Married At First Sight bride Hayley Vernon has made no secret of the fact that she struggled with drug addiction in the past.
WATCH: This bride’s definitely a little bit out there!
She’s been open and brutally honest in the lead-up to the seventh season of the hit show, which kicked off on February 3. And now, she’s opened up about the circumstances that led to her painful dependancy.
“My teenage years were probably a little bit rougher than most,” Hayley explains, adding that she came from a broken home – which, she says, “can make it hard to find yourself as a person”.
We have no doubt about that; and sadly, Hayley found a way to cope in illicit substances.
“I turned to drugs,” she says, bravely owning every bit of her history.
“At the end of the day, it was as simple as that.”
But as “simple” as her reason for falling into that lifestyle may be, it certainly sounds like the finance broker – who has now been clean for several years – had a very rough family life.
“I was kicked out of home from the age of 17,” she tells, “and I was abusing several substances.”
“This was all I knew for eight or nine years,” she added.
“It’s actually the worst thing in the world. It’s crippling.”
Several years down the track, Hayley turned her life around when she began training, which completely changed her life.
After befriending a female bodybuilder she’d been following on Instagram, the MAFS bride was given the opportunity to join the fitness expert in Queensland, and was taught a new way of being in the world.
Fitness, Hayley reveals, turned her life around.
“It gave me direction, it gave me purpose, it gave me focus,” she says.
Throughout her difficult upbringing and the tough years of dependancy that followed, the bubbly brunette‘s friends have remained by her side.
“Hayley’s been through a lot,” says her best friend Bek – who Hayley describes as “the mum I haven’t got in my life at the moment”.
“To see where she’s come, it’s a really proud moment for me. She deserves [to be happy].”
Hayley’s father couldn’t be prouder of his little girl, either.
“Dad’s always got my back,” Hayley smiles. “He’s my number-one supporter.”
The 32-year-old – who’s obviously worked incredibly hard to get to where she is today – only wants one thing in sharing details of her past: that people not use her history to define her.
“The worst thing that could happen… is that they’re going to judge me on my past discretions,” she says.
“That would probably break my heart.”
In a personal interview with A Current Affair on the same night as the Married At First Sight season 7 premiere, the brave bodybuilder – who’s already been ruffling feathers in the social experiment! – spoke about about some of the consequences of her decade-long drug habit.
“I battled things most women my age could only imagine… homelessness, mental abuse, physical abuse,” the 32-year-old shared candidly.
“So what I can bring to the table is something that far outweighs my past.”
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