Britney Spears’ mom has revealed the depth of her “brave little girl’s” drug addiction, desperation and despair in a searing and wealth-creating account of celebrity motherhood.
Lynne Spears spells out the “shock and dismay” she suffered while her daughter verged on total breakdown and she discovered that Sam Lufti, the pop star's sometime companion, guru and manager, was grinding up medication and sneaking it into Britney’s food in the hope of inducing a coma.
Mrs Spears, 53, writes in her third book about her daughter that after periods of difficulty, including a stint in the psychiatric ward of the UCLA medical centre, Britney is regaining her “glorious voice”.
Through The Storm: A Real Tale of Fame and Family in a Tabloid World also allows Spears senior to explain her emotions when she discovered that her second daughter was pregnant: it was like being “punched in the stomach”.
She reportedly recovered by selling the story of 16-year-old Jamie Lynn’s pregnancy to OK magazine for $1million.
The thoroughly-illustrated 211-page book will be published on September 16 by Thomas Nelson, a leading Christian publisher. It tracks Britney Spears’ life through her early years - when she was apparently singing and dancing by the age of three - through her rise to fame and then pill-addicted fall.
Lynne Spears denies that she forced her young and impressionable daughter into showbusiness, claiming that the singer was always focused on achievement and would constantly practice to the music of Madonna and Whitney Houston of her own accord.
She says her daughter was a confident, outgoing girl whose talents were so obvious that family friends would insist she would one day be on Broadway.
Far from looking for her own material gain, Mrs Spears explains that she selflessly gave up her own job as a school teacher in order to help her child’s rise to infamy.
After the jolting, but pleasant surprise of Britney Spears’ debut smash, ... Baby One More Time, Lynne Spears says she felt she was losing control when a 1999 Rolling Stone magazine story featured a cover picture of the singer in her underwear.
She says it was harrowing to watch her daughter shave her head and enter brief, doomed marriages to Jason Alexander, a childhood friend, and Kevin Federline, a failed rapper.
Ms Spears does praise Federline as a “caring daddy” and says Britney is “an amazing mother,” but only when at her best. She also writes warmly of her daughter’s former boyfriend, Justin Timberlake, but says the wilful nature of the young couple helped to break them up.
The nadir came in the past two years, with Britney's increasingly disturbing public behaviour and her drugged private life in Malibu, California.
Ms Spears writes that she was distraught as then-manager Sam Lufti told her he was grinding up pills and putting them in Britney’s food, hoping to put her in a coma that would allow doctors to cure her of all addictions.
The singer was hospitalised twice this year, the second time in February when paramedics took her to a psychiatric ward where her mother says she finally received the care she needed.
It was, Mrs Spears writes, a “turning point” for the entire family.
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