The man who turned Justin Bieber into a global pop superstar says he feared he would find him dead from a drug overdose.
Scooter Braun, Bieber's manager, opened up about his decision to put the brakes on Bieber’s Purpose world tour last summer.
"I thought he was going to die,” Braun said on The Red Pill podcast. “I thought he was going to sleep one night and that he would have so much crap in his system that he would not wake up the next morning.”
Bieber had performed more than 150 shows over 16 months when Braun cancelled the last 15 scheduled dates (including two shows at Toronto's Rogers Centre), explaining that Bieber’s “soul and well-being … came first.”
This week, Braun admitted Bieber was in a “dark place,” although he didn’t specify which substances the Canadian singer was using.
“There was a time when I would go to sleep almost every night — when he had the money to fly away from me — and I was worried every night that I was gonna lose him,” Braun said on the podcast. “That was the time when I was telling him he’s not allowed to work. He used to yell and scream at me and he wanted to put music out. He wanted to tour, but I thought if he did that, he would die. So I just refused.
“We weren’t making any money, it wasn’t like I was trying to take advantage — I didn’t want him to work, I wanted him to get healthy.”
Braun said Bieber made a decision to seek a healthier lifestyle. “He made a conscious choice for himself to change,” he said. “For a year and a half, I failed miserably trying to help him because for a year and a half he didn’t change, and I made every effort you can imagine.”
Braun revealed: “It wasn’t until one day he woke up and said, ‘Hey, I need to talk to you. I don’t want to be this person anymore.’ And he made the decision to change, and actually put that into action, and the result is who he’s become today, and that is the result of his own decision, no one else’s.”