Britney Spears pointed out how her mom’s and her dad’s drinking habits differed in a revealing new excerpt from her memoir “The Woman In Me.”
Spears described some of her earliest memories involving alcohol in a book preview published by People magazine on Tuesday, in which the pop star wrote about the bouts of seemingly normal life she squeezed in between seasons of “The Mickey Mouse Club.”
“For fun, starting when I was in eighth grade, my mom and I would make the two-hour drive from Kentwood to Biloxi, Mississippi,” Spears said, referring to the casino capital of the South, which was not far from her Louisiana hometown.
“While we were there, we would drink daiquiris. We called our cocktails ‘toddies,’” Spears remembered. “I loved that I was able to drink with my mom every now and then.”
Seeing her father, Jamie Spears, drunk was another story, however.
“The way we drank was nothing like how my father did it,” she said. “When he drank, he grew more depressed and shut down. We became happier, more alive and adventurous.”
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The book excerpt echoes previous accusations Spears has made about her father’s drinking during her bid to remove him as her personal conservator.
Spears entered the conservatorship in 2008 after publicly struggling with her mental health, and the arrangement left her father in control of her finances and health decisions.
Her father reportedly attended alcohol rehab treatment in 2004, according to a court filing reviewed by The New York Times. A decade after that, Spears’ then-lawyer moved to reevaluate Jamie Spears’ conservator role, in part citing the singer’s belief that he was abusing alcohol again.
One year after Spears’ conservatorship was dissolved in 2021, she accused her father of “abusive and bullying conduct” and “chronic alcohol abuse” again in court filings reported on by NBC News.
Responding to her father’s request to cover his legal fees, Spears claimed that he had already “enriched himself” with over $6 million of her money.
Fans can expect even more revelations from Spears when her memoir “The Woman In Me” comes out on Oct. 24.
Need help with substance use disorder or mental health issues? In the U.S., call 800-662-HELP (4357) for the SAMHSA National Helpline.