Justin Bieber Says ‘People Don’t Know How Serious’ His Drug Abuse Got – menshealth.com

• Justin Bieber used an episode of his new YouTube series, Justin Bieber: Seasons to open up about his past with drug abuse, and why he’s gotten clean.
• “I decided to stop because… I was like, dying,” he said. “My security were coming into the room at night to check my pulse.
• Bieber’s new album, Changes, is out on February 14, and Seasons is streaming on YouTube Premium.

It’s shaping up to be a big 2020 for Justin Bieber, who is not only gearing up to release Changes, his first album since 2015, but also in the process of releasing a documentary series about himself titled Justin Bieber: Seasons. Each episode of the series hones in on a different topic, and the latest episode (the fifth, titled “The Dark Season”) looks at Bieber’s past drug use.

“My security were coming into the room at night to check my pulse,” he says at one point, describing a particularly low moment. “People don’t know how serious it got. It was legit crazy-scary.”

As MTV News details, the episode features Bieber discussing his history with drug use, which innocuously enough began with smoking weed at age 12 or 13, though he eventually became “dependent” on it. Eventually, he got into harder substances, like prescription pills and drinking lean (typically made up of a cough syrup and Sprite mix).

“It was just an escape for me,” Bieber said. “I was young, like everybody in the industry, or in the world, who experiment. But my experience was in front of cameras and I had a different level of exposure. I had a lot of money and a lot of things, so then you have all these people around me hanging on and wanting stuff from me, knowing I was living this lifestyle that they also wanted to live.”

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Fans might also remember that Bieber went through a series of arrests and issues in the public eye due to his unruly behavior and substance abuse. Eventually, for both his own sake and to rehabilitate his image, he decided that he needed to end that way of life. “I decided to stop because… I was like, dying,” he said. “My security were coming into the room at night to check my pulse. People don’t know how serious it got. It was legit crazy-scary.”

The 25-year-old singer has gone through quite a lot in the last year, getting married to his on-again-off-again partner Hailey Baldwin (treating himself to a very expensive watch in the process), and opening up about his own struggles with mental health issues and lyme disease, as well as getting reflective about how he may have hurt some others in his past. He also expressed his interest in fighting Tom Cruise in the UFC Octagon.

“I’ve abused my body in the past and now I’m just in the recovery process,” he said, alluding to the fact that he needs to be at his healthiest to be there for both his family and his fans.

Changes will be Bieber’s fifth studio album; he’s already released two singles, “Yummy,” and “Get Me,” which features fellow pop star Kehlani.Bieber’s documentary series is also continuing to air on YouTube; there are five available so far. You can check the latest one out below.