Believe it or not, there are millions – actually multimillions – of women who know what you’re going through and believe in your ability to recover from the devastating changes that have taken place in your life over the past four or five years.

 

It seems only a few years ago that you were thrilling audiences with your dancing and singing, movie-making, book-writing, and public appearances – going back to the time when you were a child star who had:

 

▪ An amazing degree of discipline.

 

▪ A stellar and enviable work ethic.

 

▪ Admirable equanimity in dealing with the pressures and demands of your profession.

 

▪ A great amount of generosity in affording your parents, siblings, friends, and employees the kind of riches and comfort they had never dreamed of.

 

Throughout that time, you were successful in resisting the allure of all the vices you were inevitably introduced to by the high-rolling crowd that constitutes “show business” and in maintaining the good values you were raised with.

 

And in spite of all your current troubles, you still retain your essential sweetness, which is why most people look at you not with scorn but with growing concern.

 

So what happened?

 

Only you know, but I suspect that several things conspired to put you on the sad and self-destructive path you’re now traveling.

 

The DNA Thing

I suspect there are things you never knew about yourself, among them that you are particularly vulnerable to the effects of alcohol and drugs, both of which addle the brains of perfectly “normal” people, but devastate those who use these substances as “medications” to mask underlying depression. If you look back on your family’s history, I suspect there were others who were equally vulnerable.

 

All you’ve seen – in the limited view of the world that insulates most people in show business from the bigger picture – are countless others in your industry who have abused drugs and alcohol for decades with seeming impunity. And like them, you indulged for several years with no seeming ill effects, believing the tabloids that claimed, Girls just wanna have fun!

 

The Mommy Thing

Even before you became a mother, there were signs that you were going off the beaten path. Your 10-minute marriage to Jason Alexander (okay, it was 55 hours) gave your fans a clue that “something” was not right with their girl. But that mini-scandal passed and everyone hoped you were back on track.

 

Not a millisecond later, you were hot and heavy with Kevin Federline, the rapper who swept you off your feet and led you to ignore the fact that there was something amiss about hooking up with a guy who was having his second child with another woman.

 

Okay, call this the bad judgment of a naïve girl.

 

And then just a couple of years ago, when you were 24 and married to Kevin, you gave birth to your first son, the adorable Sean Preston, and everything seemed to go haywire. I’m sure that your behavior surprised even you!

 

I suspect that you experienced an undiagnosed and untreated postpartum depression – a state that only counseling and often medication can treat effectively. So naturally you turned to the “medications” that made you feel less depressed, anxious, and out-of-control, which were the sure-fire, mood elevating “magic” of alcohol and drugs.

 

And then, a year later, you gave birth to your second and equably adorable son, Jayden James.

 

A lot of the things you’ve done since becoming a mother – no seat belt on the baby, no panties, in-and-out of rehab in 24 hours, partying and driving around all night, often at dangerous speeds, head-shaving, car-denting, car-crashing, mom-bashing, lyric-forgetting, alternating between an asthma inhaler and cigarettes, short stints in revolving-door “rehab,” the list goes on – are not surprising at all

 

At least a couple of them – like driving with your baby on your lap and partying all night – are things other young mothers have also done, until the politically-correct police decided that placing babies in backseat car seats was the only way to drive, and that staying up late was an unforgivable sin. As for the no-panties thing, I have seen a number of other Hollywood stars in the same state of careless undress. So let’s forget these relatively minor things.

 

But let’s not forget that much of the behavior you’ve exhibited has been described and written about not only by doctors but, most powerfully, others suffering from either bipolar disorder or other biochemical imbalances:

 

▪ A lack of impulse control with little or no attention to the consequences.

▪ Neglect of oneself and one’s children.

▪ Sleep changes, often including turning day into night.

▪ Erratic, unpredictable behavior.

▪ Potentially dangerous or inappropriate sexual behavior.

▪ Problems with or at work.

 

We’re speaking here of chemical changes that affect the brain and therefore behavior. But the body is equally sensitive to other chemicals – for instance, thyroid, pituitary, or sex hormones – that even with the minutest alterations affect physical health and function.

 

So if you can start looking at your problems, Britney, as biological in origin, and not those scary terms – “mental” or “psychological” – that drive too many people away from getting the help they need, that would be a good start in stemming your downward spiral and placing yourself on the path to recovery.

 

Too Many Losses

Let’s concentrate on what has really happened to you in a period of just a few years – events I suspect would make most people unbalanced at best. Let’s add them all up. In just a few short years, Britney, you’ve lost:

 

▪ The lifelong and close relationship you had with her mother because you said she was “interfering” in your life. She disapproved of and was embarrassed by your behavior and clearly had trouble “reaching” you.

 

▪ The unqualified support of your younger sister, Jamie Lynn, whose entry into show business was inspired by you but who recently said she “didn’t want to be like” you.

 

▪ The “bond” you held with your longtime and closest assistant because she “couldn’t take it anymore.”

 

▪ Your longtime bodyguard because he testified under oath about your excesses – and how worried he was about you.

 

▪ Your beloved aunt, Sandra Bridges Covington, from breast cancer.

 

▪ The adoration of the media that in all its fickleness now casts you as a hopeless, doomed-to-fail-and/or-die wastrel.

 

▪ Your once-toned figure.

 

▪ Your stellar reputation.

 

▪ Your credibility for multiple failures to appear in court.

 

▪ Many if not most of your most devoted fans.

 

▪ Most dire, your once-intact sanity.

 

▪ Equally dire, the custody of your two beautiful sons because of a bizarre incident on January 3^rd, in which you holed up in your locked bedroom with your baby Sean Preston and refused to allow Kevin’s aide to pick him up after a court-ordered visit, which resulted in your being taken to the psychiatric ward of a local hospital for evaluation.

 

The interesting thing about people who are out of control is that they make the people around them feel out of control. When people try to help but fail, they feel that their best efforts are falling on deaf ears. They feel powerless. Then they get frustrated and then angry.

 

Sound familiar? Don’t you, yourself, feel powerless to get your life back on track? Doesn’t that make you feel frustrated? And don’t your outbursts of anger (hitting a car with an umbrella, lashing out with profanities) give you insight into the reasons why so many people who love and respect you have left you?

 

Hope Is On The Way!

The NY Post, Britney, calls you a “pop tart” – but I call you a once-normal woman who has been struck by the lightning of a genetically-inherited chemical imbalance and most probably an equally devastating postpartum depression – two strikes too many.

 

What should you do? Or just as urgent, what shouldn’t you do?

 

Several years ago, I read that Angela Lansbury, the famous and much-awarded-and-respected actress, learned that her daughter, Deirdre, was addicted to drugs. Ms. Lansbury quit her then-flourishing profession to whisk Deirdre off to Ireland, effectively removing her from this irresistible and potentially fatal temptation. It worked! Deirdre is now a successful restauranteur!

 

So I suggest to you, Britney, get outta town!

 

▪ Take your most trusted, on-your-side friend with you.

 

▪ Go to some remote place on the globe that is out of reach of the paparazzi.

 

▪ Depend on your trusted friend (or friends) to stand by you and help you while you really, truly, painfully undergo detoxification

 

▪ Travel, as Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys did, with a psychotherapist – one who specializes in behavioral therapy.

 

▪ At least try the medications that have successfully combated postpartum depression and bipolar disorder.

 

▪ Don’t even think about coming back to the music industry or to Hollywood until you have regained all of the confidence and discipline you displayed so brilliantly as a child star.

 

▪ Seriously consider giving up stardom, and becoming – at least for the next several years – a full-time mom.

 

▪ Try to get involved with issues outside of yourself, for instance fighting for better diagnoses and treatment for women with major depression, bipolar disorder, and postpartum depression.

 

▪ Keep a diary of your journey back to health. When you succeed in putting your life back together, you can turn the diary into a book that will inspire more women than even your music did!

 

▪ Be as loving to yourself as your fans have been to you.

 

Going Public

One of the positive things about “the information age” is that it has allowed many people to step forward with their struggles and take once-taboo subjects out of the closet of ignominy and shame. Before former-First Lady Betty Ford came forward about her own breast cancer and alcoholism in the 1970s, both conditions were relegated to the back burner of public consciousness, only spoken about – if at all – in hushed and secretive terms.

 

Since then, countless people, both famous and not famous, have gone public with their battles against addiction, depression in general, and postpartum depression in particular. Brooke Shields, a loving mother of two little girls, even admitted to having thought about killing her first baby and herself. Their stories served to bring the darker side of human existence into the light, ultimately helping untold millions of people retain hope and seek help themselves.

 

Britney, you’ve gone public in another way, letting everyone know that you’re suffering but seemingly having no idea how to find the help you need. But don’t despair! By making a few key decisions about the direction of your life – most important, to leave your environment immediately and take with you one or two trustworthy people – you can start – and succeed in – recapturing your old, vibrant, talented self.

 

There are millions of people, me among them, who wish you the best!

 

Joan Swirsky is a former delivery room nurse who taught Lamaze classes for over 20 years, Joan has written a monthly Newsday magazine column on pregnancy and childbirth for the past 10 years, and is also a psychotherapist. Her most recent book is, Mommy I Want To Kill MySelf - The True Story Of A Mother's Fight To Save Her Little Boy.