How I went from a homeless heroin addict to Miss England finalist
...thanks to a loving mother who never gave up — and a magical new life as a farmhand
SHIVERING in a thin sleeping bag in the shop doorway that was her bed for the night, skeletally thin and freezing cold, Atlanta Wilsher could think of only one thing: where her next hit was coming from.
‘I knew I was at rock bottom,’ she recalls. ‘I wasn’t sleeping, I wasn’t eating — I was a mess. I was physically and emotionally exhausted yet all I wanted was to get my hands on a fix. I hated myself, but I couldn’t see a way out. I thought I’d never lead a normal life again.’
It was a sentiment shared by Atlanta’s desperate mum, who had tried everything she could to try to free her daughter from the evil grip of the drug addiction that had held her in its thrall for seven long years.
None of it — the drug programmes, the methadone, the tough love — had worked.
Yet last week this same girl — who until last year had been sleeping rough or in squats and injecting heroin up to ten times a day — took to the stage of the Miss England pageant, one of 56 finalists from all over the country.
Clad in a stunning burgundy sequinned dress and heels, her long blonde hair held in an elegant bun, the 25-year-old flashed a beaming smile at the judges, none of whom could have envisaged the grim backdrop from which this stylish beauty had emerged.
In the end, Atlanta missed out on the title, which went to 23- year- old junior doctor Bhasha Mukherjee, from Derby. Not that that matters a jot to Atlanta, for whom just taking part was enough.
‘I’ve come so far from where I was,’ she says. ‘Only a year ago my whole life was heroin — my circle of friends, everyone I spoke to, it was all about drugs. To go from that to a beauty pageant stage is overwhelming.’
Overwhelming — and also a life-affirming testament to the power of the human spirit, not to mention some good old-fashioned love and determination: Atlanta credits her extraordinary turnaround both to her mum, Jane, a ballet teacher who once performed at the Moulin Rouge with the Bluebell Girls, and a family friend who gave her work on her farm.
The experience proved transformative: surrounded by animals and in the fresh air, Atlanta found she was able to conquer her demons.
‘Without them, I wouldn’t be here,’ she says candidly. ‘It had got to the point where I didn’t care about anything any more.’
So how could a girl from a loving home descend into addiction in the first place? For Atlanta, a naturally cheerful and charismatic girl whose whole face lights up when she smiles, it was precipitated by an unexpected tragedy as a teenager.
While her parents divorced when she was a toddler — her father played no part in her upbringing — she recalls a happy, active childhood alongside older sister Georgia, now 30.
‘I had guinea pigs, horses, dogs,’ she recalls. ‘Mum was keen for us to try things out so we did gymnastics, ballet, karate.’
By 16 Atlanta had achieved a respectable clutch of GCSEs and started training as a hairdresser. ‘I loved it,’ she says simply.
She was also happily ensconced in a relationship with her boyfriend Mark, a builder from Marlborough, Wilts, eight years her senior, whom she had met at a music festival.
‘He was the loveliest man,’ she recalls. ‘I would get the train to see him and he would meet me with a bunch of flowers.’
While largely long distance, their relationship flourished and by the time Atlanta was 18 — by which point she was taking a university access course to retrain as a nurse — they had discussed her relocating to live in a cottage on the smallholding owned by Mark’s parents.
‘I honestly thought this was it,’ she recalls. ‘I thought that once I had established myself in my nursing career, we would have babies and we would raise a family together.’
Tragically, it wasn’t to be: on January 2, 2011, Mark was killed when he tripped off an icy kerb and fell into the path of an oncoming car. He’d gone drinking after a silly row. BACK home in Harlow, Atlanta received the devastating news via a phone call from the police. ‘I couldn’t take it in,’ she says quietly. ‘All I could think of was that it was my fault, that if we hadn’t argued he wouldn’t have gone drinking and he wouldn’t have fallen. Everyone told me otherwise, even his mum, but I couldn’t shake off this deep guilt.’
The news triggered a deep depression from which Atlanta found it impossible to recover. ‘I had grief counselling and I was surrounded by love and support, but it was like no one could reach me,’ she says.
It is against this backdrop that Atlanta went to visit friends in London — not a good group of friends. In fact, the very opposite of the sort of people she needed in her life when she was grief- stricken. ‘I was so depressed and vulnerable,’ she says.
When she was offered heroin, with the promise it would make her feel better, Atlanta couldn’t resist.
‘I was so numb that I would have pretty much done anything,’ she says. ‘I don’t remember much about that first time, but it was something that helped me stop feeling.’
That one simple act would precipitate a catastrophic unravelling that happened with chilling speed: instead of returning to her mum’s cosy home, Atlanta moved into a house in Stoke Newington, NorthEast London, with her new ‘friends’, who persuaded her to start begging.
‘Because I was so fresh-faced, they saw I could earn good money,’ she says. ‘They were exploiting me, though I didn’t see it that way. I thought they were my friends.’
On good days she could earn anything up to £200 — all of which went on heroin which she was soon injecting. She was also smoking crack.
One can only imagine the desperation her mother must have felt. ‘She tried to find me lots of times,’ says Atlanta quietly. ‘She was going out of her mind.’ And even more so when, in early 2012, Jane received a call to say her daughter had been hospitalised after collapsing in the street.
Her list of symptoms was horrifying: she had pneumonia, septicaeby
mia, renal failure and deep vein thrombosis. Placed in a coma for ten days, Atlanta remained in hospital for three months.
You might think this would be a wake-up call — and briefly, it was: returning home, Atlanta determined to get herself clean. ‘I went to drug meetings and started helping mum at her ballet school,’ she recalls. ‘I felt hopeful.’
But as any addict knows, the spectre of a hit is never too far away, and when Atlanta met a local she knew had dabbled in heroin, she was quickly sucked back into her bleak old life.
‘I bumped into him on a bad day and that was it — I was straight back on it,’ she says quietly.
Desperate, her mum did everything she could to stop her daughter succumbing again to her addiction, confiscating her money, credit cards and keys.
Atlanta moved to East London, settling in a squat from where her life spiralled ever further downwards. ‘Pretty soon, I was injecting ten times a day,’ she says. ‘I wasn’t sleeping, I wasn’t eating — any money I earned went on heroin and crack.’
On occasions, she spent stints sleeping on the streets, huddled in shop doorways. ‘You’re freezing, exhausted, yet all you can think of is your next hit,’ she says.
Atlanta knows that she’s lucky — while she was called countless names by passers-by, she was never physically assaulted like some of her fellow addicts.’ Meanwhile, her mum tried everything to get her daughter back.
‘She managed to find me and bring me back home so many times,’ Atlanta recalls. ‘She tried everything, different drug treatment programmes, anything you can think of. Each time I would think: “I’m never going to use heroin again.” I would be doing well for a couple of months, then I would be straight back on it.’
Who knows how long this debilitating cycle may have gone on? As it was, a turning point came unexpectedly last summer when Jane once more brought her daughter home from the squat in which she’d been languishing. By then she was skeletally thin — at 5ft 5in, she weighed just over 5st.
‘I agreed to come home, but instead of putting any pressure on myself, I just told myself I needed a bit of time to get healthy again,’ she recalls. ‘I went on the heroin substitute methadone, and found a counsellor with whom I really clicked. And slowly I just got stronger.’
Recovery is a viscerally grim business. ‘It’s horrific both physically and mentally — you’re sick, shaking — but the mental side is the worst. In your mind you are losing your best friend,’ she says.
‘Heroin was my partner in crime, and I thought I couldn’t do anything without it. It’s impossible to describe the grip it holds on you.’
And yet slowly, that grip did loosen — helped by an unexpected offer. Marlene Brunt, a long-standing family friend, suggested Atlanta went to work on her farm in Sawbridgeworth, Herts.
‘I’d known Marlene since I was three, so I trusted her implicitly,’ Atlanta recalls. ‘She said I was free to roam and do my own thing, but I could help her out with the animals, too. When you’re an addict, you have to be kept busy otherwise your mind starts to wander and think about heroin. I needed something to focus on.’
Her new focus came in the form of a vast menagerie of dogs, horses, cows, pigs and chickens.
‘I found I loved being out in the fresh air, wading through the mud and helping out,’ she says.
Then there were the new friends she made among the farming community. ‘I’d lost all my old friends through my addiction, replacing them with drug addicts whom I couldn’t be around any more, but the farming community have rallied round,’ she says.
‘They’ve really helped me through my recovery. When you’re coming off heroin, your emotions run riot. Sometimes I still cry for no reason but they just give me a hug.’ ATLANTA now works on the farm full time, spending her nights in a small caravan on the site where her neighbours are five noisy pigs.
It’s a far cry from the grim squats and street doorways she once called home — as are the frills and fancy make-up of Miss England.
It was Jane who decided to enter her daughter in the pageant, believing it might boost her confidence. ‘I never thought anything would come of it,’ Atlanta says. ‘But then we got a call to say I’d been selected. We were both screaming down the phone.’
It meant the girl who hadn’t worn heels for nearly a decade had to practise wearing stilettos and sort out a few new wardrobe choices.
And so, last week, she took to the stage in the pageant final in newcastle.
She admits to being nervous about her fellow contestants learning of her past, but says they ‘couldn’t have been more lovely. I felt like an outsider, like it wasn’t my world, but everyone has been incredibly supportive — so many of them have said I should feel proud of what I’ve achieved.’
And so she should be: Atlanta may not have won the Miss England title, but it would be a hard-hearted person who did not think that in her own way she was every bit as much of a winner as the girl who gained the crown.
‘Just walking into that room and being among all those beautiful girls was enough for me,’ she says. ‘Just over a year ago it would have been impossible for me to imagine it — but it happened.
now she wants to use experiences to help others who, like her, have stared into the abyss. ‘I want to show people that however low you are, even at rock bottom it’s possible to turn your life around,’ she says. ‘I know I’ve been lucky so I want to help as many other people in my situation as I can.’