Four months later I find myself sitting on a tan couch with my arm around my wife waiting backstage to go on the Oprah Winfrey show. I’m about to go on live television in front of millions and tell them all about my problems. I’m a guy; I’m not completely into opening up and discussing my feelings. Not even to mention this shows complete weakness that I’m not particularly excited about sharing with the world.

            “You don’t have to do it,” I heard Becca whisper, “It’s not too late to leave.”

            “It’s ok, I want to,” I said as I rested my hand on her lap. Everyone’s been saying that all this shit is happening too fast but I’d rather get it over with. Sure, I’m not exactly excited to show the world my weakness, but part of the whole rehab program is to open up and not hide anything. My life has always been in the limelight and I feel like I owe it to everyone, especially my fans, to get the truth out there. I swear there’s more rumors going on about us that the truth will probably look a hell of a lot less scandalous.

            It’s one thing to say I’m going to do all this but it’s a completely different thing to actually do it. I know it’s what I have to do, but it’s going to be tough when I’m actually out there on that yellow couch looking into the camera knowing I’m showing up in millions of people’s living rooms.  It’s just difficult knowing that so many people that used to look up to me now have all these fucked up images of me, although some of them are rightfully legit.

            “Five minutes,” a stagehand woke me from my thoughts.

            I took a deep breath before taking a sip of Fiji water and running my hands through my hair. I haven’t been this nervous in a long time. “Are you ready for this?” I asked with a smile, it’s going to be as hard for her as it is for me. In fact, I’d say it’s even harder in some ways since she has to just sit there and relive everything with a camera in her face.

            “I’m ready,” she smiled before kissing my lips gently, “I’ll be right there in the front.  Remember, if you don’t want to answer something don’t answer it.”

            “I know. I’m ok baby, don’t worry. I can handle myself.”

            “I know, you’re a professional with interviews. Just turn up that Timberlake charm,” she smiled, “I love you. I’ll see you out there.”

            I watched her walk out of the room and took another deep breath. The stagehand came back a minute later and I followed him to the stage while I could hear them getting the audience ready.  I’ve seen my share of Oprah episodes and you can always tell within the first two seconds if it’s going to be a fun Oprah or a serious Oprah. If it’s a fun one all the lights are on, she’s wearing bright colors and her hair is curly. If it’s going to be a serious episode she does her opening in the dark, with one spotlight on her wearing dark colors.  I was on her show one other time and she wore a dark green dress with wavy hair.  It was a combination fun and serious interview, but this time I’m sure she’ll be wearing black and ready to bring on the tough questions.

            As for me, I’m wearing a full out suit ready to impress.  Becca’s looking absolutely gorgeous in her dark green halter dress with her straight blonde hair half up with a clip. She looks very professional; I’d say we both have the look down.  I’m scared about what the reaction will be when I walk out there. Usually, I get people screaming for me, but I haven’t had an interview since all the shit went down and I have this fear no one is going to even clap.

            Luckily, when Oprah called me out I was greeted with applause, not to the extreme that I’m used to but much better than the boos I was expecting. “Justin Timberlake.”

            “Oprah Winfrey,” I smiled before hugging her and sitting down on that yellow couch that Tom Cruise jumped all over. I will not be jumping on this couch, that’s a promise. She’s wearing a black skirt suit; we’re in for the serious Oprah today ladies and gentlemen.

            I looked into the audience to find Becca sitting right there in the front row. She smiled at me and made me feel much better about the whole situation. “Thank you so much for coming here for your first interview, how are you doing Justin?”

            “I’m fantastic, thank you for having me.”

            “You look fantastic, you do. You look great, you look happy, and everything is good?”

            “Everything is great. I got everything straightened out and I’m back to the way things always were.”

            “Perfect, now let’s talk about that. You’ve had some great press in the past.  You’ve sold millions of records; you’ve raised millions of dollars for charities.  You’ve always been kind of low-key. I’ve met you before and I remember being surprised at how normal you were, as in down to earth. You weren’t someone that we read about in the tabloids for being out all night partying or drinking and driving. You really stayed out of the negative press.”

            “Well thank you. Honestly, I never really got caught up in that. I mean I partied, don’t get me wrong, but I think I had the sense to keep it private. But I mean, this was years ago. I got married kind of young, we had our son, partying wasn’t really high up on my priority list.”

            “Do you think that there’s something to be said about young Hollywood and the recent drugs and alcohol addiction?”

            “Um, I don’t know. I mean, it’s obviously something that we all face and it’s easy to get drugs in Hollywood. But that’s no excuse for anything. Drugs are ruining people’s lives all over the world not just in Hollywood.”

            “How did it happen, for you? How did it all get started, why did you start?”

            I hate when there’s three questions in one. I took a deep breath before answering, “You know, I was working a lot and kind of being at the top is a tough place to be. Everyone wants a piece of you, everyone wants your name on their album and people expect everything with my name on it to be a huge hit. These things can’t be forced I’ve never been someone that could just sit down from nine to five and write a song. Ideas hit me at different times; I mean I wrote a bunch of my songs at three o’clock in the morning waking up when my son couldn’t sleep. But it’s stressful when you get to a point that people expect you to just be able to sit down and write a hit.  And even worse is when you can’t. It’s like admitting failure almost that I couldn’t do it. I’m a huge perfectionist and it wasn’t enough for me to just admit I couldn’t do it. I needed to find a way to do it.”

            “So you turned to heroine?”

            “I had to find some kind of a balance between all that I’m expected to do. I needed to learn how to say no. That’s difficult because, I mean, come on, I knew that I wasn’t always going to be on the top. I’m realistic in that sense, and I always knew it could all go away. I mean, in that sense I never overdid anything because I was always aware that it could all be gone so fast. So that’s why I always felt like I couldn’t turn anything down because you know, in a year or five years or ten years it could all be gone. I’ve always been so used to everything being either black or white. The good or the bad, clear options. And you’re always told to live one way and take a stand and I mean politicians are getting bad reps because they’re in the gray. But for me, and I think most people it’s important to find a balance, to live in the gray. I can have the music and the fame and I can have the family life but I don’t have to turn to other ways to be able to fit it all in.”

            “Is that why you started heroine?”

            “I was in the studio actually and could not for the life of me come up with anything. I was working with another artist and it was at the point that everyone was saying if you work with me it’d be a definite hit. And I could not come up with anything! It was driving me absolutely crazy. And being in a studio with a group of musicians all trying to come up with this one three minute song is just stressful. It’s tough when your whole career is about being creative and you’re so used to having the creative juices flow without any problems and suddenly they just stop. So people, you know, musicians, have ways to get those creative juices flowing again.”

            “Like heroine?”

            It’s still hard to say that, even after as long as it’s been. And so hard to hear, and it’s like she keeps saying it.  “That is what I turned to, yes.”

            “Were you addicted?”

            I nodded my head and bit at my bottom lip before speaking, “I have an addictive personality. I want to do everything. And the heroine at the time helped me get what I needed to get done done.  I wrote the songs, I had time to come home and play with my son, spend time with my wife.”

            “Your wife, Becca, who is right there in the front row.” Oprah said and Becca smiled and waved, “Come up, can you come up?

            “Sure,” she smiled and stood up, walking over to us. Becca got a huge applause, way more than I did. She hugged Oprah and then kissed me before sitting down next to me.  I don’t know how she’s staying so strong.

            “Now Becca, we know, is a famous producer. The two of you, from the day you met I would imagine, were know as a dream team.”

            “We still are Oprah,” Becca answered with a smile, causing the audience to laugh. She’s so adorable, she gets nervous doing interviews but she’s naturally adorable and entertaining.

            “Excuse me, of course you still are,” Oprah answered with a laugh, “Now, I thought that you always worked together and when I heard that his addiction started in the studio, I didn’t understand it. Were you there?”

            “Oh no, we don’t always work together,” Becca smiled, “We do his songs together and we do work together at other times but we have a son so I’ve cut back a lot, and kind of let him do his own thing. Justin’s really a workaholic and loves to be in the studio and I do too, but after Lyric was born I haven’t been doing as much and he contractually has to.”

            “Did you realize he was high? I mean, what were the signs that you actually knew something was going on?”

            “I was never high in front of her, I was sure that I wasn’t because I knew she’d catch on right away. When recording sometimes I’m there for twenty four hours straight, and I made sure to never let her see me high. Now, it got to the point that needed it to get through the day.”

            “Yeah, um he just seemed really distant,” Becca continued placing a hand in my lap, “It was kind of like he was depressed, he just wasn’t himself. We always talked and joked around and he was just quiet and… distant. I knew something was going on.”

            “How did you know? What was the point that you realized it?”

            I placed my arm left arm over Becca’s shoulder and my right in her lap. I know this is hard for her to relive and that’s why I wasn’t so sure about bringing her here with me. It’s one thing for me to have to relive everything but it’s completely different to have her do it.

            “It was our son’s second birthday party and Justin had been claiming he wasn’t feeling well for days. All of our family and friends were over and he was nowhere to be found so I went to look for him and found him on the floor in the closet. He’s really good at hiding things and he’s a great actor, as we know,” she smiled and looked into my eyes, “But I knew there was more to it than that. And then later that night I was going through the closet and I found his stash.”

            “We have a picture of both of you and your son that was taken at his birthday party, the day Becca found the drugs.” Oprah said as she showed the picture of the three of us, wearing the goofy party hats and huge smiles. The audience let out collective awws, “He is adorable, you’re such an adorable family.”

            “Thank you.”

            “That is the day that you found it? Right? Look at that, you would never expect Justin to be addicted to heroine at that point. He looks happy like a normal proud father,” she continued, “How did you confront him?”

            “I just kind of asked him. We’ve always been honest and I had it so I just asked him if it was his and he was honest. It was easy, it was like he wanted me to find them and he wanted help.”

            “Did you? Justin, did you want her to find it?”

            “I don’t think I’d go that far,” I laughed, “I mean, I knew that it was going too far and I knew I had to get straightened out so I wasn’t going to fight her about it. I was ready.”

            “What was your wake up call?”

            “Seeing her cry, having her leave,” I swear to god I am not crying on national television. I felt her hand on my leg and managed to pull myself together.

            “You left?”

            Becca nodded her head, “I told him that we needed to leave, and I didn’t want Lyric to see his Daddy like that. And Justin knew, I mean he carried the bags to the car.”

            “She told me that she had to leave but she’d always be there for me. Her phone would always be on and if I needed her help to get through something she’d be there. But she also said she wasn’t going to do anything for me. I had to be the one to make the arrangements because if someone made me do it I wouldn’t have gotten better. I needed to do it myself, that’s the kind of person I am.”

            Oprah nodded her head, “That must have been tough.”

            “Oh yeah, very tough but I knew he could do it. I told him if he did I’d be right back there with him. But that was his only chance and if he didn’t get himself straightened out he’d never see me and especially never see Lyric again.”

            People clapped and I honestly think that was the best thing she could have done for me.  “So you started rehab right away?”

            I nodded my head, “The next day I went down and joined the intense rehab and detoxification process.”

            “How was that?”

            “Hell. One word, hell,” I laughed, “It was tough.”

            “What was the hardest part?”

            “Being away from my family and not being able to see anyone. I got to see Becca once every three weeks for an hour. And I got to talk to her on the phone once a week for a half an hour. I mean, we hadn’t been apart for more than a couple days since we met. Even when I was touring we’d fly out every week or so.  And I didn’t get to see lyric at all. That was tough. But the whole process in itself was tough as well. I mean, going through the actual process was hell too. The whole situation was, I can’t pick one part.”

            “But you’re done now, do you find it difficult to keep clean?”

            I shook my head, “Not at all. I mean, it’s really not even something on my mind. I just don’t want to go through all that again, and I know I’d loose everything and it’s not worth it. I’ve never been into drugs; I’ve never really experimented. It was completely out of normal for me to do it and I have no cravings to go back.”

            “Now you’re here for the new album. Some critics say it’s a little too fast for you to be coming out with something new and you should be taking time to focus on your family. Were you pressured by your record company into coming out with something so fast?”

            “No. I was dying in there not being able to record. I spent my days writing and Becca mixed a lot of beats while I was away.  We really breathe music and we live in the studio. I don’t think people understand the extent to our obsessiveness.”

            The audience laughed before Becca added, “We really do. His whole album was pretty much done before he got back. We both are like connected as far as music goes and when he handed me his notebook and he listened to my tracks everything fit. It was the easiest record I think we ever worked on.”

            “So you’re saying you went right to work when you got back?”

            I nodded my head, “It’s an escape. Everyone has their own escapes but music is both of ours. I mean, that first night I came home we went downstairs to the studio and spent the whole night working on tracks.”

            “The whole night?” Oprah asked with a laugh.

            “Yes, literally the whole night,” Becca smiled, “We made it to bed at like six in the morning and Lyric woke us up at 6:30. It was a very tough day.”

            “But things went back to normal with you right away or were there awkward moments?”

            “There were awkward moments at the very beginning. When everyone left and Lyric was in bed and it was just the two of us. But we went down to the studio and everything went back to normal. That really is like our haven. We live down there. Seriously we met in a studio, I proposed in the studio, we got married in the studio.”

            “We did not get married in the studio,” Becca corrected me with a laugh, “That makes us sound like freaks, we got married in a church like normal people.”

            Everyone laughed, they love her. I swear she could get her own show, “Yeah, sorry that’s not what I mean. We just have a lot of memories in the studio.”

            “What about your son? He’s how old?”

            “He’ll be three in two months.”

            “He’s so adorable, what was it like coming home to him? Did he remember you?”

            “Yeah, surprisingly he did I was real worried about that. But Becca made sure he’d remember me. It was tough because he had grown so much and when I left he was starting with sounds and when I got home he was all talking in mixed up sentences.”

            “We have your son Lyric, on Skype with Justin’s mother, Lynn Harless. Hello?”

            “Hello,” my mother’s southern drawl filled the room, “Say hi sweetie.”

            “Hi!” Lyric smiled and waved, “Oh! It’s Mommy! Hi Mommy! Hi Daddy! You come home?”

            “Hey buddy, is Granny taking good care of you?” I asked as everyone sighed. He is adorable, there’s no surprise here.

            “Yeah, we had ice cream! Huh?”

            “Nice Ma, real nice,” I laughed.

            “She got caught,” Oprah laughed, “Grannies always sneak in the sweets.”

            “Mommy I go swim,” my son just cut off Oprah Winfrey, that’s not good.

            Becca looks like she’s about to cry, “Good job babe, I miss you.”

            “I miss you! You come home. Daddy come home too!”

            We all said our goodbyes and I rested my hand on Becca’s lap as she waved goodbye.  “Are you ok Becca?” Oprah asked.

            She nodded her head, “I’ve never been away from him for more than like a couple hours,” she laughed and wiped her eyes, “I’m ok though, we’re ok, I’m sorry.”

            The rest of the interview was focusing on the good things I’ve done. We talked about the different charities I have sent up and my new album.  Becca was back in the audience with Oprah when I performed my new single. Looking out into the crowd and seeing Becca with that look in her eyes really makes me realize how lucky I am to have my life back.  After the show I hung out to sign autographs. I’m surprised they still want my autograph, so I’ll stay out here signing them until I’m forced to leave.

            It was great to actually talk to the people in the crowd. A lot of them had stories about family members going through what I went through and they said it really helped seeing the steps I’ve made and now they have faith that they can do it too. I almost cried about five times, but there were only tears once. I’ve become an emotional wreck.

            When we left the show we went right to the private jet on our way back to LA.

            “You did great,” Becca kissed me gently, “They loved you.”

            ‘They loved you,” I corrected her, “You’re a natural out there, we should get you a show.”

            She laughed, resting her legs on my lap and taking off her heels, “I’ve learned how to charm, just like you.”

            “That’s right, now that you’re a Timberlake you got the charm.” I kissed her forehead, “Thanks for coming, thanks for everything baby. I’m indebted to you forever.”

            “Good, you can start paying off your debt by rubbing my feet. Those heels were killing me.”