These disconcerting photographs of Britney Spears took her admirers aback. Now, at last, she divulges the true essence of those moments.
In recent years, Britney Spears' fans had numerous reasons for concern, but the enigmatic occurrences of early 2019 were especially disquieting.
Within a matter of months, Spears abruptly canceled her imminent Las Vegas residency, just weeks before its scheduled commencement, and quietly sought refuge in a psychiatric rehabilitation facility for an extended sojourn.
The images of Spears in public shortly after her stay in the facility bewildered the world: She appeared lost and shattered, her countenance devoid of expression and her gaze empty. "Britney Spears looks like a bewildered disarray in the peculiar initial photos post entering rehab," read RadarOnline's uncharitable headline during that time.
Now, over two years later, Spears herself has provided troubling context for those pictures in her explosive 24-minute courtroom address, which is part of her ongoing conservatorship case.
As Spears recounts it, her relationship with her conservator father, Jamie, and other handlers soured after she confided that she felt overburdened and had reservations about proceeding with the Vegas residency, slated to open in February 2019.
She was taken aback when they agreed to cancel the residency just five weeks before its commencement but feared immediate "retribution" for the cancellation.
According to her testimony, her therapist prescribed the psychiatric drug lithium just three days later.
"He took me off my regular medications that I had been on for five years. And lithium is an incredibly potent and entirely different medication compared to what I was accustomed to," she said.
Spears alleges that she was also coerced into daily four-hour psychiatric evaluations at her residence. She claims that after one such assessment, her father called to inform her that she had failed and would be sent to a rehab facility, which would cost her $60,000. She asserts that he relished her emotional reaction to the news.
"I wept on the phone for an hour, and he savored every moment of it. He relished the control he wielded over someone as influential as myself – he delighted in hurting his own daughter to the fullest extent," she stated.
Spears likened her time in the facility to "sex trafficking": "Enslaving someone to work against their will, confiscating all their possessions – credit cards, cash, phone, passport – and confining them in a place where they toil alongside fellow inmates."
She further alleges that she was compelled to work in the rehab facility for ten hours a day, seven days a week, and was threatened that she wouldn't be permitted to see her two children or her boyfriend, Sam Asghari, unless she complied.
She also contends that she was under constant surveillance "morning, noon, and night," afforded no privacy, and even observed while changing.
And now, the images – first published in April 2019 as Britney emerged from rehab. As she explains it now, she was "intoxicated" with lithium and had just undergone a traumatic and exhausting ordeal.
But was the rehab stint truly necessary? Spears vehemently insists that it was not.
"They advised me, for the sake of my public image, to go ahead [to rehab] and get it over with. That's what they said to me. It's ironic – I don't even drink alcohol. Considering what they've put my heart through, perhaps I should," she shared with the court.
So what lies ahead for Britney? After her impassioned address, the judge expressed willingness to entertain a formal request to terminate the conservatorship. However, it seems that Britney desires more than just that; in court, she asserted that those responsible for perpetuating her conservatorship should be held accountable, even suggesting the possibility of imprisonment.
"I would honestly like to sue my family. I also wish to share my narrative with the world, to expose what they did to me, instead of it being a clandestine secret that benefits them all. I want to be heard regarding the injustice they've subjected me to for so long – it's detrimental to my well-being. I've been consumed by anger, crying every day. It concerns me that I'm forbidden from revealing the identities of those who orchestrated this against me," she proclaimed.
