Chapter One - Dad's perspective


My name is Scott Gibbs and I will always be Marcus' father. We are a middle class family living in Hilton, NY. A wonderful community of caring friends and family. "Rarely abusive" I believe refers to my yelling because I have never laid a hand on anyone. "Rarely home" refers to my extensive travel schedule. To his point, I was not home a lot....and when I was home, I was a father with a short temper focused more on work than my family. This was not a great way to create healthy family dynamics. Fortunately for us, my wife is a wonderful person and was holding us all together. 


We were proud of Marcus going to college with a plan. Marcus started using alcohol and marijuana spring term of his high school senior year. 


The summer before Marcus went to college was difficult for all of us. Marcus was smoking pot and drinking against our wishes and became harder to talk to. He started identifying as a "smoker." We struggled to help him realize that this was not a productive path and his peers were not helping. 


I believed he was in love and I believed that he believed he wanted to be with his girlfriend forever. We encouraged him to stay the course at Canisius but we did not know that he was in such a bad place with drugs at that point.




I definitely did not know that Marcus had been using pain-killers in high school. This is the first I have learned about it. I question if his memory is correct here. We think his pain-killer abuse started in college when he had knee surgery and befriended the veteran he describes in his next paragraph. 


I knew that Marcus was tutoring this person and was worried about their relationship because of the age difference. We had no idea that he was using drugs to the extent that he was.  


Yes, it was an interesting summer. Not pleasant. At this point, we still did not realize the extent of Marcus' drug use. I did not get a new job yet. I was still traveling most weeks. We co-signed for Marcus' apartment near the local community college. His friends told us that he was out of control partying all the time. He and his roommate soon parted ways and Marcus came home to live with us. I think he lived at the apartment for 3 months before asking to move back home. 


At this point, we knew we had a problem but still didn't know how big a problem. I started getting some counseling to help me figure out how to best help Marcus and our family. By the summer of 2015, I knew that I needed to be home more to help our family navigate our situation. I took a new job in the fall of 2015 so that I could be the father to Marcus that he needed me to be. I spent nearly every night at home for the next 12 months. I had no idea that I was too late and that his drug use was spiraling out of control. 


Marcus entered rehab fall of 2015 and made significant progress towards recovery. We are grateful for the time that he spent there and for the counseling he received. He came home a respectful young man that enjoyed being at home with his family, working hard and making money. He was a pleasure to be around. It is still hard for us to believe that we didn't know how bad our situation was. 

High performance strategist, #thinkstrongnow. Business Wingman, Blacktop to boardroom

 

Marcus is/was my oldest of three sons and was a wonderful person....kind, loving, generous and fun-seeking. Marcus had become dependent on prescription opiates which led him to heroin dependence. He was working hard on his sobriety and had been detoxing himself at home for the two weeks prior to his death. His mother and I could see how much pain he was in during this process and it broke our hearts. At the same time, we were extremely grateful that he had decided to get clean. 


The weekend prior to his death, Marcus had decided that he wanted to help other people "knockout" their relationships with drugs. He had also decided that he and I were going to write a book together to help other families cope with drug dependency issues. To get started, he had his mother buy the domain names knockoutheroin.net and knockoutopiates.com and he began writing his book. His vision for his book was for him to write about his journey and what he was thinking at different points in time. He had envisioned that I would write my version of events alongside his. Then, together, we would summarize the changes we went through, what we learned and how the experiences had made our relationship stronger.  


Marcus died in pursuit of his sobriety on November 16, 2016. Marcus was active with the Open Door Mission and was an organ donor. His organs improved the lives of 5 recipients and we have met Marcus' heart recipient and his family. We have listened to Marcus' heart beat in another man's body. Marcus will be forever 21 years old. F21MTG. The weekend before he died, Marcus wrote two chapters for Knockout Opiates. Here is our DRAFT of Chapter One. 

Chapter One - Marcus' perspective


My name is Marcus Gibbs. I come from a middle class family in the suburbs of Rochester, NY. My family was a loving one and my father was rarely abusive or home. But we definitely felt the love, vacations, plenty at Christmas and my mom always made sure we got to our sports practices and games. Things were going great. I joined my cross-country team and did well. I even got into Canisius College. I was there to complete the premier finance program in New York. A program that surpasses finance programs at Columbia University and Cornell University. 


All seemed to be going according to plan in the eyes of my mother, father and counselor. After all, I was on scholarship and making lasting relationships. 


My freshman year I was arrested twice...and hospitalized twice. As a result, I was on what Hollywood calls "double secret probation"; punished with over 200 hours of community service. "Fuck that" i said. I dropped out after completing 12 credits and never looked back. 


How could I explain this to the ones I loved wrapped up in a pretty package? The answer came that summer when my girlfriend of 3 years said she had too much anxiety to move out to Buffalo with me my sophomore year. So that was the story and that's who I blamed....and even my girlfriend blamed herself for me leaving the college dream behind. 


What nobody knew was I had battled with opiate dependency since I was 14. A series of surgeries when I was in high school had opened my eyes to a new world of warmth and confidence, you know what I mean. 




In college after a calculus course me and the Afghanistan veteran I tutored would drive down the block to his place study for 30 minutes and smoke Fentynyl, snort vicodin, and pop percs until I hit the floor. I could always roll with the best of 'em. 


So coming back home that summer was confusing to say the least. My Dad got a new job so he could be home more to watch me because I don't think he truly believed my story that I dropped out for love. I found a good morphine connection, got a job and attended community college. 





If I was ever too fucked up and my stranger of a father would yell, I need only throw things he felt guilty about in his face, act violent and walk out of the situation. On a daily basis, I set out to prove that he failed and couldn't protect me, he didn't care where I was or what happened to me. I remember saying some very off color things. I was pretty good at getting sympathy, my family was justifying my drug use and I was in bliss. My girlfriend was so sheltered. She had no idea what was going on and we were in love. Nothing else mattered.