College degrees provide lifeline for Grove City resident to overcome addiction, prison stints

Chris Lyons didn't get to attend his 2009 graduation ceremony with his Grove City High School classmates.

He was in rehab trying to overcome an addiction to heroin he had developed during his freshman year.

"At that time, not being part of graduation didn't really register with me," Lyons, 30, said. "But later, when I was in prison and had time to think about it, I really regretted that."

But a long-running postsecondary correctional program that many people outside prison walls might not know about changed his life.

Lyons was sure to attend the ceremony in May 2020 to receive a bachelor's degree from Ashland University.

He earned an associate degree in 2018 while serving time at the Grafton Correctional Institution through Ashland's Correctional Education program. 

When Lyons was released from prison in 2020, he had one more course to complete to earn a bachelor's degree.

Participating in his college graduation "felt so awesome," he said. "The best part was that I wasn't treated like an ex-con but as a student like everyone else."

And his parents, Ed and Lisa Lyons, were able to attend the ceremony, and Lyons said he felt a sense of accomplishment.

What he has accomplished – earning the two degrees, starting graduate school last month at Ohio State University, married to a former classmate in Grove City and father to two stepchildren – all seemed far out of reach at one time, he said.

"I can't believe how my life has turned out," Lyons said. "I never thought I would get married or would have stepchildren. I never planned to have children."

A good portion of his life had been spent figuring out how he was going to get the heroin he had craved and trying to survive incarceration.

Struggle with ADHD, start of addiction

Lyons and his family moved from Berea to Grove City just before he started first grade.

Although he always was a high-achieving student, Lyons struggled with issues relating to attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder.

"My mind was always racing," he said. "I couldn't sit still. I always had anxiety. I never felt like I fit in.

"I wasn't like other ADHD students. I did well in school, so my parents didn't really believe that I had ADHD – 'You're doing so well in school and achieving so much; it can't be that.' They meant well and loved me. I was raised in a caring home with good values."

But he knew how his ADHD made him feel, he said.

"I was a straight-A student. I took advanced classes, was on the football and wrestling teams. I was involved in choir, played drums and got the lead in the spring musical," Lyons said.

Those activities helped him cope with the ADHD, he said.

But Lyons said he started using marijuana when he was 10 years old.

"I did almost all the drugs you can think of, except for benzos," he said.

Benzodiazepines, a class of psychoactive drugs, are prescribed to treat such conditions as anxiety, insomnia and seizures.

In the summer before his freshman year, he tried heroin for the first time.

"Suddenly, I felt normal for the first time in my life," Lyons said. "It seemed to calm my brain down. I felt at peace."

Heroin actually was a trap, he said.

"I thought I could stop if I wanted, so when school started up again in the fall, I tried to stop," Lyons said. "I felt horrible. I felt sick to my stomach. A friend told me, 'Man, you're dope sick.'"

Almost instantly, Lyons said, he had become addicted to heroin.

Feeding the heroin beast

To support his habit, Lyons arranged with a supplier to sell heroin to dealers.

"I would skim a bit off the top for my own use," he said. "That's how I was paid – not in money but in heroin."

That arrangement continued during freshman and sophomore years. During this time, Lyons said, he continued to excel in the classroom and in extracurriculars.

"I stopped football to concentrate on wrestling," he said. "What I liked about wrestling was it was something I could do every day."

During junior year, he earned the lead role of Tony in the high school's spring production of "West Side Story."

"I had to quit the role because I was in rehab," Lyons said.

Addiction's path to crime

His life began to spiral out of control during his junior year, when his heroin arrangement fell through. That's when Lyons said he turned to crime. 

"I started committing burglaries and robberies to support my drug habit," Lyons said. "I justified it in my mind. I only robbed drug dealers, so I thought that was OK since they were just drug dealers."

When he burglarized homes, he said, he told himself his victims all had insurance and would be able to replace their items.

The reality was made clear to him later when he was in court and one of his residential victims testified about how traumatized his family had been by the burglary.

"It really brought it all home to me," Lyons said. "As I listened to him, I put my head down and started to cry."

It's not that he hadn't realized he had a drug problem, he said. In fact, he said, he attended rehab about a half dozen times during his junior and senior years of high school. 

"I wanted to get better; I really did," he said. "I got so tired of feeling sick and needing the drug."

As a minor, Lyons was not placed in an extensive long-term program that would allow him to address the issues leading to his addiction, he said.

The path was clear and well worn.

After a short stint in rehab, he would succumb to his addition, commit crimes to support the habit and wind up in court.

Crime's path to prison

Lyons served his first prison sentence from age 19 to 22 at the Noble Correctional Institution in Caldwell.

"It was hellish," Lyons said. "It was unbelievably rough, tough and violent. I got beat up twice in one day just after I started serving. Everyone knew my parents had a little money, so I was a target."

Noble had a cell block that was exclusively populated by inmates 21 years old and younger, he said.

"It was the dumbest idea to have all these kids locked up in one place," Lyons said.

Most of the young inmates were gang members, and they didn't follow any rules, he said. And there never seemed to be consequences for anything they would do in prison.

"Someone would go out in the yard and hit someone in the head with a rock, and they wouldn't get into any trouble," Lyons said. "You wouldn't be sent to solitary or anything."

Soon after his release from prison, Lyons said, he was using again.

After breaking an ankle in a hiking accident, he was given pain medication, which only fed the urge.

"It brought back my craving for heroin, and I was back on the stuff before you knew it," Lyons said. "I went back to stealing to support my addiction."

Hope in education

Lyons quickly ended up back at Noble and served more than six years before being released in 2020.

Things had improved at Noble, with better programming and resources available for inmates, he said.

He had started taking college courses during his first prison stint, but there was no avenue for earning a degree, he said.

After hearing about Ashland's Correctional Education program offered at Grafton, he  received a transfer.

"I'm really grateful for the opportunity the program gave me," Lyons said.

It allowed him to turn his life around, he said.

Ashland's Correctional Education program has been in place since 1964 and was first offered at the Ohio State Reformatory in Mansfield, said Todd Marshall, the university's vice president for correctional education and innovation.

"We're the longest continuously running postsecondary correctional program operating in the United States," Marshall said.

The program is offered in prisons in 13 states and Washington, D.C., he said.

Over the past five years, more than 1,100 inmates have earned degrees through the program, Marshall said.

"One of the goals of the program is to offer inmates a positive pathway for their future life," he said. "Many of the inmates who go through the program are the first members of their family to earn a degree."

The average age of a Correctional Education student is "in the upper 30s – 37 or 38," Marshall said.

"They are going through the same level of coursework as a regular student at the university," he said. "They must have a high school education or the equivalent, and they have to apply for acceptance into college the same as any other student."

Pell Grant money allows the program to be offered at no cost to the inmate or the prison, Marshall said.

Most Correctional Education participants take courses via distant learning on laptops or other devices, he said. Three 12-week sessions are offered each year.

"Most inmates have 'day jobs' they have to fulfill daily at the prison," Marshall said. "The distant-learning method means they have the ability to complete the coursework on a schedule that's convenient to them."

The students have access to professors for assistance, he said.

Focused on the future

Lyons said he is convinced he received the same level of attention and care he would have received as a regular student enrolled in the school.

He earned a Bachelor of Arts in communication studies, with a double minor in sociology and business administration. He started classes in August to earn a master's degree in social work at Ohio State.

"What I want to do is open a practice with a specialty of working with young people and people dealing with addiction," Lyons said. "I want to help people avoid the issues that I had to go through."

He said he would like to help ease the reentry that ex-inmates make into regular society.

Society does not do enough to help inmates reenter society after their release from prison, he said.

"Society only defines you as an 'ex-con,' and the places you're able to live are usually poor neighborhoods where there's a lot of crime," Lyons said.

It's all too easy for someone to slip back into the relationships and habits they had before and back into a life of crime, he said.

He continues to struggle on a daily basis against the temptation and ache to slip back to using drugs, Lyons said.

"It's always there in the back of your mind," he said.

To continue his recovery, Lyons said, he attends rehab meetings several times a week, participates in marriage counseling and meets with a counselor to address the post-traumatic stress disorder that resulted from his harsh time in prison.

"The PTSD still affects me so much," he said. "I can get really anxious when someone is walking behind me, for example."

Lyons said he knows his recovery is a work in progress.

"I think the important thing is to totally remove yourself from the people, the places and the situations that might draw you back into that life," he said.

Lyons married his wife, Harley, in September 2020 and once again lives in Grove City.

"Harley's really the reason I've continued on to graduate school," he said. "I had started working, and she said that with her job and insurance, I should stop work and concentrate on furthering my education so I could achieve all of my goals."

The couple have known each other since childhood.

"We were both in some of the advanced classes together," he said. "When I was living in a halfway house after getting out of prison the second time, we reconnected, and I knew pretty quickly she was someone special.

"She's really my soulmate, and Harley and my stepdaughters are my source of strength."

Harley Lyons said she was not aware of the struggles Lyons was going through until she heard he had been sent to prison after graduation.

"Then everybody kind of knew what was going on," she said, adding they were not close friends while in school. 

"We didn't run around in the same crowd," she said. 

But something about Lyons made an impact on her, she said.

"It's funny because I would think about him sometimes over the years, just wondering how he was doing," she said. "There must have been some kind of spark there."

In early 2020, she reconnected with him via social media.

"I just wanted to see how he was doing and let him know I was thinking about him," she said.

After exchanging a series of messages, the pair agreed to meet at Scioto Grove Metro Park, where they spent hours just walking and talking, she said.

"You know how sometimes you can spend several hours with someone and it feels like only a few seconds have gone by? That's how much you're connecting with each other," Harley Lyons said. "It was like that with Chris.

"I'm so proud of everything Chris has accomplished because I know how much he's had to overcome and he's still overcoming. He's such a wonderful soul. He's the bravest person I know."

As his wife, she said, she shares in her husband's battle to overcome drug addiction.

The couple have come up with a code word – "pumpernickel" – that Lyons can use anytime he is beginning to feel stressed out or have a desire to use drugs.

It can be difficult for him to express what he's feeling, Harley Lyons said.

"The code word allows us to move right to getting him the help or support he needs at that moment, and we can talk about it later when he's ready," she said.

"It cuts to the chase," Lyons said. "It's just easier for me to use one word to express what I'm feeling than try to explain it all at that time."

Lyons should be defined as more than just a recovering drug addict or ex-con, Harley Lyons said.

"He's a very special person," she said. "He wants to use his education to help others."

The quality of his character is reflected in how quickly and deeply her daughters bonded with their new stepfather, she said. 

"They have a good relationship with their father, but after Chris and I got married, they wanted to know if it was OK if they call him Dad," she said. "I told them that's what they should call him if that's what he means to them."

"I can't quite believe how good my life has turned out," Chris Lyons said.

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