When I said no to one dance move into rehearsals, it was as if I planted a huge bomb somewhere and I said, no, I don’t want to do it this way. After that, my management, my dancers and my assistant of the new people that were supposed to do the new show all went into a room, shut the door and didn’t come out for at least forty five minutes. Ma’am, I’m not here to be anyone’s slave. I can say no to a dance move. I was told by my—at the time—therapist, Dr. Benson, who died, that my manager called him and then that moment and told him I wasn’t cooperating or following the guidelines in rehearsals. And he also said I wasn’t taking my medication, which is so dumb because I’ve had the same lady every morning for the past eight years give me my same medication and I’m nowhere near these stupid people. It made no sense at all.
There was a week period where they were nice to me and they said, “I don’t want to do…” And I told them, “I don’t want to do the…” They wait, no. They were nice to me. They said if I don’t want to do the new Vegas show, I don’t have to ’cause I was getting really nervous. I said “I can wait.” It was like, they told me I could wait. It was like lifting literally two hundred pounds off of me when they said I don’t have to do the show anymore cause it was… I was really, really hard on myself and it was too much.
I couldn’t take it anymore. So I remember telling my assistant, “But you know what, I feel weird if I say no. I feel like they’re going to come back and be mean to me or punish me or something.” Three days later, after I said no to Vegas, my therapist sat me down in a room and said he had a million phone calls about how I was not cooperating in rehearsals and I haven’t been taking my medication. All of this was a false. He immediately the next day put me on lithium out of nowhere. He took me off my normal meds I’d been on for five years. And lithium is a very, very strong and completely different medication compared to what I was used to. 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. I really couldn’t even take up for myself. I couldn’t even have a conversation with my mom or dad really about anything. I told them I was scared and my doctor had me on… Six different nurses with this new medication come to my home, stay with me to monitor me on this new medication, which I never wanted to be on to begin with.
There were six different nurses in my homes and they wouldn’t let me get in my car to go anywhere for a month. Not only did my family not do a goddamn thing, my dad was all for it. Anything that happened to me had to be approved by my dad. And my dad only… He acted like he didn’t know that I was told I had to be tested over the Christmas holidays before they sent me away when my kids went home to Louisiana. He was the one who approved all of it. My whole family did nothing. Over the two-week holiday, a lady came into my home for four hours a day, sat me down and did a psych test on me. It took forever, but I was told I had to then. After that I got off… wait.
I was told I had to then, after I got a phone call from my dad saying after I did the psych test with this lady, basically saying I had failed the test or whatever. Whatever. “I’m sorry, Britney, you have to listen to your doctors. They are planning to send you to a small home in Beverly Hills to do a small rehab program that we’re going to make up for you. You’re gonna pay sixty thousand dollars a month for this.”
I cried on the phone for an hour and he loved every minute of it. The control he had over someone as powerful as me, as he loved the control to hurt his own daughter. One hundred thousand percent. He loved it.
I packed my bags and went to that place. I worked seven days a week, no days off—which in California, the only similar thing to this is called sex trafficking, making anyone work—work against their will. Taking all their possessions away—credit card, cash, phone, passport card—and placing them in a home where they work with the people who live with them. They all lived in the house with me, the nurses, the 24/7 security. There was one chef that came there and cooked for me daily during the weekdays. They watched me change every day, naked. Morning, noon and night. My body… I had no privacy door for my room. I gave eight gallons of blood a week. If I didn’t do any of my meetings and work from eight to six at night—which is ten hours a day, seven days a week, no days off—I wouldn’t be able to see my kids or my boyfriend. I never had a say in my schedule. They always told me I had to do this. And ma’am, I will tell you, sitting in a chair ten hours a day, seven days a week, it ain’t fun. And especially when you can’t walk out the front door.
And that’s why I’m telling you this again two years later, after I’ve lied and told the whole world I’m OK and I’m happy. It’s a lie. I thought I just… Maybe I said that enough, maybe I might become happy because I’ve been in denial. I’ve been in shock. I am traumatized, you know? Fake it ’til you make it. But now I’m telling you the truth, OK? I’m not happy. I can’t sleep. I’m so angry, it’s insane. And I’m depressed. I cry every day.
And the reason I’m telling you this is because I don’t think how the state of California can have all this written in the court documents from the time I showed up, and do absolutely nothing. Just hire, with my money, another person to keep, and keep my dad on board. Ma’am, my dad and anyone involved in this conservatorship, and my management who played a huge role in punishing me when I said, “No, ma’am, they should be in jail.” Their cruel tactics working for Miley Cyrus. If she smokes on joints and stage at the VMAs, nothing is ever done to this generation for doing wrong things. But my precious body, whose work for my dad for the past fucking thirteen years, trying to be so good and pretty. So perfect when he works me so hard, when I do everything I’m told, and the state of California allowed my ignorant father to take his own daughter, who only has a role with me if I work with him. They set back the whole course and allowed him to do that to me? That’s given these people I’ve worked for way too much control.
They also threatened me and said if I don’t go, then I have to go to court and it will be more embarrassing me if the judge publicly makes you go, “The evidence we have, you have to go.” I was advised for my image. I need to go ahead and just go and get it over with. They said that to me. I don’t even drink alcohol. I should drink alcohol, considering what they put my heart through.