BRITNEY SPEARS shaved off her hair during her infamous 2007 meltdown in a bid to hide drug use, according to her former sidekick SAM LUTFI.

The notorious fixer's lawyer Joseph Schleimer opened his client's defamation trial against the pop star's mother Lynne Spears by claiming Lutfi was not the cause of Spears' downward spiral following her split from husband Kevin Federline - amphetamines were.

In his opening statements on Thursday (18Oct12), Schleimer told the court, "She liked to use amphetamines. Most everything that went wrong was because of this drug."

The attorney also stated that claims Lutfi introduced Spears to drugs were incorrect, insisting the svengali was determined to stop the Toxic singer from abusing narcotics, even hiring a drug-sniffing dog to root out substances in the pop star's home.

But it was Schleimer's account of Spears' bizarre hair-shaving episode that was the big shocker - according to Tmz.com, he claimed she had a penchant for hardcore drugs and was so paranoid that a judge would test her hair for narcotics, she cut it off.

Lutfi's lawyer suggested that Spears feared she'd lose custody of her sons with Federline if a test of her hair turned up positive for drug use.

Lutfi, who was fired from the pop star's entourage in 2008 as her life unravelled following a breakdown, filed suit against Lynne Spears over allegations she made in her memoir, Through the Storm: A Real Story of Fame and Family in a Tabloid World.

In the book, she claimed Lutfi secretly drugged her daughter and refused to let her speak freely to family and friends.