15 Years Sober: What Recovery Has Given Me | Zac Clark

And it made me think back to my first mentor sponsor in NAA.

I was probably, who knows, two months, three months, four months sober.

And I was smoking cigarettes at the time.

And we had a chat late one night, I called him.

drowning in my guilt and shame and fear about the future.

And he turned it around on me and just said, Zach, do you have a pack of cigarettes? I said, yes.

Do you have a roof over your head? I said, yes.

Do you have food to eat? I said, yes.

Do you have water to drink? I said, yes.

And well, that sounds like it's going pretty well for you.

And when i think back to that conversation he knew he knew that if i stayed sober years later i would reference that moment in time because that's the worst it was gonna get if i just did the things that I had to do in order to maintain my sobriety.

And he was right.

He was right.

He had every reason to ask those questions in the way that he did.

So when I sit here and I think about sharing on this podcast, which is named after my name, which can be uncomfortable, The Zach Clark Show.

And I look at this wall behind me with a foam hat,

this Clark truck leasing hat, which was one of my dad's.

First companies that ultimately went bankrupt, and there was a lot of pain in the home when that happened.

But I put that up there as a reminder.

And the baseball, this baseball here, baseball was a huge part of my life, obviously, but this is the one that I threw out at the Phillies game, the first pitch last year, which was a huge honor and a gift from my sobriety.

marathon medal and

a release hat it all makes sense it all makes sense to a certain degree and the thing that i continue to trust but not understand is why i was chosen to have my story publicized in the way that it was i can tell you that prior to any appearance on television i was telling my story in the same way in fact the moment i came out of rehab I was desperate to tell my story to anyone that would listen because I was so excited about this new life that I had been given.

And that blind faith, that willingness early on has driven me for the past 15 years.

The reason I continue to tell my story so openly is because recovery, behavioral health care, substance abuse, drug addiction is word of mouth.

This thing is word of mouth.