Patti Clark on Returning to Recovery and Finding Connection

For author Patti Clark, returning to recovery meant learning to be honest with herself and other people. That understanding of connection now shapes the stories she tells.

Returning to recovery changed what Patti Clark wanted from connection. She wanted relationships in which she could talk honestly about her life, including the years she had returned to drinking. As she began sharing that experience, she found other women wanted room to tell their stories, too. Those exchanges helped shape her book, Recovery Road Trip: Finding Purpose and Connection on the Journey Home, and the writing she continues to share.^[1]

Clark told AddictionHelp.com: “I wanted the health and the clarity that comes with sobriety. I wanted to connect deeply with myself, so I could connect honestly with others.”^[1]

Her account traces that understanding through a women’s meeting she helped start, responses to a video about her relapse, and conversations that eventually became material for a fictional character. At each point, connection involved both speaking and being willing to hear what another person had to say.^[1]

Finding Connection in Recovery Again

Clark remembers connection in her first recovery community as the feeling of being understood by women with whom she had something important in common. She first got sober in 1988, she says, and belonged to a women’s group in Tucson, Arizona. After moving to a small rural town in New Zealand, she struggled to find the same sense of belonging.^[1]

She stopped attending meetings and began romanticizing drinking. In her account, wine after school pickup looked like a way to be part of the social life around her. After almost 13 years of sobriety, she returned to drinking. That period lasted almost 14 years, she says.^[1]

The exchange she remembers as a turning point happened in a coffee shop. She was thinking about her behavior the previous weekend and had decided she could not carry on that way. A man she recognized from a 12-step meeting came in with a woman named Rosie. Clark introduced herself and asked Rosie whether she was in recovery.^[1]

She was. Clark said she needed a women’s meeting. In Clark’s recollection, Rosie’s response was simple: “Let’s start one!”^[1]

They talked over coffee about the kind of meeting they wanted, one centered on acceptance and what Clark calls emotional sobriety. In describing it, she emphasizes being able to connect without judgment. They began inviting people and held the meeting under the Narcotics Anonymous, or NA, banner. Clark says they wanted to welcome people dealing with different addictions and keep the focus on recovery.^[1]

The difference mattered to her. Socializing over drinks had not met the need she was trying to fill. Here, she recognized a deeper connection and her own desire to participate in it.^[1]

She described the feeling this way: “It felt like taking a deep, full breath after being held underwater. I felt filled up.”^[1]

Finding a group that fits can involve trying different options. The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism notes that mutual-support groups vary in their beliefs and the people who attend. It advises trying different groups to find a good fit, with both 12-step and secular options available.^[2] For someone considering that step, comparing recovery support groups offers a way to learn about different approaches and what a first meeting may involve.

How Sharing Her Relapse Changed the Story

Talking about returning to recovery changed Clark’s understanding of what other people needed from her story. As she described her relapse and return to meetings, other people began telling her about theirs. She came to see a need for somewhere people could be honest about the experience without feeling ashamed or judged.^[1]

A younger woman she sponsored in recovery encouraged her to try TikTok and came over to teach her how to post a short video. Clark says that within a week of sharing a video about her relapse, women in different parts of the world began contacting her.^[1]

She recalls a young woman in Ireland saying she had shown the video to her mother to help her see she was not alone. Another woman, in South Africa, thanked Clark for being honest and vulnerable. Those exchanges changed how she understood the value of sharing.^[1]

“I thought I was sharing a cautionary tale, but what they needed was proof that someone came back from the edge.”^[1]

The return had become an essential part of the story. Listeners could recognize their experience in what she described and see someone talking openly about coming back. For Clark, that recognition created a conversation. People were bringing their own experiences to her, and what they shared influenced the stories she wanted to tell next.^[1]

Writing Recovery Road Trip From Shared Experiences

Clark says the second time she got sober, her reasons changed. Earlier, she had wanted to be better for the people around her, including her children, husband, friends and sister. This time, she also wanted sobriety for herself, with the health, clarity and honesty she associated with it.^[1]

“I couldn’t connect with Rosie, or the women online, until I stopped performing and started being honest with myself.”^[1]

That understanding helped her recognize a subject for her writing. She was hearing from women who wanted deeper connection, including women who had already spent years sober. Conversations online during the COVID-19 pandemic and stories women shared after meetings contributed to her decision to write Recovery Road Trip⁠.^[1]

The book’s central character, Meg, is fictional. Clark describes the protagonist’s journey as “a bit of an amalgamation of the stories I heard.” In other words, she brought together experiences she had heard from different women to shape the character’s journey.^[1]

Published by She Writes Press in October 2024, Recovery Road Trip follows Meg on a solo trip across the United States after her father’s death. The publisher’s description presents her as a woman who has given up alcohol but is still looking for meaning and connection. That is the book’s premise, rather than an account of a road trip Clark herself took.^[3]

The creative choice extends the question Clark was hearing in those conversations: what does someone still long for after becoming sober? In her account of writing the book, the desire to belong and to understand oneself remained important even after years without alcohol. Giving those experiences a character and a journey became another way for her to explore them.^[1]

Connection Through Writing and Conversation

Writing has also led Clark into new communities. She says articles she shared on Substack brought an invitation to speak on a Tribe Sober podcast, followed by an invitation to lead a journaling workshop. She now describes running workshops for the group several times a year, with the aim of helping women connect more deeply with themselves through writing.^[1]

She also reached out to The Sober Curator and became a contributor. The site’s profile identifies her as an author and contributor. Clark says her work there includes articles, book reviews and some podcast interviews.^[1][4]

There is a continuing exchange in the work she describes. Conversations with women in recovery helped her find a subject. Sharing that subject through writing introduced her to more people and more opportunities to listen. Connection became part of how she makes the work, as well as what the work is about.^[1]

“And I love the way that sharing my own story connects me to more people all over the world.”^[1]

Readers interested in her books and other writing can find them on Patti Clark’s website.