Justin Bieber is speaking frankly for the first time about his past experiences with drug addiction.
In a new episode of his documentary series Justin Bieber: Sessions, the 25-year-old singer got candid about his past drug use, which began with smoking marijuana when he was “12 or 13.”
Bieber has previously opened up about a past of “doing pretty heavy drugs,” but delved into much greater detail in the new episode. He began depending on marijuana heavily and later got involved with alcohol, lean (a mixture of codeine cough syrup, soda and hard candy), taking pills, MDMA, psychedelic mushrooms, “everything.” Bieber eventually decided he wanted to get sober when he “felt like I was dying.”
“My security and stuff would come into my room at night to check my pulse,” he recalled. “People don’t know how serious it got. It was legit crazy scary. I was waking up in the morning and the first thing I was doing was popping pills and smoking a blunt and starting my day. It just got scary.”
Scooter Braun, Bieber’s longtime manager, called ages 19 to 21 Bieber’s “dark period.”
Bieber explained that his upbringing was part of the reason why he struggled so much.
“I started valuing the wrong things in this business, because there was things dangling in front of me,” he said. “If I get this, I’ll be happy. If I do this, I’ll be happy. These are things that I think a lot of people with secure households learn at a young age. I never heard that security in a family. I never had that consistency. I never had the reliability and the accountability.”
He credits using an oxygen chamber and working with brain disorder specialist Dr. Daniel Amen as part of his recovery. Bieber’s wife, Hailey Baldwin, also helped him get clean because she reportedly wouldn’t date him “until he chose to get sober.”