My life seemed perfect - but I was doing cocaine six days a week and could barely function without it. Even my husband didn't know my secret

Monday was my sober night.

During my chaotic days of partying with bikies, dancing for wealth and recklessly taking drugs, determination would beryllium 1 nighttime a week erstwhile I wouldn't punish my assemblage with cocaine. Looking back, however I managed to bash that was a miracle.

My communicative whitethorn dependable confronting astatine first, but I'm sharing it due to the fact that I privation the satellite to cognize it is imaginable to interruption the rhythm of addiction and travel retired the different side.

You see, I was surrounded by cause maltreatment increasing up. And, ironically, it was fleeing this toxic situation that threw maine head-first into my ain addiction.

Lost astatine property 17, I met immoderate bikies - members of outlaw motorcycle gangs - and they introduced maine to cocaine. I wasn't hooked connected it consecutive away; that wouldn't hap until 2 years aboriginal when I relocated from Western Australia to the Gold Coast, Australia's enactment capital, and started going to nightclubs. 

I was trying to flight my chaotic location beingness by moving interstate. Instead, it conscionable made things worse. By the extremity of my teens I was hopelessly addicted to coke.

Before I speech astir my addiction, you're astir apt wondering if I was ever intimidated by the criminals I was hanging retired with and who were giving maine drugs. The things is, I had ne'er felt harmless increasing up successful my family, truthful I felt comfy around danger - it was mean to me.

And it was fun, too. With these guys around, each nighttime determination was a enactment on. And yet I decided to marque partying my profession. As soon arsenic I was of ineligible age, I took a occupation arsenic a skimpy (a bikini-clad waitress) and worked backstage events. Cocaine kept maine alert and I felt similar I ne'er mislaid control, dissimilar erstwhile I drank alcohol.

From Tuesday done to Sunday, it was non-stop chaos. I was earning accelerated wealth and enjoyed the thrill of being surrounded by atrocious boys. I was a high-functioning addict and yet reached the constituent wherever I couldn't spell 2 days without cocaine - which was ever readily disposable with bikies around.

In galore ways, I was inactive a child, but taking drugs elevated my consciousness of status. I felt large and important, and I was besides capable to trick myself into reasoning cocaine was 'acceptable' due to the fact that it wasn't a 'hardcore' cause similar heroin. No, it was conscionable a amusive enactment drug, not to notation the cause of prime for the affluent and famous.

Fortunately excavation isn't a communicative of tragedy. 

I did not endure a beingness of addiction lone to extremity up destitute and broken. My clip arsenic an out-of-control cocaine addict lasted conscionable 2 years, and I'm arrogant to accidental it's present good and genuinely successful the past. 

But earlier we speech astir my beingness today, fto maine overgarment a representation of my beingness arsenic a enactment girl.

My enactment week was Wednesday to Sunday and I would typically gain betwixt $2,000 and $5,000 a week arsenic a semi-nude waitress. To me, looks were power: I was tall, toned and had large boobs. Who wouldn't privation to enactment with me? 

But portion I was beauteous and shiny connected the outside, wrong my self-worth was successful tatters.

I grew up surrounded by cause addicts, gangs and abuse. My puerility was a changeless conflict to survive, emotionally and physically. I had ever sworn that I wouldn't travel the aforesaid way of drugs. And yet I would look astatine myself successful the reflector connected a Monday - the 1 time of the week erstwhile I would abstain from drugs, bash immoderate workout and really devour due nutrient - and spot a young miss I didn't recognise.

Despite everything I'd tried to escape, present I was heading down the aforesaid path: the partying, the drugs the binge drinking - it each felt excessively familiar. I was trapped successful a rhythm of endurance that I'd inherited. By the clip I was 21, I knew I had to change.

I retrieve the greeting erstwhile thing wrong maine snapped. As I looked astir my flat, filled with the debris of different brainsick night, a horrible sinking feeling crept up my assemblage and into my throat. Whether it was the paranoia of the comedown oregon the realisation I was nary longer successful power of my life, I conscionable knew this was my stone bottom.

I made a decision: I wasn't going to fto my past specify my future. I packed my bags and planned my determination backmost home. I didn't archer my brag oregon my 'friends'. In information I didn't archer anyone I had met connected the Gold Coast that I was leaving.

Returning to WA marked the opening of a travel that changed everything.

At 21, I was baptised successful the Catholic Church and started a due vocation - successful recruitment, not bikini waitressing. I had ever been atheist but thought if I was baptised the aged mentation of maine would beryllium 'wiped clean'.

I roseate done the ranks rapidly and by my 2nd twelvemonth successful the occupation I was earning much than fractional a cardinal dollars. I rapidly snapped up five concern properties and by my mid-twenties I was already readying on retiring early.

Sounds similar my blessed ending, doesn't it? What was truly happening was I'd swapped my addiction to drugs for an addiction to work. I was pulling 12-hour days six days a week. I was blocking retired the ghosts of the past by staying obsessively busy. Yes, it was lucrative, but it was inactive a signifier of self-medication.

And, of course, my caller manufacture was awash with drugs. 

Recruitment sometimes feels similar a Wolf of Wall Street-type manufacture - you enactment hard and play harder. While I ne'er afloat relapsed, connected juncture I took cocaine socially erstwhile my colleagues did. 

At astir this time, I met the antheral I would marry. We were unneurotic for a decennary but divorced three years ago.

Despite being unneurotic for 10 years and having a son, who is present six, I ne'er told my hubby astir my past arsenic a cocaine addict due to the fact that I was embarrassed by it. I wanted to hide the aged maine ever existed.

It was a bully relationship. We travelled a batch and were large parents - we inactive are. But successful a mode we ne'er truly knew each different due to the fact that I kept that section of my beingness a concealed from him. Because of that, intimacy, extent and transportation was missing from our marriage. I don't deliberation helium ever saw maine cry.

Because I truthful desperately wanted to unreal my past ever happened, I went done astir of my twenties and thirties wearing the disguise of a successful, well-put-together young professional. I didn't privation to admit however I was inactive that breached enactment miss inside, and that I'd conscionable traded drugs for and addiction to enactment and money.

But, arsenic I recovered with my partying, the precocious is ever followed by the brutal comedown. And that's precisely what happened to me. 

I'd gone from hardly surviving to thriving. In total, I spent 15 years successful recruitment, staying with the aforesaid institution for 8 years and climbing to the apical of the ladder there. Then, aft taking conscionable six weeks disconnected enactment to person my son, I was presented with an connection to partner with an capitalist to commencement my ain business. It was excessively tempting to resist.

I built that concern from the crushed up until it was valued astatine $60million. Not a atrocious effort for 18 months' work. But the bully times didn't last.

In 2022, I was truthful burnt retired I sold the assets of the institution and took 12 months off. Despite our success, erstwhile I closed the concern I owed a debt of $3million to the taxman. 

Most radical would freak retired if they had specified a monolithic debt, but aft everything I'd been through, I had this beardown consciousness I could get myself retired of immoderate situation, nary substance how impossible - which I did. 

The roadworthy to occurrence is seldom linear, and my travel was nary exception. It was messy, afloat of missteps, setbacks and lessons learned the hard way. But each determination I made aft that constituent was fueled by a tendency to emergence supra my past.

In January 2023, I started my coaching and virtual adjunct concern and successful my archetypal twelvemonth I hit six figures successful revenue. Now I'm connected way for a seven-figure turnover. 

It wasn't casual - pulling yourself retired of the acheronian ne'er is - but I knew the beingness I wanted was imaginable if I enactment successful the work.

I harnessed that aforesaid restlessness that had pushed maine to enactment six nights a week arsenic a mislaid teenage miss to go a unit of nature in business. But the quality this clip was that I wasn't connected a way of self-destruction, but was instead building thing existent and meaningful.

I'm not acrophobic of fear. As the cliché goes, I consciousness it and bash it anyway. Even with my indebtedness and the demons of my past, I person been capable to propulsion done to go the champion parent and businesswoman I tin be.

I privation different women to cognize that nary substance wherever you travel from, nary substance however acheronian your past, your aboriginal is shaped by your choices. 

You tin rewrite your story. That would beryllium my connection to my 19-year-old self. 

•  As told to Carina Stathis