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 wild days of partying with bikies, dancing for money and recklessly taking drugs, there would be one night a week when I wouldn’t punish my body with cocaine. Looking back, how I managed to do that was a miracle.

My story may sound confronting at first, but I’m sharing it because I want the world to know it is possible to break the cycle of addiction and come out the other side.

You see, I was surrounded by drug abuse growing up. And, ironically, it was fleeing this toxic environment that threw me head-first into my own addiction.

Lost at age 17, I met some bikies – members of outlaw motorcycle gangs – and they introduced me to cocaine. I wasn’t hooked on it straight away; that wouldn’t happen until two years later when I relocated from Western Australia to the Gold Coast, Australia’s party capital, and started going to nightclubs. 

I was trying to escape my chaotic home life by moving interstate. Instead, it just made things worse. By the end of my teens I was hopelessly addicted to coke.

Before I talk about my addiction, you’re probably wondering if I was ever intimidated by the criminals I was hanging out with and who were giving me drugs. The things is, I had never felt safe growing up in my family, so I felt comfortable around danger – it was normal to me.

And it was fun, too. With these guys around, every night there was a party on. And eventually I decided to make partying my profession. As soon as I was of legal age, I took a job as a skimpy (a bikini-clad waitress) and worked private events. Cocaine kept me alert and I felt like I never lost control, unlike when I drank alcohol.

From Tuesday through to Sunday, it was non-stop chaos. I was earning fast money and enjoyed the thrill of being surrounded by bad boys. I was a high-functioning addict and eventually reached the point where I couldn’t go two days without cocaine – which was always readily available with bikies around.

In many ways, I was still a child, but taking drugs elevated my sense of status. I felt big and important, and I was also able to trick myself into thinking cocaine was ‘acceptable’ because it wasn’t a ‘hardcore’ drug like heroin. No, it was just a fun party drug, not to mention the drug of choice for the rich and famous.

Fortunately mine isn’t a story of tragedy. 

I did not endure a lifetime of addiction only to end up destitute and broken. My time as an out-of-control cocaine addict lasted just two years, and I’m proud to say it’s now well and truly in the past. 

But before we talk about my life today, let me paint a picture of my life as a party girl.

My work week was Wednesday to Sunday and I would typically earn between $2,000 and $5,000 a week as a semi-nude waitress. To me, looks were power: I was tall, toned and had big boobs. Who wouldn’t want to party with me? 

But while I was pretty and shiny on the outside, inside my self-worth was in tatters.

I grew up surrounded by drug addicts, gangs and abuse. My childhood was a constant battle to survive, emotionally and physically. I had always sworn that I wouldn’t follow the same path of drugs. And yet I would look at myself in the mirror on a Monday – the one day of the week when I would abstain from drugs, do some exercise and actually eat proper food – and see a young girl I didn’t recognise.

Despite everything I’d tried to escape, here I was heading down the same path: the partying, the drugs the binge drinking – it all felt too familiar. I was trapped in a cycle of survival that I’d inherited. By the time I was 21, I knew I had to change.

I remember the morning when something inside me snapped. As I looked around my flat, filled with the debris of another crazy night, a horrible sinking feeling crept up my body and into my throat. Whether it was the paranoia of the comedown or the realisation I was no longer in control of my life, I just knew this was my rock bottom.

I made a decision: I wasn’t going to let my past define my future. I packed my bags and planned my move back home. I didn’t tell my boss or my ‘friends’. In fact I didn’t tell anyone I had met on the Gold Coast that I was leaving.

Returning to WA marked the beginning of a journey that changed everything.

At 21, I was baptised in the Catholic Church and started a proper career – in recruitment, not bikini waitressing. I had always been atheist but thought if I was baptised the old version of me would be ‘wiped clean’.

I rose through the ranks quickly and by my second year in the job I was earning more than half a million dollars. I quickly snapped up five investment properties and by my mid-twenties I was already planning on retiring early.

Sounds like my happy ending, doesn’t it? What was really 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 out the ghosts of the past by staying obsessively busy. Yes, it was lucrative, but it was still a form of self-medication.

And, of course, my new industry was awash with drugs. 

Recruitment sometimes feels like a Wolf of Wall Street-type industry – you work hard and play harder. While I never fully relapsed, on occasion I took cocaine socially when my colleagues did. 

At about this time, I met the man I would marry. We were together for a decade but divorced three years ago.

Despite being together for 10 years and having a son, who is now six, I never told my husband about my past as a cocaine addict because I was embarrassed by it. I wanted to forget the old me ever existed.

It was a good relationship. We travelled a lot and were great parents – we still are. But in a way we never really knew each other because I kept that chapter of my life a secret from him. Because of that, intimacy, depth and connection was missing from our marriage. I don’t think he ever saw me cry.

Because I so desperately wanted to pretend my past ever happened, I went through most of my twenties and thirties wearing the mask of a successful, well-put-together young professional. I didn’t want to admit how I was still that broken party girl inside, and that I’d just traded drugs for and addiction to work and money.

But, as I found with my partying, the high is always followed by the brutal comedown. And that’s exactly what happened to me. 

I’d gone from barely surviving to thriving. In total, I spent 15 years in recruitment, staying with the same company for eight years and climbing to the top of the ladder there. Then, after taking just six weeks off work to have my son, I was presented with an offer to partner with an investor to start my own business. It was too tempting to resist.

I built that business from the ground up until it was valued at $60million. Not a bad effort for 18 months’ work. But the good times didn’t last.

In 2022, I was so burnt out I sold the assets of the company and took 12 months off. Despite our success, when I closed the business I owed a debt of $3million to the taxman. 

Most people would freak out if they had such a massive debt, but after everything I’d been through, I had this strong sense I could get myself out of any situation, no matter how impossible – which I did. 

The road to success is rarely linear, and my journey was no exception. It was messy, full of missteps, setbacks and lessons learned the hard way. But every decision I made after that point was fueled by a desire to rise above my past.

In January 2023, I started my coaching and virtual assistant business and in my first year I hit six figures in revenue. Now I’m on track for a seven-figure turnover. 

It wasn’t easy – pulling yourself out of the darkness never is – but I knew the life I wanted was possible if I put in the work.

I harnessed that same restlessness that had pushed me to party six nights a week as a lost teenage girl to become a force of nature in business. But the difference this time was that I wasn’t on a path of self-destruction, but was instead building something real and meaningful.

I’m not afraid of fear. As the cliché goes, I feel it and do it anyway. Even with my debt and the demons of my past, I have been able to push through to become the best mother and businesswoman I can be.

I want other women to know that no matter where you come from, no matter how dark your past, your future is shaped by your choices. 

You can rewrite your story. That would be my message to my 19-year-old self. 

•  As told to Carina Stathis