Why do people think that with money comes happiness? I want to tell you all what money did for me. While everything is now said and done, I still wouldn’t change a thing about my life. All of the good and all of the bad made me the man that I am today. This is my story.

Let me back this up a little. My name is Joshua Chasez and I am... well was three fifths of NSYNC. The funny thing about the whole deal is that I didn’t really even want to do it. I had just left Justin in Nashville with his mother (that being after every producer in LA told me I was shit unless I sucked their dick, or fucked their wives) and headed home to Bowie. I needed my mom to hug me and tell me that I was special to her, and then I was going to start college. I had already registered for classes and everything. I had declared my major in architecture. Really, I was all set. That is until Justin called me out of the blue one day and told me about this guy starting this group. At first I told him no - a flat out refusal. The little shit told me to think about it and he’d call me back on Friday. Then he hung up on me. The little fucker hung up on me. I had most of the week to ‘think’ about it, it was only Tuesday. So I told my parents and I also told them that I had already said no. I think that they were surprised, but as I said, I was ready for college. Later that night, right before he went to bed, my dad came into my room and told me that I should try it. The University of Maryland would always be there, he said. This was a once in a lifetime opportunity. He had a point. Even so, that was the longest week in creation and I had a stress headache the entire time. True to his word, Justin called me on Friday. I guess my decision was obvious. The rest is history

We met in Orlando and then a little while later, went to Germany. I was part of something, although Lou told me almost daily that I didn’t have enough talent to be there. That I should be grateful that the others could carry me. I just took it all in stride and never let anyone else know that things that he said to me. It infuriated me and made me want to go home. Why was I the one that was being degraded and picked on? At least I could dance. But no, no one ever said a thing to Lance. He was told to practice more, that JC would help him. So I did, every night after everyone was done, me and Lance were still in the rehearsal studio working on choreography that I had down for three weeks. I asked why me, and management told me that they felt that I needed the practice too. That hurt! Basically, I was miserable the entire time we were in Germany. Before we left the states, Lou and Johnny asked each of us about our pasts, if there was anything that could come back to bite us in the ass. I told them that I was adopted. It was a mistake that I would regret. Even though all five of us became extremely close, we truly were best friends, I never told them any of the things that Johnny and Lou said to me. It wasn’t worth it, they were all happy and I wanted them to stay that way.

We finally got to go home, and by home I mean Orlando. Justin’s mom and step-dad had moved across the country for this, so had Lance’s. Then again, both of them, Lynn and Diane, had been in Europe with us most of the time too. When they went home, I was in charge of their baby boys. Chris and Joey were gallivanting free and I was practically babysitting. I couldn’t be a bad example to the youngsters, now could I?

Anyway, I digress. We got home and I moved in with Chris, Justin, and Justin’s mother. I spent a lot of time holed up in my bedroom when we weren’t rehearsing or I wasn’t working in a shitty little restaurant. God, I hated being a waiter.

The only good thing that came out of LA was a girl I met. We had kept in touch the whole time I was overseas and now she was planning a visit. She was finishing college so her parents had lent her the money. God I was so thrilled when she stepped off the plane. We both cried, yes cried, because we hadn’t seen each other in so long. I told her all about Europe and showed her all of the pictures. I told her how were we HUGE over there and then we got back here and nothing. She smiled and told me that it would happen over here too. That I had enough talent to carry the other four. Even when our relationship went to hell, I remembered that and continued to be in love with her, even though I knew I shouldn’t.

I digress again. Bobbie stayed a week over her spring break. It was great, except for rehearsals and hanging out with Lynn. That sucked. I mean, I had to let Bobbie take my bed and I slept on the couch - Lynn’s rules. We spent a lot of time gone, if you get my drift. We both cried when she left. I stood there and watched her plane take off with tears still running down my face. I wanted my mom to be there to make me feel better.

Lou hated it that she and I were dating. He told me time and time again to get rid of her, but I refused. I didn’t want to be ‘marketable’ to girls. I wanted to be happy and she made me happy. He just didn’t care. When the record blew up (ok maybe not blew up, but we were getting recognized where ever we went) we were all supposedly single. I told Bobbie and even though she didn’t like it, she said she kind of understood. By this time she was an intern at J-14 magazine. I really didn’t think too much about that at the time, but then again, I was only a waiter with larger hopes and dreams. How was I to know that within 3 months, her supervisor would recognize the picture of me that Bobbie kept in her cubicle. We went in and did an interview (one of our first) and Bobbie was guaranteed a job after college. It was great. . . for awhile. 

It wasn’t long before someone (I don’t remember who, probably a parent) realized that we weren’t getting paid like we were supposed to. We were all broke. My parents flew from Bowie to Orlando to be there with me, my mom treating me like a child again. I didn’t even pretend not to love her attention. As the lawsuit drew nearer I began to regret my decision to even be in the group. I kind of blamed my dad and I made the mistake of telling him so. It was the first fight that I remember having with my father. We screamed and yelled and made my mom cry. I won’t go into what was said, I hate reliving it. Even now I still feel the flush of shame creeping up my neck and into my cheeks. We’ve never fought like that again. Anyway, Bobbie decided that I needed to get my mind off of things, so she flew to Orlando to be with me. That was a huge mistake. Not that I wasn’t glad to see her, but as soon as she stepped off of the plane, my mother’s hackles rose. My mother hated her and she didn’t mind letting Bobbie know either. I had never seen my mom act like that and I haven’t since then. Then again, I have better sense than to introduce my girlfriends to my mother unless we’re very serious. Bobbie ended up leaving a whole 2 weeks before she had originally planned. I took her to the airport and this time there were no quick goodbye kisses or hugs. Right before she walked to the gate, she turned and told me something that I would never be able to forget, not truly forgive her for. She said, ‘Josh you can’t let your bitch of a mother run your life. You are old enough to make your own decisions. Call me when you can let the fuck go. Cut the goddamned apron strings.’ She turned then, and walked away from me. I didn’t watch her plane take off. I went home and went straight to my room and didn’t come out for 2 days.

As you know, the lawsuit went well. The only thing that I was unhappy about was that Johnny was still our manager. But he was a good manager so I didn’t really complain too much. When it was all over and my parents had went back to Bowie, Bobbie came back. It was only for a weekend, but it was a great weekend. We didn’t leave her hotel room. When I went back to the house, Justin looked at me with a sort of awe. It would fade soon enough.

After the lawsuit we recorded another album, No Strings Attached, and it blew up. I mean, it was fucking insane. We couldn’t go anywhere without security. It was cool and annoying all at the same time. Bobbie started to get stressed out with everyone talking about her. Our fans were constantly calling her a bitch and a slut. It hurt her feelings and in turn it hurt mine. Chris’ girlfriend, Dani, was the nice girlfriend and mine was the whore who was just using me. Bobbie changed as a result, and soon none of the other guys liked to be around her. She and Dani fought every time they were together. It wasn’t long after all this that she started cheating on me. Then I started cheating on her. Tit for tat. It was weird and no one else understood, but we had a perfect understanding about it all. I’d stop when she did. She eventually did, so then I did.

The ‘strings’ tour ended, finally, and me and Bobbie broke up. Shortly thereafter we got back together. Everything went well, for a while. We all went back into the studio to begin the writing and recording of ‘Celebrity’. I had been writing for weeks, by myself which was odd. It wasn’t until a meeting that I found out that Justin had been writing with Wade, a choreographer. What the hell. I decided that it didn’t matter, I turned in my songs to Jive and waited for a response. It turns out that I was going to be waiting for a while. They chose quite a few of Justin’s songs to be on the album. Less of mine. I was slightly put out, but I figured that I was a professional so I just let it go.

I had decided to ask Bobbie to marry me. I had bought a house in LA and she had moved in. I had already bought the ring and was really excited. I went home one day and I started up the stairs. I heard Bobbie’s voice and I heard my best friend, Kasey. I followed their voices and found them. Naked. In my bed. My bed! I hit the roof. Oh my God, she fucked my best friend. In my bed. I turned and left. Now, I don’t even remember where I went. It really doesn’t matter, the point is that I just left.

After that I just kind of kept to myself. My confidence had really taken a beating with the song selection for the album, then with Bobbie cheating on me. I retreated inside my head. I basically holed up inside my house in Orlando and wouldn’t answer the phone, or the door. I think, in retrospect, that I was waiting for someone, anyone, to come to me and just ask what was wrong. No one did. I had never felt more alone.

It wasn’t long before we were going to head out on the Pop Odyssey tour. I met the other guys at Johnny’s house for a meeting. I think they were surprised at my appearance. I had lost weight, so I was even more slender than normal. Then they started asking questions. I ignored them, why should I tell them, they didn’t care before. Maybe I was being petty, but then again, maybe I didn’t care.

 The meeting was the same old shit, tour dates and song order and the like. It was decided that we were going to do another small tour after Pop Odyssey. I can say that I was less than thrilled. After it was over Johnny asked me to stick around for a while, he said he wanted to talk to me. I

just sighed and sat back down. He sat down next to me after the others had left and put his hand on my shoulder. He asked me if I was okay. I blew up. Before I knew it I was crying and yelling. Did I look okay? Did anyone try to contact me while we were all apart, himself included? Did anyone know, or even care, that I was gonna ask Bobbie to marry me? Did they give a fuck that she slept with my best friend in my fucking bed? By the end of my tyrade, I was almost hyperventilating. Johnny sat there in complete shock, he had never seen me lose control like that. I assured him that I would be fine, and I would get through the tour okay, that he shouldn’t worry. Then I left. Even as I drove home, I knew that before I got there the other guys would know about this.

I was barely on my street when my cell phone started ringing. It was Justin. I opened the phone and closed it, effectively silencing the noise and hanging up on him at the same time. When I got in my house, the land line was ringing. It was Chris. I picked up the receiver and then hung it up. They would be at my house next. I locked the front door back then just went up to my bedroom. I got under the covers and pulled them over my head. Before long I was asleep.

I’m sure you guess that they would be in my bedroom when I woke up. You were right. They all were upset with me. I should have expected it, but then again I expected at least one of them to have noticed that something was wrong with me. I gave them a few answers then told them that I wanted them to leave. They all left but Chris. He just sat there on my bed and looked at me. He said that he thought I had been alone long enough. Chris could be so annoying when he wanted to be. This was one of those times.

Anyhow, Chris didn’t leave me alone for more than 2 days until we left on tour. Even the days that he was gone he called at least once, sometimes twice. It was nice to have someone fawning over me. It wasn’t long before things went back to the way they were. Chris and Justin were hanging out and so were Lance and Joey. I was back to being the odd man out. That was fine though, I wasn’t as depressed as I had been.

Day after day, the tour went on. It wasn’t long before the end of Pop Odyssey that I noticed whenever I would get on the bus Chris and Justin would stop talking. When I went back to my bunk, I would hear whispers. They were keeping something from me. It wouldn’t be long before I would know what.

Justin finally called a group meeting. I was the last one there and quite shocked to see Johnny and a Jive rep there. I immediately became uneasy. When I got sat down, Justin said simply, ‘they want me to do a solo album’. No one else looked surprised, but I was floored. Just like that, he was leaving to do an album. Johnny started talking about it being a ‘hiatus’ but deep down I knew better. This was the beginning of the end. What was I going to do?

I should probably say here that when Bobbie did what she did, I became a different person. I was so depressed that I didn’t get out of bed for days. I started to drink heavily. While on a beer run, I ran into some ‘friends’ from back in the day. Friends is a really strong word, really we were more, well we knew some of the same people. Anyhow, one of them told me that I looked like shit, so I explained to him what had happened and told him that I just wasn’t dealing to well with it. He got into his pocket and produced a couple of white pills in a baggie and a phone number. He told me to try them to see if they would make me feel better. They sat on my dresser for days before I got up the nerve to take one, but when I did. It was great. I felt better than I had in days, hell weeks. It wasn’t long before the pills that he had given me had run out. I called the number that he had given me. He told me that the pills were nothing compared to this other stuff he had. I agreed to meet him to try some of the other stuff. Well, it turned out to be cocaine, and pretty pricey too. I paid it without a whimper.

It wasn’t long before I was needing more and more to get by. I was still depressed, but it didn’t seem to matter as much. Right before we went on tour for Pop Odyssey, I tried heroin for the first time. Before that I didn’t know that you could smoke it. You can. I did. When Justin had his little meeting, heroin was quickly becoming my drug of choice, and I had Dereck on speed dial. The cocaine was messing up my sinuses so bad, so I had switched almost entirely to heroin. Besides that, cocaine was an upper, I think that I wanted to be depressed, so therefore heroin was the way. I would lay around lethargic for hours, counting my heartbeats. Writing songs that I knew no one would ever see or hear.

Okay where were we? Oh yeah, Justin had just dropped a huge bomb on me. He avoided me for days afterward, but that was fine. I didn’t particularly want to talk to him anyway. I stayed in my bunk while we weren’t on stage or doing interviews. No one suspected that I was doing anything, but I was everyday. I would have Dereck fly to where ever we were to give me my supply. He eventually brought me vials filled with liquid heroin, and as you all know, I don’t do needles. I got over it, the drug got into my blood so much quicker this way. It was wonderful.

Let me skip all of the boring details. Pop Odyssey ended, then so did the Celebrity tour. The last show was hard, we all cried and clung to each other. No one in the audience suspected anything, but it was the last time they would see us on a stage together in that atmosphere. The last notes of Bye Bye Bye were never more melancholy. I didn’t even make it off stage before tears were rolling down my cheeks.

We said goodbye and went our separate ways. Justin to LA, Lance to Russia to train, and Joey went to New York to do Broadway. Me and Chris were floating loosely. He decided to buy an RV and tour America. Pretty fitting for Chris I suppose. He always loved the traveling by bus, he hated to fly. That left me alone in Orlando. I was still writing in my drug induced hazes, and somehow I got hooked up a dude to do a song for a movie. It turned out fine, so I did an album. I got hooked up with a sleazy manager, Jive jerked me around, then Justin did the Super Bowl. We won’t mention the fling with a certain actress from a huge television show. I did a small tour with a friend of mine, Tony. When that was over, I retreated back into myself. I stayed in the house with my drugs. I didn’t care anymore. It was over.

That’s when everything went to shit. I was laying around in one of my stupors, drug induced of course, and my brother walked in. Okay, maybe I was laying in a puddle of my vomit. Not my best moment I know, but there I was. He got me to my feet and cleaned me up, as well as my carpet, and lay down with me on my bed. When I got sick again, he was there holding my hair and kissing the back of my head. The next morning, he told me that I was going to have to tell our parents. He went with me and there in front of our parents and sister, I told them. My mom cried and so did my dad. We all decided that it would be best for me if I went to a private rehab center.

It was really nice I guess. It was in Vermont, so it was kind of cold. Okay, I lie. It was hell. I hated every agonizingly painful minute of it. Detox was the worst. All of the muscles in my body ached. It was the longest three months of my life. When I got out, my parents were waiting for me at the airport. I was so glad to see them. Tyler, my brother, was there too. After that, me and Tyler were damn near inseparable. We are to this day. We all went to my parents house in Chicago.

It wasn’t long before I got a house there, not far from theirs. For the first time, in longer that I cared to admit, I was actually happy. I was more in touch with who I used to be. My mom told me that I was more like the little boy that she raised. I was calmer, and more centered. I began going to church with my parents, something that I hadn’t done in a long time. I got back in touch with old friends and family I hadn’t seen in years. In other words, I was happy. For the first time in a long time, I was happy without music. Let me amend that, I was happy without commercialized music. Pop music. I never stopped writing, or playing for that matter. It just wasn’t anything that anyone would expect from me.

So anyway, I was sitting in my new home one day when I saw a strange car in my driveway. I watched out the window to see who would get out. It was Chris. I couldn’t believe that Chris had come to see me. I was at the door before he got there. I flung it open and immediately enveloped him into a huge hug. He entered my new home for the first time and looked around. He smiled and plopped his ass onto my couch. Then he stopped smiling. He asked what had really been going on with me. I was so tired of lying to my friends, I just started to cry. I told Chris everything. When I was finished I just stared at my hands. He moved over beside me and hugged me. He held me tight while I cried.

He told me that whatever I did, it was in the past. He loved me for the person that I was. He assured me that everything would be fine, but he suggested that I tell management just in case it leaked to the press somehow. I agreed with him. This time it was me calling the group meeting. We all met in Orlando, Justin flying in from Toronto where he was shooting a movie, Joey coming in from New York, and Lance came from LA. Me and Chris came from Chicago. He hadn’t left my side since he showed up at my door 3 weeks earlier.

When everyone got there and got sat down, I nearly started crying. They all looked at me curiously, and Johnny got up and put his hand on my shoulder. He asked me if everything was alright, and told me that no matter what was wrong they’d all be there for me. I cried harder, and Chris got upset. He told Johnny that it was too late for them to be there for me, because I had already got through my shit. He told them that I was hurt that Justin didn’t show up for my album release party, that I was upset that he didn’t even call. By this time, I was sobbing openly. Chris leaned over and put his arm around me, pulling my head into his shoulder. He kissed my forehead and smoothed my hair. When I got myself under control, I took a deep breath and told them all about my adventures in rehab. I tried to make a joke out of it, but it fell flat. Everyone was just staring at me with their mouths open. I hated seeing pity on their faces, but it was there. Then I sighed and pushed up the sleeve on my left arm. I held it out for everyone to see. There, across my wrist, were three scars. I told then that I had also tried to kill myself while I was there. I assured everyone that I was seeing a therapist in Chicago, and not to worry. I wasn’t suicidal anymore. Chris looked just was shocked as everyone else. I hadn’t even told him.

Not long after I told them that, everyone started drifting away from the meeting. Johnny held me back, again, to talk. He told me that he knew that I wasn’t okay and hadn’t been for a while, but he never knew what was wrong. I assured him that it was just personal stuff that I was working through. I had been lonely, then when Jive screwed me over with my record, I just kind of snapped. I wasn’t happy and I didn’t want to be alive anymore. He sort of smiled and said that I was the type to bleed for my art. I grinned and agreed with him. We had a moment of understanding, the first in quite a while. I told him that I was hurt that Justin abandoned us and that was kind of the final straw. I just felt that I wasn’t good enough for anyone or anything. We agreed that Bobbie had really fucked me up.

When I left the room Justin was waiting on me. We drove in silence to my home in Winter Park. When we got there, and into the safety of the house, Justin broke down in tears. He told me that I was one of his oldest friends and he had no idea that I felt that way. He said that he wished that I had come to him to talk, but I explained, as gently as I could, that he was part of the problem.  It wasn’t his fault, that I realized a little too late, that management had been grooming him from the beginning for a solo career. The rest of us were just stepping stones. Joey may go on to be a great and recognized actor, and Lance may go into space one day, but none of us would ever be able to live up to the Timberlake name. It wasn’t his fault, he just stepped into his place where he was supposed to be. I held him while he cried and apologized. I assured him that no one thought bad of him, he didn’t know. He asked me what I was going to do next. I told him that I thought I would get out of the music business altogether. It was never too late to return to school.

And it wasn’t. I went to college. I moved back to Maryland where I was raised. I enrolled at the University of Maryland at Baltimore, and I graduated from there four and a half years later with a degree in architecture. I got a job with a firm in Chicago and moved back there. I am still in touch with my NSYNC friends. They are my best friends and always will be. I met a great woman ( her name in Amber and she teaches art history at the Art Institute) and we got married. We have 4 children. I am no longer JC. Now I’m just Josh (Joshua if I’m in trouble) and daddy. And I have never been happier. Not even at the height of my music career.

Sometimes I still get up on stage and sing with Tony Lucca. I will never lose my love of music. It’s like music is always there, pulsing around me. I hear music in everything. I still wake up in the middle of the night with a song idea. I still write songs and play them. But now, it’s for my lovely wife and children. I don’t care what the public thinks of me and I’m almost positive that I’ll end up on Vh1 on some ‘where are they now’ show. I don’t care. Finally, after almost 20 years and hitting rock bottom, I am truly happy.