How South Jersey’s Zac Clark turned his ‘Bachelorette’ fame into a platform for people in recovery

When Season 16 of The Bachelorette finished airing in December 2020, Zac Clark went back to life before falling for Tayshia Adams on national television: managing substance use and mental health programs and building the nonprofit he cofounded to provide scholarships for treatment.

But now, Clark — who grew up in Haddonfield — had thousands of Instagram followers, a now ex-fiancée, and a notoriously obsessive fan base.

Appearing on the reality dating show helped Clark raise over $1.6 million for his nonprofit, the Release Recovery Foundation, allowing him to begin exploring scholarship partnerships in Philly. It has also become one of the most defining aspects of Clark’s public persona, even after splitting with Adams in 2021.

“It had been four years of working really hard to prove that that one experience doesn’t define me,” Clark, 40, said. “The flip side is, of course, how lucky I am to utilize my story on a very public level to try to help people.”

Clark didn’t go on The Bachelorette to become an influencer; his sister, Kathryn Cannici, 36, nominated him because she “was pregnant and probably bored.”

That hasn’t stopped Clark from using the show to build a brand as a sobriety influencer. After being among the first Bachelorette contestants to speak about personal experience with addiction on air, Clark gained 480,000 Instagram followers. His profile is a mix of clips from his mental health podcast, ads for Narcan, and mindful running tips. Posts circle back to his recovery journey.

Clark’s postshow arc is a departure from the Bachelor(ette)-to-influencer pipeline, where competing for long enough can lead to a career in social media. Clark isn’t doing that exactly; he worked in behavioral health care before appearing on the show. But he is using the standard tool kit of sponsored content, podcast appearances, and subtle thirst traps to “make recovery look cool, hip, and sexy,” he said.

Clark’s pivot from Bachelor Nation bro to recovery mogul wasn’t possible for most of the show’s history, according to talent agent Paul Desisto, who has repped dozens of Bachelor(ette) contestants since the 2010s. Contestants made the majority of their after-Bachelor(ette) cash from club appearances until 2017, when they began to get paid for posting social media advertisements.

» READ MORE: Run clubs are having a moment. This one is for people in recovery.

Now, The Bachelor(ette) influencer bubble is bursting. Follower counts for Bachelor alums are falling as social media is oversaturated with the stars of other dating shows, making it difficult for more recent contestants to get paid thousands of dollars for an Instagram post. You can’t just be the person who lets reality television define them, said Desisto. You have to be compelling, but also authentic, balancing whoever you were before The Bachelor(ette) with whoever you can be after.

“I showed up [on The Bachelorette] and I was as real as I possibly could be,” Clark said. “And that’s the way I’ve continued to try and live my life. There’s nothing fake about me.”

The type of person most likely to succeed after The Bachelor(ette) must take to fame naturally, but can’t want to be famous. That’s called being there for the wrong reasons.

Clark had never seen an episode of The Bachelorette, said Cannici, or thirsted for fame, but was a natural charmer. His yearbook superlative at Haddonfield High School was “Life of the Party,” and he describes his teenage years as a slideshow of baseball, Eagles games, “Bud Light and bong hits.”

Those were replaced by harder substances when Clark graduated from York College in 2009, where he played baseball. After surviving a brain tumor, Clark began abusing the opiates he was prescribed to manage the pain, eventually turning to heroin before landing in rehab twice: Once after getting a DUI in Pennsauken, and again after a bank teller in Camden prevented Clark from cashing a forged check he had stolen from his father.

Clark has been sober since 2011 and has opened five addiction treatment and transitional living facilities across New York. He started the Release Recovery Foundation in 2019, and has given out more than 100 scholarships since the start of 2023, which cover the cost of treatment for people from marginalized backgrounds.

“It wasn’t like [Clark] got sober and suddenly everything was rainbows,” said Cannici. “But it’s crazy to see how far my brother has come …. His story is bigger than the show.”

Clark said his followers are part of what brought him back to Philly: Fans kept asking Clark to spend time in Kensington, a neighborhood with a notorious open air drug market that’s at the center of a debate over the limits of harm reduction, law enforcement, and rehabilitation.

In April, he hosted a football clinic with the Philadelphia Eagles at Kensington’s Conwell Middle School and spent two days shadowing workers at Savage Sisters and Roz Pichardo’s Sunshine House. Clark left wanting to build formalized partnerships between community groups and his scholarship program.

» READ MORE: How Kensington Avenue’s open-air drug market went international — and the city’s fight to take back the neighborhood

“The last time I was there I was buying drugs for myself, and now I’m able to go there, get out of the car, and not think of anything else besides how to be of service,” said Clark. “The people that I met need to have an opportunity to actually recover. And if they’re not given that opportunity, they’re just going to stay in this cycle.”

Clark’s sister refers to him as a “unicorn” within Bachelor Nation because he seemingly bypassed the reality show’s all-encompassing universe of recap podcasts and tell-all books.

Instead, Clark rarely mentions the show on social media, hoping to redirect the attention toward recovery resources. “You’ve saved so many lives and changed them for the better. My son is one of them,” commented one woman under a clip from Clark’s podcast. Others have thanked him for introducing them to naloxone — which can reverse opioid overdoses — or for advice on how to support family members in recovery.

“I feel like a lot of people leave that show and it’s all about ‘How am I going to get paid?’” said Matthew Rinklin, 41, who cofounded the Release Recovery Foundation with Clark. “When Zac got off the show, he took his fame and basically poured all of that into our work.”

Rinklin said Clark’s time on The Bachelorette was an almost immediate windfall. The foundation made $85,000 from a T-shirt fundraiser in early 2021, Rinklin said, driven by three Instagram posts from Clark that received a combined 150,000 likes.

Still, Clark said the stigma of appearing on The Bachelorette comes in subtle ways, like when leading an intake appointment for a family putting their child into treatment.

“They’ll crack a joke about me being on TV, but very quickly after that they’re making a decision to put their son or daughter’s life in my hands,” said Clark. “There’s blessings and curses with this whole experience.”

The work of sobriety influencers like Clark “break down the shame and secrecy of addiction,” said Nancy Irwin, a licensed psychologist who spent nearly a decade treating addiction at Seasons Malibu: “When you see someone share their story and that the world is still turning, it opens up more opportunity” for self-forgiveness, and eventually, recovery.

Still, Irwin said there’s immense pressure placed on public figures that make recovery central to their persona to be all things at once: Perfect, yet nonjudgmental, and transparent, but only when it comes to mistakes that have solutions.

“The expectations are extraordinarily high. They have to walk their talk while still remaining humble,” said Irwin. “We shouldn’t expect perfectionism.”

As for Clark, he still feels like the kid from South Jersey who got a second chance.

“This was my life before and this is my life after. I got through the shame and came out the other side believing it was my purpose to help others,” said Clark. “Recovery is a gift.”