TV & VIDEO - March 9, 1987

Christian television personality Tammy Faye Bakker is being treated for drug dependency and could be away from the PTL ministry’s daily broadcast for up to a year, officials said. Bakker, 45, and her evangelist husband, Jim, made the announcement in a videotape shown at PTL’s Fort Mill, S.C., studio Friday and scheduled for broadcast nationwide today. Tammy Bakker already has been absent from the show for two months. Jim Bakker blamed the problem on an over-the-counter allergy medicine his wife has been taking for 17 years and on tranquilizers doctors prescribed to reduce nervousness the medication caused. Previously, PTL had said only that Tammy Bakker was recovering from pneumonia and complications from medicine she took after getting sick recently.