I get kind of annoyed with celebrities chiming in with obvious statements like “Britney needs help with her addiction” “Lindsay needs help with her addiction” “Paris needs help with her drinking…” wait, am I starting to see a pattern here? Are a lot of starlets struggling with addiction? Huh. Anyway it’s really annoying when they think they’re making these profound statements that are really helpful, but Tatum O’Neal is a big exception, because she’s been in Britney’s shoes – in fact their case are eerily similar. O’Neal lost her kids to husband John McEnroe – a guy who was generally considered a douche bag (major temper, etc) – after she became addicted to heroin.

“Tatum O’Neal, who’s led her own troubled path on the road of motherhood, says that Britney Spears must get treatment and shield her children from media attention. She ‘needs to be in recovery and get her disease of addiction together,’ said O’Neal, 43, who can empathize with the 25-year-old pop star. ‘I relate to her and feel really sad for her,’ O’Neal told Entertainment Tonight in a interview to air Thursday.

“‘I did everything that she doesn’t want to do,’ said the Oscar-winning actress (for 1973’s Paper Moon, which costarred her father, Ryan O’Neal). ‘I did the drug testing … It was very humbling, but I wanted those kids back.’ In 1986, O’Neal wed tennis superstar John McEnroe, and the couple had three children: Kevin, Sean, and Emily. The couple divorced in 1992 and remain openly hostile toward one another. When O’Neal became a heroin addict in 1995, McEnroe took custody of their kids, something he has retained ever since. ‘Not being able to see my kids is like part of me is missing,’ a recovering O’Neal told PEOPLE in 2002. ‘Part of my soul is missing. Hopefully she will figure [it] out,’ O’Neal told ET. ‘But it’s going to be hard and she will do it publicly and that sucks.’”

[From People]

I will point out that Britney is pretty strongly courting the publicity (I mean she actually handed her kids over to Kevin Federline in a convertible, so the paparazzi could get lot of super-clear photos.) But I think O’Neal’s advice is really clear, and spot-on: Britney is going to have to humble herself. She’s going to have to do what the judge says. It seems like she’s locked in a parent/child power struggle, except Brit is the kid and the judge is her parent. Whatever he tells her to do, she does the opposite just to show him that she doesn’t have to listen. And while that’s never a good idea in a court of law, when your kids are at stake it really says something about you. I keep wondering what it’ll take Britney to realize she needs to let her ego go, but I’m still not sure what that’ll be.

Picture Note by Jaybird: Here’s Tatum with her son Kevin McEnroe. Images thanks to PR Photos.