I started doing cocaine at 17. I would constantly drink to blackout… then I became bulimic. But here’s how I’ve beaten my addictions, by ex-catwalk model KAREN THOMSON

Looking at my life from the outside, it appears almost idyllic. I live with my 17-year-old son, while my eldest is 19 and away at college for most of the year. I love spending time with them – cooking meals, playing board games or going to festivals together, since we love the same music.

For a while we kept chickens, but now we have koi fish, a dog and a cat. I love animals and my biggest pleasure is going horse-riding whenever I can. All in all, it’s a pretty blissful existence.

I’m 46 now, but you’d never guess that in my twenties I was an addict, an alcoholic party girl with an eating disorder and a cocaine habit. I hid it so well and my life seemed dazzling, hanging out with A-listers.

In the late 1990s, I was a top model, appearing in magazines such as Cosmopolitan and Marie Claire and walking the catwalk for Versace and Chloe. I was frequently invited to film premieres and high-end parties.

I started modelling at 16 after being scouted on the street while I was waiting for a boyfriend. I travelled a lot, flying to London, Paris and Milan. At 17 I was part of a Versace tribute show with Naomi Campbell, Kate Moss and all the other big supermodels shortly after Gianni Versace had been murdered. Nelson Mandela attended and when I told him I was from South Africa he said, ‘I’m so proud of you, my daughter.’ That was a huge deal for me.

I was not a naturally sociable person, but as long as I had a drink in my hand, I did a convincing impression of being the life and soul of the party.

I never thought of myself as an alcoholic, I didn’t even like the taste of alcohol. I wasn’t knocking back vodka with my breakfast or hiding bottles of spirits around the house, and I never needed to drink every day. But once I started drinking, I couldn’t stop. I would black out, find myself unable to remember what had happened and feel horrific the next day.

At events I’d always be very nervous until I’d had a drink. I’d down neat Jack Daniels, tequila shots and, at one point, absinthe (one of the strongest drinks available with an alcohol percentage up to 74 per cent).

After eight wild years of modelling, I remember the night I’d been invited to a party packed with A-listers in a swanky private house. The drinks were flowing, as was the cocaine, but for some reason I didn’t feel exhilarated – I just felt very alone.

The next morning was my rock bottom. I looked in the bathroom mirror and wondered who I’d become.

The person reflected back at me was gaunt and lifeless. How had I got to this point? I was only 24. I felt pathetic.

My whole life flashed before my eyes. I realised how much time I had spent searching for something that would make me feel whole – in alcohol and drugs, but also in relationships, approval, people, places and experiences. To others my life looked exciting, but inside I felt completely empty.

I had previously managed to get some pills from a friend. Should I swallow the rest of them and take my own life? Or should I face the darkness and sadness within me?

As a child I grew up in South Africa within the Dutch Reformed Church – a strict religion about being good all the time and following the rules.

I had always been a good girl, desperately trying to please others. I grew up with my younger brother Tiaan, my mum Deirdre and my dad, Kobus, a retired professor.

My mum’s father was Dr Christiaan Barnard – the world-famous surgeon who performed the first successful heart transplant. He had always believed in me, telling me I could do something great with my life. So when I went down the road of alcoholism and addiction, it was devastating – I felt I hadn’t achieved what I was really capable of, or lived up to his expectations. He died in 2001 without seeing me get sober.

My parents weren’t big drinkers but, when I was 15, some friends and I stole a bottle of red wine and downed it. Even though we got violently ill, the alcohol helped me lose my inhibitions. I’d been painfully shy my whole life and realised drinking provided me with a buffer, allowing me to feel confident and beautiful and not worry about what people thought.

As I was travelling by myself for work, my parents didn’t really know what was going on and there was no strict supervision from my modelling agency. Everybody there was lovely, but it wasn’t their job to babysit me. Occasionally I’d miss castings while hungover. But no one really cared too much back then.

And alcohol wasn’t my only problem. At 17 I was offered cocaine for the first time from a man I was dating. It made me feel I could conquer anything and that was an addictive feeling. From then on I started doing cocaine when I drank.

The drug kept me thin, too, and it wasn’t long before I was suffering from an eating disorder. I’m 5ft 9in and, at my thinnest, I weighed a shocking 7st 12lbs. My eating was deeply erratic. At times I’d overeat, even when I wasn’t hungry, as a way to push down my negative thoughts and insecurities, and I was always eating sweet things because of the dopamine hit the sugar gave me.

Then I became bulimic, but I wasn’t throwing up because I was scared of getting fat – it was a way to expel the horrible feelings inside me.

Any time I acted in opposition to the morals and values that I’d learned as a child, I’d feel worse about myself and drink or punish my body to push those feelings away. It was a vicious circle.

I was a nightmare to be around – all my feelings would spill out after a drink and I could be cruel towards other people, particularly if I was angry with them. As a result, I lost most of my friends.

The morning after that Hollywood party in 2004, when I considered taking my own life, I realised I needed to get help.

I called one of my remaining friends and said: ‘I feel like I’m having a nervous breakdown.’ She called my dad who came to get me and my mum told me I was going to rehab. She’d been trying to get me to go for years.

Finally, at 24, I entered a rehab centre in Cape Town. I had a tough time there. Having always tried to be a good girl, when I was asked to share my experiences openly I did so, and was held up by the counsellors as an example of how others (who’d been there much longer and hadn’t progressed much) should be. Because of this, the other clients hated me.

I stuck it out for 30 days and then went to another treatment facility. Over the next nine months, I worked through the 12-step programme for addiction recovery.

It taught me to take responsibility for myself and the understanding that while I couldn’t control what anybody else did, I could control myself and my reactions. Recovery introduced me to God again in a completely different way. It was beautiful, loving, uplifting and freeing. For the first time, faith wasn’t about being perfect.

I realised that I had never really craved alcohol or drugs themselves. I craved what I thought they gave me – confidence, freedom, connection and the ability to express who I really was. Sobriety began teaching me that those things couldn’t be found in substances, other people or external experiences.

Looking back, I think I had spent years trying to fill a God-shaped hole with everything except God.

I gave up modelling and went to university, where I got a degree in psychology. After years of addiction, I was thinking clearly again and not waking up feeling anxious that I’d done something terrible the night before.

Finally sober, I met my husband Steven in Cape Town, and we moved to Palm Springs, California, in 2016 as we thought it was a safer and healthier place to raise our children. Although we divorced after ten years, I still live here and my boys remain the greatest blessing of my life.

I haven’t had a drink for 22 years, but it hasn’t always been easy. After I stopped, my sugar intake skyrocketed. I remember buying my favourite chocolate and hiding it from my sons to eat in secret. I would tell myself it was because I didn’t want my kids to have sugar, but really, it was because I didn’t want to share.

I started to notice that this was a common response among recovering alcoholics. We had celebrations for people marking a year in recovery and often they would have doubled or tripled in size. They were swapping their alcohol or drug addiction for one to junk food and sugar – anything to give them that dopamine hit.

So, together with Professor Tim Noakes, a world-renowned South African scientist, I set up one of the world’s first in-patient carb and sugar addiction programmes.

It followed the same treatment protocols as programmes for alcohol and drug addiction, but we also implemented a low-carb lifestyle at the clinic. I started an online programme called Sugar Free Revolution and wrote a book titled Sugar Free, too. One of the hardest things has been coming to terms with the way I treated my parents. They were so loving and kind and I realised how much worry I had caused them. My mum is in a nursing facility now because she has Parkinson’s disease and I’ve often wondered if the trauma I put her through triggered it. I carry a lot of guilt about that.

Naturally, I’ve warned my children about the dangers of alcohol and drugs. I’m sure they’ve experimented, but we don’t have alcohol in the house and they’ve never seen me or their dad drink, so it’s never been something normal to them. But obviously I’m petrified they have inherited my addictive genes. As for me, I’ll only drink a club soda now if I’m going out.

I truly believe no one should drink. I’m not saying that to be controversial: alcohol is a carcinogen – a poison. There’s not one health benefit from drinking and if you can’t give it up, maybe you should ask yourself why that glass of wine is so important to you?

My whole life, all I’ve wanted is to help people suffer less. So if my story of sobriety can help anyone, then I’m happy to share it.

As told to Lina Das

• For confidential support, call Samaritans on 116 123, visit samaritans.org