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The Independent UK
The Independent UK
National
Roisin O'Connor

'I became resentful': Justin Bieber on drugs, fame and being 'the world's most hated person'

Justin Bieber has shared a lengthy personal message in which he apologises for his past behaviour and reflects on his growth from a young star to the person he is today. 

The pop star, who was discovered by music manager Scooter Braun aged 13, opened his message by addressing recent feelings of depression. He linked this to the “quite unexplainable” pressure placed on a celebrity who has come from an unstable home to grow up in the frenzy of the media spotlight. 

“It’s hard to get out of bed in the morning…when it feels like there’s trouble after trouble after trouble,” he wrote on Instagram.

“You start foreseeing the day through lenses of ‘dread’ and anticipate another bad day. A cycle of feeling disappointment after disappointment. Sometimes it can even get to the point where you don’t even want to live anymore. Where you feel like it’s never going to change.”

At 18, he had “millions in the bank” and “access to whatever [I] wanted” but “no skills in the real world”, he pointed out. By 19, Bieber says he was doing “pretty heavy drugs” and “abused” the relationships he was in: “I became resentful, disrespectful to women and angry,” he admitted.

Bieber said he reached a moment, aged 20, where he had “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”.

Now aged 25, Bieber wrote that his life has changed for the better, thanking his faith, marriage to model Hailey Baldwin, and his support network of friends and family.

Read the full post below: 

Following his hit collaboration with Ed Sheera, “I Don’t Care”, Bieber has teased that new music is on the way. His last studio album, Purpose, was released in 2015.

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