Even after shaving her head and rampaging with an umbrella, Britney managed to give her fans a glimmer of hope in late 2007. The word was out that she was releasing a new CD. Better yet, she was returning to the old venue that had marked so many milestones in her career: the MTV Music Awards, where she'd always wowed the crowds. Surely she could do it again?

She did it all right -- only not in the way anyone could have imagined. There was Britney before millions, barely moving and lip synching in time to the music. It was as if she were wishing she could be anywhere else but here, the stage, where she had always been so confident. It was a disaster.

Michael Musto: I was watching the VMAs as they unfolded. And of course, my phone, my text and my emails were going off the hook. “Can you believe this?” She looks not only under-rehearsed, she looks half-dead.

Despite that performance, Britney's new CD, “Blackout,” has been something of a hit. In this video for her song “Piece of Me,” she lashes out at the press for persecuting her. And yet it seemed a case of too little, too late.

Levy: Nobody pays any attention to what's on the record because, well, the life has taken over. There's no room for the music.

Indeed, according to Forbes, at the height of her fame her music earned her $39 million a year in record sales, tours and endorsements. Last year, without tours or appearances to hawk her new CD, her take-home was just $8 million.

But as bleak as her professional life looked, her personal one was about to become downright depressing. In October, after citing Britney's "habitual, frequent and continuous use of controlled substances and alcohol," a family court awarded custody of her two children to her ex husband. Britney, the court ruled, was an unfit mother.

Levy: The woman's had her children taken away. She is the butt of every late night comic. She is a pariah to most of America. She's nobody's role model now.

A woman known all over the world now seemed to be all alone within it.

Her children, husband, manager, and publicist: gone.

Her parents: a strained relationship at best.

It was little coincidence that as her inner circle shrank, the circus ring around her swelled. Hordes of cameras were constantly pressing in.

Levy: So who does she turn to for approval and attention? The guys holding cameras who are saying “Britney, Britney, over here, Britney, Britney, Britney, over here.” You know, there's a little excitement in a day that might otherwise be filed with oh, the reality of not getting to see your kids.

Instead of fighting them, Britney was giving in to the men she used to try to run away from.

Brandy Navarre: And our photographers, many of them, really do genuinely care about this girl.

Brandy Navarre of the X17 photo agency says cameramen helped Britney change her tires and they offered her fatherly advice.

They became her family.

Brandy Navarre: She's sought companionship and friendship in the photographers because she has no other friends. And some of our photographers have probably been the truest friends she's ever had.

Britney: I love you guys!

Paparazzi: We love you, Britney!

In fact, she seemed to feel so comfortable with them that she picked one to be her boyfriend.

Adnan Ghalib (pronounced guh-leeb) was born in Britain and moved to the United States about a decade ago to make it big as the alpha paparazzo in Britney's pack. It may come as no surprise that his competitor, Brandy Navarre, thinks Britney made a poor choice in her latest boyfriend.

Brandy Navarre: He was setting up photos so that he could have them exclusive through his agency. But it kind of backfired. Because a lot of the media were pretty aware of what was going on. And that it was kind of ugly to take advantage of her and do that.

More than that, Britney had broken some unwritten code in Hollywood: the one that says you don't make friends with people who are chasing you for pictures.

Michael Musto: She's partly courting the media and what could be better proof than that than she's going out with a photographer. Those are the enemy! She's literally sleeping with the enemy by bringing one into her house.

And sometime last year she added one more face to her diminished entourage.

Osama "Sam" Lutfi (pronounced lut-fee), has been described alternately as a friend, a bodyguard, her manager, it was never clear what Sam Lutfi was to Britney. Only that he was constantly at her side.

Michael Joseph Gross, Blender writer: He arrived as her new manager/publicist/ best friend. And started giving tips to one paparazzi agency in particular. Since then, they've always known where she's going, where she's going to be.

Writer Michael Joseph Gross of Blender magazine rode with the paparazzi trailing Britney. He says Sam Lutfi was largely responsible for all of Britney's run-ins with the cameras over the past few months.

Gross says Lutfi somehow worked his way into meeting Britney, then convincing her she needed him.

But Gross says Britney put herself in the hands of a dangerous man.

By midsummer, according to a lot of people who are close to her, Sam had so taken control of things that nobody got in or out of the house. No message got in or out except through Sam.

In fact, at the time he was with Britney, Sam Lutfi had three restraining orders against him from other people who, like Britney, had let him into their lives. In the petition for one of those orders, a man described Lutfi as a "dangerous person" who was " harassing" him through text messages and emails.

On Jan. 3 of this year, Britney refused to hand her children back to their father after a long weekend with them. A police standoff ensued, ending with Britney being forced onto a gurney, into an ambulance, and off to a hospital for psychiatric evaluation.

Michael Musto: This wasn't even just a trip to, like, a Promises kind of rehab center where it's all kind of a little bit glam. And you get out after two days and clink clink that was fun. This was serious business. This is a psycho ward.

But no sooner was she in for help then she was out, running around town, often in a pink wig, often with a British accent.

At one point she went on an 60-hour paparazzi binge with the cameras behind her, sometimes yelling at Sam Lutfi.

After one fight, she wound up on the curb, sobbing. One of the most popular entertainers ever, now reduced to a puddle of tears with a puppy on her lap.

Back in Kenwood, La., old friends looked at their computers and TVs in disbelief. Joy Moore says Britney's mother Lynne -- estranged from her daughter -- had called Joy one day, beside herself.

Joy Moore: She said, "I’m going in my tennis shoes and my sweatpants and if I have to scale the wall and run past bodyguards and dogs, that's what I’m going to do. I'm getting to her." And that was her. That's how she felt. "I’m desperate. I just have to get there."

Eventually she did get there, and with more than a pair of sneakers to help her.

In late January of this year, less than a month after Britney's first trip to the hospital, her parents had convinced the courts their daughter needed an emergency intervention. With helicopters roaring overhead, a line of police cars snaking up the drive to her home, Britney was ushered back to the hospital for another psychiatric evaluation, leaving the rest of the world wondering: could anything or anyone save this woman?

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