The singer has faced a barrage of speculation in the media.<\/p>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text module_class=”credit-name” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” text_font=”Black Han Sans|||on|||||” text_text_color=”#000000″ header_4_font=”|||on|||||” header_4_text_align=”center” text_orientation=”center” custom_margin=”||0px||false|false” global_colors_info=”{}”]
Words by Nikki Peach<\/strong><\/p>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_image src=”https:\/\/flatplan-plus-content.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2025\/02\/Screenshot-2025-02-24-at-13.20.30.png” alt=”Jennifer Aniston” title_text=”Justin Bieber (Photo: IMAGO)” force_fullwidth=”on” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][\/et_pb_image][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” sticky_enabled=”0″] 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.<\/p>\n Take a cursory glance at the comments underneath his latest Instagram posts and fans have written things like \u2018you look like you hate your life\u2019, \u2018something is not right\u2026 he seems so off\u2019 and \u2018Justin, I genuinely care about your healing journey\u2019.<\/p>\n Others have feigned concern about his marriage, writing that pictures of him with his wife Hailey are \u2018forced\u2019 and show that he\u2019s \u2018obviously jealous\u2019 of his ex-girlfriend Selena Gomez getting engaged to Benny Blanco. One person even wrote, \u2018Hailey, stop posting as Justin\u2019 under a photo of the couple.<\/p>\n The picture on X is not any more positive. There, users have posted that Bieber is \u2018looking older because of drug use\u2019 and that \u2018he has a son and is still doing drugs\u2019. This is something a representative for the singer has been quick to shut down.<\/p>\n \u2018The recurring narrative that Justin is using hard drugs is absolutely not true,\u2019 a spokesperson told TMZ, adding that the singer is \u2018in one of the best places in his life\u2019.<\/p>\n They added that he is \u2018actively parenting his newborn son\u2019, Jack, who was born six months ago and claim the reports are \u2018exhausting and pitiful and show that despite the obvious truth, people are committed to keeping negative, salacious, harmful narratives alive\u2019.<\/p>\n Any changes to Bieber\u2019s behaviour can be chalked up to a \u2018very transformative\u2019 past year, according to his rep. \u2018He ended several close friendships and business relationships that no longer served him.\u2019<\/p>\n Any tiredness in his appearance, including dark circles under his eyes that fans have pointed out online as ‘evidence’ of alleged drug abuse,\u00a0 are in fact a result of spending all night in the recording studio working on his new album, the TMZ source added.<\/p>\n While much of the \u2018concern\u2019 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.<\/p>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text module_class=”custom-quote” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” header_2_font=”Libre Bodoni|||on|||||” header_2_text_align=”center” header_2_text_color=”#333333″ header_2_font_size=”40px” header_2_line_height=”1.2em” global_colors_info=”{}”] 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.<\/p>\n In the early 2010s, he was pictured egging his neighbour\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n 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: \u2018By 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.<\/p>\n \u2018I 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.\u2019<\/p>\n 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 \u2018informal detox\u2019. Speaking to Vogue about his recovery, Hailey said, \u2018I\u2019m really proud of him. To do it without a program, and to stick with it without a sober coach or AA or classes \u2013 I think it\u2019s extraordinary. He is, in ways, a walking miracle.\u2019<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n This was something he also mentioned in his 2019 post on Instagram. \u2018It\u2019s hard to get out of bed in the morning with the right attitude when you are overwhelmed with your life\u2019, he wrote, adding that \u2018sometimes it can even get to the point where you don\u2019t even want to live anymore\u2019.<\/p>\n These dark and overwhelming feelings are ones Bieber cannot distinguish from his adolescence under the spotlight. \u2018Have you noticed the statistics of child stars and the outcome of their life?\u2019 he asked. \u2018There is an insane pressure and responsibility put on a child\u2019s brain [and] emotional, frontal lobes (decision making) aren\u2019t developed yet. When you add the pressure of stardom it does something to you that is quite unexplainable.\u2019<\/p>\n 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 \u2013 or act a bit ‘strangely’ for a few months \u2013 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.<\/p>\n As a recovering addict and new parent, Bieber deserves a lot more respect than that.<\/p>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_divider color=”#111111″ divider_position=”center” divider_weight=”2px” module_class=”custom-divider” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” custom_margin=”0px||0px||false|false” custom_padding=”0px||0px||false|false” global_colors_info=”{}”][\/et_pb_divider][et_pb_text module_class=”credit-texts” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” text_font=”|||on|||||” text_orientation=”center” global_colors_info=”{}”] Photo: <\/b>IMAGO<\/p>[\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section]\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The singer has faced a barrage of speculation online.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":7314,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"on","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7313","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"modified_by":"guestgrazia","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7313","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7313"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7313\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7334,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7313\/revisions\/7334"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7314"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7313"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7313"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7313"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Bieber is in ‘one of the best places in his life’<\/h2>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”]