I've Got My Hands On A Miracle: Healing From A 35-Year WoundI've Got My Hands On A Miracle: Healing From A 35-Year Wound
I Love Being Sober
Terry Murphy shares how a life marked by early addiction, family pain, and extreme drug use gradually turned into decades of sobriety, service, and spiritual healing. Through treatment, 12-step work, meditation, and a deep love for his family, he describes a slow, ongoing miracle that continues to shape his life.
1:46:23•19 May 2026
A Slow Miracle: Terry Murphy on Healing a 35-Year Wound and Loving Sobriety
Episode Overview
- Healing from deep childhood and family wounds can unfold slowly over years of consistent recovery work.
- Treatment, sponsorship, and 12-step fellowships provide structure and support that many people cannot create alone.
- Meditation and spiritual retreats help bring buried pain to the surface and can reshape long-held beliefs about oneself and loved ones.
- Living sober opens the door to meaningful service, from prison work to community aid, turning past shame into contribution.
- Physical activity, such as marathons and trail running, can become a powerful complement to emotional and spiritual recovery.
“Getting sober is the hardest thing a human being ever does.”
You’ll hear Terry talk about growing up as the ninth of ten children in a chaotic, grief-filled home, becoming a "child addict" on powerful pills sold by the local ice-cream man, and carrying the crushing words he thought were his dying mother’s last: "Get out of here, you make me sick." He describes the guilt of stealing from his sons’ piggy banks, leaving his wife Donna and young child after a stillbirth, and shooting cocaine with toilet water or even without a needle, all while desperately trying and failing to stop.
What drives someone to seek a life without alcohol? This episode of *I Love Being Sober* centres on Terry Murphy, a 70-year-old man with nearly 35 years of continuous recovery, who lays out exactly what that journey has looked like for him — the beauty, the horror, and the slow miracle of healing. Tim Westbrook keeps the tone grounded and conversational as Terry explains how treatment, sponsorship, and long-term involvement in 12-step fellowships and prisons gave him a way back.
Through meditation and spiritual retreats, Terry experiences what he calls his "miracle": revisiting old memories and hearing a different truth from his mother — "I love you, baby" — decades into sobriety. The episode is aimed at people in recovery, their families, and anyone who feels they’re too far gone to change.
You’ll get candid stories of relapse and suicide risk, but also hear about marathons, ultra-marathons, helping to deliver millions of pounds of food to Navajo communities, and writing a 12-step companion guide for Cocaine Anonymous. Terry sums it up simply: "Getting sober is the hardest thing a human being ever does," yet for him it has turned shame and self-hatred into a life of service, love, and everyday joy with his "smoking hot" wife and granddaughters.
If you’ve ever wondered whether long-term recovery can truly transform a life, Terry’s honesty might make you ask what kind of miracle could be possible for you too.
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