An untold secret lies below the surface of the ground-shaking “BeastQuake” run by Seahawk Marshawn Lynch.
Widely overlooked at the start of that famous play, Mike Gibson pulled from his right guard spot to lead Lynch to the point of attack against the New Orleans Saints defense.
Cutting behind Gibson’s block, Lynch wove a 67-yard path of destruction so exciting that the joyful spasms of Seattle fans registered on nearby seismometers.
Unknown to even teammates and coaches, Gibson was dealing with pain from a chronically dislocating hip. That season, he was working his way up to daily dosages of 300 milligrams of the painkiller Vicodin.
Following that wild-card playoff win, the Seahawks built toward subsequent Super Bowls, while Gibson descended into a dependency on drugs, including heroin, that eventually cost him almost everything.
Nine years sober, the 40-year-old Gibson is working in the field of mental health/addiction treatment in San Diego.
He believes the National Football League could learn from his story. It is a cautionary tale that other players would not likely forget.
• There were years when “all I could think about was football and taking Vicodin.”
• At times he had to decide whether to buy food or score drugs. He would choose “… drugs, 100 percent … food was not even a thought.” His weight dropped from 305 to 210.
• His deepest motivation wasn’t pain, but fear. Considering himself a fringe-roster player, he always felt that if coaches could tell he was injured or addicted, he’d be cut, losing both his career and identity.
Now, Gibson has a family, a job, and an amazing story to tell.
Until now, only a few have heard of Gibson’s fall and recovery. One of those is his closest former teammate, Seahawks linebacker Lofa Tatupu.
“I love him and I’m just so proud of him,” Tatupu said last week. “Not only is he sharing his story, which might save lives, but he’s helping people get out of the darkness that he felt.”
• • •
A sixth-round draft pick of the Philadelphia Eagles in 2008, Gibson left the University of California, Berkeley, as a 6-4, 308-pound offensive lineman with such strength he bench-pressed 225 pounds 31 times at the NFL Scouting Combine.
He was smart, and a quick learner, who would volunteer to fill any position on the offensive line. A shoulder injury sidelined him his first season in Philadelphia, and the Seahawks signed him off the Eagles’ practice squad in the 2009 season.
During early practices in Seattle, Gibson caught the attention of Tatupu, then a Pro Bowl linebacker in his fifth season.
“I’ll never forget watching him kick the (expletive) out of people,” Tatupu said, citing Gibson’s “warrior mentality.”
“(I loved it) anytime I saw somebody really enjoying the violent parts of this game. … But outside of that, he was the nicest human being you’ve ever met – a source of light and laughter, always cracking jokes, having fun. I saw parts of myself in him; this guy gets what it’s all about.”
During training camp his second season in Seattle (2010), coach Pete Carroll’s first year, Gibson suffered a torn labrum in his hip. “(It was) a subluxation, like a dislocation of the hip, so it would pop out and pop back in,” he said.
Operating under a lineman’s code of forbearance, and fighting to keep a spot on the roster, here’s how Gibson dealt with his injury: “I didn’t say anything; I didn’t want anybody to know. So, I basically got a prescription from my doctor back home.”
Not through the Seahawks medical staff, he said.
“I started taking it as prescribed,” he said. Gibson recognized later that he hadn’t effectively educated himself on the addictive qualities of painkillers. “It was all my fault. Not researching enough.”
Use of Vicodin and oxycodone, he said, was not uncommon in the league. But as the season wore on, the effectiveness lessened. Gibson said that when he informed his doctor that his tolerance was building up, he was told: “Take two.”
• • •
During the 2011 offseason, which was disrupted by the 18-week NFL contract lockout, Gibson realized he was chemically dependent on opioids.
He tried to kick the addiction himself, but sickened by withdrawals, he went to an emergency room. “The emergency room prescribed me more,” Gibson said. “I ended up taking more and felt better.”
He couldn’t kick the self-doubts, either.
“I had the fear I was the 53rd (last) guy on the roster at all times, and if the team would find out (about the addiction) they would end up releasing me,” he said.
Fair to question a subtext to Gibson’s story: If the “warrior mentality” is a quality that can elevate some players to greatness, is it also a quality that can make them vulnerable? Can those outside the game understand its powerful lure: The job, the money, the identity?
“Everything about Gibby, the temperament, the attitude, the willingness to put his body out there, I always admired,” Tatupu said.
But Tatupu feared Gibson hadn’t developed the ability to “forgive himself if he had a bad play,” Tatupu said. “You’ve just got to flush it and move on. I wish I had a little more time to really teach him that.”
When the lockout ended, Gibson returned with a painkiller prescription from his doctor at home, which was submitted to the league for approval for prescribed drugs. His problem was that the prescription was 31 days old when he was tested, and it needed to be dated within 30 days of the test. It landed him on the league substance program. Not for the amount or the abuse, but as a matter of timing and paperwork.
Once in the program, under regular testing, Gibson realized how much he was struggling without the drugs. “All I could think about was football and taking Vicodin.”
All his own fault, he stressed.
“I reached out to a friend in the area who had some and he said he didn’t have the 5 or 10 milligram (pills), he only had the blue oxys (30 milligrams),” Gibson said. “And I said, ‘Well, let me take those.’ I felt amazing.”
His next question: “How can I get more?” Gibson said he was buying 120 of the 30 milligram pills a month.
By then, he had become adept at manipulating his prescriptions to cope with the league drug tests.
• • •
Gibson ended up playing a full, 16-game season with the Arizona Cardinals in 2013.
“I was playing every game, every practice … taking 30 of those things,” he said.
He mentioned something else about the pills: “Expensive.” It became a growing concern when he was no longer receiving NFL paychecks.
“Once I retired, for me, the question was, ‘What is my purpose?’ From the time I was 8 years old, I was always ‘Mike, the football player,’ so, what am I going to do next?”
Take more drugs.
Asked about a time when he felt he had reached bottom, Gibson pinpointed 2017. “I had lost everything at that point. All I had was two garbage bags of clothes and shoes. I couldn’t get a bank account. I had sold houses and cars and basically everything I had. I ruined relationships because of it.”
His NFL pension and 401(k) were not available until age 45, he said. “Thank God. Can you imagine me at 30 with my 401(k) and an addiction to heroin?”
In Gibson’s first of six tries in drug-rehab centers that year, a fellow patient touted the wonders of heroin, which, he learned, was “cheaper, faster and harder.”
At one point, he lived 27 days in a hotel in Orange County, doing drugs along with a revolving cohort of users. In essence, he had disappeared.
Was suicide a consideration?
“At times,” he said. “The thought process was that it would just be easier to end my life than to face the shame and guilt of disappearing on my family, losing money with nothing to show for it. A lot of it had to do with my own depressive state; I felt my life was worthless at the time.”
He ultimately found a treatment center outside San Diego that finally addressed one of the primary impediments to his recovery: his ego.
“The beauty of it was they made me do chores, constantly mop floors, do dishes, make my bed,” he said. “Holding me accountable – humility is a major part of finding myself, and my recovery. And it didn’t happen overnight.”
• • •
When his recovery took hold, Gibson worked for several years at the rehab center, Mental Health Center of San Diego.
Ryan Winberry, owner of the MHCSD and other facilities, has seen the enormous positive effects Gibson has on others fighting addictions.
“One, he’s an extraordinarily large human being,” Winberry said. “When he walks into the room, he’s the candle light, larger than life. He’s got a great, loud personality, and he’s happy and he’s smiley, and he’s able to relate to guys who are struggling with it.”
If problems like theirs could bring down a Goliath like Gibson, it felt less humbling that it had happened to them.
“I think they say, ‘If he can do it, so can I,’ ” Winberry said.
Gibson is now director of business development and marketing for the Moment of Clarity, a mental health outpatient program in Southern California.
Gibson was clear he didn’t blame the NFL or Seahawks or any of the other teams for which he played. Now? “All I’ve wanted to do is raise awareness (in the league),” he said. “I’d like to reduce the stigma.” He said he’d like to see the league’s focus shift toward prevention and treatment.
The fear of being punished and suspended “was what prevented me from going to anybody who could have fixed it,” Gibson said. He believes he could be “a valuable resource for current and former players.”
• • •
Through treatment and hard work, “I’ve been able to build my life back to where it was,” Gibson said. Except he doesn’t use money as a measurement any more.
His work counseling others has given him “the gratification and fulfillment of seeing somebody become successful, being able to achieve something they never thought they could. That’s everything to me.”
Interesting that both Tatupu and Winberry used the term “light” to describe Gibson’s personality these days. Perhaps he presents that quality to those he counsels, as well.
So much of Gibson’s story was unknown to Tatupu, who had no clue of it even while Gibson lived for a time at the Tatupu home. When he learned the full details, “I was shocked.”
“I could not be more proud of the man he’s always been, rising to his potential, and being the father he is,” Tatupu said. “And the pure joy I see now when he’s with his family.
“He’s one of my favorite teammates and one of the greatest guys,” Tatupu added. “I was so proud of him because the mark of a true champion is not how many times you fall, but how many times you get back up.”
So, the next time you watch a video of the “BeastQuake” run, watch for No. 64 plowing into the defense, and know that Gibson’s path to recovery was, in its own way, every bit as hard-fought and triumphant as Lynch’s touchdown that day.