good days, it's exactly what it's supposed to be. I'm rooting for others, my heart is full.
And I spent a lot of time with my therapist on this. Like there's a lot of work that's gone into understanding why that is one of my drivers.

**Rich Roll** (2:48)
How does therapy work in the context of a recovery program? Like is it, in your case, supplemental to doing the steps in your kind of AA community? Or what is that relationship like?

**Zac Clark** (3:06)
So at the beginning, I needed to be physically separated from drugs and alcohol. I had no shot of being in the world and not picking up. The phenomenon of craving, the allergy, whatever it was, was too powerful. So initially, I needed a lot of therapy. I need a lot of separation. Ultimately, I knew that the thing that was going to sustain my recovery long-term was going to be community fellowship, service, prayer, meditation, helping others. And I found all those things in AA. So today, almost 15 years in to it, it's AAN. So AAN therapy, AAN running, AAN going to the concert or playing the golf or finding joy in ways that previously I really wasn't able to.
The second part is just letting the person who is out there who is struggling know that this thing is available to them. And that's a lot of the experience I got when reading Running Ultra. That book was not given to me as a recovery aid or, hey, you should check out this guy Rich Roll because he's sober. It was given to me because I was getting into running and someone knew I wanted to change. And when I got to the part of the book where you were sober, I said, holy shit.
And that was something that was really cool to me and I identify with that.

**Rich Roll** (4:31)
So yeah, back to transgressing the tradition.

**Zac Clark** (4:37)
Right, right, right.
All right, I was in an AA meeting when I came off The Bachelorette, which I'm sure you're going to get to this on it. So it's a double edged sword because I'm in an AA meeting where I'm wanting to be anonymous and it's Zoom and it's the height of COVID. And I have people direct messaging like stuff about this show that I was just on. So I don't know if I'm trying to make myself the special snowflake or whatever it is, but there's times where it's just been taken from me. I don't have a choice.