Less than 24 hours after checking into her second rehabilitation clinic in a week, Britney Spears has left the facility. According to a source close to the singer, Spears left the Promises Malibu Alcohol and Drug Rehab Treatment Facility in Malibu, California, at 8 a.m. P.T. on Wednesday (February 21).
Last week, Spears briefly visited the Crossroads Centre, a treatment facility on the Caribbean island of Antigua, only to leave less than a day later. This time, her family and manager intervened, and announced yesterday that Spears had voluntarily entered rehab . “We ask that the media respect her privacy as well as those of family and friends at this time,” her manager Larry Rudolph said in a statement at the time.
After returning from her first trip to rehab, Spears made a shocking public appearance Friday night, debuting her newly shaved head at a tattoo shop in Sherman Oaks, California .
Most patients remain in rehab facilities from roughly 28 to 45 days, and Spears’ brief visits have caused concern among her family and friends, according to People. Some family members and friends talked with the magazine in between Spears’ rehab stints.
“She’s getting her life together,” Spears’ producer Sean Garrett told the magazine, “getting it where it needs to be. She just needs time to herself. She’s not crazy; she’s young, she’s rich and she does what she wants to do.” “We told her she needs to get control over what’s going on,” Spears family friend Gregory Pittman added.
“She is obviously in a lot of pain and needs help immediately,” agreed Doreen Seal, the mother of Jason Alexander, a longtime family friend to whom Spears was briefly married.
“I think she made a step in the right direction,” Spears family friend Ginger Simmons told People. “We all make mistakes and do things we aren’t proud of – and we don’t have the paparazzi in our face all the time. We have to remember that there are children involved, and that this is someone’s daughter, someone’s sister, someone’s mother.”
News is trickling out concerning Spears’ children, sons Sean Preston and Jayden James. A source close to the situation tells MTV News that the respective 17-month-old and 5-month-olds are “fine” and “don’t even know what’s going on,” and their father, Kevin Federline, is continuing his visitation schedule as usual. Meanwhile, Rudolph assured People that “the kids are being well taken care of.”