Justin Bieber issued a lengthy and apologetic explanation for his “terrible decisions,” while also drawing eyes to his own battles with mental health and drug use.
The 25-year-old pop star from London, Ont. shared intimate details about his upbringing and how fame led him into a cycle of disappointment and dread.
“My whole world was flipped on its head,” Bieber wrote.
Life as a 13-year-old boy from a small town was upended by his meteoric rise to fame, he said, adding that his parents were also only 18, without money and maturity, when he was born.
“Have u noticed the statistics of child stars and the outcome of their life (sic),” Bieber wrote. “There is an insane pressure and responsibility put on a child who’s brain, emotions, frontal lobes (decision making) aren’t developed yet.”
As he grew up, Bieber says he never had independence — a foreshadowing of the problems he faced after turning “18 with no skills in the real world, with millions of dollars and access to whatever I wanted.”
“By 20, I made every bad decision you could have thought of and went from one of the most loved and adored people in the world to the most ridiculed, judged and hated person in the world!”
Some of his past scandals include fights with paparazzi, fans and actors, charges for assault, careless driving charges and resisting arrest, saying Holocaust victim Anne Frank would be a “Belieber” and urinating in a custodian’s mop bucket while cursing at former U.S. president Bill Clinton.
The incidents led to a petition hosted on the White House website to deport the singer from the U.S — it amassed more than 273,000 signatures.
The message to his fans also led him to discuss how he “started doing pretty heavy drugs at 19 and abused all of my relationships,” leading him to become “resentful, disrespectful to women, and angry … i was hiding behind, a shell of a person that i had become (sic).”
Now, the pop star says that is all behind him thanks to God and his new wife, Hailey Baldwin, now Hailey Bieber.
“It’s taken me years to bounce back from all these terrible decisions,” he wrote.
“All this to say even when The odds are against you keep fighting. Jesus loves you.”
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