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I have read both Great Big Beautiful Doll and Train Wreck...both paint ANS as a difficult and troubled personality with a lot of issues.

The interesting thing is that the family was extremely dysfunctional and Virgie wanted NOTHING to do with any Hogans and that included Donna. Yet Donna is very complimentary of Virgie and that ANS’s stories are unfounded. She confirms that ANS was wildly out of control and Virgie struggled to keep her on the straight and narrow and that is why she sent her to Mexia.

Donna confirms that Donald Hogan (her father and ANS’s stepfather) was and is a horrible and abusive parent. ANS didn’t experience this as he left when she was an infant and it devastated Virgie when ANS established contact with him in later years.

Virgie and ANS did have a love/hate relationship as both are strong and controlling personalities. Virgie disapproved of ANS’s lifestyle and the heavy drinking, drugs and indiscriminate sex.

ANS, even as a child, was someone who was always unhappy and couldn’t be alone. Even in those early years she made things up about herself (the identity of her mother) and in later years her fabricating events and facts about herself was common.

It really is a sad story as it becomes clear that the drugs insulated her from herself.

Would you say she had a borderline personality? Could she have suffered from schizophrenia? Multiple personality disorder? She seemed unhinged, although incredibly beautiful (in her natural state...not all painted up and in bizarre dress). I’m no psychiatrist so apologies if these terms are used inappropriately. But you get my drift. I think something was quite wrong in her head and the drugs were her gone haywire attempt at self medicating. Thanks for reporting on what you’ve read.