Justin Bieber has been forced to bat away rumours of drug use after increasing commentary online. Over the last few weeks, paparazzi photos of the singer out and about in New York City have gone viral, as well as videos of him interacting with fans, after viewers claimed he looked ‘dishevelled’ and unwell.

Take a cursory glance at the comments underneath his latest Instagram posts and fans have written things like ‘you look like you hate your life’, ‘something is not right… he seems so off’ and ‘Justin, I genuinely care about your healing journey’.

Others have feigned concern about his marriage, writing that pictures of him with his wife Hailey are ‘forced’ and show that he’s ‘obviously jealous’ of his ex-girlfriend Selena Gomez getting engaged to Benny Blanco. One person even wrote, ‘Hailey, stop posting as Justin’ under a photo of the couple.

The picture on X is not any more positive. There, users have posted that Bieber is ‘looking older because of drug use’ and that ‘he has a son and is still doing drugs’. This is something a representative for the singer has been quick to shut down.

‘The recurring narrative that Justin is using hard drugs is absolutely not true,’ a spokesperson told TMZ, adding that the singer is ‘in one of the best places in his life’.

They added that he is ‘actively parenting his newborn son’, Jack, who was born six months ago and claim the reports are ‘exhausting and pitiful and show that despite the obvious truth, people are committed to keeping negative, salacious, harmful narratives alive’.

Any changes to Bieber’s behaviour can be chalked up to a ‘very transformative’ past year, according to his rep. ‘He ended several close friendships and business relationships that no longer served him.’

Any tiredness in his appearance, including dark circles under his eyes that fans have pointed out online as ‘evidence’ of alleged drug abuse,  are in fact a result of spending all night in the recording studio working on his new album, the TMZ source added.

While much of the ‘concern’ from online trolls reads more like a salacious and baseless invasion of his privacy, it is likely that a lot of it is genuine too. Bieber has been famous since 2009 when he was only 15 years old. He shot to astronomical fame almost overnight and has amassed hundreds of millions of fans around the world.

This level of fame, attention and financial success would be difficult for anyone to deal with, let alone a teenager from an ordinary family from Ontario, Canada. As such, Bieber has opened up publicly about finding himself following a well-trodden path of drug and alcohol misuse to deal with the pressure.

In the early 2010s, he was pictured egging his neighbour’s house, urinating in a restaurant mop bucket, receiving a DUI (drinking under the influence) fine for drag-racing a Lamborghini and buying a pet monkey that was seized at customs in Germany.

In 2014, he was arrested and charged with drink driving, resisting arrest and driving without a valid licence. Speaking about this period on Instagram in 2019, he wrote: ‘By 20, I made every bad decision you could have thought of and went from one of the most loved and adored people in the world to the most ridiculed, judged and hated person in the world.

‘I started doing pretty heavy drugs at 19 and abused all my relationships. I became resentful, disrespectful to women, and angry. I became distant to everyone who loved me, and I was hiding behind a shell of a person that I had become.’

Bieber has been sober from drugs since 2014. Instead of following the more traditional path of going to a rehabilitation centre, he stayed with his close friend and celebrity pastor, Carl Lentz, which he described as an ‘informal detox’. Speaking to Vogue about his recovery, Hailey said, ‘I’m really proud of him. To do it without a program, and to stick with it without a sober coach or AA or classes – I think it’s extraordinary. He is, in ways, a walking miracle.’

The singer has subsequently entered a period of self-reflection on more than one occasion, often sharing his thoughts with his fans on social media. In 2020, on his YouTube series The Dark Season, Bieber admitted to becoming addicted to taking pills and smoking cannabis when he was just 13 years old. He later revealed that at his lowest point, he feared his dependence on drugs would kill him.

This was something he also mentioned in his 2019 post on Instagram. ‘It’s hard to get out of bed in the morning with the right attitude when you are overwhelmed with your life’, he wrote, adding that ‘sometimes it can even get to the point where you don’t even want to live anymore’.

These dark and overwhelming feelings are ones Bieber cannot distinguish from his adolescence under the spotlight. ‘Have you noticed the statistics of child stars and the outcome of their life?’ he asked. ‘There is an insane pressure and responsibility put on a child’s brain [and] emotional, frontal lobes (decision making) aren’t developed yet. When you add the pressure of stardom it does something to you that is quite unexplainable.’

He might be 30 now and a father himself, but Bieber experiences the same unrelenting criticism as he always has and is still held to incomprehensible and unrealistic standards. Not only does this strip him of his humanity and leave little space for him to make mistakes – or act a bit ‘strangely’ for a few months – but it means people are actively choosing to ignore the countless warnings he has given about the toll this kind of speculation and scrutiny can take.

As a recovering addict and new parent, Bieber deserves a lot more respect than that.