Drugs and sex on the catwalk

Sophie Anderton tells the BBC's Fiona Bruce about her recovery

Top model Sophie Anderton has spoken exclusively to the BBC about her years of drug abuse, suicide attempts and her tempestuous relationship with footballer Mark Bosnich.

The affair ended disastrously last year when the ex Chelsea goalkeeper allegedly beat her up.

Miss Anderton, 27, won fame as the face of Gossard's Wonderbra advertising campaign - but disappeared into rehab after a 10-year long cocaine habit nearly killed her.

Speaking on Real Story with Fiona Bruce, she criticises the fashion world for exposing girls to drug taking and sexual exploitation.

Painful childhood

The Real Story cameras follow the model on a night out, when she is escorted to toilets by bouncers so as not to be tempted to take drugs.

"I don't trust people," she tells Fiona Bruce.

I used to cut up my arms a lot. I would smash a glass and mash it into my hands Sophie Anderton

"People want to see me slip up so they can tell a story and they can make money out of it."

The root of her addiction, she says, lies in the fact that she was prescribed morphine after an horrific car accident as a child.

From the age of 11 to 15 Miss Anderton, who grew up in Bristol, had 18 operations and could not walk.

"The amount of painkillers I was given. Every time I had a pain in my leg I got used to numbing it out."

But she also feels the modelling industry, into which she was catapulted aged 16, left her vulnerable.

She recalls seeing a model shooting up underneath her toenails before a Paris fashion show, and tells how a well-known fashion photographer went home with two 15-year-old models when she refused him sex.

"I will never work with that photographer or that agency again," she resolves, describing the Paris and Milan fashion scenes as "depraved".

Overdose

She was encouraged to stop eating and started taking cocaine aged 17.

The addiction has left her with bad sinuses, pains in the jaw, attention deficit disorder and depression.

In her early 20s she took 18 pills of Rohipnol, a so-called date rape drug, after a row with her then boyfriend, millionaire Robert Hanson.

She was rushed to hospital where staff saved her life.

Self-harming

In 2002, she began dating Australian Mark Bosnich, a footballer with a £42,000 a-week wage who shared his girlfriend's cocaine addiction.

Bosnich was suspended by Chelsea after testing positive for cocaine

The pair would stay inside their flat taking the drug for a week at a time, Sophie tells Real Story.

Equally alarming are her revelations of "self-mutilation and self-loathing".

"I used to cut up my arms a lot. I would smash a glass and mash it into my hands."

Police arrested Bosnich last October after an alleged assault which saw Sophie in hospital with bruising. He later sold pictures of her to the press.

'Extremist'

"I just met someone who happened to be a million more times more self-destructive than me.

"He broke me down so much I lost all self-respect."

Now claiming to be clean from drugs and in a happy relationship with nightclub owner Mark Alexiou, Miss Anderton admits she fell off the wagon a month ago.

"I'm just an extremist. I will always have it in me to medicate."

Real Story's interview with Sophie Anderton will be shown on BBC One on Monday 14 June.