I've Got My Hands On A Miracle: Healing From A 35-Year Wound With Terry MurphyI've Got My Hands On A Miracle: Healing From A 35-Year Wound With Terry Murphy
I Love Being Sober
Terry Murphy shares his journey from severe addiction and family heartbreak to more than three decades of continuous sobriety, service and spiritual growth. The conversation highlights slow healing, daily recovery practices and the surprising gifts that a long sober life can bring.
1:46:23•19 May 2026
From Pawn Shop to Ultramarathons: Terry Murphy’s 35-Year Journey of Sobriety
Episode Overview
- Long-term recovery can reveal and gently heal deep childhood and family wounds, but it often happens slowly over many years.
- Daily practices like prayer, meditation and regular meetings help keep sobriety at the centre of life.
- Service – especially helping other addicts in jails, prisons and communities – can transform shame into purpose.
- Sobriety can rebuild broken relationships and create new roles as loving partners, parents and grandparents.
- Physical activity and big goals, such as marathons and ultramarathons, can become powerful tools for emotional and spiritual growth in recovery.
“Getting sober is the hardest thing a human being ever does.”
What makes a recovery story truly inspiring? Terry Murphy’s long, winding path from 12-year-old “filthy doper” to 34+ years of continuous sobriety gives plenty of answers. Recorded live with the Camelback Recovery outpatient community, this episode centres on Terry, a 70-year-old husband, father and grandfather who’s been sober since 1991. The style is raw, funny, emotional and very story-driven – perfect if you like real talk more than clinical lectures.
Terry shares how early childhood trauma, a dying mother and cheap street narcotics pulled him into addiction. He talks openly about the shame of stealing from his sons, abandoning his wife after the stillbirth of their baby Brandon, and shooting cocaine with toilet water. Yet he never plays the hero; he keeps circling back to one simple truth: “Getting sober is the hardest thing a human being ever does.” A big thread through the conversation is long-term healing.
Terry describes powerful spiritual experiences in meditation, including re-hearing his mum’s “real” last words decades later: not “you make me sick” but “I love you, baby.” He shows how wounds can ease over time through consistent recovery work, sponsorship, service in jails and prisons, and daily habits like dropping to his knees every morning and night.
You’ll also hear how sobriety gave him a second chance at everything: rebuilding his marriage, walking his granddaughters to school, running marathons and ultramarathons, and helping write a 12-step companion guide for Cocaine Anonymous. The tone stays light enough to smile at times (he happily reports that sex doesn’t end at 70) while never minimising the deadly seriousness of addiction.
This one’s aimed at anyone wondering whether long-term recovery can actually lead to a life worth living – especially people carrying old family wounds and heavy guilt. It might leave you asking: if the “walking dead” can become a devoted granddad and ultrarunner, what could long-term sobriety make possible for you?
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