"Drugs were never recreational for me," he wrote. "My use of them from the beginning was abusive." His drug use escalated when he discovered heroin. Gibson was in and out of jails in Canada, (which led to his hilarious Christmas carol "Box of Candy and a Piece of Fruit"), Chicago, and Cleveland, for various drug-related charges. In the mid-1960s, he began a three-year period of complete isolation where drugs were his only priority. From 1969 to 1978, he tried repeatedly to restart his career, but his addictions made it impossible. In 1978, he attended an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting in Cleveland and eventually regained his sobriety. A musical comeback, however, was not to be. While he had been a popular and high-profile performer in the 1960s—as well as an important influence on other musicians—by 1978, interest in his purely acoustic folk-styled music had waned significantly. Although many remembered Gibson, and he recorded several albums of new music over the next several years, he was never again to capture the mass public appeal of his early 1960s period. Illness and death Around 1990, Gibson began to experience loss of balance, frequent falls, and other neurological symptoms. Later, his vision and then his voice were affected. In 1994 he entered the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Florida where a diagnosis of progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP) was made. With only 20,000 PSP patients in the United States (as opposed, for example, to 500,000 with Parkinson's disease), it was an "orphan disease" and therefore the object of little research. Gibson moved from "my favorite place to live (Mendocino, California)" to Portland, Oregon where PSP was being studied. As his illness advanced, Gibson invited many of his friends to a farewell "hootenanny" on September 20, 1996, in Chicago: This may be the last chance I have to see many of you. I am finding it increasingly difficult to do the simplest things and traveling is really a challenge. I won't be able to play and sing with you, but I'm really looking forward to being an audience of one! Studs Terkel served as host for the event. Gibson tired early, struggled to rise and say goodnight, and received a standing ovation. One week later, on September 28, 1996, he died at the home of his daughter, Susan, in Portland. In 1997, Gibson was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award posthumously by the World Folk Music Association. Discography Legend: