Downward spiral. Aaron Carter opened up about his past alcohol abuse during a new episode of Oprah: Where Are They Now, which aired on Saturday, October 22. Watch what he said in the clip above.
Carter says his troubles first began when his parents, Robert and Jane, split in 2003. "The depression was brought on because I loved my family being together. I did not want to see them divorced," the singer, 28, explained. "I couldn't dwell on it. I couldn't think about it too much. I kind of had to just block it out."
Carter turned to partying to escape, but he eventually went broke and moved in with his older brother, Backstreet Boys' Nick Carter, in Tennessee. During the downtime, he worked on his music in the guesthouse and eventually got a call to join season 9 of Dancing With the Stars in 2009. Producers tracked him down by calling his cellphone number, which he posted on Twitter to his fans.
The stint on the ABC series gave him new motivation to reignite his career. However, even after hiring music manager Johnny Wright, record labels didn't want to work with him.
"They just were not interested in me," he explained on the OWN program. "They didn't want to touch me, they didn't want to do anything… Nothing ever came into fruition."
The negative feedback didn't sit well with the former child star. "I started getting really heavy into drinking and was telling people, 'I'm on a real bad path right now. I need help,'" he recalled. He later checked into the Betty Ford Center in Rancho Mirage, California, for a month in 2011.
Aaron claims he's been sober ever since and, despite rumors, says that he's never been a drug addict. "I don't want to always feel like I have to prove myself, but people put me in these positions, and that's fine," he told Entertainment Tonight at the time.