In the four-plus years since a judge ended the conservatorship that had long controlled Britney Spears’s life, the singer has gone through the motions of a beloved pop diva whose performing career is behind her.
She released a memoir centered on her journey to autonomy, which is now being made into a film. She had her biggest hits turned into a Broadway musical. And last month, it was revealed that she had sold her music catalog.
But looming in the background have been concerns from fans and those in the singer’s orbit about her erratic behavior, including frenetic dancing videos she continues to post on Instagram and disheveled tabloid photos. Some observers questioned whether Ms. Spears, after successfully fighting to be released from the 13-year conservatorship, now needed more guidance.
Those concerns came to a head this week, when Ms. Spears was pulled over on a California highway and arrested on suspicion of driving under the influence of a combination of alcohol and drugs. Her representatives, including her manager Cade Hudson, released a statement that called her behavior “completely inexcusable” and said her loved ones would arrange for an “overdue needed plan” to improve her well-being.
“Hopefully this can be the first step in long overdue change that needs to occur in Britney’s life,” the statement said.
In Ms. Spears’s 2023 memoir, “The Woman in Me,” she disputed the idea that she had a persistent substance abuse problem, saying that her drinking was never “out of control.” She said that in the past, her “drug of choice” had been Adderall, which is prescribed to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.
Exactly who will help to arrange a care plan for Ms. Spears, 44, is unclear.
She has accused her father, Jamie Spears, of maintaining an “abusive” conservatorship that controlled her personal life and finances. She has aired grievances against her mother, Lynne Spears, as well as her siblings. Her most recent husband, Sam Asghari, filed for divorce in 2023. And Mathew Rosengart, the high-profile lawyer who led the legal effort to end the conservatorship, no longer represents her, saying in 2024 that “her wish for freedom is now truly complete.”
If Ms. Spears is charged and convicted of a crime, possible punishments include jail time and a probation program that involves substance abuse treatment. But the suggestion from those close to her that she needs to voluntarily seek professional help is particularly delicate because of her past experience.
Kevin Federline, Ms. Spears’s ex-husband and the father of her two children, wrote in his 2025 memoir that although the movement known as “Free Britney” may have “started from a good place,” it vilified people around Ms. Spears so intensely that professionals with the ability to help her might be too afraid to step in.
Ms. Spears’s conservatorship was instituted in 2008 in another moment of crisis, after she had been driving at breakneck speeds and was twice taken to a hospital for emergency psychiatric evaluations. The arrangement is typically a last resort for people who cannot manage their basic needs, such as those with significant disabilities or older people with dementia.
As it stretched on for more than a decade, it turned into something that Ms. Spears has described as exploitative, restricting certain freedoms — such as spending money and dating — while she carried out global tours and a Las Vegas residency, and released hits such as “Womanizer” and “Circus.”
So for many fans associated with “Free Britney,” which vociferously lobbied the court to end the conservatorship, the decision to get mental health or substance abuse treatment must come from her alone.
“Maybe now she can actually get whatever help she may need in a different way than taking all her rights away and putting her under a conservatorship and basically making her a lifelong teenager,” said Nelson Saavedra Jr., who runs the “Free Britney” page on Reddit.
This week’s arrest has proved something of a breaking point in a string of behavior since 2021 that escalated concerns over Ms. Spears’s safety.
In 2023, fans called the police to check on the singer after she posted a video of herself dancing with what appeared to be kitchen knives. She clarified on Instagram that they were props and chastised her fans.
In 2024, paramedics were called to the Chateau Marmont hotel in Los Angeles, where, Ms. Spears later said, she had twisted her ankle while dancing. She had been there with the man she was dating the time, Paul Soliz, who met the pop star while doing maintenance work at her home. Paparazzi, long scrambling for front-row seats to Ms. Spears’s struggles, photographed her covering herself up with a pillow and blanket.
Ms. Spears’s dance videos, recorded at her home, often involve her wearing little, her breasts censored with heart emojis. One video showed what appeared to be dog excrement on the floor. Another showed a bandage on her knee.
She has spoken about the videos as a healthy exercise of self-expression, writing on social media this year that it helped “heal things in my body that people have no idea about.”
Mr. Federline’s memoir and the press surrounding it prompted lengthy and emotional social media posts from Ms. Spears, who said she felt “demoralized” by her lack of a relationship with her sons. One, she said, had visited her for less than an hour in a five-year period.
“I will always love them,” she wrote, “and if you really know me, you won’t pay attention to the tabloids of my mental health and drinking. I am actually a pretty intelligent woman who has been trying to live a sacred and private life the past 5 years.”
It has not been clear what kind of psychological treatment, if any, Ms. Spears has received since the end of her conservatorship. Court papers indicated that Mr. Rosengart and Jodi Montgomery, a conservator involved in the case, had collaborated on a “termination care plan” that was filed under seal.
Jordan Miller, the founder of the Spears fan site BreatheHeavy.com, which helped start the “Free Britney” campaign, said it would be understandable if Ms. Spears had a deep distrust of psychiatric and medical systems after facing involuntary treatment during her conservatorship. She wrote in her memoir that she spent months “locked up” in a rehabilitation facility against her will.
“Ideally, support would focus on Britney as a person, her well being, her stability, and her health, not stepping back into controlling her finances or professional life again,” Mr. Miller said in an email.
Jamie Spears, the singer’s father, has defended his handling of his daughter’s affairs, telling The Daily Mail in 2022 that without the conservatorship, “I don’t know if she’d be alive.”
Ms. Spears had been under no illusions that public scrutiny over her day-to-day life would end with the conservatorship. In 2021, not long before the judge ordered its termination, the pop star aired her anxieties about life on the other side.
“I’ll just be honest and say I’ve waited so long to be free from the situation I’m in,” Ms. Spears posted to her Instagram at the time, “and now that it’s here I’m scared to do anything because I’m afraid I’ll make a mistake!!!”
Kirsten Noyes contributed research.
Julia Jacobs is an arts and culture reporter who often covers legal issues for The Times.
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