Heidi Anderson woke up with a pounding headache, messy hair, and makeup smeared all over her face.
Standing up, he groaned as he saw the trail of destruction he had left across their shared house in London after arriving home just hours earlier.
The dress she wore the night before was thrown over a chair, her heels were in random places, and her purse was spilled on the side of the bed.
‘What did I do last night?’ she thought to herself as she squinted to adjust to the late morning sunlight now streaming in through the open 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 aged 21, Heidi went out almost every weekend repeating the vicious cycle of elation followed by disgust and then regret. All of his bad decisions were fueled by cocaine.
For Heidi, who described herself as the “fun fat friend” during her unhappy twenties, the party drug was a way to get men’s attention, manage her anxiety, and lose weight.
But in reality it was causing her weight to fluctuate violently and sending her down a path of self-destruction.
The cheerful and loud Heidi Anderson (pictured) was always the life of the party.
For Heidi, who described herself as the “funny fat friend” during her unhappy twenties, using cocaine was a way to get men’s attention, control her anxiety, and lose weight.
‘My weeks were full of dieting, feeling bad about myself and trying to erase everything I had done at the weekend. But by Thursday I was already excited about my plans for the weekend, then I would party on Friday and sometimes even on Sunday,” Heidi, now 40, tells me.
For years, she tried to live up to the “happy fat girl” persona she had developed during school to protect herself from others. But with cocaine added to the mix, at age 20 he saw his mental health collapse..
‘I’ve always been loud, it was almost like a defense 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 almost never received attention from men. I was the “funny fat friend,” or that’s what I thought. Men went out with me and drank, but they weren’t attracted to me.
At the same time, cocaine use was common and was seen as a “safe” drug used by supermodels and celebrities.
In Heidi’s case, she turned to cocaine to become a better version of herself, silence her inner critic and finally get some looks from men.
‘In London it was cheaper to take drugs than drink alcohol. It was the mid-2000s, the world was very different, a bag of cocaine cost around £50 ($100) and pills cost £4 ($8). It was crazy,” says Heidi.
Friday and Saturday nights were spent partying, meeting new people, sleeping with strangers, and forgetting his 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, at age 20 he saw his mental health collapse.
‘Most men in London wanted to sleep with my friends, not me. I almost never received attention from men. I was the “fat, fun friend,” she says.
But cocaine wasn’t the miracle weight loss drug that some models from the ’90s and ’00s would have you believe. For Heidi, her weight changed drastically as a result of her lifestyle. He would lose several kilos in one month due to cocaine use, then gain them all back the next and sometimes even end up gaining more weight.
‘While I was partying, I barely ate. “I lost weight and then gained like a yo-yo and had a list of other physical defects, like puffy cheeks and a beer belly,” he says.
To make a living in busy London, she worked in a bar and then as a tour guide before joining a public relations agency. On the weekend, he would ruin everything he had done and go off the rails.
“I did crazy things that I normally wouldn’t do. “I was almost in an orgy and I got angry on the subway when someone stole my camera full of travel photos,” he admits.
Looking back, Heidi believes the ‘self-hating Sally’ voice in her head started after her first kiss on the playground at age 11 or 12, when she had chubby cheeks and was bigger than the other girls.
“I was so proud that I kissed a guy, but then I saw him laugh and I heard his friend say, ‘You kissed the fat guy,'” she says.
The comment stayed 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, he began his radio career in Bunbury, WA, but hit rock bottom in 2016.
She is now a keynote speaker, author and mother. Despite the chaos, she regrets nothing, as the madness led her to meet her husband and help other women get better.
“There were so many things going through my head constantly and I didn’t know how to handle them. Growing up in a rural Australian town in the 1990s, mental health wasn’t talked about,” Heidi tells me.
By the time she reached high school, she was so obsessed with her weight that she developed an eating disorder. In a cruel twist, boys suddenly became interested, which only deepened her body’s problems, as she now associated starvation with attention from men.
‘I went from a size 14, with a fat and swollen face, to a size seven. All the boys wanted to go out with me. For me it was validation,” he says.
When she was 20, Heidi kept telling herself the same thing: being thin meant being successful with men. While she knew she was fun and had a vibrant personality, she longed to be desired for her looks.
‘All my friends were beautiful and thin and attracted attention. While men just wanted to be my friends,” she says.
Heidi returned to Australia in 2009 and was diagnosed with chronic anxiety. The following year, he began his radio career in Bunbury, Western Australia, but continued to struggle with low self-esteem.
Radio can be hard work for someone insecure. In his book, ‘Drunk On Confidence,’ he recalled the first time a listener made fun of his weight: a A man called to say she was “fat and not funny and to get off the radio.”
In 2013, Heidi’s profile rose when she took part in Big Brother, which led to her performing on radio in a much larger market, Perth. But as her career skyrocketed, she mentally hit rock bottom as her anxiety about her weight worsened.
Heidi had to get out of bed to go to work every morning, and she felt palpable relief when she came home and plopped down on the couch..
During her workday, she often had to run to the bathroom to have a panic attack during a three-minute song, before recovering to speak again.
‘I had to take Valium and my anxiety became so intense that I felt trapped in my own body. Then my boss at the time asked me if I wanted to talk about it live,” says Heidi.
“At first I thought it was a crazy idea, then I decided to do it. I explained that every patient feels something different and we all experience a variety of different symptoms.
“I took a leap of faith and confessed my anxiety to 500,000 people on live radio.”
His story reached more than two million people online.
Today, Heidi is a successful keynote speaker, author, and mother.
Despite her chaotic younger years, she is grateful to have gone through them because it led her to meet her now husband. He was one of the men she met during her wild years in London, but they didn’t start dating seriously until five years later, when fate brought them together at a friend’s 30th birthday party..
For Heidi, her marriage is a shining example that even on the darkest days there is always a ray of hope on the horizon.