Roane State Community College

August 11, 2020

By Bob Fowler
Roane State staff writer

A decade ago, Keisha Thrower was struggling with addiction while living in an abandoned home in the town of Robbins, Tennessee. She says she sold illegal drugs to feed her disease.

Now addiction free for 10 years, she’s married, reunited with her children and working as a peer recovery specialist for the Scott County Recovery Court.

Part of her dramatic turnaround included the decision to enroll at Roane State Community College’s Scott County campus. “It just dawned on me that I can do this,” she said of her decision at age 32 to go to college.

Bolstered by supportive professors, a “truly amazing success coach” in Vannessa Overton and encouragement from campus director Sharon Wilson, Thrower graduated last December with a 3.9 grade point average and an associate’s degree in psychology.

“I believe with all of my heart that Roane State was a big part of restoring my life,” Thrower said. “With that degree, I’m able to have more money and benefits and provide for the future.”

Thrower describes her descent into substance misuse in an online account titled “Faces of Opioids” on the Tennessee Department of Health webpage. She said she was prescribed anti-anxiety medication when she was 9 years old and a victim of sexual abuse.

Pregnant at age 15 and divorced at 18, she said she met a man who introduced her to powerful pain pills. She described herself at age 19 as a “damaged young woman who had a lot of issues from being sexually, mentally, verbally and physically abused.”

She said she stopped taking drugs when she learned she was pregnant with her second son but resumed after his birth, and it soon took over her life. She and her boyfriend started selling drugs. “In a matter of a couple years, I literally lost everything, including my two children. I had become an IV drug user and I was homeless.”

Thrower said her arrest on March 16, 2010, was “the best day of my life” because it turned her life around. She went through “two weeks of the worst detox ever. I thought I was going to die and to be honest, I believe the prison staff thought it too.”

“I prayed for my higher power to either let me die or to help me.” Thrower said a month later, she signed up for a drug court program, spent a month in rehabilitation and then 18 months in a recovery residence. “I had to rebuild my life from the absolute bottom,” she said.

She took a job as a certified peer recovery specialist with the Scott County Recovery Court and then decided to enroll at Roane State, even though that move at age 32 was “very scary. It’s hard to be a mother and go back to school,” Thrower said.

She cleaned houses to make ends meet, and the campus became a comforting, secure haven thanks to the staff and faculty there, she said.

“The professors were truly amazing,” she said. “They wanted you to succeed. I went from being really scared to the college becoming the most pleasant experience I’ve had in my life.”

Thrower speaks fondly of Vannessa Overton, her college success coach who now works at Roane State’s Campbell County campus. “She was truly amazing and always encouraged me,” Thrower said. Campus director Sharon Wilson also was a positive influence and has urged her to continue her education. “You’d be surprised how that encouragement helped me.”

She said her psychology classes taught by associate professor Andy Anderson “were the most fun. He is absolutely amazing. I’d take any class he would teach.” She said she met Brittany Dyer, who is now her best friend, while they were both taking psychology classes.

After she graduated, Thrower said she resumed her job at the Scott County Recovery Court. She said she keeps “God at the center of my life” and calls her husband, Wesley Thrower, “my biggest supporter.”