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The hits keep coming for Britney Spears but they are not the ones that will help put platinum records on her walls.Spears' downward spiral took another twist when a court commissioner ordered the 25-year-old, one-time princess of pop music to undergo random drug and alcohol testing twice a week as part of a child custody dispute with ex-husband Kevin Federline.
The ruling could not come at a worse time professionally for Spears, who is trying to recover from a series of image-crippling events that include a bizarre head-shaving incident in February (captured by paparazzi photographers) to her widely ridiculed performance earlier this month at MTV's Video Music Awards.
Now, a judge has intervened and told Spears to clean up her act, which he said includes evidence of "habitual, frequent and continuous use of controlled substances and alcohol."
The question is, does the order come soon enough, and is it strong enough, to keep Spears from losing custody of her two young sons to ex-husband Federline.
"If she were to violate the order, she would be really stupid," said Lynne Gold-Bikin, a family law attorney in Pennsylvania and former chair of the American Bar Association Family Law Section. "Reading between the lines, I think the judge is saying, 'I think you can stop it, pull yourself back.'"
Superior Court Commissioner Scott Gordon, who issued his order on Monday, required both Spears and Federline to refrain from drinking or using drugs either in the presence of their children or within 12 hours before taking charge of them.
He also ordered Spears, but not Federline, to undergo random drug and alcohol testing twice a week, according to court documents.
Absent from the order was a requirement that Spears undergo rehabilitation and substance abuse counselling, possibly indicating that her problem isn't severe enough to affect her parenting skills. Without that provision, however, experts say Spears may be bound to fail.
"People tend to backslide in those situations, and once you get into habits and patterns, it's tough to change," said University of Southern California sociologist Julie Albright. "The stakes have been set very high for a relapse."
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