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Despite concerns expressed by fans, Justin Bieber isn’t back to using drugs, insists one of the star’s representatives.
While the Sorry singer has looked tired and gaunt in recent photos and videos, Bieber’s rep told TMZ that the narrative about drug use is “absolutely not true.”
A member of Justin and Hailey Bieber’s team called the reports “ridiculous,” according to the gossip site, and in fact, insisted that Biebs couldn’t be any better.
The rep said Bieber has “had a very transformative year” which began with him “disassociating himself from people who no longer served him in his life.”
TMZ noted how Bieber has unfollowed people he used to be close with and has “moved on.”
Team Bieber called the drug use allegations “exhausting and pitiful,” adding that “despite the obvious truth, people are committed to keeping negative, salacious, harmful narratives alive.”
Bieber’s team also laughed off how exhausted he appears, chalking it up to fatherhood after he and Hailey welcomed son, Jack Blues, in August.
The rep also noted that Bieber has been in the recording studio where he sometimes works into the night and doesn’t get much sleep — if any.
Bieber has been open about his past drug use.
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He told GQ in May 2021 that his security detail would sneak into his bedroom in the middle of the night to check his pulse to make sure he was still alive.
“There was a sense of still yearning for more,” Bieber told the magazine.
“It was like I had all this success and it was still like, ‘I’m still sad, and I’m still in pain. And I still have these unresolved issues.’
“And I thought all the success was going to make everything good,” he continued. “And so for me, the drugs were a numbing agent to just continue to get through.”
He added that he “lost control of my vision for my career.”
In September 2019, the Peaches singer took to Instagram to reflect on how achieving fame at an early age, growing up in an unstable home, and having “access to whatever I wanted” led him to eventually struggle both physically and mentally.
Bieber revealed that the “ups and downs” from being in the public eye caused him to rely on “heavy drugs” by the time he was 19.
“I became resentful… and angry,” he wrote. “I became distant to everyone who loved me, and I was hiding behind, a shell of a person that I had become. I felt like I could never turn it around.”
He added: “It’s taken me years to bounce back from all of these terrible decisions, fix broken relationships, and change relationship habits.”