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The daughter of broadcaster Paul Holmes has spoken out for the first time of her $1000-a-day P addiction, the horror of being arrested and charged - and the havoc it's caused her and her family.
But Millie Holmes, 19, says she's still a "daddy's girl" and that her
conviction has drawn her closer with her famous dad, who she describes as the "rock in my life - he's so important to me".
Millie says she's now off the drugs that had become a way of life for the past three years, starting with marijuana and ecstasy before moving to "my drug of choice" P.
The drug, she says, was easy to source and made her feel alert and more productive - she was high on it even while filming for TV3's show, Deal or No Deal.
But her heady lifestyle collapsed with a police raid on her Grey Lynn apartment in June, her subsequent arrest - and her conviction for possession of methamphetamine and allowing her residence to be used for drug taking. She will be sentenced in early December.
"It's been a real eye opener - I was involved in a totally different walk of life than the one I had been brought up in, and it gives me a lot of insight and sympathy for people who are stuck in that rut."
Her drug habit saw her high almost every day. "I had a $1000-a-day habit but I've never actually paid for it," says Millie, who says a close friend supplied her with drugs.
She met gang members, who she says treated her with respect. "I was always the youngest girl. Everyone was nice to me."
She says she lapped up the partying lifestyle as a response to the pressures of being the daughter of a high-profile celebrity.
She says she was "always happy" and "always had money".
"There's a lot of pressure to achieve highly because you have all those opportunities, so it's expected you should do something fantastic with your life.
"At some point I just turned around and said 'f*** this, I'm going to do what I want to do...I want to go partying, I want to go and have fun'.
"I remember saying to people all the time 'I'm only 18 and I can do whatever I want'...I've got all my life but really these are the building blocks for the rest of my life."
She says her father has been hugely affected by her arrest and addiction. "Before this I've only see him cry once - this has rocked him.
"My little brother...I feel so sorry for him, he's got into fights defending me. He got into a punch-up at school. A boy called me a 'crackhead' at a rugby game, he got into trouble for that, and my mum got really upset.
"They are all going through their own problems and it's not fair that I have pushed my shit on to them."
She says she used to push Paul away when it came to dealing with issues, but since her arrest she and her father are now closer and more honest with each other.
"I've thrown a lot of opportunities away that he gave me because of my drug using, so now I feel like I owe him and I owe it to him to prove that I can do something with my life and not just f*** around...Yes, I'm a daddy's girl, I love my dad."
Millie describes the day her apartment was raided by police, and how she was strip-searched at the station.
"It was like seven in the morning and I was in bed and my friend Jackie was in the garage. I heard a knock on the door, I thought it was just a friend or something. I came downstairs and there were six policemen there - I was like Holy shit!
"They were screaming, banging on the door and saying 'open this door now'. I had to run upstairs and get my keys cos I'd padlocked the door and they were threatening to break the door down. I just sat on the couch while they tore the house apart.
"They were very careful what they said about me because of Dad."
At the police station, Millie was strip-searched.
"I freaked out, I was like 'No way, you guys have been absolute pricks to me'. I went mental. I said 'I want to call my lawyer, I want to call my dad', and so I tried to call Barry Hart and I couldn't get hold of him so I left a message on his answer phone.
"Then I rang dad. He was on a plane coming back from interviewing Michael Hill, so I left a message on his phone...'Dad I've just been arrested for drugs'...ooohhh it would've been such a bad message.
"You have to take off all your clothes slowly one at a time, like you're fully exposed, it's horrible. Then we had to squat on the floor and touch your toes with your legs apart. It's horrible, it's so demeaning. They don't touch you but it's horrid...that was quite a shock for me."
She says earlier reports that a P pipe was found in her underwear were wrong. "I was just holding it in my hand the whole time and trying to take my clothes off without dropping it. This was while I was being strip-searched. I'm standing there topless, trying to cover myself and then it was like 'take your bottoms off', so I'm trying to cover myself down there with my hand. Then I thought 'f*** this I can't be bothered trying to hide it any more'.
"I handed it to the female police officer and said 'here'...they wrote [it] down...but I'm standing in the dock at court and suddenly...it's like it's down my pants, so it was rubbish. I tried to get it rebutted."
Millie says she was high on P when she was arrested. "I was in the cells for a day-and-a-half, so I was awake that whole time. The cells are horrible. There are cameras in every cell. You had no privacy [for] going to the toilet and stuff like that. You just hold on because you don't want to do it in front of a room full of police officers watching you."
After being released from jail, she spent time in Whangaparoa.
"I slept for seven days and then ate for a whole month. The food depravation thing was quite big [during drug-taking moments], so I was trying to eat all the time even when I was high. I would try to eat salads. I knew it was bad for me, what I was putting into my body, [and] I tried to counteract it with salads."
There were other early warning signs about Millie's behaviour. Last year, a friend crashed her car; she was a passenger and high on drugs.
"I left it on the side of the road with every window smashed, undriveable. The police rang my dad: 'Oh we think your daughter might be dead, we found her car'. Dad went mental and couldn't find me for two weeks."
Millie has been recovering at the Capri Clinic in Mt Wellington, Auckland, where she met Keita Nobilo, the former girlfriend of league star Matthew Ridge and a member of the Nobilo wine family dynasty. The two have become close friends.
She initially spent four weeks at Capri but is now living with her new boyfriend, James Mail, in Onehunga. She visits Capri each week for family nights and is keen on a job such as modelling or in the magazine industry.
"It was in my last two weeks [at Capri] I thought maybe I should actually consider stopping [taking P] and having a go at 'real life' because I'd been doing it since I was 16, and I was so unmotivated and I wanted to get that motivation back.
"So I started to get excited about getting a job. I'd never had that before, so I was excited about that and that replaced my desire for drugs."
She says the whole experience has been a "wake-up call".
"I think it's been really fortunate. A lot of my friends are still using and I think I'm quite lucky because I got a wake-up call, and I can take it as a wake-up call and not say 'God damn it, I got caught'. But I can learn from it because otherwise I would've just gone downhill.
"I think it is quite addictive but it depends on the head space of the person. If you're not very headstrong, then you'll get sucked into it quite easily. I first tried it when I was 16 but I didn't start using it heavily till I was 18, so I was using it on and off but it wasn't controlling my life."
Millie and Keita say they now go shopping or to a sunbed clinic if they feel the urge to return to drugs. "We talk most days.
"We'll call each other if we're ever stressed out. 'Oh I feel like using' and 'yeah, me too but let's not'. The consequences are it's not worth it. All this work [rehab], for what?"
She knows prison is one possible outcome when she is sentenced in December. "I've had to see psychiatrists, people from Capri, drug assessment people. Home detention did come up in the conversation.
"I am happy to suffer the consequences for what I did. I know I was wrong so if it's what I have to do, it's what I have to do. I did the crime, I'll do the time."
Asked if she thinks she can stay off drugs, she says: "I definitely have the willpower. I'm a strong-minded person and when I set my mind to something, I usually achieve it...I get that from Dad. I have so many people to support me, so there shouldn't be any reason why I can't.
"I think I've learned a lot, grown a lot and I'm so much the wiser now.
"If this hadn't happened, God knows what would have. I would've got worse - there would have been more wreckage."
Keita says P almost made her give up on life
A member of the Nobilo wines family dynasty says P drove her into erratic behaviour and violent rages, including one when she smashed ex-boyfriend Matthew Ridge's European car.
Speaking publicly for the first time about her battle with P, Keita Nobilo, 26, says at one stage she feared her six-year addiction would cost her her life.
"When I got sick after coming back from Japan, I just went downhill. I gave up on life really.
"I was very depressed and just waiting for my time to come... I didn't think I was ever going to get well again."
Keita dated TV personality and former league star Matthew Ridge at the height of her addiction.
"I have to give him credit for putting up with the insanity of my drug use while I was with him... I was really erratic, very aggressive, very violent."
She remembers the couple having a fight in a carpark.
"I just revved the Beamer and just ran up the back of his Merc as hard as I could.
"The other time I was sitting in the passenger's seat and I booted his front windscreen, and the whole thing shattered. I got out of the car and just ran for my life. At that stage my B12 levels were really low and that's when I get really psychotic and everything."
She said Ridge later turned up to hospital to collect her.
"I'd cut myself [from the windscreen]. He'd also heard I'd thrown my breakfast tray from my mum and he thought 'Oh that's my little girl and she is actually sick, it's not just a domestic'.
"When he heard that I was throwing stuff at other people... he picked me up, took me home, it was all good."
Keita and Ridge have since separated but she has met Millie Holmes at the Capri rehab clinic. She said they hit it off instantly.
"Our stories are so similar, same struggles, same outlook on life. I think Millie is definitely a key part of my recovery."
But she says, it's also important the pair use the publicity about their troubles to help others.
Keita says she's determined to stay on the road to recovery, but it's not easy. "They say always do activity, like go for a walk, or change what you're doing so your brain changes because it's linked to thinking." She says the "buzz" people get from drugs can be achieved "naturally".
Her immune system had been depleted after a spider bit her in Japan, but she says her health is "so much better now".
"I was using drugs because I thought they were making me function normally but that wasn't the case. I am getting my health back, so that's really good.
"I've lost everything that was me, like my values system, my beliefs, my responsibilities, the things I cared about... Now I'm refocused on all of that and trying to live a normal life."
She says she very much regrets the impact on her family. "They have had to go through so much and I really feel for them so much."
But she is looking forward to a new career. "It's exciting... I went to Unitec, I have a degree in international communications.
"Like Millie said, there are so many things we can do and that's exciting because we are now functioning human beings."
