Myth: that she needs to get on her meds rather than off. No, it’s almost always addiction. Espcially when she drives onto a runway with a 2-month-old in the car.
“She’s not going to be stable until she gets on medication.”
So said Bebe Anderson in explaining that her daughter, KoKo Nicole Anderson, 21, who had crashed through a gate at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport and drove onto a runway with her infant son in the car, suffered from bipolar disorder.
The trouble with this explanation is, as described in Alcoholism Myths and Realities, alcohol and other-drug addiction mimics (and sometimes triggers) mental illnesses such as bipolar disorder.
Police found KoKo in her car with the 2-month-old baby’s pacifier in the mother’s mouth. She told officers she wanted her flip-flop shoe. She was acting so erratically, a drug recognition officer (DRE) was called to the scene. Since a charge of aggravated DUI was added to charges of criminal damage and DREs are the law enforcement experts in identifying people who are under the influence, we can safely assume she was on something. Despite the claims of those who believe they can “dually diagnose” both a personality disorder and substance addiction, she needs to get clean and sober before being diagnosed as bipolar, which I seriously doubt will be the case.
If Bebe Anderson wants to help her granddaughter to avoid becoming yet one more tragic and very innocent victim of an undiagnosed and untreated psychotropic drug addict, she will correct her thinking to, “She’s not going to be stable until she gets off her drugs, whatever they may be.”