When Britney Spears Was 'Scared' of Failing a Drug Test During a Tour: "I Won't See My Boys"

Britney Spears' life has been a tumultuous ride since she grew to unprecedented fame in her music career. Her life was majorly subjected to a cruel conservatorship, including her "toxic" relationship with the media. The 2000s were particularly challenging for her as once, the 'Princess of Pop' smoked weed backstage during her 2009 concert and cried as a consequence. 

The now-42-year-old was reportedly terrified after she took the drug before going to the stage of her 2009 Circus tour stop, according to the documentary The New York Times Presents: Controlling Britney Spears. The head of the wardrobe for the concert, Tish Yates, recalled how the Criminal singer was upset for smoking weed and became "distressed." 

"She is distressed. She is upset," Yates says in the documentary. "She's yelling, 'It smells like pot. It smells like pot. I can't breathe this. I cannot breathe. I will fail a drug test. I won't see my boys.' And she bolted. She was running trying to get back to her dressing room. She was crying. She was screaming. The level of how she was scared really opened my eyes. She's crying and the show goes on." 

This particular tour began a year after she was put on a 13-year-long court-ordered conservatorship under her father Jamie Spears in 2008. At the same time, she was embroiled in a custody battle with her former husband and father of her two sons (Jayden James and Sean Preston) Kevin Federline. She had described her conservatorship as "cruel" and "abusive" and a way to control her freedom to make decisions. 

The pop sensation spoke openly about her addiction to substance abuse in the 000's in her bombshell tell-all memoir The Woman in Me after she was freed from her conservatorship in November 2021. The mother of two dismissed reports that she's an addict, claiming that the tabloids back then inaccurately portrayed her as a "party girl," adding that the only drug she was used to was her doctor-prescribed medication, per Cosmopolitan. 

"The tabloids were full of accusations, 'She's a slut! She's on drugs!'" wrote Spears in the book, explaining, "I never had a drinking problem. I liked to drink, but it was never out of control. Do you want to know my drug of choice? The only thing I really did except for drinking? Adderall, the amphetamine that's given to kids for ADHD. Adderall made me high, yes, but what I found far more appealing was that it gave me a few hours of feeling less depressed." 

"It was the only thing that worked for me as an antidepressant, and I really felt like I needed one of those. I never had an interest in hard drugs," she added, citing her discomfort with cameras, public scrutiny, and social anxiety due to feeling unsupported by those around her and not having the freedom to make mistakes, normal to human beings, courtesy of being a public figure.