Bright Lights, Poor Britney
Every night during dinner, my wife and I flip channels during the commercials of Wheel of Fortune to TMZ. I got a good laugh tonight as they lamented the fact that with Britney in the hospital, they had nothing new to report on the infamous Ms. Spears. Turns out, I laughed too soon.
News from CNN today that since she’s not a “legal danger to herself or others” they couldn’t hold her any longer and were forced to release her back out into the cruel jungle that is the savage home of the Los Angeles paparazzi. Her father still holds conservatorship over her estate for the time being and should continue to help her focus on getting better, but I consider this a major setback. This bit from the CNN piece explains why:
“Spears left the facility in her black Mercedes-Benz and drove to a hotel with television helicopters tracking her every move. A crowd of photographers swarmed around her when she arrived.”
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, as long as Britney is within arms reach of the media, she’ll never really be able to get help. She adores being the center of attention, to the exclusion of her family, friends and even her children. She’d rather be seen running out for an espresso in the middle of the night than staying home and taking care of her boys.
Fellow blogger Sam Spagnola seems to think that Britney has mental health problems such as a bi-polar disease. This very well may be, and if so, her need for treatment becomes even more imperative. But she’s now been released from medical care prematurely at least 3 times for one reason or another and her time is running out. If her father doesn’t take immediate and decisive action, I fear the 8-ball’s prediction may come true much sooner than originally thought. The media won’t leave her alone, and unless someone gets her the hell out of Dodge, she ain’t got a prayer.
I found your site on technorati and read a few of your other posts. Keep up the good work. I just added your RSS feed to my Google News Reader. Looking forward to reading more from you.
Eric Hundin
What a pitiful shame. This entire situation is a shame. Brit, parents, lawyers, councilors, the works. A huge shame and a terrible distraction away from healthy thinking.
Wow… this almost begs comparison with Frances Farmer or Judy Garland, if only in terms of how deeply disturbed Ms. Spears appears to be.
The court decision is wrong. She is stark raving mad. She is a danger to herself, cannot stop her destructive behavior, and will be dead before she’s 30. If she were my child I would beg the courts to enroll her in a lockdown detox/mental health program. Someone has to step up and be the bad guy before it’s too late.
Every single thing Britney is doing right now fits directly under the definition of a bipolar personality. Symptoms of someone manic can range from: decreased sleep or little fatigue, increase in activities, restlessness, speech disruptions (maybe this is why she thinks it’s funny to speak in a British accent),Impaired Judgment (well this ones very apparent), inappropriate humor & behavior, Financial Extravagance which is VERY common for bipolar people to struggle with (nice new car she just bought as if she needed another one), increased/decreased sexuality, Disorientation, changes in mood,irritability/excitability/Hostility, Inflated self-esteem (this has been seen in some of the videos of her)
I have a relative who is Bipolar and this past Sept very nearly succeeded in killing himself. He is a very smart and successful person, we had all just had a family get together the previous weekend and nothing seemed out of the ordinary. Suddenly were sitting in the emergency room because his thoughts/mind got the best of him and rationale went out the window. In his case his medication was off or he stopped taking it. To this day he would probably still try to downplay the seriousness of the situation just like he did in the hospital. For any person not afflicted with this medical condition, overdosing on pills and turning the car on in the garage is pretty insane and DEFINITELY a suicide attempt. For a bipolar person they think nothing is wrong with them. It makes me sick to see everything this girl is doing to herself and her family/kids…it’s not if she’ll kill herself but when. She needs to get out of California, totally away from any paparazzi presence and she needs the support from her family, medication and therapy. Even her kids will not keep her from ruining her life, maybe they’ll be lucky enough to get a note like my nephews.
This all so very sad and frightening.
I have a son who is bi-polar and just two years younger than Brittany. The signs of bi-polar illness jump out at you. The way we, as a society, treat our mentally ill speaks volumes of our ignorgance and misunderstandings of what needs to be done. INTERVENTION and MEDICATION for someone who is very ill – just the same as diabetic who needs insulin is what needs to be done. We wouldn’t watch a dog with delirium or rabies suffer, would we?? Well, Bi-polar illness requires chemicals to stabilize the mind. Too bad Phychiatrists are not respected as REAL doctors because they disagree amongst themselves about a person rights, illness etc….and this allows the circus and tradgedy to continue. Most people need to be educated about mental illness and what chemical imbalance really means and what needs to be done. The mind is the same as the body – this is a PHYSICAL ILLNESS that affects the mind! How sad that as a society we are so backwards about this topic that we watch as another human being suffers and may even die from sheer exhaustion and risk taking behaviour. How very sad. How frightening for her parents.
I completely agree. The only way she’s going to find any peace, and give her children any sense of normalcy, is to get the eff outta dodge. Even if she doesn’t have an illness, all that attention and pressure is enough to drive anyone mad.
If I were her, I’d kidnap my kids from their schmuck of a dad and buy a big piece of land in the middle of Wales with a field of fluffy lambs and a yurt. I’d hire an excellent nanny to help me raise my children, a chef to teach me how to cook for them, and buy some really big hungry dogs to take out any media hounds crossed my property line.