Britney Spears is setting the record straight on her history with drug and alcohol use in her The Woman in Me memoir.
Spears, 41, recalled in the book that ADHD medication Adderall was her “drug of choice,” per an excerpt published by The New York Times on Thursday, October 19.
In the passage, the Grammy winner claimed she “never had a drinking problem” nor was interested in taking “hard drugs.”
“What I found far more appealing was that it gave me a few hours of feeling less depressed,” she penned, claiming the medication “made her high.”
Back in the 2000s — during the height of Spears’ career — there was often speculation about her drug and alcohol use. The rumors grew rampant after Spears was spotted out with fellow teen icons Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton in 2006.
“It was never as wild as the press made it out to be,” she wrote in The Woman in Me, per The New York Times.
Hilton, now 42, later revealed that the trio had carpooled to a club in Los Angeles. “It was just Brit and I out and then [Lindsay] just, like, chased us to the car and got in,” the Paris in Love alum quipped during an MTV Australia interview in December 2017. “[Lindsay] wasn’t invited. She wasn’t on the list.”
Spears, for her part, further recalled in The Woman in Me that she knew “[she] had been acting wild,” and partying a lot, but did not think that warranted the conservatorship. (Britney’s father, Jamie Spears, was appointed the conservator of her personal life, finances and more starting in 2008.)
“There was nothing I’d done that justified their treating me like I was a bank robber. Nothing that justified upending my entire life,” she alleged in the newspaper’s excerpt of The Woman in Me. “I went from partying a lot to being a total monk. Security guards handed me prepackaged envelopes of meds and watched me take them. They put parental controls on my iPhone. Everything was scrutinized and controlled. Everything.”
Since 2021, Britney advocated for the termination of the conservatorship, alleging that Jamie, 71, and co-conservator Jodi Montgomery — who took over in 2019 — had abused their positions. During a June 2021 court hearing, Britney even claimed that her therapist made her take lithium, a mood stabilizer used to treat bipolar disorder, instead of the medication she had been prescribed years earlier.
“Lithium is a very, very strong and completely different medication compared to what I was used to,” Britney said at the time. “You can go mentally impaired if you take too much, if you stay on it longer than five months. But he put me on that, and I felt drunk.”
She added: “Not only did my family not do a goddamn thing, [but] my dad was all for it. Anything that happened to me had to be approved by my dad. I’m tired of feeling alone.”
A judge officially terminated the 13-year conservatorship in November 2021.
If you or anyone you know is facing substance abuse issues, call the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s National Helpline at 1-800-662-4357 for free and confidential information 24/7.
The Woman in Me hits bookstore shelves on Tuesday, October 24.
