Gainesville resident Michael Turner is first graduate of Action Recovery Center

Action Recovery Center, a residential sober living facility in Gainesville, will mark its 9-month anniversary this Saturday, Aug. 3, in the best way possible - with the graduation of its first client, Michael Turner, who says he has a new lease on life after becoming sober with the help of ARC.

Turner, known to many locals by nickname “Mike T,” grew up in Gainesville,  making him a fitting first graduate from the program, which was organized for Ozark County residents by Ozark County residents to fill the need for drug and alcohol addiction recovery here. 

Turner came to Ozark County as a high school sophomore and graduated from Gainesville High School in 2005. He then continued his education at Missouri State University.

“But, during my third year, I dropped out of college... it boiled down to the fact that I was drinking and using drugs too much,” Turner told the Times. 

Although, Mike says his problems got worse in college, he feels that his  addiction issues began when he was a teen. “When I look back, I think it really started when I was like 15, smoking pot. Marijuana is definitely a gateway drug.”

The slow, downward spiral led to Mike dropping out of college, and he spent the next 13 years on a rollercoaster of good and bad times. 

After leaving MSU, he moved to California and got a job at a marijuana growing facility. “It was a serious job. We were cultivating under laws, legally, to meet standards. So, it was a legit job, a hard job. The first three years I was out there, I wasn’t using drugs at all,” he said. But, after riding the high of sobriety for awhile, he fell into some dark times. 

“There were a lot of high points and low points. For two and a half years, Ingrid and I had a band, and were touring the country - and we were doing drugs...  things were really bad sometimes. There were a couple times when I had a pocket full of money, but still I slept outside the grocery outlet next to a dumpster, because I knew the grocery outlet was the first place opened where I could get booze that next morning,” Turner said. 

The cycle of excess drinking, led him to the use of heroin and Xanax. On four different occasions, Mike overdosed and flatlined, before being brought back to life by medical staff. 

Often driving while drunk or high, he also racked up two driving while intoxicated charges and refused to submit to a breathalyzer during another stop, which led to his driver’s license being revoked for 10 years. 

The really bad times were often followed by Mike’s attempt to pull himself into a better place. 

“I’d get sober for three or four months, maybe six months. But then I’d start drinking again, and that would just lead me into other stuff. It always pretty much started with the drinking for me,” he said. 

Turner decided to move back to Gainesville five years ago to be closer to his family, especially his mother Lisa Sullivan and father Gier Turner.

“It got worse once I moved back. Not the first year I was here, but the second year I was here, it got a lot worse,” Turner said. “Drugs are just so readily available here. And if they weren’t readily available right where I was, with my gift of gab, I could go out and get anything I wanted at any time I wanted.”

Then, on Aug. 11, 2022, Mike was stopped by Ozark County Deputy Josh Sherman at the bottom of the Tecumseh curves on Highway 160, after swerving several times with the officer following behind him. There were 532 grams of marijuana in a container in the floorboard of the vehicle. 

Mike was charged with felony-level delivery/distributing of marijuana. He later accepted a plea deal, pleading guilty to an amended charge of possession of a controlled substance and operating a vehicle on a highway without a valid license. He was given a suspended imposition of sentence and placed on probation for five years.

He was also convicted of the felony of tampering with a motor vehicle and a misdemeanor resisting arrest charge in Christian County. He was given a SIS for the felony and placed on probation in that case too. 

“But, then I violated probation. I had a dirty drug test, and then I had three driving while revokeds. So, they were stacking up against me,” he said. “If the dirty drug test wasn’t going to send me to prison, I figured the driving while revoked was going to. And I kept not going to see [my probation officer],” he said. 

“That was one of those rock bottom times. I was just staying wherever I could. I was living with my dad some. My mom didn’t want me around. That’s when I knew I had it bad... when my folks didn’t even want me around - and I didn’t want to be around my folks either,” Mike said. 

He worked odd jobs for money, including construction work for Amber McGinnis and Jeff Dotson, two local residents who came to organize ARC in 2023.  

“I was talking to Jeff a lot, for about six months before ARC even opened,” he said. “And at that time, I wanted to help out with the recovery part of it and not as an actual client. Because at that time, I was doing OK. I was working at Town & Country. I wasn’t using. I wasn’t drinking. But I was on [legal] prescription meds,” he said. 

The ARC men’s facility opened officially on Nov. 1, 2023, and Turner was the first client enrolled. He showed up two days late, but he showed up nonetheless. 

The program is formatted in such a way that clients must live in the ARC residential facility under strict rules for the 9 months they are enrolled in the program. In return, ARC provides them shelter, three meals a day and takes the financial burden off clients by paying their bills, so they can focus on recovery. Clients are provided full-time jobs and are required to work with transportation provided by ARC. They are tested for drugs and alcohol weekly. 

A portion of the client’s paychecks go back to ARC to help pay the bills to keep the facility running, and the rest is kept in a bank account that can later be used by the client to purchase a vehicle and get housing setup after successfully graduating from the program. 

Mike said he knew he needed a change, and he was serious about getting sober, but it wasn’t an easy road. 

“I came in dirty. I failed three drug panels. It was a struggle in the beginning. I was coming off alcohol, methamphetamines and benzos,” Mike said. 

Mike was taking the latter in the form of depression and anxiety medications, which were legally prescribed to him by a doctor; but, ARC organizers told him when he enrolled that the center doesn’t allow clients to use benzodiazepines. He tried to convince them, unsuccessfully, to allow him to keep taking the pills, but he eventually agreed to give the prescription medications up.  

“I was serious about my recovery. I was there. I had made a commitment,” Mike said.

The day after coming to the ARC facility, Mike’s former probation violations caught up to him, and he was sent to the Ozark County Jail to complete a 7-day shock jail sentence. He was released back to ARC.

A week later, he began working full time at American Epoxy Scientific in Mountain Home, Arkansas, a job that was arranged by ARC personnel. “And I succeeded very well at that job. I was trained up in shipping, boxing and then I went to hand fabrication,” he said. 

The ARC center continued to grow, and more clients were enrolled and accepted, living at the center and working toward sobriety like Mike. At one point, 10 clients were enrolled and living in the facility; now, organizers have capped the enrollment at 8 residents in that facility to give the clients more focused attention, they say. 

Clients have come and gone since then - both on their own accord and as forced exits after being kicked out of the program for failing to follow the rules. But many of the men who have enrolled have stuck with the program and become  healthier and happier in their sobriety. 

McGinnis says that the program is very selective in who is accepted, and the clients themselves are a big part of the discussion as to which applicants are accepted. “At this point, we’ve probably rejected 60 or 70 applications,” she said. 

Mike says he thinks that being selective has been good for the program. “I think we make a bigger impact by screening people like that. Because we’re not just getting people who want to escape out of the system and get out of jail. We’re getting people who are actually serious about their recovery and really want the right thing and to do the right thing,” he said. 

The program has continued to evolve and adapt as things come up, McGinnis said. “We’re still making changes, and we’re still figuring it out. And poor Michael, he’s been through it all - the strict, then the not-so-strict, then back to the strict. We’ve given them things, then we’ve had to take them back away when we realized that wasn’t working. And Michael, he’s the one who just rolls with it and never has a problem with any of the changes.”

McGinnis says Mike has really excelled in the program. He worked at Epoxy for seven months before he took a higher-paying job doing construction work at Funk Construction, a company run by his cousin, Shane Funk. Mike’s mom, Lisa, who hadn’t wanted to be around him when he was using drugs, is also employed with the company and now happily works with him every day. 

Mike has paid nearly $4,000 in restitution, along with $2,500 in fines from Arkansas tickets in the 9 months he’s been at ARC. He’s also saved enough money to purchase a vehicle, and has jumped through all the required hoops to legally get his driver’s license back after 13 years of having it suspended. 

He has enrolled in college and is taking courses through Arkansas State University, where he is working toward an associate’s degree with hopes to eventually earn a bachelor’s degree in psychology to become a substance abuse counselor, helping others who are in the same dark place he found himself so many times. He’s also helping to organize hand-tailored meetings for those with drug and/or alcohol abuse issues, along with a chapter of the Drug Endangered Children’s Alliance.

Although the program is not faith-based and religion is not a required component, Mike says that his faith is stronger than it’s ever been. “I’m really putting effort into my relationship with God.” Mike has been preaching at Mission Square Church in Gainesville, and packing the house. 

After his ARC graduation Saturday, Mike is welcome to stay at the ARC facility, or he can transition into other housing arrangements. 

McGinnis has purchased several properties she is renovating to be available to ARC clients to rent upon graduation. 

Although he might be moving out of the ARC center soon, he says he’ll always been involved with the program and will cherish the camaraderie he and the other ARC clients share. 

He says he hopes others out there who are going through dark times find the courage to get better. “If you’re ready to make a change, seek the help. It’s not always going to be easy. It’s easier to make the wrong decision than it is to make the right decision, but it’s worth it,” he said. “It took me 15 years to screw up my life, and only these 9 months at Action Recovery Center to put it back together. It goes to show if you put as much effort into your recovery as you did running around getting high and drunk, you can make something drastic happen.”

To find out more about the ARC program or how to apply, call the office at 417-989-8247 or email actionrecoverycenter@gmail.com.