In early March, Britney Spears was arrested on suspicion of a DUI, after she was caught swerving in and out of traffic and behaving recklessly in her BMW. She was hospitalized then taken to jail overnight. She will be in court in early May and no one knows what the California courts will do about Britney at this point. Her conservatorship ended in 2021, and while all of us wanted Britney to be freed of the conservatorship, many of us also wanted to ensure that there were some guardrails to protect Britney and protect everyone else from Britney. So much of the legal system is all or nothing though – there’s no halfway-guardianship or “conservatorship-lite.” Well, Us Weekly’s cover story this week is all about Britney and how she’s really been doing since her conservatorship ended. It’s a pretty rough read.
Britney’s next steps: “It’s a delicate situation,” says a source. “Everyone around Britney wants her to be healthy and stable, but you can’t force her to do anything.” Spears’ family and friends were bracing themselves for something bad to happen prior to her arrest, says a second source. Spears showed “signs of impairment” after she underwent a series of sobriety tests by the California Highway Patrol on March 4, and was booked into the Ventura County Jail for “driving under the influence of a combination of drugs and alcohol.” (Chemical tests were pending as of press time.) “It wasn’t a matter of ‘if’ but ‘when’ she would get arrested,” the source says, adding that loved ones “are just relieved no one was hurt.”
She’s gone from bad to worse in recent months. “She spends a lot of time alone at home, which leads her to make bad choices,” says the first source. “She has this tendency to think she’s kind of invincible, especially since she’s been free from the conservatorship. For a while, she felt like there were no real consequences, but lately, it’s started to catch up with her.”
Popping pills in Mexico: In her 2023 memoir, The Woman In Me, Spears said she “never had a drinking problem” and that her “drug of choice” was Adderall, which is used to treat ADHD symptoms. “[Pills] are her real vice,” says the second source, noting that when Spears’ conservatorship was terminated, she stopped being drug tested, and that’s when “she started falling back into old habits.” Adds the source: “She’s been privately struggling with it for two to three years now.” The first source says things began to escalate when she started spending long stretches in Mexico. (Spears celebrated her last two birthdays in Mexico; in a December 2024 video she posted to Instagram, she said she’d moved there to escape paparazzi attention in the States.) “That environment wasn’t good for her,” says the first source. “She had access to all kinds of pills, and there wasn’t anyone really keeping things in check.” Adds a third source: “It’s not a safe place for her because there’s a lot of access to over-the-counter things. Who knows what she is getting and how it’s making her act.” Another insider says that her trips to Mexico raised alarm bells even in 2024 as she’d been “going to the pharmacy there for pills, including Adderall, because it’s more accessible than in the States.”
What happened after she divorced Sam Asghari: The source said Spears changed for the worse when she started dating her former handyman Paul Richard Soliz soon after she and Asghari, 32, parted ways (another source told Us at the time that she’d cheated on Asghari with Soliz). “[That’s when] she began going downhill,” said the source. Spears and Soliz, who has a criminal record, ended their on-off relationship in early 2025 after sources told Us her inner circle had been pushing her to stop associating with him.
On Kevin Federline’s memoir: Spears, says a fourth source, was “deeply upset” about Federline’s assertions but notes that his book “wasn’t the catalyst” for her recent spiral. “It didn’t help matters, but her issues predate it.”
To their credit, Us Weekly quoted various guardianship and conservatorship experts and lawyers about what could be done and whether Britney needs something like that again. Those experts didn’t really have the answers, because so much of it is contingent on what Britney would agree to and whether she would stick with any program or guardian. There’s also a big, looming question over what the court will do about Britney’s DUI, given her history. I don’t know, I really don’t. Britney has rights and agency and she fought long and hard for her freedom, but I keep coming back to this: what happens if and when she hurts someone? That, more than the DUI, will be what really changes things.
Photos courtesy of Britney’s Instagram. Cover courtesy of Us Weekly.
