Heidi Anderson woke up with a throbbing headache, messy hair and makeup smeared across her face.
Pushing herself upright, she groaned as she took in the trail of destruction she’d left through her London sharehouse after arriving home just hours earlier.
The dress she wore the night before was thrown on a chair, heels were in random spots and her handbag was spilling out next to the bed.
‘What did I do last night?’ she thought to herself as she squinted her eyes to adjust to the late-morning sunshine now flooding in through the unclosed curtains.
This was a typical Sunday for Heidi, a recurring nightmare filled with self-loathing and crippling anxiety caused by Friday and Saturday nights filled with cocaine, alcohol and casual sex.
After moving to the UK from Australia at 21, Heidi was out nearly every weekend repeating the vicious cycle of euphoria followed by disgust then regret. All her bad decisions were fuelled by cocaine.
For Heidi, who describes herself as the ‘funny, fat friend’ during her unhappy twenties, the party drug was a way to get male attention, control her anxiety and slim down.
But in reality it was causing her weight to fluctuate wildly and sending her on a path of self-destruction.
Bubbly and loud Heidi Anderson (pictured) was always the life of the party
For Heidi, who describes herself as the ‘funny, fat friend’ during her unhappy twenties, taking cocaine was a way to get male attention, control her anxiety and slim down
‘My weeks were full of dieting, feeling bad about myself and trying to erase everything I had done on the weekend. But by Thursday I would get excited about my weekend plans, then party from Friday and sometimes through to Sunday,’ Heidi, now 40, tells me.
For years, she tried to live up to the ‘happy, fat girl’ persona she’d developed during school to protect herself from others. But with cocaine added to the mix, her 20s saw her mental health collapse.
‘I’ve always been loud, it was almost like a defence mechanism. I would put on a brave, bold face and tell everyone I was fine, but inside I hated myself,’ she says.
‘Most men in London wanted to sleep with my friends – not me. I hardly ever got attention from men. I was the “funny, fat friend”, or that’s what I believed. Men would hang out with me and drink but weren’t attracted to me.’
At the same time, cocaine use was common and seen as a ‘safe’ drug used by supermodels and celebrities.
In Heidi’s case, she turned to cocaine in order to become a better version of herself, silence her inner critic, and finally get a few looks from men.
‘In London it was cheaper to take drugs than to drink alcohol. It was the mid-2000s, the world was a lot different, a bag of cocaine would cost around £50 ($100) and pills cost £4 ($8). It was wild,’ Heidi says.
Friday and Saturday nights were spent partying, meeting new people, sleeping with strangers, and forgetting about her darkest thoughts.
During her school days, Heidi tried to live up to the ‘happy, fat girl’ persona to protect herself from bullies. But with cocaine added to the mix, her 20s saw her mental health collapse
‘Most men in London wanted to sleep with my friends – not me. I hardly ever got attention from men. I was the “funny, fat friend”,’ she says
But cocaine wasn’t the weight-loss miracle drug some ’90s and ’00s models would have you believe. For Heidi, her weight bounced around drastically as a result of her lifestyle. She would lose several kilos in one month due to her cocaine use, then would put it all back on the next, sometimes even ending up bigger.
‘While I was partying, I would barely eat. I lost then gained weight like a yo-yo and had a list of other physical flaws, like puffy cheeks and a beer belly,’ she says.
To make a living in busy London, she worked at a bar, and then as a tour guide before joining a PR agency. On the weekend, she would blow everything she’d made and found herself going off the rails.
‘I did crazy things I wouldn’t normally do. I was almost in an orgy and flew into a rage on the Tube when someone stole my camera filled with travel photos,’ she admits.
Looking back, Heidi believes the ‘self-loathing Sally’ voice in her head started after her first kiss in the playground at age 11 or 12, when she had chubby cheeks and was bigger than the other girls.
‘I was so proud I had just kissed a boy but I then saw him laugh and heard his friend say, “You kissed the fat one,”‘ she says.
The comment stuck with her for years.
She became obsessed with her weight and what others thought of her, and her anxiety about her appearance flared every time she looked in the mirror.
Heidi returned to Australia in 2009 and was diagnosed with chronic anxiety. The following year she kickstarted her radio career in Bunbury, WA, but hit ‘rock bottom’ in 2016
Now she is a keynote speaker, author and mother. Despite the chaos, she doesn’t regret a thing as the craziness lead to meeting her husband and helping other women better themselves
‘There was so much going on in my head constantly and I didn’t know how to handle it. Growing up in an Australian country town in the 1990s, mental health wasn’t spoken about,’ Heidi tells me.
By the time she reached high school, she was so fixated on her weight she developed an eating disorder. In a cruel twist, boys suddenly became interested, only deepening her body issues as she now associated starving herself with attention from men.
‘I went from a size 14, looking fat and puffy in the face, to a size seven. All the boys wanted to date me. To me, it was validation,’ she says.
Fast-forward to her 20s and Heidi was still telling herself the same thing: being skinny meant success with men. While she knew she was funny and had a vibrant personality, she longed to be desired for her looks.
‘All my friends were gorgeous and thin and turned heads. Whereas men only wanted to be friends with me,’ she says.
Heidi returned to Australia in 2009 and was diagnosed with chronic anxiety. The following year she kickstarted her radio career in Bunbury, Western Australia, but continued to struggle with low self-esteem.
Radio can be a tough job for someone who is insecure. In her book, ‘Drunk On Confidence’, she recalled the first time a listener mocked her weight: a man called in to say she was ‘fat and not funny at all and to get off his radio’.
In 2013, Heidi’s profile rose when she was a contestant on Big Brother, which led to a radio gig in a much bigger market, Perth. But as her career soared, she hit ‘rock bottom’ mentally as her anxiety over her weight worsened.
Heidi had to drag herself out of bed to get to work every morning, and felt palpable relief when she would get home and slump on the couch.
During her workday, she would often have to race to the bathroom to have a panic attack during a three-minute song, before pulling herself together to speak again.
‘I had to take Valium, and my anxiety became so bad I felt trapped in my own body. Then my boss at the time asked me if I wanted to talk about it on air,’ Heidi says.
‘At first I thought it was a crazy idea, then decided to do it. I explained that every sufferer feels something different and we all experience a range of different symptoms.
‘I took a leap of faith and confessed my anxiety to 500,000 people on live radio.’
Her story went on to reach more than two million people online.
Today, Heidi is a successful keynote speaker, author and mother.
Despite her chaotic younger years, she is thankful she went through them because it led to her meeting her now-husband. He was one of the men she encountered during her wild years in London – but they didn’t start dating seriously until five years later when fate brought them together a friend’s 30th birthday party.
For Heidi, her marriage is the shining example that even in the darkest days, there is always a glimmer of hope on the horizon.
