December 17, 2025

THIS IS THE PART OF HIS STORY THAT ALWAYS MAKES CLAYTON CLARK CRY.

When he goes back over the years of selling drugs, eventually using drugs, even the moment he put a gun to his head and pulled the trigger, all of these past experiences he tells candidly, without hemming or hawing. This was his life once. Not an easy road, but he never falters in the retelling.

Then he gets to the worst day of his life, the day that changed everything, the day that would break him but ultimately start healing him, and he sheds some tears.

“I’d blown through my grandpa’s life savings. I got him into debt. But I kept asking him to get loans because I’d gone from getting 10 pills at a time to getting 30, and I would use those up in almost a day and a half.” He can still remember the words his sister spoke on that day, the words that rearranged his life. “She said, ‘Grandpa’s moving out of the house where he raised his family to get away from you.’”

The bigger-than-life military man with the servant’s heart, the patriarch, who taught Clark the importance of protecting others, had to finally say enough. No more money. No more loans. No more paying off drug debt. No more. It was time for Clark to stop running from the effects of his choices.

The day was July 25, 2019, and it was the worst and best day of Clayton Clark’s life. It was two days after what he calls his “clean day,” the day he stopped using and never went back. The day that led to this day and this moment— reaching out for help.

And finding it.

The Choctaw Nation Behavioral Health Services would help one of their sons, sending him direction, therapy, and placing him into a homeless shelter. It would be the worst low, but it would start his life anew, a life where he would fulfill his grandfather’s calling and, instead of being the one needing help, would be the one offering help to others in need as a Lighthouse Peer Recovery Support Specialist.

That day would come, the day he would call his grandfather and his grandfather would answer. But that wasn’t this day in July 2019. This day, Clayton Clark would find himself sitting on a curb, his belongings in three trash bags and a backpack, and nowhere to sleep.

Before he could rise, he first had to fall hard enough to break.

HURTING FROM THE START

That day in July was long in the making. It didn’t happen overnight. It came after weeks, months, years, decades of abuse and rebellion, starting at age 6 when his parents divorced.

He would be the little boy caught between an abusive, alcoholic father and a drug-addicted mother, learning too early and too harshly how addictions destroy lives.

“I love my grandparents. My grandpa was in the Marine Corps, a retired gunnery sergeant,” says Clayton, who has a tribute to him tattooed on his right arm, “and grandma was a stay-at-home mom. So they started raising me from that age.”

His grandparents were the glue that held the family together, and they would be his saving grace. They’d raise him, give him a foundation of honor and responsibility, and pass down a legacy of service, but his absent parents would fuel a rebellion that would have him pushing away from those early, grounding life lessons.​ By age 13, he’d bounce between his grandparents, his father, his uncle, and eventually live mostly with his drug-addicted mother, who paid him no attention.

He started with weed, progressed to crack, and, eventually, getting a vehicle at 16 years old, became a drug runner. His mother, instead of stepping in to help her son, used his relationship with drug dealers to get more for herself. Now, he wasn’t working just for money, he was working to pay off her drug addiction, too.

Eventually, one more parental let down, one more lack of care, would send him spiraling toward suicide.

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THE CLICK OF THE GUN

One day, in the midst of his drug running, his father called with an invite to come over. They’d do some guy stuff, hang out, spend time together.

“He said he’d have snack foods and we’d play PlayStation all night and hang out. I was so excit-ed because that’s something I craved.”

It turned into his father taking a nap, while he played video games alone. Finally waking, his father headed for the bar with his girlfriend with one nearly fatal piece of advice thrown out.

“He leaves me there at the apartment and says, ‘If something happens, you know where the gun is,’ and then he leaves. I’m sitting there, playing video games, crying, angry, upset. So I go get the gun, a 25-caliber, I’m thinking about how my dad doesn’t want to even spend time with me and my mom’s on crack, so I put the gun to my head and pulled the trigger.”

Click.

The loaded gun malfunctioned. The primer failed. He shouldn’t still be alive, but he was.

“That click snapped me out of that crisis moment I was having and really shook me.”

It was time for help. He wrote a letter to his school counselor who would ask him one question, “Do you want help now or help later?” He answered “now.”

For the next 10 days, Clayton was admitted to the adolescent unit at Rolling Hills in Ada—a place that would bring him healing through therapy, as well as a glimpse into a future of helping others like himself.

ALL THE WAY DOWN

One thing he learned while at Rolling Hills was to ask for help. This would be a vital step, the one that would save his life, when he finally reached rock bottom.

That day was still a few years away, though. He continued selling drugs, disgusted with the crack addicts and their desperation, until some of the other dealers he knew were killed. It was time to get out. To live straight. So, he applied to the military, a way to honor his grandfather’s military legacy; his family’s Marine Corps, Air Force, and Army legacy; and his ancestry as descendants of Comanche leader Quanah Parker. However, when they found out about his suicide attempt and bipolar diagnosis, he was refused.

“They said, ‘Sorry, we can’t take you. We can’t give you a gun.’ It is understandable, but, at the same time, it really kind of crushed my dreams,” says Clark.

Eventually, he moved to Dallas, got married, got divorced, and got arrested for smoking weed while driving. It was time for a radical change. If he couldn’t protect people through the military, he could help them through the medical industry. At age 19, he became a certified nurse aide, obtained his state license, and worked in home health.

He quit partying, quit drinking, got settled back in Oklahoma, got a steady job at Tysons Food, everything going smoothly, finally finding stability, until he injured his back moving furniture. Prescribed opiates would, inevitably, bring about his downfall and, ironically enough, a rebirth.

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THINGS ARE ABOUT TO BREAK

Clark couldn’t stop. He tried. He got on hydrocodone to taper off the opiates and got addicted to it, too. He racked up $800 in debts on pills. Then added cocaine. Eventually, over the course of seven years, he moved into a nearly $300-a-day habit.

His grandma died, his first son was born, his second son was born, and he kept using. He blew his paycheck on drugs. Spent Christmas money on drugs. Used up his grandfather’s life savings on drugs. On and on, year after year, job loss after job loss, he couldn’t control it anymore.

“It would hit me every now and then, I’d realize I’d turned into that person, the type of person I used to get annoyed by whenever I sold.”

He needed to seek help again, but he didn’t. That’s when his sister, along with the rest of his fami-ly, stepped in and did the hardest thing imaginable: they cut him off on July 25, 2019.

Two days earlier, July 23, he calls his clean day.

It was his stepdaughter’s birthday. He’d stopped using long enough to be clean on her special day, even though within six hours of not using, he’d go into withdrawals. But he did it. Two days later, he’s out looking for his next fix when his sister arranges to meet him at the Choctaw Nation Clinic.

“My grandpa is in the car with her, and she walks up and says, ‘Give me the keys. Now.’ She tells me Grandpa is moving to Ponca City with her. He’s leaving the house, the one he and Grandma raised their boys in, because of me, because I won’t leave him alone. I keep taking his money and he can’t do it anymore. He’s stressed out. He has no money, but I keep asking him to go get loans. I keep bothering him. So he decides to move from his home.”

Clark hands over the keys to his grandfather’s truck and is driven to his girlfriend’s mom’s, where he’d been living with his two sons.

“I get to the door and there’s three trash bags of clothes and my backpack sitting on the porch. She won’t see me. She won’t let me see my kids. So my sister gives me a drive back to the Indian Clinic. She says, ‘We love you, but we can’t do this anymore.’ Then she leaves. And now I’m homeless.”

THE END OF ADDICTION

Retelling this part of the story is always the hardest, Clark says. He always cries and does so now, taking off his glasses, wiping his face, taking those steady breaths, and then back to the retelling again.

“I’m shocked because I was told not to contact any of my family. They weren’t going to talk to me,” he says. “I can’t see my kids. I don’t have anything. And the thoughts of suicide came back. I wished I could just die. I thought everybody would be better off without me. That way they wouldn’t have to deal with me anymore.”

But he remembered his sons. He couldn’t do that to them. He couldn’t leave them with that kind of heartbreak. Instead, he sees a Tribal Transit van and the driver, seeing his desperate state, of-fers to drive him to Wind Horse, the Choctaw Nation behavioral health center. His previous counselor gets on the phone and starts making calls, getting him into a homeless shelter in Texarkana.

“It’s an old gym with a bunch of, what I call ‘FEMA cots,’ those little aluminum frame canvas cots,” he remembers.

“They gave me a drug test when I got there and the nurse says, ‘You’re clean.’ I told her, ‘Yeah, I’ve been clean for awhile, almost a month.’ She asks, ‘Then why are you coming here?’ I told her, ‘I’ve been clean before. It’s not getting clean that’s the problem, it’s staying clean. I’ve come here to learn how to stay clean.’”

THE LONG JOURNEY HOME

“My favorite color is green,” Clark says, standing in the playground of Ardmore Regional Park, while his boys, William, 11, and Grayson, 6, whom he coparents, burn energy in the background.

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It’s not idle trivia he is sharing.

It’s a reminder of the moment he stood outside the Choctaw Nation Men’s Recovery Center in Talihina, looking toward the Ouachita Mountains, surrounded by the beauty of nature and filled with hope that, one day—a day like this day—would come.

A day where he’s clean and stable. A day where he’s not a burden but a strong support for his family. A day where he’s the man his grandfather taught him—and believed him—to be. A day when he’s with his sons, loving and laughing and being the father he so desperately needed at their age.

“I looked around,” he describes that moment, that moment when the future looked hopeful, maybe for the first time, “and all I could see was green.”

He says this while wearing a green Luma shirt, which he uses to wipe the tears from William’s face. He’d stopped playing to stand near his dad and listen to him share his story of recovery and the years he couldn’t be the dad he is now.

“I forgive you,” William says, freely, voluntarily, without even being asked, before throwing his arms around his father.

They exchange “I love you’s”, and hugs and tears. Then it’s back to laughter, boys being boys, and a father being a present father on a playground.

BIGGER FAMILY, BIGGER BIRTHDAY

“One thing that, when he was working his recovery, that I felt I reiterated quite a bit was the need to sometimes have, not only Plan A and B, but C, D, and E. So if the first thing doesn’t work, what’s the second thing you can do? And if all those things don’t work, who can you reach out to? Try to get ourselves back to a good place because sometimes that’s how life goes,” says Callahan, sitting next to Clark at the Lighthouse Outpatient Clinic in Ardmore, and recalling when his initial plan to return to the homeless shelter post-recovery.

Callahan was that person Clark reached out to when the drug dealer approached him fresh out of rehab. He’d connected with her while in rehab when she did a presentation on grants and programs available postrecovery, which is a major focus for Choctaw Nation’s rehab program.

“We understand that, while you might have the best-laid intentions, sometimes people need additional support once they leave the rehabilitation center,” says Callahan.

It isn’t just about getting clean, like Clark said, it’s about staying clean when you leave the center. And he was going to make sure he stayed clean, which meant asking for help when it’s needed.

“Lacey came and I was like, ‘Hey, you told me about those programs in rehab and I told you I think I’m good, but I’m not. I need to use some of your programs you told me about,” Clark says.

She got on the phone and found him a spot in an Oxford House.

“Oxford House is a house for recovery. You wouldn’t even know it was a sober living if you were to drive by one,” explains Clark.

It’s a safe place for recovering addicts and alcoholics who pay the bills, take care of the chores, manage the house, and support each other as they work through their recovery program and create their post-addiction life. It’s also a place where the men become brothers, he says.

“It’s family. I just celebrated six years (clean) this year, so July 23, 2025, and I’ve never had anybody really celebrate my clean day,” says Clark, who describes that day with his fellow roommates, as well as other Oxford House residents from out of town. “They came and picked me up and said, ‘Come on.’”

They went to Chili’s and celebrated his “birthday,” which is what the men at Oxford House call your clean day because “that’s the day we finally start living, that’s the day we come alive because, in addiction, you feel dead,” says Clark.

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They sang at the restaurant then headed back home for cake with a number “6” birthday candle.

“Oxford House, it saved my life and is still helping me to this day.”

BRIGHTER LIFE, BRIGHTER FUTURE

Clark didn’t only find his way back, he’s leading others now, too.

As a Lighthouse Peer Recovery Support Specialist, his experiences with trauma, suicide, addiction, hurt, loss, disappointment, all of those things give him unique, boots-on-the-ground experience to reach others when they’re in those dark places he also once lived.

When people come into a Lighthouse Crisis Center who are overwhelmed and having trouble focusing on making a plan, Clark says he will often take them to the day room, grab a jigsaw puzzle, and show them the completed picture on the front.

“‘This is what you want your life to look like.’ I’ll open it and say, ‘But this is what it looks like right now’ and I’ll dump it out. ‘How do you take this and turn it into that?’ They’ll say, ‘You put it together.’ ‘Okay, how are you going to do that?’’ He asks them, “‘Are you going to grab a handful of these pieces and mash them together and hope they go together? No, you got to do it one piece at a time.’”

By putting the pieces of his life back together, Clark has built a strong family and, now, a strong future helping others do the same. Through Lighthouse, he reaches people in those crisis moments, those sitting-on-the-curbwith-three-trash-bags-and-a-backpack moments, while also helping them like Callahan helped him by offering resources and programs to get them back to stability.

“She helped save my life,” Clark says of Callahan, who has become a friend. “I wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing right now if it wasn’t for her starting that support with me and cheering me on, just congratulating me for every little step that I made.”

Callahan continues cheering Clark on as he shares his testimony and insight on fentanyl panel discussions, speaks at the men’s rehab and other men’s groups, and educates others on a health app. He has also shared his testimony for the Choctaw Nation, and he has been sharing his insight and lived experience for various publications.

“I’m actually doing something, making a difference. And that’s all I ever wanted was to make a difference somewhere,” says Clark, who often speaks to the men at the Choctaw Nation men’s rehab center, standing in the place Callahan once stood, looking at the men sitting in the half-circle of chairs where he once sat, who sought happiness and healing, like he did, in the wrong places. Now he has found a life of stability and wholeness and he’s showing others the way back, which starts with forgiving themselves.

“It’s funny, you’re the first one to actually tell me about the forgiving yourself,” Clark tells Callahan, thinking back to one of the most important steps in recovery. “And I still teach that to my people, to my groups. And just give yourself some grace…It’s really hard, especially whenever you look back on active addiction. You look back on it and you see how many people you’ve actually affected in the negative way.”

Callahan takes a moment, like she’s done all these years, to once again remind him of what to do in that situation. “But reframe that, right?”

“Yeah,” he remembers.

“For how many you impacted in a negative way,” she prompts, “look at how many you’re impacting in a positive way because of your journey.”

Clark gives a soft, relieved exhale. “Yeah.”

He went through the darkness of night. He traveled through the harshest of places, literally and mentally, but he still came back into the light. As desperate as his circumstances got, they were still redeemable with a little help.

That’s the story he now lives and the story he tells others who come into Lighthouse walking where we once walked and struggling where he once struggled: there is always hope.

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