{"id":15692,"date":"2022-06-07T18:09:38","date_gmt":"2022-06-07T22:09:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/?p=15692"},"modified":"2022-06-20T16:13:55","modified_gmt":"2022-06-20T20:13:55","slug":"out-of-the-dark","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/out-of-the-dark\/","title":{"rendered":"Out of the Dark"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Nikki Tierney \u201921M remembers Sept. 21, 2007, only vaguely. She was at Monmouth Beach lying in the sand when her 3-year-old son Kole came to her. \u201cHe might have said, \u2018Mom, let\u2019s go play,\u2019\u201d she recalls. And with that, she was up and headed for the ocean.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But once in the water, this mother of four with the law degree and the stellar collegiate basketball career was having trouble swimming. Lifeguards told her to get out of the water. She started to, but inexplicably waded back in and tried\u2014unsuccessfully\u2014to swim again. Her inability to function normally could have been due to the amount of alcohol in her system. It\u2019s also possible she had had a seizure, which she was prone to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the end it wouldn\u2019t matter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The only thing she knows for sure is that her day was spent with a bottle of vodka because she didn\u2019t have the money to buy the pills she really wanted. She knows she was pulled out of the water by lifeguards who had called 911; she was arrested; and later she was charged with child endangerment. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tierney also knows her son was crying that afternoon at the beach.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt was a hard day for Kole,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

Tierney\u2019s struggles with opioid use began when she was 14, as she waited to have a surgery that would repair a hole in her stomach lining, which she had had since she was a toddler. An always-anxious child, Tierney still remembers lying on that operating table. \u201cI was so warm,\u201d she says. \u201cI was so at peace.\u201d Though she would be going under the knife, this kid\u2014who always feared death and catastrophe\u2014felt just fine. Her anxiety was gone. Her fears were laid aside. \u201cBut it wasn\u2019t Jesus coming down or the bright lights,\u201d says Tierney. \u201cIt was the morphine.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
“I do parenting classes, I do group therapy, I do individual therapy, I go to church\u2026. I do anything I possibly can not to return to the darkness,” says Tierney.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

From that day on, any time Tierney felt that anxiety creeping in, she would tell her parents her stomach hurt, and she would be off to the hospital for Maalox, phenobarbital, and a little peace. Not long afterward, Tierney found alcohol. \u201cThe drink wasn\u2019t as powerful as the morphine,\u201d she says, \u201cbut it was good.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Her full-scholarship undergraduate years brought more drinking and pain pills, but they also brought straight A\u2019s, a three-point record in basketball her freshman year, academic All-American status, and a $15,000 postgraduate scholarship from the NCAA. Outside of sports, drinking, and opiates, Tierney didn\u2019t really have a self-image or a life plan. So after graduation, she vacantly landed on law school and took opiates with her to Rutgers School of Law in Newark. \u201cI took pills almost every day of law school,\u201d says Tierney. \u201cI took pills when I took the bar.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She finished in the top of her class. She had everything\u2014a great job, a beautiful home, money in the bank. \u201cSo now, I have everything anyone could possibly want,\u201d she says, \u201cand I was so broken.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Next there were two traumatic pregnancies (one a set of triplets and a son born a few years later) that both ended with C-sections\u2014and pain pills. With those drugs, the insanity came back with a vengeance. \u201cThat\u2019s when I starting kiting scripts to feed my habit,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

Kiting prescriptions\u2014filling them at one pharmacy and then immediately heading to another to fill them again or forging them entirely\u2014is a third degree felony. And Tierney had several when she tried to end her life in 2007. All the things she had\u2014the house, the family, the license to practice law, custody of the kids\u2014were gone by then. She couldn\u2019t get out from under her addiction, and her mental health had spiraled. Her child endangerment charge from that day at the beach was another felony, second degree. There was nowhere to go, she figured, but to the grave.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After she tried to take her own life, she landed at Bergen Pines, a psychiatric detox unit. Tierney\u2019s recovery started there. So did her awakening about her mental health. When her counselor asked her what kinds of medication she was on, she confessed she didn\u2019t even have insurance. When he asked if she was seeing a psychiatrist, she was perplexed. \u201cWhy would I?\u201d she asked him. She went home and cried. The one person she had opened up to thought she was \u201ccrazy.\u201d It broke her down and woke her up. \u201cI was diagnosed with major depressive disorder and generalized anxiety disorder,\u201d says Tierney, \u201cand I\u2019ve been in psychiatric care ever since.\u201d She\u2019s also been on what she calls her \u201cjourney of wellness\u201d ever since.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Nikki Tierney (second from left) at home with her children (from left) Kole, Ashley, Amanda, and Kyle Devaney.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Tierney\u2019s life improved, one day at a time. She managed to get on her feet, develop relationships with her children, and volunteer with recovery groups and in her community. \u201cI do parenting classes, I do group therapy, I do individual therapy, I go to church,\u201d she says. \u201cI do anything I possibly can not to return to the darkness.\u201d Eventually she put 13 years of recovery together. But because of those felonies, there were things she couldn\u2019t do. She couldn\u2019t coach her kids\u2019 basketball teams, couldn\u2019t cosign their college loans, couldn\u2019t be a class mom. Getting jobs was difficult\u2014or required a lot of explaining. In New Jersey, there are 1,088 collateral consequences of having a felony on your record. And Tierney ran into most of them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It wasn\u2019t until she decided to pursue an M.S. in clinical mental health counseling at Monmouth that she read about her ability to expunge her record should she complete drug court, a program she was sentenced to and completed several years back. When Tierney went before the judge for the expungement, the judge told her, \u201cMy hands are tied. It says everybody who graduates gets expungement, but down the list, it cross-references things that can never be expunged.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Those things? Felonies\u2014including nonviolent, nonsexual child endangerment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It just didn\u2019t make sense to Tierney. People with violent felonies\u2014murder, rape, assault\u2014couldn\u2019t be admitted to drug court anyway. The judge knew it was an issue, and admitted that she had just hugged and turned down another mother who was trying to get her own life back on track. She urged Tierney to call legislators or appeal her decision. \u201cNikki, you could do it,\u201d she told her. \u201cYou could appeal me. You\u2019re the one that could.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s when all the roads Tierney had taken\u2014the productive ones like law school and the difficult ones like addiction and recovery\u2014came together to make change. What she wanted to do in that instance was cry and give up. But she made herself do something else. \u201cI told myself: \u2018Don\u2019t you dare be so selfish, because if you could hardly make it, what about them?\u2019\u201d she recalls.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She was worried about the single moms who would be overwhelmingly affected by the current law.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So instead of giving up, Tierney picked up the phone. She called legislators. She reached out to Monmouth for help\u2014professors offered advice, students and faculty signed petitions, and President Leahy gave Tierney access to Monmouth\u2019s general counsel, John Christopher. It took nearly four years and 10,000 signatures, but she pushed and pleaded and made the case to get a bill before the legislature that would offer expungement to those facing nonviolent, nonsexual child endangerment charges should they complete drug court (today called recovery court). It passed the assembly, but when it reached the judiciary committee, it stalled. Legislators came back with an edit: They would post the bill but would require a 10-year wait before a judge could grant an expungement in those cases. The compromise was frustrating for Tierney, who knew that children would age out by the time their parents\u2019 records were expunged. But it was a win nonetheless, one that would make a difference in her life and in the lives of other families with parents in recovery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today, Tierney continues to work with and for others who face substance use disorders and mental health challenges. Today, she has her Monmouth degree with a concentration in addiction studies. Today, she is a licensed associate counselor, certified alcohol and drug counselor, and peer recovery specialist at CPC Behavioral Healthcare and an in-community clinician with Jersey Innovative Science. She is also the coordinator for the Hazlet Municipal Alliance, which focuses on prevention and awareness. She knows her role in the community and in the health care profession might not have been within reach had her journey been any different, and today, she chooses to walk down this new path she has created for herself. The expungement is just one step along the way. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a huge step for myself and for others who benefit, because we will continue to pay it forward and show society that your belief in us is worth it,\u201d Tierney told the Asbury Park Press in January, days after the bill passed. \u201cMy gratitude is going to be a verb. I want to be exhibit one of why expungements, second chances, clean slates\u2014whatever we call it\u2014is one of the best investments society can make.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you are thinking about harming yourself or attempting suicide, call the toll-free, 24-hour hotline of the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline<\/a> at 1-800-273-TALK (1-800-273-8255), or by dialing 988 after July 16, 2022, to be connected to a trained counselor at a suicide crisis center nearest you.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Gripped by the claws of opioid use disorder, Nikki Tierney was convicted of child endangerment. Even after 13 years of recovery, it haunted her every move: where she could work, how she could interact with her kids. So Tierney focused on changing the law\u2014and the lives of others who are in sustained remission from substance use disorder.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":60,"featured_media":15702,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"image_focus":"{\"x\":33,\"y\":23}","hide_title":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15692","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-features"],"thumbnail":"\"\"","catString":"Features","issue":"Spring\/Summer 2022","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15692","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/60"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15692"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15692\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15721,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15692\/revisions\/15721"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15702"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15692"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15692"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15692"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}