Danny Gilbert

Danny Gilbert’s role in the account of his daughter Joey Gilbert’s addiction is defined by the practical work of trying to keep her alive: helping manage medication, confronting barriers to treatment, and responding to her pleas in the hours before her death. His story shows a parent attempting to provide structure and support within a treatment system that could demand abstinence even when withdrawal and relapse made that demand dangerous.

Father and Treatment Support

Joey had previously benefited from monthly Vivitrol injections, but lost access when she turned twenty-six and could no longer remain on her father’s insurance. Without coverage, the injections would have cost $1,500 a month. She later transitioned to buprenorphine prescribed by Dr. David Hartman, a Roanoke psychiatrist whose federally mandated waiting list had also prevented Tess Henry from promptly accessing care.

The prescription came with conditions: Joey had to pass a weekly drug test. Danny held her medication and gave it to her daily, providing a measure of control over its use. The medication cost about $700 a month. Even with this arrangement, waiting lists and the requirement that Joey be drug-free before entering rehab kept treatment difficult to reach, while her continued drug use left her vulnerable to relapse and overdose.

Disagreement Over the Route to Rehab

When Joey decided to enter rehab, she began tapering herself off medication, although she knew the risks. Jamie Waldrop and Cheri Hartman supported her determination but worried about the taper. Danny argued that requiring a person with addiction to be clean before admission was unreasonable. He also pointed to Joey’s difficulty tolerating pain and her belief that she could not stop taking one substance without taking another.

The admission rule was not presented as simple indifference on the treatment center’s part: Jamie explained that it could not afford medical staff to supervise detox or medication. The resulting bind remained consequential for Joey. She needed treatment, but preparing to qualify for it meant reducing the medication that had been helping her manage cravings and withdrawal.

The Final Call and Messages

Joey had two halves of a Suboxone pill left and was trying to stretch them as she prepared for rehab. The next day, while Danny was traveling in northern Virginia with his wife, Joey called him after another fight with her boyfriend and said she felt her resolve slipping. She told him she did not want to die. They argued on the phone.

A few hours later, Joey texted to ask Danny to transfer four dollars so she could buy cigarettes. He replied that she was loved and urged her to get the cigarettes but also to get her life back. The exchange captures both the small, immediate need she brought to him and his attempt to redirect the conversation toward survival and recovery.

Death and Significance

The next morning, Cheri Hartman told Jamie Waldrop that Joey had died after an overdose of illicit methadone. Joey had lain inside a Roanoke County house for nearly eight hours before anyone called 911; people who had been using drugs with her had cleaned up the scene, fearing prosecution. She was twenty-seven. Her death, the nineteenth lethal overdose in the Roanoke County suburbs that year, followed the treatment obstacles Danny had been trying to navigate with her.

Danny’s part in the narrative is not a claim that parental supervision could overcome those obstacles. He could hold and administer medication, argue against an abstinence-before-admission rule, and answer a desperate call, but he could not secure an uninterrupted path from medication to rehab. His final text stands as an intimate record of care under pressure: an effort to reach his daughter through the immediate crisis while asking her to imagine a life beyond it.