SELENA BACK TO REHAB?

Partying. Exhaustion. Jealousy. Inside Selena Gomez’s downward spiral

She looked beautiful — but felt terrible. Wearing a cropped white turtleneck and tight black pants, Selena Gomez managed to smile her way through an Instagram video that showed her dancing with a male friend during a night off from the Australian leg of her Revival world tour. “When my babies take me salsa dancing even when they told me not to because I’m sick … ” she wrote on Aug. 12 alongside the clip, adding, “I don’t care.”

But her friends and family do. After weeks of emotional drama, a public feud with ex-boyfriend Justin Bieber and a significant increase in her partying, Selena’s loved ones fear she’s trapped in yet another downward spiral. “Half of the time Selena says she is sick, she’s really just hungover and keeps partying anyway,” a friend tells In Touch. “She’s been showing a lot of signs that worry her friends who’ve seen this behavior before. First she gets depressed, then has massive anxiety, then starts drinking and partying way too hard, then goes into denial and finally has a breakdown,” adds the friend. “Everyone fears that if she doesn’t slow down, she’ll end up back in rehab.”

Her last trip to rehab was in 2014. She spent two weeks in an Arizona treatment facility amid a then-secret struggle with the autoimmune disease lupus, ongoing drama with Justin and what she described at the time as a “need to spend some time on myself.” ( Her rep said she checked in for emotional issues.) Now, says her friend, “The scariest part is that she’s drinking and partying about 10 times harder than ever before and her health is horrible.”

She’s desperately unhappy. “Selena’s major source of unhappi- ness right now is twofold,” explains an insider. “She’s realizing that the career she so desperately wanted as a child doesn’t fulfill her anymore. And then there’s her inability to date a nice, normal guy.” With four months left on her grueling world tour, she’s reminded of her problems every single day. “Selena is emotionally and physically exhausted,” says a source, “and she also feels all alone.”

That’s why she’s been unraveling all summer. On July 23 — just one day after her 24th birthday — Selena nearly broke down onstage in Indonesia before posting, then deleting, an emotionally fraught Instagram rant explaining how she felt “extremely unauthentic, unconnected to both myself and my music” and needed to rethink her life “creatively and personally.” Then on Aug. 15, she got into a public war with Justin, 22, on Instagram in — of all places — the comments section of a picture he’d posted with new love Sofia Richie, 18. “Selena flew into a jealous rage and was shaking with anger” when she saw the pic and started engaging her ex (see right), says the source. “Now she desperately wants to clear the air with Justin, but he’s having none of it. And the more he ignores her, the worse she feels.”

She needs help. “Selena is heading down a slippery slope of selfdestruction,” says the source. “Her mom, Mandy [Teefey], is petrified that if her daughter doesn’t slow down, she’ll suffer from another lupus flare-up,” which could have dire consequences. Her mom should be worried, says the friend: “This is the worst we’ve ever seen her and she seems to get worse every week. If she does end up back in rehab, we just hope she remains there for at least a month rather than just a few days so that she truly gets the help she needs.” ◼

Everyone’s worried she’ll have a breakdown before she makes it to the end of her tour”

— AN INSIDER