What happened in this episode?
Rich Roll interviews Zac Clark, founder and CEO of Release Recovery and a prominent US recovery advocate who also became widely known after winning The Bachelorette in 2020. Clark describes early alcohol use beginning at 13 and a long period of high-functioning heavy drinking through school, college baseball and early work in recruitment. He recounts a sudden medical crisis in his mid-20s, when a benign brain cavernoma required emergency surgery, and says the pain relief provided by hospital opioids became a sensation he later chased through prescription pills and, eventually, heroin.
Clark gives detailed first-person accounts of escalating addiction, including doctor-shopping in the early 2000s, hiding substance use within a marriage, and moving rapidly from relapse to heroin and crack use. He describes arrests and criminal behaviour, and recounts a pivotal episode in which a bank teller contacted his father rather than police when he attempted to cash a cheque he says he wrote to himself. Clark credits subsequent long-term residential treatment, AA fellowship and therapy with establishing sustained recovery.
The conversation also turns to treatment policy and culture: Clark alleges some luxury rehab operators charge extremely high monthly fees while failing to prevent deaths after discharge, and he argues that community and long-term support matter as much as clinical programming. Roll and Clark discuss relapse stigma, the role of trauma and family dynamics, and the limits of coercive interventions. They also cover how running and peer communities can support recovery, while acknowledging the risk of replacing one compulsion with another.
