As superstar singer Justin Bieber confesses he is “drowning”, two Australians have emerged as part of his inner circle.

Candid shots shared by Bieber to his 294 million Instagram followers show the muso along with wife Hailey and Australian mates Eddie Benjamin and The Kid Laroi enjoying a day out at Disneyland.

It comes as a stark contrast to an alarming series of recent public appearance in which the father of one has looked tired, dishevelled, pale and gaunt.

Benjamin and Laroi are understood to have been supporting Bieber in private and regularly appear on his social media.

There has been much speculation about Bieber’s physical and mental health over recent times and just days ago he told fans he felt like a “fraud” as he struggled with impostor syndrome.

On Tuesday, Bieber shared another cryptic post to social media about the difficulty he has expressing his negative emotions because of his childhood experiences.

“I was always told when I was a kid not to hate,” the post read.

“But it made me feel like I wasn’t allowed to have it and so I didn’t tell anyone I’ve had it; which made me feel like I have been drowning feeling unsafe to acknowledge it.

“I think we can only let hate go by first acknowledging it’s there. How couldn’t we feel hate from all of the hurt we have experienced?”

In Hollywood days gone by, these vulnerable moments played out in private or when a star fell apart in public.

But the rise of social media has refreshingly allowed celebrities to take control of their own narratives while giving fans a front-row seat to their lives.

In the separate post last week, Bieber spoke of doubting himself while he explained that he felt unworthy of his fame.

“People told me my whole life, ‘wow Justin you deserve that’, and I personally have always felt unworthy. Like I was a fraud, like when people told me I deserve something,” he wrote on Instagram.

“It made me feel sneaky like damn if they only knew my thoughts. How judgmental I am, how selfish I really am. They wouldn’t be saying this.

“I say all this to say. If you feel sneaky, welcome to the club. I definitely feel unequipped and unqualified most days.”

In October, troubling footage of fallen music mogul Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs telling of his plans to go “buck full crazy” with a teenage Justin Bieber resurfaced following the rapper’s arrest on sex trafficking and racketeering charges.

The video, posted to Bieber’s YouTube account in 2009, showed the rapper boasting about partying with the awe-struck young singer, who was then aged just 15.

In the clip, Combs, then aged 30, stands next to an innocently smiling Bieber and says: “He’s having 48 hours with Diddy, where we hanging out and what we’re doing we can’t really disclose. But it’s definitely a 15-year-old’s dream.”

A representative for Bieber recently told TMZ that the past 12 months had been “very transformative for him as he ended several close friendships and business relationships that no longer served him”.

They noted that Bieber was “simply in one of the best places in his life”, while also describing speculation about his mental and physical health “exhausting and pitiful and shows that despite the obvious truth, people are committed to keeping negative, harmful narratives alive.”

Bieber and his wife are parents to seven-month-old son, Jack Blues.

With his friends at Disneyland this week, Bieber’s group got into the full spirit of the ‘happiest place on earth’ as they donned Mickey and Minnie Mouse ears and rode the Space Mountain rollercoaster.

Laroi, real name Charlton Kenneth Jeffrey Howard, is the former Redfern rapper, singer and songwriter that collaborated with Bieber on hit global single, Stay.

In an interview with Australian radio duo Will & Woody, Laroi, 21, said: “He’s just always been super. I mean, that’s a really cool thing about him that’s so special is like, he’s just so open and welcoming and always hitting me (up) every day like, ‘Hey, how are you feeling? Are you good?’”

He continued: “He’s the man and I would say I’ve totally leaned on him a lot. He has the best advice, the best knowledge when it comes to that stuff (living in the spotlight). Even just everything he’s been through at such an extreme. What I go through is not even a 10th of what he had to go through.”

WHO IS EDDIE BENJAMIN?

But who is lower-key but super successful Eddie Benjamin?

The Telegraph first met Benjamin, an insanely talented musician some would see as a genius in his own right, back in 2023, around the release of his song, Weatherman.

The 23-year-old grew up in Sydney’s east where he went to Rose Bay Secondary College and was in a group called Hze Trio before moving to the US and signing to Epic Records and Sony Music.

Benjamin regularly appears in Bieber’s Instagram stories and posts. In one recent upload, Benjamin is seen dancing with a cigarette in his mouth while Bieber raps.

Both are dancing.

Bieber is holding a bag of popcorn as he raps with his shirt off, wearing baggy pants, his white Calvin Klein undies showing as he raps: “I fly high like a magpie.”

Commenting on the post that received more than 90 million views, Benjamin wrote: “hahahaha swiag (sic) galore.”

Benjamin was part of the inner sanctum when Bieber celebrated his 31st birthday earlier this month.

Sia is his mentor, someone he has described as an “aunt” figure, while Benjamin has written songs for the likes of Shawn Mendes, Alessia Cara, Raye and Meghan Trainor and featured on Bieber’s song, That Should Be Me.

Benjamin, who dated American actor and dancer Maddie Ziegler and was linked to Willow Smith, supported Bieber on his global tour.

He also toured with Shawn Mendes recently and performed with the Canadian singer at the MTV VMA’s in September.

“Honestly, when anything really heavy happens, I feel like he (Bieber) is one of the first people I get on the phone to,” Benjamin, whose new single MANIAC is out now, told The Daily Telegraph in April 2023.

“It is about finding that balance … he does think I work too much in a sense that I am so obsessed (with my music). I often find myself on the phone to him, in tears might I add. “Definitely, you’ve got to have relationships where you can really clearly fall apart, otherwise I just don’t see the point in them and I love connecting to people like that. I can’t do the small talk.”

Bieber had a brief but ill-fated relationship with the New York campus of Australian Pentecostal mega-church, Hillsong, during which time he was famously baptised in NBA player Tyson Chandler’s bathtub by then lead pastor Carl Lentz.

The pair reportedly fell out after Lentz’s highly publicised fall from grace when he was revealed to be having an extramarital affair while he was steering the church’s New York locations.

Bieber has more recently aligned himself religiously with the Maverick City worship collective, singing their hit faith-based track, Jireh, with high profile music leader Chandler Moore.

It has been a rollercoaster of a few years for Bieber personally and professionally.

In 2017, he cancelled the final 14 dates of his Purpose tour to focus on his mental health.

He had played 150 concerts over 40 countries.

“I’ve learned the more you appreciate your calling the more you want to protect your calling,” he wrote on Instagram at the time.

“Me taking this time right now is me saying I want to be SUSTAINABLE … so that I can be the man I want to be, the husband I eventually want to be, and the father I want to be.”

His last album, Justice, was released in 2021 and the following year he was forced to cancel parts of his world tour after revealing he had been diagnosed with Ramsay Hunt syndrome.

In June last year, after many months of speculation, it was confirmed Bieber had parted ways with long-time manager Scooter Braun.