Continued from page 1

Britney Interrupted

Thursday February 07, 2008 12:00 PM EST

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"UCLA is for hardcore cases, for people who are very sick," says a former patient. "This is not the Ritz-Carlton." Photo by: Dean Chapple / Splash News Online

And so goes a sad new day in the life of the princess of pop, whose out-of-control lifestyle – sources say she had not slept for three days when she was admitted to UCLA – has cost her the keys to the kingdom: from the right to see sons Preston, 2, and Jayden, 17 months, to the ability to spend her hard-earned money. One day after Dr. Deborah Nadel, a Santa Monica-based psychiatrist who had been treating Spears as an outpatient for a week, issued the request for an involuntary 72-hour lockup – now extended to 14 days – an L.A. court named her father, 55, cotemporary conservator of her estate, in control of her estimated $100 million empire.

Could the force that sold upwards of 70 million CDs truly have fallen so far? According to her mother: farther. In a stunning affidavit presented to the court on Feb. 1 to secure a temporary restraining order against best buddy Sam Lutfi, Lynne, 52, described a chaotic scene on Jan. 28 in which her daughter wandered around her Beverly Hills home, drugged, confused and showing "the understanding of a very young girl."

Ironically, Spears' latest hospitalization and the return of her parents to the scene had been set into motion by Lutfi, who had finally persuaded Spears to seek treatment from Dr. Nadel, a psychiatrist recommended by her lawyers.

According to her father's court documents, "Britney is currently in severe mental distress" and suffering "from several mental health disorders which are not being treated." That distress showed in the weeks preceding the UCLA hospitalization: fighting with on-again, off-again beau Adnan Ghalib, 35, as well as Lutfi, 33, taking paparazzi on high-speed chases and just breaking down in tears.