I’ve Got My Hands On A Miracle: Healing From A 35-Year Wound

 

Terry Murphy has been sober since May 23, 1991—nearly 35 years of continuous recovery. In this live episode of I Love Being Sober, recorded with the Camelback Recovery outpatient community in Phoenix, Arizona, Terry joins host Tim Westbrook to share the addiction that nearly killed him, the morning everything changed, and the life he has built since.

Terry is a husband of 47 years, father of two, and grandfather of three. In long-term recovery, he has spent more than three decades serving in substance-use programs with the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office and the Arizona Department of Corrections. He was appointed by Governor Janet Napolitano to Arizona’s substance abuse credentialing committee and founded Helping Hands for the Navajo Nation during the COVID-19 pandemic, delivering millions of pounds of aid to tribal communities. In 2024, he became the primary author of the Twelve-Step Companion Guide of Cocaine Anonymous—the first major addict-authored recovery text since 1982. He also ran his first marathon at 50 and has now completed five ultramarathons.

In this episode, Terry discusses:

• The night in active addiction when he believed his family would be better off without him—and what stopped him
• Why he calls addiction “a grave I dug” and recovery a miracle he didn’t earn
• Losing his job after entering rehab, and the opportunity nine months sober that changed everything
• The difficult amends he has made over three decades in recovery
• Working the 12 Steps repeatedly—and how each pass brings something new
• Running marathons and ultramarathons, and what endurance teaches about sobriety
• Co-authoring a new recovery guide and why it was long overdue
• What 35 years of sobriety has looked like in its most recent chapter
• A direct message to those in treatment—and anyone questioning whether recovery is worth it

Whether you are new to sobriety, long into recovery, working the Steps, or supporting someone in addiction, Terry Murphy’s story is a reminder of what long-term recovery can make possible.

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Watch the episode here

 

Listen to the podcast here

 

I’ve Got My Hands On A Miracle: Healing From A 35-Year Wound

Terry Murphy Is 35 Years Sober. He’ll Tell You About The Night He Wanted To Die, The Job He Never Applied For, And What It Actually Means To Put Your Hands On A Miracle

We’re coming to you from Camelback Recovery, the outpatient treatment center. We’re here with a room full of people who know exactly why we do this show. Some episodes I bring you a clinician, some episodes I bring you a celebrity in recovery. In this episode, I’m bringing you something different. I’m bringing you a seventy-year-old man with a sobriety date of May 23rd, 1991. That is 34 years of continuous recovery. That’s longer than some of you’ve been alive and every one of those days he’s shown up for it.

Terry Murphy has been a husband of his wife, Donna, for 47 years. He calls her his smoking hot wife. I’m contractually obligated to say it that way. He’s a father of two sons, he’s a grandfather to Scarlett, Riley, and Nora. He has volunteered inside the Maricopa County jail system and the Arizona Department of Corrections for thirty years. He started Helping Hands for the Navajo Nation, which delivered millions of pounds of food, baby formula, diapers, and PPE to tribal communities during COVID. Governor Napolitano appointed him to the state substance abuse credentialing committee.

He ran his first marathon at 50 and his first ultramarathon at 60, and I think you’ve done 5 of those. In October of 2024, he became the primary author of the Twelve-Step Companion Guide of Cocaine Anonymous, the first book written by addicts for addicts since the NA Basic Text in 1982. Here’s the part I want you to know. Terry tells me he is mostly a sponsor, a sponsee, a friend, and a man who is madly in love with his wife, his life, and his recovery. That order matters. That’s the man we’re about to meet. Terry, welcome to I Love Being Sober. Thanks for coming and sitting here with us.

“I’ve Got My Hands On A Miracle”

To hear that about myself after all the things I thought about myself before the miracle recovery entered my life. Before I got sober I had this beautiful wife. I loved her with all my heart and soul and these two sons that like, I remember when my boys were born. It was like the gift of all gifts. I’d hold them up to the rising sun like, “Ah, wenas.” like Lion King. It’s like I got boys. I loved them with all my heart. In the end, I robbed their piggy banks, I stole their college money and turned it into dope and alcohol. The love I had for my wife wasn’t enough.

What I discovered is nothing was enough in my life. I’m a child addict as well. I was first busted for drugs when I was in the seventh or eighth grade and I’ll never forget that. I was a little boy, maybe twelve. I was taking a really strong narcotic called Seconal. Reds is what the nickname of it. In my neighborhood, I grew up in Southern California and the world exploded in the 1960s. At the same time the world exploded, my mother got sick with cancer.

I’m number 9 out of 10 kids. My father spent all of his time going to work, shopping, cooking, helping kids with homework. He was the busiest man on earth and it left all of us little kids feral on our own. In the neighborhood I lived in, the ice cream man now, Van Halen grew up in the town that I grew up in and they’ve got a song, “I’m the ice cream stop me when I’m passing by. I got every kind of flavor guaranteed to satisfy.” He was writing about the ice cream man that drove in my neighborhood. You could buy a rack of Reds, which were four really powerful narcotics, for $1 or a roll of Whites for $1.

I get caught up in that. I found the pain that I felt about watching my mother so sick as she was moving towards death. The drugs gave me relief. A great member of Alcoholics Anonymous, he passed away a few years ago his name was Clancy I. If you get a chance to listen to him, he’s so knowledgeable and he has a talk called Alcoholism: A Disease of Perception. What Clancy would say is, “Drugs and alcohol could not have done so much to me if they hadn’t done so much for me.” I’m this wounded little boy with a dying mother and I start taking this dope and it makes me feel better.

I get busted. One of the kids rolls on me and I’m going to Catholic school. The nuns call me in and I’m sitting in the nun’s office and they said, “Listen, we know you’re on dope.” I had overdosed one day in school so it was pretty obvious that I was in real trouble already. The nuns sat there with me and they said, “We know that you’re doing dope, the other boys have told on you. We know that your mother is dying and we do not want to add to that poor woman’s pain. If you tell the truth, because in the Bible it says ‘The truth will set you free,’ we will not tell your mother.”

No matter how many times I’ve worked the Steps, prayed, or surrendered it to God, some of the wounds from addiction run that deep. Share on X

I sat there already being a little street hood, knowing you never tell the truth. “Go to the electric chair, never tell the truth.” I love my mom and I said, “Yes, sisters, I have been doing drugs.” They said, “Okay.” When I got off the school bus that day, my mom said, “Come here, I need to talk to you.” We walked back into the laundry room where this proud Irish woman would iron everything there’s no permanent press, everything had to be ironed in those days. She said, “The sisters came by and they told me my son is a filthy doper.”

She said, “The shame you have brought on your family. I can never tell your father because if I tell your father, he’ll beat you to death. I need him to feed the rest of these children. The shame that you brought on me.” She started to name every one of my siblings, “The shame you brought on Kathy, and on John, and Jim, and Leda, and Maura, and Brian, and Michael, and Colleen, and your little brother,” then she said, “You’re going to carry this secret to your grave and I’m going to take it to mine. A grave you put me in early. Now get out of here, you make me sick.”

That was the extent of my drug and alcohol treatment as a twelve-year-old boy. I walked out of that laundry room so brokenhearted. Literally devastated beyond words. The pain of it still is so deep in me. No matter how many times I’ve done the steps, no matter how many times I’ve prayed and given it to God, some of the wounds we experience in our addiction are so deep. I know my mom was doing the best she could and she did take it to her grave. My whole life, I walked through my life thinking my mother’s last words to me were, “Get out of here, you make me sick.”

The Work: Steps, Sponsorship, Amends, Self-Love

I’ve been sober for ten years. Time matters. Recovery matters. The investment you’re all making in your own lives is the greatest gift you could ever give to yourself. I showed up to recovery never believing it was possible for me to stop because I’d spent my lifetime trying to stop. Every time I stopped, I failed. Every time I failed, I hated myself more. In the end, I didn’t even want to try anymore. I would tell my wife things like, “If I just kill myself, you can have the insurance money and be with these boys so you don’t have to deal with this shameful excuse of a husband.”

When I met my wife, I rode into her life like a knight in shining armor. I pulled up on her and I said, “Hop on the back of my steed, we’re going to have a life like you never imagined.” She fell for it. She had the biggest blue eyes that sparkled like the sea. I took her on that adventure. I could tell you the story of my addiction through her eyes. It’s first time I do an all-nighter and I come home, sun’s coming up, and her eyes were just like swollen and red with tears and she said, “I’m so afraid. I thought that something happened to you. I called the police, I checked the hospitals.”

I made up some story. The next time I did it, she was pissed. “Man, you son of a bitch.” then when I did it the next time, her eyes changed and it became indifference. She didn’t care. In the end, it was like looking at the eyes of a shark. She didn’t care. I had killed the love that my wife had for me through my drug abuse. I never intended to wound her and my children, but this is a disease. I bought the lie that the only person I was really hurting was myself.

First Christmas sober, seven-year-old son, the oldest, we’re getting ready for Santa Claus, Christmas Eve. We’re putting out cookies and carrot sticks and I go and I grab a glass of milk and I set it on the hearth of the house. My seven-year-old looks at me and goes, “Daddy, what’s that?” I said, “That’s milk for Santa.” He said, “Dad, Santa drinks rum and coke.” My son ended up in the rooms. He almost died of the disease that I in part gave him. Every one of you, every one of us, we all carry the wounds of our own experiences. I was so broken my whole life thinking my mother’s last words “Get out of here, you make me sick,” but I can’t change the past.

When you all listen to RFK, he said one of the most brilliant things I’ve ever heard and anybody who hears this should listen to that podcast. It was the most beautiful thing that I think I’ve ever listened to in my nearly 34 years and 11 months. When he talked about the rearview mirror and looking back should be that much of your life. “Don’t look to the past, but don’t stare.” I think you said that. I was floored because that’s it, because I know a lot of people that get stuck in the past and all they’re ever living in is in their past pain.

If you’re living in the past pain, you can’t be in the present moment. In the present moment is the only place where you are. It’s the only place where my wife is. It’s the only place where my granddaughters are. If I’m stuck in my pain of the past so I need recovery, steps, treatments, modalities, anything that helps set this prisoner free. I have been active in my recovery. I’ve never had a period where I wasn’t doing this. I was saved by this program and I knew it was my responsibility to find other men like me. Men and women, anybody who doesn’t know that a solution exists.

I was 35 years old, I never knew a single person who got sober. No one ever got sober in my life. All of my brothers and sisters drank and drugged just like I did. They’re party animals, they’re the most fun people on earth. My little brother Kevin, when he hits it, he can drink and drug like the best of them. When it’s time to stop, he stops. He’ll buy a pack of cigarettes and always smoke when he’s drinking. I don’t understand that. I don’t live that way. Those were my siblings.

In The Big Book it says, “We alcoholics are bodily and mentally different than our fellows.” I am clearly bodily and mentally different because something I know that my siblings had, they had a stop button. They had an ability to pull back when it was time to save the job, to get a few hours of sleep before they went to work the next day. None of that happened with me. It was always like, “One more for the ditch. Turn up the music. Let’s have some fun.” It was until the song changed. The fun started to disappear. When I honestly look back over my life, I can see where the fun disappeared as a twelve-year-old boy, but I powered through that.

I ended up starting some retreats and in the Big Book they talk about going on spiritual retreats. A place where you disconnect from the day-to-day, I’m going on one again, where you can get quiet have some people challenge you spiritually. We have some Native singers and dancers and drums and bowls and anything that can create a little shift in consciousness so that maybe some more light can pour into my body and into my spirit.

I started this retreat. We had a healing service on Saturday night. Now, my sponsor is a Catholic priest, which is really strange to think because I had a real problem with religion after that betrayal by those nuns. I thought you can never trust God or any of his emissaries. We’re sitting in this chapel and there’s like 50 men in the darkness. He started to talk and he said, “Think about some pain in your life.” It was pretty spiritual setting. I thought, “I don’t have any. I’m cool. I’m ten years sober. My business is wonderful, my life is beautiful.”

At 10 years, my son was 1 year sober, maybe 2 by then. I got nothing. I am just a man of tremendous gratitude sitting in the silence of that chapel. I know that something can happen if you avail yourself to it. You don’t have to believe that any of the therapies that they will use while you’re in treatment will help you. It doesn’t matter what you believe, it’s what you do. I’m sitting there and he’s going, “Recall some pain.” I got none. Not any. I’m good. I’ve done my steps a few times, I’ve been doing work in the prisons for nine and a half years. I started when I had six months of sobriety.

I’m great. My marriage is blossoming again. I know how to stick with it because so many people quit that saying we hear in recovery about “Don’t quit before the miracle happens.” It’s that’s true every day of our lives. You never know when somebody’s word is going to be the one that unlocks something. It’s almost like we’re like a Rubik’s Cube. The God and others are just spinning those numbers and you never know how it’s going to align. I’m sitting in the darkness. “Recall some pain.” I saw myself as a little boy in that laundry room with my mother.

The next words he said were, “Now bring your higher power into that moment.” In this meditation, I was in the backyard of the home I grew up in with my mother who died in 1971. I got sober in ’91 and this is 2001. Time does count. I’m sitting in the backyard under the oak tree with my mother and Jesus. Not a word was said. After the healing service, that’s what he calls these meditations, we have an ice cream social. I’m thinking, “This is the most candy-ass thing I could ever imagine. I’ve been shooting dope for years. I was a lunatic in the drug world and now we’re having an ice cream social.”

What’s happened to me? I’m sitting there eating my ice cream, I’m sitting there eating my ice cream and he walks up to me and he goes, “How was your meditation?” I said, “, it was fine.” He goes, “Well, did you experience anything in it?” I said, “No, nothing. I saw my mom.” The minute I said it, I burst into tears just like I am right now. I can’t control what I’m feeling in the second. It was just so real like it was her. I knew that somehow that maybe she was forgiving me for the pain I caused her. I don’t know what the hell that was.

I’ve got to continue on with this story. I don’t know how we ended up on this one. That was at ten years of sobriety. When I was 50 years of old, 50 years of age, 15 years sober, still doing the jails, the prisons, speaking whenever asked, sponsoring tons of men, doing the work. Back in that chapel, because I go there every year. Before I got the Catholic priest, I had a sponsor who looked like Elmer Fudd and sounded like him. His name was Howard Polenz. He was the most brilliant man. Howard would say, “Wherever you find God, mark that place and go sit in that window again.”

For me, one of those places is this monastery in Southern Arizona. I’m sitting there, I’m 50 years old. You cannot create your own experience in meditation. All you can do is show up. Make sure your phone’s turned off so that the world doesn’t distract you. I’m sitting there meditating and I don’t remember what he was saying. The next thing I was at my mother’s bedside just before she died. What had happened is her cancer had broken off and it had caused, I think they called an embolism, so she was unable to speak.

She didn’t speak for months before she died. My job, when I would get off of school, this little boy would be to take like it looked like oatmeal and I’d mix it up and squirt vitamins in it. I’d stir it up and then I would go to feed my mom. I’d be sitting right there giving her eye dropper of food. She was wearing the bathrobe that me and my little brother and sister Colleen had given her that Christmas. The three little kids, we had pitched together to give our mama a robe because she never got out of bed anymore.

I’m trying to feed her with the eye dropper. She was making sounds. I’m starting to lose it because I know if she doesn’t eat, she’s going to die. If she and I’m not ready for that. I don’t even know the wound I’m carrying. I’ve never met a person who can self-heal. There may be some. I’ve never encountered one. I don’t even know the wounds that exist inside of me. Think about this stuff. I’m fifteen years sober at this moment. I have done so many fearless moral inventories, I have never held back one thing in an inventory.

I have never deliberately not said something. I’ve never held back. When the Big Book says, “More will be revealed,” that’s what they’re talking about. I think God made it that way, that we heal slowly over time because if I had to have faced the blunt force trauma of every bad thing I’d ever done, I don’t know if I could have survived. Getting sober is the hardest thing a human being ever does. We live in a world where every gas station now has gas station heroin. Everywhere you go, the liquor stores, a culture that is so tuned out.

I’m there with this meditation. I’m trying to feed my mom and she won’t take the food. I’m starting to lose it. I look at her and I go, “Mom, what? What?” She said, “I love you, baby.” Now you know why I wanted to come on the show. Do you know what that meant to me? To be 50 years of age and to finally hear the real last words. They weren’t, “Get out of here, you make me sick.” They were, “I love you, baby.” I’m going to tell you a third one on this, we’ll move on to something different.

Five years after that, twenty years sober, meditating. You understand what I’m saying? Meditating. There are 12 steps, I do all 12. Meditation is part of the eleventh step. I’ve gotten blessed beyond words just but I’ve never tried to like, “I want to meditate on my mom.” You could sit there, any one of you could think of the most important person that you love with all your heart and soul and look at a photograph of them and then go into meditation and try to visualize them and the odds of that happening are just impossible.

We don’t steer the subconscious mind. The subconscious mind is guided by two things. I think a higher power and a disease of addiction. I’m sitting there meditating and I always wondered what happened, how did those nuns roll on me? How did they do that to me? I’m meditating and I see the nuns. It’s like I’m like a helicopter view, like a drone view over my childhood home and I see the nuns in their black robes walking away from my house. That day that I had overdosed in school, I was writing a school paper and it was just written like scrawl.

Words were blended together and I kept dropping my pencil and the kids were holding me up and I’m falling out again. I’m having a horrible overdose. Nobody knows what’s wrong with me. The nuns think I must have the flu or something, but they got that paper that I was trying to write that day. They took that paper. I watched the nuns walk away from my house and I see my mother standing there looking at the school paper with the scribbles like an animal had written it.

I watched my dying mother fold that paper in half and she kissed it and she opened our big family Bible and she put it in there. She did the only thing she knew how to do. My mother gave me to God then. It was recovery that brought me to God now. What a journey. You can say to your friends who weren’t here, “We had a speaker talked about seeing dead people a lot.” I’ve got more stories. I saw my father in meditation and I don’t know about all you, I don’t know what price you paid for your chair here. I paid.

We all do, I think. My wife Donna got pregnant in between our two sons. There was Devon who was three at home and the miracle of life was happening. I’m a good guy, I got a bad disease. I win my wife’s heart and then I break it. I win her heart, I break it. I win her heart, I build my life up, I tear it down. I build my life up, I tear it down. I start companies and have great success and then I drive them into the ground with new drug use. My whole life is like that.

Donna’s getting pregnant and the miracle of life is happening. Our little boy Devon’s excited and our son, we know it’s a boy, his name’s Brandon. We’re really excited about our boy coming. We’re not bad people, but we got a bad disease. At about the seventh month, she’s way out to here, she said, “Something’s wrong, the baby’s not moving.” In my view of things, the way I tell the story for a long time was, “We’re like hippies, a little counterculture, so we were going through natural childbirth.” My wife reminded me, “No, honey, we were unemployed and we were uninsured.”

I’m always trying to paint my experience in the best possible light, it seems. We go down to Phoenix Memorial Hospital on 7th Avenue in the hood. They did an ultrasound and they came back in the room and they said, “Mr. Mrs. Murphy, we’re so sorry, but your son’s dead.” They turned to my wife and they said, “Ma’am, in keeping with the natural order of things, you need to carry this dead child to term. Your body will tell you, you’ll go into a normal labor and delivery. When that’s time, come back.”

My poor wife. I wasn’t thinking about her. We went to my sister’s to cry, my sister Rita’s house. I knew to go to her because she’s so loving. We went over there, our hearts are breaking, we don’t know what the hell to say to our little boy. What do you do? I remember all I could think is, “I need a drink.” The only thing she had to drink in her house was a bottle of Tia Maria. I remember turning that bottle up and just like chugging the whole thing. I just had to get something in me to deal with these feelings.

Everywhere we went, the story was the same. People would say, “Is it a boy or girl? Are you going to teach him to play ball? Have you decorated the room yet?” Me and Donna weren’t talking, we were just crying a lot. Our little boy, three, was just rocked like, “What’s happened to my world? Why are Mom and Dad always so sad? Why is nobody talking about my brother anymore?” His room was half painted. “Why aren’t they finishing it?”

Donna said to me after about a month and a half, she said, “I can’t do it anymore. We’ve got to go.” That’s what I thought she said. She corrected me a few years ago. She said, “No, honey, that’s not what I said.” She said, “If they don’t take this baby, I’m going to kill myself.” our disease affects our families in the most incredible ways. My wife Donna’s a warrior, though. She always could see the good and God in her husband. In fact, my wife started Co-Anon family recovery in the state of Arizona and has been instrumental in spreading Co-Anon around the world so that families have a place to recover.

Our disease affects our families in incredibly profound ways. Share on X

When I got sober, if you went into Al-Anon and you talked about an addicted loved one, they would say, “We don’t talk about drug addicts here.” She had nowhere to go, so she created the fellowship. That’s how beautiful and she does the hard people used to say to me like, “Terry, you really have a gift at helping people in recovery. It looks like God put Donna in your life to keep you alive long enough to get to your primary purpose of helping others.” I now know that that’s total bullshit. People like me who burn their lives to the ground are a dime a dozen, but people like my wife who can heal families, now that is a power.

The work that she does with families just slays me. I cannot imagine how she’s capable of loving people that much in their wounds because people die and kill themselves over their alcoholic or addicted family members. We laugh about recovery, but this shit’s deadly. It’s insane. Back to the story of my son Brandon. Donna said, “If they don’t take this baby, I’m going to kill myself.”

We called the hos and I said, “You have to take us in right now.” They did. The disease of alcoholism cut the tongue out of my mouth. I couldn’t even speak when other people were wrong because I was always afraid you’d call me out for some behavior or some dishonesty because I’m living a lie most of the time. I’ve got to get money, I’ve got to get dope. I’m full of shit in what I say most of the time because I’m being driven, not by my spirit, but I’m being driven by my darkness.

They put us across from the nursery. Literally all day long, Donna’s there like anyone who ever had a kid here or seen what Lamaze breathing is. “Push, baby, push.” All day long, like eight hours of intense labor, knowing that the baby’s going to be dead. All the while everybody’s like no farther than that wall, looking at their babies going, “Look at the babies.” It was like something surreal, like you couldn’t believe the scene. Finally, after hours of labor, my son Brandon was born.

They wrapped my boy up and they tried to hand him to me and I backed up and put my hands up and I said, “I won’t take him.” We left the hospital and I left my son’s body there. A week later, when my wife and son needed me the most, I fled the state with a woman that we’d even had at our home for dinner. What kind of man does that? I left my unemployed wife and my three-year-old son and moved out of state with another woman. I’ve got to tell you, recovery rescued me.

Now maybe you understand why I wanted to kill myself so much because looking back, I was so ashamed of what I’d become. What happened to that kid who used to chase the clouds? When I was a little boy, I would run and I would chase the clouds and I could hurdle and I could fly and run like the wind. I was the joy of everyone. I was born on Christmas Day and my parents said it was the greatest gift they ever had. My father’s father abandoned him when he was two. He got into comic books and his favorite hero was a man named Terrence X and he was a World War I pilot who was my dad’s hero.

As they had kids, he said to my mom, “I want to name one of my sons Terrence X.” My mom didn’t like the name. There was John, and then there was Jim, and then there was Brian, and then there was Michael, and finally she relented and Terrence X Murphy was born. It’s like the wounds of a lifetime. I know what it is to be loved and I know what is right and I know what’s wrong. When drugs go into my body, I become the most selfish, self-centered person on this earth.

People that know my life now, filled with service and philanthropy of all sorts, they’re shocked when they hear my story. They go, “How could you? I can’t fathom you being that.” I ended up leaving that other woman and me and Donna got back together and had another son named Brian. The day he was born, he was born with a cord around his neck. He survived and he’s actually now my neighbor right across the street. My youngest son, because of sobriety, bought the house across the street from his mother and father.

Now the reason I tell the tales of those two boys is one was 7 and one was 3. When I first got sober, an old man named Montana Jim Pinkerton, he was a legend in Alcoholics Anonymous in Montana and in Arizona in the day, he would always tap the chair next to him in the meeting to have the newcomer sit next to him. He would say to me things like, “Terry, tell me about your boys.” I’d think, “Why is this old man so interested in my sons?” I know why because what else was there to talk about?

I didn’t know anything about recovery. My marriage was on the rocks, I didn’t know about anything but I did love those boys with all my heart. What that man was teaching me was the most important lesson that I would ever learn. That is that we come together in our recovery in groups like this to learn from one another and to strengthen ourselves. Where you want to measure your recovery is in your own home. That’s what he taught me. What a brilliant man.

 

How does a guy go from shooting dope with toilet water? I’ve done that. I shot dope once with a syringe filled with cocaine without a needle on it because I had this big ass rig filled with dope and no way to do it. I couldn’t find the needle because what had happened is I was shooting dope and I don’t know if you all have ever experienced any paranoia before, but paranoia was my new friend. I’m in a bathroom and I’ve built this beautiful company and now I’m putting the company in my arm. I’m shooting cocaine and I look up and a camera drops out of the ceiling.

I would have hated this room. The camera went, “Vroom. Vroom. Vroom. Vroom.” I went, “No, I’m in trouble. They’re after me. I got to get rid of this evidence.” I punched a hole in the wall, through the drywall, and I dropped the syringe in the wall. I kept the dope with me though. I could see the SWAT team coming through the roof. They were about two or three inches tall and they were rigging up and they’re coming in. I thought, “I better step on them when they’re little.”

My next thought, “Would that be murder?” I’m whacked out of my mind. I don’t know where dope took you, but it took me into some pretty dark places. I could hear the police dog outside the door. “The dog’s going to tear me up. This is bad.” My heart’s beating and I’m sweating, what a vision for you. It got quiet. I realized that they must have retreated to go get reinforcements because I’m such a badass. They all retreat and I think, “I better do the rest of this dope.”

I kick out the baseboard, I reach up in the wall and I pull out the syringe. I take the vial and I put the water, I get the cocaine ready to go in the syringe. I go, “Where’s the needle?” I can’t find it. I rip out the drywall between the top hole and the bottom hole. I can’t find it. I realize the bastards in the vent probably moved the needle. I start ripping out drywall. Here’s a vision for you. The drywall’s all torn apart. I can’t find the needle. It’s 2:30 in the morning and I started running what I think is like inventory.

What are my options here? I thought, “Well, I can squirt it in my mouth.” No. “Save it until tomorrow?” No chance. I hear this voice say, “Just shove it up your ass.” I think, “No. Nothing going in my ass. That’s not my story.” I hear, “Just shoot up without a needle.” Good idea. I tied off, I still have the hole. It’s like right there. There’s the hole. Now that shit’s abnormal, isn’t it? So is dipping into a shit-and-piss-filled toilet bowl because that’s the only liquid you could get to shoot your heroin with.

That’s abnormal too. I did that ten years before I shot up without a needle. All the while wanting to get sober, Tim. All the while I needed a Camelback Recovery in my life, I needed someone to help me. Nobody in my life ever got sober. Everybody in my life went to the grave or the penitentiary or they kept on using. Nobody ever got sober. You talk about being grateful for what recovery has given me because I love sobriety because what sobriety has given me is the chance to become the man I knew I was born to be.

The one I was as a child that got lost along the way and then at 35 years old, a man in a pawn shop in Phoenix, Arizona, right down the street from here on Thomas Road. I’m in that pawn shop. Now I’m 200 pounds, 6 foot 4. I was 140 then. I thought I looked good. I thought I was looking great because the disease is a liar and it centers in the mind and it tells me, “You’re good, Terry. Don’t worry about it. It’s just a bad patch, things are going to get better soon.”

I go in that pawn shop one morning and I’ve been talking to my wife and telling her, “I’m going to kill myself just so you don’t have to be ashamed anymore.” I’m not being dramatic, it’s how I felt inside. I was hopeless. I have quit so many times, I put my hand on the Bible and I’ve sworn I will never do dope again and I did it. I put my hand on the Bible and I’ve sworn on the lives of my children I will never do drugs again and then I robbed my kids’ piggy bank to get more dope. I hate me. I hate what I become.

In the end, my mother and father were dead. My dad died two years before I got sober. My mom died in ’71, my dad died in ’89. By ’91, when I would show up at a family gathering, all of my siblings would start packing up their stuff and leaving. I’d go, “Where you all going? I just got here.” They had all talked amongst themselves and they said, “We can’t watch it anymore.” Watching their brother who was the life of the party. Two years before that, I had a St. Patrick’s Day party at my house and there were three hundred people at it.

My brother was down visiting from Seattle and he came to me the next day, he said, “Bro, I have never met anyone who has as many friends as you. I had at least 10 or 15 people come up to me and say, ‘Your brother Terry is my best friend.'” Go to May 1991. How many of those friends you think showed up? None of them because there are people that we know in our lives that we party with and that’s a whole different world than the friendships that I’ve come to know in recovery. If you listen to my wife Donna ever talk, she’ll talk about being there like the central hub of where people gathered for fun.

When it got dark, no one else being there. She contrasts that to. She said, “I have hundreds of friends that I can reach out to that would be here at a moment’s notice for any reason.” That’s what we do for each other because the first word of the twelve steps is We. Together we can do what alone is impossible. What’s impossible for me is to stay clean and sober alone. It’s impossible for me to have a good life using drugs and alcohol. That ship has long since sailed. Maybe when I was a kid, but probably not. Not when you hear the story starting at twelve all the way up to the present moment. Do I love sobriety.

Let’s go back. I’ve heard you talk a lot about meditation. When did you start meditating and how did that come into your life?

Right from the beginning, I tried. They said, “Meditate.” I would meditate. I would close my eyes, but it was impossible in the first like six months. When I would close my eyes, it would look like the Fourth of July. Neurons are firing. Physically we wound ourselves in addiction. Cocaine Anonymous, they came out with an eighteen-month chip.

We wound ourselves in addiction. Share on X

The reason they came up with it was because of some science behind it and that was how long it took for the synapses in the brain to start to reconnect, the ability for the body to start to produce a little dopamine and some of the chemicals that make you feel good naturally, the things that our body that we were born with. We deplete that stuff. I’ve always had an interest in that. I was tortured. For the first year of my sobriety, if my wife was out of town, I had two Doberman pinschers. Beautiful animals.

They were just the most gentle beast. I couldn’t sleep in my own house with two Dobermans and an alarm system unless I locked my bedroom door and propped a chair up against the door. Every time I would drive, “What was that in the back seat?” I felt the effects for a long time from and in the Big Book they knew that because Bill wrote, “A body badly burned by alcohol does not recover overnight.” I had to learn to give myself some grace and know that I’m going to walk through the fires of hell in the process of getting clean and sober.

I stayed with meditation in whatever capacity I could do it. Sometimes it was guided meditation, sometimes it was five minutes. This past Lent, I just did two twenty-minute sits all through Lent. I’ve never done it was like 51 days of 40 minutes. That’s intense meditation. I never felt worse. I said to my sponsor, I go, “I thought God’s supposed to be there with me.” He said, “You’re steering the ship again?” I know when I run my life, I know where I take it.

I know when we run my life, and when I say we I mean you, and when I say God, I see you. I need to clarify that because y’all heard how I felt about God. That wound I experienced with that betrayal of those nuns stuck with me. When I saw God and all that stuff and then I had a wise man tell me, he said, “How did God come to you, son?” He came to me as a man in a pawn shop in Phoenix, Arizona on Thomas. I’m in there, I’m dying, I’m 140 pounds, I’m gray in color. I’m really sick.

I pawned my Bose speakers that morning. I love music. I listen to music all day. I got incredible audio system and I got it cranked up all day. I love my music but I needed the dope. I took the speakers to the pawn shop and I pawned them that morning, he gave me the money for it and I went and I bought crack cocaine and some alcohol. I was also on methadone then and I was chewing pain pills like crazy. I’m pouring this poison into my body. I go get the dope and then it’s on me.

You know what I mean? Like sometimes it’s casual, but other times the disease just goes, “Come. More. Now.” I went back to the pawn shop and I said to the guy, “I don’t really want these Bose speakers anymore. I’m just going to sell them to you. No point in me picking them up in a couple of weeks.” The guy looked at me and he said, “Dude, I don’t know if you’re in trouble or not.”

The minute he started to talk, my mind was starting to slam shut like, “No, one more lecture. One more person’s going to ask me the questions people have been asking me my whole life like, ‘What’s wrong with you? Why do you do that? What about that wife? What about those kids? You were a great athlete, you were such a smart student, you were a good soldier. What happened to you?'”

I’ve been asked those questions by the best of them. “Why don’t you just stop?” Hell, I’ve stopped so many times, but I always start again and that makes me feel weak as hell inside. Just as my mind’s ready to slam shut, he flipped it on me just like what I’m doing with you. He told me what was wrong with him. He said, “I could not stop drinking and doing dope. I went to Lark, which was on the South end of the runway. You go down 24th Street and across Watkins.” He’s drawing a mental mind map. I don’t know what he’s doing to me.

I’m driving a stolen van conversion from the company that I worked at and he says to me, “Dude, I’ve been clean and sober for four years and I own this pawn shop and everything in it.” He smiled and he said, “A lot of it used to be yours.” I thought, “Cold blooded.” I ended up at Lark that day and my recovery journey began.

What I want to tell you is, in that moment, I now know was the most important moment of my life. It wasn’t the day that I married my wife or the day that my children were born. It was the day that I was introduced to recovery because that’s the most sacred event of my life because without that, there is no me. Am I grateful for what recovery has given me.

How important is it for someone to start meditating?

I think it’s 1 of the 12 steps. One of my buddies who is his name’s Marty M. He’s walked through the fire. His son Matthew, his only son, was murdered a few years ago. Stabbed 80 times. I sat through the trial with Marty. At the same time, his wife was going through kidney dialysis back in Maryland where they were living.

He comes out for the sentencing and as he lands, there’s a bunch of messages from his father-in-law to call right away and he calls and they said, “Your wife’s going into a coma, you need to return home right now.” One of my buddies went and sat with him at the airport for the 7 hours, because that’s what we do for each other in recovery, and sat by his side for 7 hours and he caught the plane back, got there just in time and then his wife died. He got back on the plane to come back to sit in the sentencing of the guy who stabbed his son 80 times.

I listened to his daughter say in the sentencing, “I just wanted to go hold my brother’s hand. He always held my hand, he was my big brother. I just wanted to go hold his hand.” The coroner said, “You can’t because there aren’t any hands left,” because he had used his hands to defend himself while he was being brutalized with the knife. I watched Marty speak at a meeting the following Monday night. What he said were the most profound words I’ve ever heard since I’ve been in recovery. He said, “In the rooms of recovery, you will hear people say ‘The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.'”

He said, “That’s not insanity, that’s stupid. What insanity is, is to be an addict and alcoholic and be in a 12-step fellowship and not work your 12 steps.” That’s how important meditation is. Right. Meditation is a part of it and now there’s so many tools for meditation. You go on the youtube, you can go Insight Timer, there’s free apps, there’s I use I do a myriad. I go on retreats to learn meditations. I’m a student of the game.

In the Big Book, my favorite line is, “Men and women drink essentially because they like the effect produced by alcohol.” Thought, “No shit.” I’ve spoken all over the world and I can say to a audience, “What is the sound that you make when you get your dope or you get your drink?” “Ahhh.” It’s universal. “What are the two words that are said when you get so frustrated inside and you decide to throw your sobriety away and go get one more? What are the two words that they say?” “Thank you,” “Fuck it.” I was in China, in Zhengzhou in the heartland of China, at their second-ever AA conference in China and I asked that question and all the Chinese went, “Fuck it.”

It was hysterical. It’s like we have some things that are universal among us as addicts and alcoholics. That’s why I could come in and talk to you about the most intimate, painful aspects of my life without shame or regret. I know one thing, none of you going to judge me. When I talk about God, I see you. That old man said, “Where’d you find God?” Well, it was a guy in a pawn shop. That’s the first place I met God. Ever since then, I’ve met God in the men and women of recovery. I found God watching that episode with you and RFK Jr.

It was so powerful for me because everything I believe and everything I’ve done in thirty-five years of staying sober is hard. It takes work, it takes dedication to your commitment. It takes dedication to your commitment to your sobriety and a willingness to take it just one day at a time for a lifetime. I feed my soul, and everywhere I see and hear you, I see God.

 

I love that. I got a whole list of questions here. We’ve been going for a while, you’ve probably answered most of my questions. What I like to do here is we like to open it up to the group. We’ve been going for a minute and if you guys want to open it up for questions. Who has questions for Terry?

Yeah, you pretty much covered every. Your story explains itself. I don’t have a whole lot of questions that come to mind per se, I just think that’s pretty remarkable and your journey’s amazing. Are you from Arizona?

I grew up in Southern California and then moved to Arizona. Went to the military and screwed that off too. Came back here and decided I’m going to go get an education and change my life. Something I like to I thought I’d definitely want you to have is that sobriety has to work. Sobriety has to lead to a better life or you won’t stay sober. I’ve been in the pursuit of a better life. Recovery is the vehicle that allows me to fulfill that because sober, I can do anything.

Emptying The Grave

I view it like I was digging my grave, one drink at a time, one drug at a time. In that grave, I threw my mother’s hopes for her son, my father’s dreams for Terrence X. My military career, I was thrown out of the military in disgrace, but because of the amends process of the program, I petitioned the military and was reinstated as a full and honorable veteran because but that was in the grave.

The first thing I threw in that grave was my love of running, chasing those clouds. All that stuff goes in the grave. I threw my wife in there, my son Brandon, Devon, Brian, my brothers, my sisters, my education, everything went in that grave. The process of being sober is really a process of emptying the grave you’ve been digging.

What Recovery Has Built

Through this work, I started to do things like do what a good husband does. I’m faithful. I’ve been faithful to my wife since the day of my sobriety. Now that may not mean much to you, but to me, that means the world. Me and my wife have been married 47 years, in August 2026, it’ll be 48. My wife says things like, “My favorite place is as close as I can get to you.” We still have the most fabulous relationship and every aspect of our life is better than it was even as newlyweds, including our sex life.

You may be wondering, when do people stop fucking? It isn’t at 70. It is not at 70 years of age. Here’s the trip, there’s no Viagra. It’s trust. We have a real relationship. We’re a partnership. I started to do things like help with the dishes. I broke all the roles that I thought were a man’s and a woman’s and really became a partner and helped to raise the kids and the granddaughters. My granddaughters are like the joy of my life. They are a chance to do over maybe what I missed in those first few years.

My sons and I have a healthy relationship. Me and my wife have a healthy relationship. I’ve made amends to her for everything I did as best I can. You’ve heard some of my story, there’s some things that you can never make right. All you can do is live the best you can in the here and now. The only moment that exists, the intersection of here and now. That’s where I live and that’s where I love.

This morning, I’m sitting there having some coffee and my granddaughter who’s nine says, “Papa, would you like to see a play?” she had all her little squishies out there. Her four-year-old sister was next to her running the sound on the play and I said, “I would love to do that. Where do you want me to sit?” “Up here.”

I sat there with undivided attention as these little girls did imaginary play. Now that doesn’t happen if I’m using dope because the minute drugs and alcohol enter my system, I stop feeling. I no longer can feel the pain of others. I couldn’t even feel the pain. You’ve seen me cry enough here to know that I live my life with my feelings. There was a time where I couldn’t even feel my own wife and children’s tears. Is that a good enough reason to love being sober?

A hundred percent.

I appreciate you coming in and sharing your story. This is off-topic, but I really like your socks. They’re cute.

These are my three granddaughters.

They’re cute. I love it.

I always wear them whenever I go someplace important for me and that is any time that I am going to be interacting with you because the most important people in my life are the new people because this is where I get the courage to wage the battles out there because what y’all are doing is powerful stuff. Thank you for your example.

Thank you, first of all, for sharing your story. It’s incredibly inspiring. I’m just wondering, like so you’re a philanthropist. What takes up like most of your time? What do you typically do on a day-to-day basis, I guess?

The most important thing in my life, every morning, when I get out of bed, I roll out of bed onto my knees. I never step down with my feet. I say, “Good morning, God. I love you. Please keep me clean and sober just for today.” I didn’t know that would make me emotional. That’s where it all starts because without that I got nothing.

Without that you’ve heard enough about what a person I become. I end my day on my knees doing what they call nightly review. I say “Thanks for the day, God. It’s been cool rolling with you. Help me to sleep well.” I climb up into the bed and lay next to my wife. Anything I can do, but the most important thing for me is recovery. That’s the tall pole in the tent of my life.

The most important thing for me is recovery. That’s the tall pole in the tent of my life. Share on X

I love my family. What I understand is that I have a responsibility to make sure that my granddaughters feel that they’re as important as the newcomers that I work with in my life. I have seen widows and orphans of recovery before. I’ve seen people that go in too deep and stay in too long and forget about their families. I was taught like I told you in the beginning, like you measure your recovery under your own roof. My days are filled with just the most amazing adventures.

I walk my granddaughters to school every day. One of my sponsees lives in the neighborhood and he drops his daughters off. Me and my wife and four little girls walk to school and we have the most wonderful conversations about the birds and the flowers and then I’ll do whatever I’m called to do. You asked about philanthropy. I’m connected to people all over the world in recovery because we are a close community. There are apps now called Meeting Finders where literally you can I can plug in right now is the perfect time to go to a meeting in Europe.

There are thousands of meetings worldwide and you can access them any time anywhere just by going onto an app, touching it, and you’re in the meeting. Recovery’s at the forefront of my life. I know that I’m not steering it. Whatever I’m supposed to do, that’s going to be guided by the higher power. The way I ended up starting this relief organization to help the Indians, not my idea. My wife said to me, “There’s a church collecting things to take up to the Navajo reservation in the beginning of COVID.”

Everybody was locked up in their houses and afraid. I went over to the church and I took a bunch of stuff and dropped it off. I sat there and I watched these people facing what was a really scary time with their faith. I went up and talked to the pastor, I gave him some money to pay for their fuel costs to go do what they did. I posted a picture. Social media is a hellhole at times, but can also be one of the most beautiful places. It was through social media I got to watch that podcast. Social media is beautiful if we’re in tune to what we want to expose ourselves to.

I took a picture of that scene in front of the church and I put, “Our brothers and sisters in the valley coming together to help our Native American friends.” I sent it out on social media. Before I went to bed that night, I got a message from a Navajo man and his name was Sean Lee. Rest in peace, brother. It said, “Thank you for that post. Things are really bad up here. COVID is killing my people fast and alcoholism and addiction is killing them slowly.” He was on the firing lines of recovery up there.

I went for a trail run. I’m out running in the desert, I thought, “Why didn’t I think about trying to help my Indian friends?” I sent a text to ten men. It said, “Meet me at noon in Zoom in two hours.” They all got there, “What are we here for?” I said, “Sean, say a prayer.” That same man, whenever he would pray, he would cup his hand over his ear so he could hear what God was telling him to say. He was a chief. He goes like that and then in Diné, in the native language, said a prayer.

Two weeks later, we delivered three semis, our first load. How do you do that? What we do is we get clean and sober. That’s the first thing. From there, empty your grave. Dust off your dreams. What did you want to be as a child? The reality is there is no top to the clean and sober mountain. At one point, as this got so big, we needed the National Guard to drive for us. The National Guard can’t go on Indian reservations ever since Wounded Knee.

I got with the President of the Navajo Nation and he signed the authorization and they started a dialogue and they opened the reservation to the National Guard and they started driving for us. We ended up delivering millions of pounds of PPE and food. The Indians would say things like, “The work you’re doing is healing generational wounds.” A town councilman from one of the cities here called me up to talk to me about something and I said to her, I said, “I have no idea how I’m doing this, I’m a retired car salesman.” She said, “God does not call those who are equipped. He equips the people he calls.”

Back to meditation. That’s where we listen. Our prayers are our words to the Creator, however you define that God, or don’t. You’ve got to find something to believe in other than the dope. The Creator will steer you. Steer my life but make your life big. Kick ass. Empty the grave. Mine’s empty. The last thing I needed empty was that running. I decided I’m going to run a marathon for my 50th birthday and everybody goes, “Have you ever ran before?” I go, “Yeah, once upon a dream.”

A little boy that I knew used to chase the clouds. Me and my little brother, we lived on a steep hill and we would run on the lawns and we would hurdle everything in sight. My little brother and me, we’d jump up we’d go, “Jumping partners to the end.” We’d like we’d roll in the grass and run and then get to the bottom of the hill and run all the way back up. When you start getting high, you know where dreams go. Alcoholism and drug addiction is where dreams go to die.

Places like Camelback Recovery is where dreams come to fly. We started getting, so as I approach my fiftieth birthday, I thought they said, “What you going to do for your fifty?” a lot of time men are immature. I don’t know if you ladies know that, but they’re especially immature when they get to fifty because they usually want to change their hair color. No offense, Tim. They don’t know what the hell they want to do. A new car, a boat, something. I drove a minivan and I loved my wife.

I didn’t want a new woman, I didn’t want a new car. “I’m going to go run a marathon.” They go, “What about a half marathon?” I said, “You never heard how I used dope? I never did a half.” For my 50th birthday, I signed up for the Rock ‘n’ Roll Marathon. All my normie friends, which I now have a lot of, they all said, “Are you out of your mind, dude? What you thinking?” You know what my friends in recovery all said? “Go for it, dude. How can I help you?” because we all understand what it’s like to be the living dead.

We get to rise up like modern-day Lazaruses. We get to get up out of those graves and we get to have the lives that we always hoped we wanted. That’s not just my story, that’s the story of recovery. That’s Tim’s story with his fifteen years. I sponsor a man who doesn’t live far from here who when I met him had a blue mohawk wearing a Misfits jacket. He said, “Will you sponsor me?” I said, “Yeah, under one condition.” He goes, “What’s that?” I said, “You got to take one class, you’re smart.”

 

He goes, “I don’t even have a GED.” I said, “I don’t care. Start with the GED and one class.” He took that one class, his name is Dr. Nicholas B. He works at tgen. There and he’s just average compared to the stories because this is where people rise up and build lives worth living. Recovery has to lead to that so.

Last thing, thank you so much again. Really inspiring story and I really appreciate your like love for life. That’s really beautiful. Thank you.

Thank you.

Tim, I got to tell one more fast story. Here it is. My wife and I’s 40th wedding anniversary. Fortieth wedding anniversary and we got some good wisdom from oldsters and they said, “Don’t wait for your 50th because sometimes your health isn’t good enough to do what you really want to do. Do it for your 40th.” That’s what AA old-timers told us. I said to Donna, “Our 40th is coming up. What you want to do? Where do you want to go, anywhere in the world?” She goes, “I want to go to Machu Picchu in the Inca, in the Andes, wherever it is. I want to go to the ancient place.”

I said, “Okay. Do you mind if I plan the trip?” She goes, “I love surprises, go for it.” I plan the trip. We flew into South America. We go down the Amazon and we stayed in a treehouse for a week. Literally it was mind-blowing. Me Tarzan, you Jane. We’re having the time of our life. We go to Machu Picchu. It’s our wedding anniversary. Donna said, “What should I wear today?” I pulled out a wedding dress I had bought online and it fit her perfectly and it was gorgeous.

I said, “I got something planned for you today.” I walked her out of the Sanctuary Lodge on Machu Picchu and she followed wearing her wedding dress and we followed a trail of rose petals up the mountain and up on the landing was an Inca shaman there to renew our vows. I had smuggled our sons, their wives, and our granddaughters into Peru to witness the renewal of our vows. What’s that got to do with sobriety? Everything because here, anything is possible. Dust off your dreams and go for it. Never know how the story’s going to end for you. I hope it’s as wonderful an experience for yourselves as I see myself and all of the people that I know and love that work programs experience.

We’ve covered a lot and I appreciate you. Before we wrap up, is there anything that I should have asked you that I didn’t ask you?

I can’t think of a thing, Tim. I love sobriety.

I love sobriety, I love being sober. I appreciate you, I’m glad that you were here. Let’s talk about your marathon running for a second before we sign off. Exercise and fitness has been a big part of my sobriety and my recovery and that’s what I do to help me. It’s a huge complement to my recovery. You finished your first marathon and then after your first marathon, you decided to do an ultramarathon and you’ve done five of those. Tell us about that journey.

I started with the first marathon at 50 and then I ran 10 marathons and 14 halves. I’m an addict. I really believe that it’s really important that we never let an old person creep inside our body or our mind. We’ve got to keep growing and learning. Me and my wife love an active life so it’s my responsibility to take care of my own physical, emotional, spiritual health and it’s her responsibility to care for her stuff. I go through the process of running those things.

I lost interest in that, I started trail running. Trail running is meditation because in trail running, it forces you into the present moment because you’re on uneven terrain. It’s like the marvel of the human spirit that I destroyed with drugs and alcohol. My mind can see the trail ahead as I’m running fast and it tells me exactly what angle and how much pressure to have my feet hit at any given moment and it’s all happening with no input from me. That’s how God made us. I almost pissed away that gift through my drug addiction and really got close to an early grave.

I’ve had out-of-body overdose experiences, I almost died when I was eighteen. I want to live my life to the fullest. I started running ultramarathons. I just thought, “I’m going to challenge myself.” We’re all capable of doing so much more than we think. I started running ultras and you know what I discovered? A very high percentage of the ultra-running community are clean and sober people and that they’re using that as their form of meditation. I used to play a lot of golf and I had memberships at the best country clubs in town.

I lost interest in golf when I started coaching youth sports. That was more fun than playing golf. When I started trail running, it was like, “This is like where I get my meditation.” I go out there and I’ll start talking to God and I’ll start a conversation like, “God, this person’s not doing things right and my wife’s not doing this right and this person’s not doing it right.” Eventually I hear that voice of the higher power in my head go, “Terry, you’re the only one out here.” I realize, “Yeah, it’s back on me.”

My last race was called the Black Canyon Ultra. It’s a 100K race. It’s through some gnarly mountains. It starts up by Prescott and ends in Anthem, all through the mountains. I lace up my shoes and I take off into the early morning and I start running. Three kilometers into the race, the water’s raging. I got to go through a creek and the water’s up to here. Other runners, we pull each other across the raging water to get to the other side. I hit my hand on a rock and I’m bleeding like crazy.

One of my friends in recovery, I had made a logo to honor him, his name’s Larry R. Larry just celebrated 50 years. At the time of that race, he was in a hospital in intensive care. He had had a double lung transplant because of his service in Vietnam and he got Agent Orange. I said, “I’m going to run this race for you, Larry.” I take a photograph. I’m drenched and I’m bleeding and I sent it to my wife and my couple of buddies that are my support team and to Larry and I said, “I’m three kilometers in, I’m bleeding, I’m drenched, let’s go do this.”

All day long, I would turn on my music. I couldn’t listen to music because music wasn’t working. Only thing that worked was prayer. I was just like, “God, it’s me and you, isn’t it? We’re running for Larry.” I held up signs that my wife took and I was running for autism because I got some buddies that have autistic kids and I was running for cancer. I got a friend of mine named Annabelle who finished her second bout with cancer and she’s a young mother. She just took the most wicked treatment, they call it the Red Devil.

Recent Challenges

She just finished sixteen chemos and I’m running for her and I’m running for I’m running for causes, I’m running for suicide prevention. I had a young man I mentored kill himself. I had another young my favorite newest sponsee, he was at eleven months of sobriety. He just got Phi Theta Kappa at Mesa Community College, he was working his steps and I saw this boy start to fade away and I called him up, I said, “Bro, this is the third time I’ve called you. When your sponsor is the one doing the calling, you’re on the wrong track.”

“You’re supposed to call your sponsor, not your sponsor call you.” I do it both ways because I love the men that I work with. He said, “Thank you for reminding me of that.” He sent me a text, “I love you so much. Thanks for that.” He didn’t call for the next two days. I called him back and I forgot the question that I should have asked the first time. “Are you already getting high?” He said, “Yeah, I am.” I said, “So can I come pick you up? Take you to treatment? Get you in a detox?” He said, “Not today, Terry.”

The last note I sent to him was, “Fight the evil. I love you and I believe in you.” That was last Tuesday. He was already dead. On Saturday, the next-door neighbor, the apartment that we blessed and did his fifth step in, the next-door neighbor complained about the smell. You know? Friday, I sat in a funeral, I’ll sit in one in a couple of days. This is for real. What we do here really matters. Life is worth living. The worst part about it is that just like when I almost died of an overdose, I begged God to help me because I said, “God, please don’t let me die. I haven’t even lived yet.”

The life in recovery is so incredibly exciting. Back to this race. I’m running like hell and every time I get tired, I felt like a hand was pushing me in the small of my back. I ran that race like a champion. As an old. I’m the oldest cat out there probably out on that trail and I’m blazing it. If you can finish the race in seventeen hours, you can qualify for the greatest race, it’s called the Western States 100 if you can finish in seventeen hours. I’m having this spiritual experience running this distance.

I’m probably fourteen hours into the race and I am killing it. I get into and it’s nighttime now and I’m running with a lamp. I get into the aid stations where they have food, snacks, medical teams if you need help, you can change your socks, whatever you need to do. I get there and they go, “Dude, you’re killing it. You’re going to Western States.” All the other runners start going, “Western States.” I’m thinking, “I’m going to go to Western States.”

I take off and I start running and then I heard that voice in my head. Before the only voice in my head was the one that told me to go get another hit of dope. Whenever I would push back against that voice, it would say something like, “Shut the fuck up and just go get some.” There’s a different voice in my head now. It’s the voice you all have given me. It’s the voice of God. It’s the voice of the love that I have deep inside for myself that I think every one of us have for ourselves.

My disease had turned it to where I even wanted to kill myself. I’m running and I hear that voice in my head say, “Don’t kill this feeling.” I reached up and I turned off my headlight. My speed dropped way down because I can’t see very good in the dark. I crossed the finish line 17 hours and 7 minutes into the arms of my loving wife. My mind was filled with one thought. The miracle is not that I finished, it’s that I had the courage to begin.

A Word To The Room

Begin your journey, that’s what you’re all doing here. You’ve got the courage to begin. Now write a masterpiece. Your life’s a blank canvas. You’ve written the first part of the story, the one filled with pain and shame. Let me tell you what the rest of the story, it’s so much more fun to write.

That’s beautiful. I love that. Tell us about the Twelve-Step Companion Guide that you wrote or where people can find it or?

Well, it’s at CA.org. Now, the first book that was ever written, which is what this book is points towards, was the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous that came out in 1939. In 1982, Narcotics Anonymous produced the Basic Text. If you read the Basic Text, it’s a good book, but  it was the book I got sober on. I couldn’t read the Big Book. I tried to read the Big Book, made no sense to me. I didn’t relate.

I relate to doing massive amounts of narcotics and booze as well, so I had done that and then the way the book came about was so Bill Wilson used the word “altruism” that is the purest form of giving. What happened is one of my sponsees was dying of cancer and I love this man, his name’s Tom Hennebry, just the most beautiful person. He looked like Buzz Lightyear. He was Buzz’s twin, just a badass man, handsome dude. The cancer was just destroying him.

For two years, me and friends would come over every Tuesday night, we’d cook a meal and we’d do a Big Book study or we’d do the 12 and 12 or we’d read the Basic Text, whatever we could do to feed our mind our conversations. One day, Tommy said to me, when everybody left, he said, “Terry, I want to work my steps before I die. I want to go to God clean.” I said, “Cool, I’ll come over tomorrow, we’ll start.” He goes, “No. I need you to find a way for me to be able to do the steps with all the men that have been coming to my house over these past two years.”

Roughly 100 guys that had been showing up for him. I said, “No problem. I’ll get it done.” I had just retired. I had been praying for two years, “When do I retire?” I talked to my sponsor, “When do I retire?” He said, “You’ll know when. God will tell you when to retire.” I was sitting at my work one day just before this and it was just a regular day, I hadn’t been thinking about retirement at all, and I was sitting at my desk and I heard, “Now.” I knew exactly what it was and I didn’t ask the question.

I walked in to my sister who was my business partner and I said, “Colleen, don’t put me on the schedule in the month of May.” She started to cry because she knew what that meant because she loves me so much. Those same siblings that couldn’t talk to me come to me for counsel and we all love each other so much. The healing that happens through recovery is so beautiful, no matter what the wounds of a family may be, this program has this ability. I retired. I had the time to do this so I took every book that I’d ever read on recovery.

Begin your journey—that’s what you’re all doing here. You’ve got the courage to begin. Share on X

Everything, and I read voraciously about life in recovery and I love this subject. I put together 6 workbooks and 100 men and Tommy went through the steps together. One of the men who went through that went to a retreat in California and he encountered a woman named Elizabeth S. Who had just been appointed by Cocaine Anonymous to try to finish a project they’d been trying to do for 35 years. They’d been trying to get a book that makes it easier for drug addicts to identify with, but points to the Big Book and the wisdom that is in those pages.

That’s a pretty tall order. There’s lots of books written on addiction, there’s thousands of books on addiction. They’re all written for by people for prestige or for money or for power. This woman says, “How are you doing, Steve?” He says, “I had a spiritual experience working my steps, it was the most amazing thing going through these workbooks.” She reaches out to me, “Can I look at that material?” I sent it to her and she goes, “This is exactly what we’re hoping for. Will you help us finish writing?”

I said, “No, I don’t have any interest in doing that, but I’ll sign the release, you can have it.” They kept pursuing it and they said, “We need you to write the stories that connect this, to make this book come alive.” I had all the experience because I had thirty years of sobriety, I had been going into prisons. There’s a chapter in there called To the Inmates and Those in Prison. I had the inmates write a story called The Gift of the Gate, which an inmate came to me and said, “I’m scared to death, they’ve taken all my books. I have two more weeks here in prison and then it’s going to take me a week to get across the country on a bus and I got nothing to read.”

I said, “Well, have you ever heard of The Gift of the Gate?” I just made that shit up and he said, “No, I haven’t.” I said, “Well, here’s what you do. You read this many pages of the Big Book every day,” I gave him my book. “You read this many pages every day and you can keep that book and take it with you and the day you get out, you’ll finish Doctor Bob’s Nightmare. That will give you the strength to stay sober till you get to meetings.” I had inmates write up the story and a friend of mine typed it out.

That was fifteen years ago. That ended up being in that book. God knew what he was doing all along because God knows what he’s doing with all your life. If the word “God” sounds weird, just say “you,” say “me,” because that’s how God shows up. God didn’t come to me through the preacher, he didn’t come to me through the Bible, he didn’t come to me through the Big Book either. He comes to me through everything. The hummingbirds, the flowers, the butterflies. God’s in all of it. Primarily, he comes through here.

I volunteered to join that committee and then I would write and then they had a support team around us and we rock and rolled and other input from other people that were vitally necessary for this whole thing to come together. In October, November of 2025, the book got released. It’s selling very well all over the world for CA. In fact, when I leave here, I’m going to go get another case because it’s the first book that I’ve found that I can take and hand to an inmate and they can go through the work without anybody having to explain to them what that word means.

The input from the different people. This guy Kevin M., who passed away, said, “Tell the story in miniature vignettes because there’s nothing more powerful than the experience of different people.” If you’re in the first step, it will have in italicized writing like one paragraph story that just screams “Step One.” or “Step Nine.” or whatever step it is because it’s the experiences of people. God had put me in the position to know the exact right people to get the exact right experiences.

God put me in the position to know exactly the right people and have exactly the right experiences. Share on X

The last thing I’ll tell you about that is I do a lot of work in my recovery. I’ve done a lot of work in my wife’s workshops. She puts on workshops for Co-Anon and they’ll get a lot of people there. I thought, “I’m just going to support my wife. I’m just going to be a good husband. She always comes to hear me talk, I’m going to go support her as she does this workshop.”

In their work, they do the second step in a vision statement where you write like, “What are your hopes and dreams?” You write it as though God had already done it. It’s in the future. Seriously, it’s like, “What would your life look like if you gave it to God and God did with your life what God’s done to get you sober?”

It’s an interesting exercise. In it, I talked about every wounded relationship that I had in my vision statement. I talked about the dreams that I had like I wanted to run. In there, I didn’t even know I’d written this until later on. I was explaining this work that I was doing with a man who’d been sober for some time to give him a new experience. He said, “I don’t really understand the concept.” I went and pulled my old vision statement out and I read it to him. It says, “I want to write a book.”

I had told God I wanted to write a book in that vision statement. Years later, I end up writing a book and didn’t even know I’d asked God to do it. Here’s a piece of advice. Be more specific with God. Had I known that it was going to be a great book, I would have said, “God let me have my name on it and pay me for it.” I did it anonymously and for no money. Yet, I can’t really say that because what’s the real payment? Isn’t it life? I don’t think I could have been paid any better if I had written the best-seller that made me the most famous author on earth.

Instead, I got to write a book that no one will know other than you and you and it’s just not like that. It’s just that’s how it happens in God’s world. That’s what God’s world’s all about. I got fired from my employer when I was in detox. There was no ADA then. There were no protections for you. They fired me. They fired me with a forward letter, “Terry Murphy, fuck him.” What’s that mean? I have a job?” It was clear I’m done. When I had nine months of sobriety, one of their managers called me and says, “I heard you’re sober.” I go, “Yeah, I am.” He goes, “How long?” I said, “Nine months.”

He goes, “I just celebrated a year, come see me.” I went and interviewed with them. He hired me back and within a month, I started my department inside their organization, which grew their organization by twenty-fold, which then, in the process, lifted my entire family out of poverty. I was able to retire a very successful career, the top person in my field in history. My little brother and my little sister, the three little kids that were the wild children, stoned and tripping on acid at twelve. I turned my little brother on to acid, I think he was 11, 10, I don’t know.

The three little kids ended up being business partners and all becoming pretty wealthy and successful and then I got to hire all my different family members and literally move my entire family out of poverty and into a whole new realm of living. How’d I do that? I didn’t. How’d I write that book? I didn’t write that either. What I am is I’m an instrument in the hands of a living and loving God. If I stay close to you, I stay close to the power. When the power flows in, I have no idea what’s the rest of my life. I just did some work on “What’s the rest of my life?”

I’m pretty ambitious. I got some ideas about what’s possible. I don’t know what will become of it because I know the most important thing I do is love my smoking hot wife Donna and be there with my granddaughters and I go to every one of my granddaughter my oldest granddaughter, Scarlett, she’s fifteen, she’s playing baseball, fast-pitch softball. She’s good. I know when to make the right choices. I’ve gone every one of her games. I have a brother who lives in California, his name’s John, he’s eighty-one and his health is really sliding. He spent two years north of the DMZ in Vietnam. He’s got horrible Agent Orange and diabetes from his service to our country.

He really wanted to see me. Me and my sister, Colleen, got in a car, we drove and met him in Palm Springs just to spend three hours with him and break bread. It was announced it was the last game of the season for my granddaughter’s softball and she was going to be the starting pitcher. I thought, “What do I do.” I thought, “You know what? I got to go do what’s right for the wounded because as we serve those in need, we can’t outgive God. I can’t do more because the more I give to God, the more things just seem to align themselves like Kennedy was talking about in that interview about the synchronistic experiences of his life.”

I spent the day and driving back, my sister’s phone rings and it’s my wife and my granddaughter hit a home run over the center field fence, her first homer. She won the game and struck out nine. That night, my granddaughter called me and spent thirty minutes with her 70-year-old grandpa on the phone so we could just talk about how exciting that was. What’s that got to do with sobriety? Everything. How do 15-year-olds want to talk to 70-year-olds? How do granddaughters want to be by their grandpa? How do sons want to be by their father?

And how does a wife want to be there? It’s because sober allows us to be the best version of ourselves. Without sobriety, you heard my story. Nobody would trust me to walk their children to school. Nobody would want to call their grandpa because he would have been dead long ago. If I was alive and using, that’s worse than dead. They asked me when I got sober in treatment, they said, “Terry, what do you feel more, dying or losing your family?” I said, “Losing my family.” The counselors were really abrasive and they go, “That’s bullshit. Death is final. What do you mean by that?”

I said, “You don’t get it. I’m already dead. I’ve been walking dead the last few years, wanting to kill myself, hating myself for everything I’ve done to everyone I loved. Knowing that inside me was an author, knowing inside of me was an athlete, knowing inside of me was a warrior that I was born to become.” Could have missed it all, if it wasn’t for places like this and people like you that had a treatment facility because Tim, I never could have made it. Without treatment, I never would have made it. There’s no way. I needed help.

I needed somebody to help me to see inside myself. Somebody to recognize like, “Dude, you’re really wounded. That’s okay. I was wounded too.” I used to hate myself but I don’t hate myself anymore. The things we do for each other in our small groups and in the counseling and I believe that the magic is created in the interaction of the patients. The counselors are the orchestrators, you know they’re running the orchestra but the music, the music is one addict helping another.

I needed somebody to help me see inside myself—someone who could recognize, “Dude, you’re really wounded. That’s okay. I was wounded too.” Share on X

In that, something special happens, doesn’t it? Literally, we empty our graves and we get to dust off our dreams and become the people that we always thought we were capable of being. If you don’t have those kinds of dreams, they’ll come. You had asked about meditation, my sponsor gave me a memory of going to my happy place just to think “Where was the best place that you knew as a child?” Go there. Start with meditation there and that was pretty helpful to me.

Around here, we are in the presence of real greatness. I have a friend that played in the NFL and ended up living in his car and he was so filled with shame. He also played, his name’s Jason S. He played for Marshall. He was the center, his quarterback was Chad Pennington, his other quarterback was Byron Leftwich, and his wide receiver was Randy Moss. Okay. He was a badass. He gets in the NFL playing for the Cardinals, but starts doing dope, gets caught, he’s living in his car.

He’s got a wife. It’s just like this is bad, living homeless. I was at a charity auction and they had this big beautiful picture of the Marshall greats of Pennington, Leftwich, and Moss. I bought it at the auction and I wrote on the back of it, “Jason, these men will play in five Super Bowls collectively, five Sundays. You play in the Super Bowl every day because what’s more important? Who wins the game or a human life? You are God’s MVP.”

I signed it. I gave it to him and it’s up in his house and he lives in he moved to Texas and he lives in South Texas and in a synchronistic moment, he called me at my last retreat and he said, “On June 26th, Chad Pennington,” who paid for his treatment. He paid to put that man in treatment because without treatment, I just don’t see people getting sober. Occasionally, somebody can walk through AA, but most people need the support system that a treatment center can offer them.

He just wanted me to know that on June 26th, because Chad’s devoted his life to youth athletics and their team just won the championship in Kentucky and this man’s devoted his life and taken all of his wealth to do philanthropic stuff. He’s making a difference in the world, helping kids like crazy in the state of Kentucky where they have a hell of a drug problem. He’s doing all this good. He called Jason and asked Jason if he would be his inductor because the state of Kentucky decided to put him in the Hall of Fame as Kentucky’s favorite son.

How do you write that story? I’m part of that story because I helped love him when he was a broken addict. He did what is taught at places like this about how to get honest with yourself once and for all and gives you a safe place to take out your trash and talk about your pain and your shame. I talked about mine. I was in treatment. I’d like to tell the story if I have one more minute. I’m in treatment and I’m getting hope. I know I got that wound about that boy of mine. Brandon.

We’re going to small group and family group and all that stuff and they said, “Anybody got anything else they want to talk about?” I raised my hand. I said, “I want to talk about Brandon.” They looked at me and they go, “Brandon?” you could bring your kids and my kids were at the treatment center every weekend because they do rec and stuff like that. They go, “Who’s Brandon? We met Devon and Brian.” I told them the story that I told you.

They gave me an assignment, me and Donna, they said, “We want you to write a letter to your boy. Tell him why you’re here. What are your hopes and dreams for your other sons?” They gave us some outline and for the first time, me and my wife had never touched that. We never talked about it when we got back together because it was too hot. We didn’t know what to do with it. God will never bring you to a problem without somebody who can take you to the solution. It may take a while, but it happens.

Me and Donna that night talked about Brandon for the first time and we wrote a letter explaining to him how we were in treatment trying to change the destiny. I could become the kind of father to his brothers that I was never able to be to him, to be the kind of husband to his mother that I had never been. We wrote the letter and we both cried a lot, writing that letter. The next day, we got to the counseling staff. You remind me a lot about the counselor I was blessed to have a man like you guiding us.

He said, “Okay, do you have the letter?” We said, “Yeah.” They said, “Come with us, we’re going to go bury your son.” they knew we left his body. He said, “We’re going to have a Dixieland Jazz funeral.” We followed the lead counselor and the patients across the campus to the chapel. They played this song on invisible instruments to “When the Saints Go Marching In.” Me and Donna followed that procession into the chapel.

We got on our knees in front of this little altar and on the altar was this wooden box with a slot on the top and a padlock and it’s called the God box. That’s where they say where if you got problems that you don’t know what to do with and you can’t even trust even a sponsor, at that will come in time, just give it to that God. Me and Donna got on our knees and we kissed that letter and we buried our son in that God box.

Now that’s not what made me an addict and that’s not what made me stay sober, but that’s just part of the story. That was part of the healing, the healing has begun. Now that treatment center just closed a few months ago. It was open for 40 years here in the valley and just closed. I inquired to my wife. She sponsors the woman who was the office manager. “Will you find out what they’re going to do with that box? If they don’t want it, I’d like to have it.” I had served there as a volunteer for 30-plus years in my recovery.

I came home from my Thursday night meeting and sitting on my counter was the God box that I had buried my son in. I sat down and I put my hand on top of that box and I sobbed. I could feel him. It was the most beautiful moment and then I called my sponsor. Having a sponsor’s important. I said to my sponsor, “Do you think God knew that in in May of 1991 when we put that letter in that box that here it is in 2026 that it would end up with me?”

He said, “God knew that was possible, Terry. A lot of things had to happen. You had to stay involved in your recovery one day at a time. Your wife had to stay involved in what she did because that was the connection to get it. God chose well the person to receive that sacred urn that had received the pain of so many patients over 40 years.” Now I’d never thought of that. I just thought about it as it pertained to me. When you have a sponsor, they see a bigger view of you and your life.

I’ve never believed that you should ever have a sponsor who is mean. Our program’s based on love. Said “God is love and if you’ve seen love, you’ve seen God.” That doesn’t jibe with, “Sit down and shut up.” or “Take the cotton out of your ears, stick it in your mouth.” That was none of the treatment I received. I went to great treatment program like Camelback Recovery. I’ve worked hard every day, one day at a time and everything that was in that grave at the beginning of my story is empty.

Now the grave’s empty, waiting for whenever it’s my time to lay down. I don’t know when that’ll be but I don’t that’s not my concern. My concern is to stay quiet enough inside so I can hear those voices that tell me “Now,” that tell me “Don’t kill this feeling.” That voice that I’ve shared with you over and over that got quiet enough to hear, “I love you, baby.” How priceless is that? Back to you, sir.

I love that. Terry, thank you so much for getting vulnerable, being honest, and sharing your experience, strength, and hope with us.

 

Important Links

• Terry Murphy
• Twelve-Step Companion Guide of Cocaine Anonymous
• NA Basic Text
• Alcoholism: a Disease of Perception
• The Big Book
• Cocaine Anonymous

 

About Terry Murphy

Terry Murphy is a recovery speaker, author, and long-term sobriety advocate based in Phoenix, Arizona. He has been continuously sober since May 23, 1991 — more than 34 years of unbroken recovery.

Terry is the primary author of the Twelve-Step Companion Guide of Cocaine Anonymous, published in October 2024. The guide is described as the first book written by addicts for addicts since the publication of the Narcotics Anonymous Basic Text in 1982, and it serves as a working companion for people in 12-step recovery from cocaine and other stimulant addiction.

He has served as a substance-abuse volunteer inside the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office and the Arizona Department of Corrections for more than 30 years, working directly with men and women facing recovery from inside the criminal justice system. Governor Janet Napolitano appointed him to Arizona’s state substance abuse credentialing committee. During the COVID-19 pandemic Terry founded Helping Hands for the Navajo Nation, which delivered millions of pounds of food, baby formula, diapers, dog food, and personal protective equipment to tribal communities across the state.

Terry’s recovery message centers on three ideas he has spoken to audiences across the United States and around the world: emptying the grave that addiction digs, learning to love yourself, and getting your hands on a miracle. He works the 12 Steps actively, has a sponsor, and sponsors others.

Outside his recovery work, Terry is a husband of 47 years to his wife Donna, a father of two sons, and a grandfather to Scarlett, Rylee, and Norah. He took up distance running in midlife, completing his first marathon at 50 and his first ultramarathon at 60. He has now finished five ultramarathons.

Terry Murphy speaks regularly at recovery events, treatment centers, correctional facilities, and faith communities. To learn more about the Twelve-Step Companion Guide of Cocaine Anonymous, visit the Cocaine Anonymous World Service Office at ca.org.