14 DAY TRIAL // Scott Stapp, the former frontman of hit rock band Creed, went through a very troubled and highly mediated patch towards the end of 2014, starting with the moment he decided to post to Facebook a video claiming he was under attack, on the run, and in hiding because aliens and governmental forces were trying to kill him.
The video was quickly deleted from his Facebook page, but the story was already out there. Soon, it emerged that Stapp’s situation was even more complicated and sad than the video had hinted at.
Today, the former rocker is a new man: he is in recovery and under treatment, and he is finally ready to give the public his own account of the psychotic break he had.
Scott Stapp is diagnosed with bipolar disorder
Speaking with People Magazine, Stapp reveals that what got out to the public was just a fragment of his reality: he was on the run from his family for 3 full months, 1 of which he spent driving around the US because he was afraid to be in one place for longer than a day. He thought he was being under CIA surveillance.
He also thought he was working with the CIA and he called his son’s school to make threats against President Barack Obama. He believed his family were stealing money from him and that there were both human and alien forces trying to get him killed.
At the time, he was convinced that what he was saying and hallucinating was true. Today, he knows it was a psychotic episode brought on by alcohol and drug abuse, because he’s been diagnosed with bipolar disorder.
“I was hallucinating. I drove around the United States for a month, following an angel that I saw on the hood of my car,” Stapp tells People. “In my delusional thinking, I thought my family was involved in ISIS, and that millions of dollars had been taken from me to support terrorism. All of it was nonsense. I was out of my mind.”
The stigma of mental illness
His wife finally got him in treatment and was there by his side every step of the way. The task proved a challenge for both even after he was off the streets because, Stapp tells the publication, he didn’t want to accept that he had a mental issue.
Much like the rest of the society, he was afraid of the stigma attached to it. In time, he learned to accept it for what it was and that’s mostly thanks to the support of his family.
At least, now he knows why all those things happened to him, he has a reason for why he did what he did. The same goes for his wife, who tells People she could never exactly pinpoint what was wrong with Scott before the diagnosis. Now, she knows.
The former rocker is now in recovery and under treatment, and he says his focus is his sobriety because he’s seen the cost he has to pay for losing it.
