'I SURVIVED THE BANGKOK HILTON'

After spending half her life in prison, Holly Deane-Johns is ready to talk

- Maisy Rae.

Whatever your idea of a nightmare is, think again. This is how Holly DeaneJohns remembers her time in the notorious Thai prison known as the Bangkok Hilton.

"You go into survival mode," Holly tells Woman's Day. "The things I saw, I couldn't believe. You'd look into [other prisoners'] eyes and there was nothing there any more. That was scary as that could be you someday."

Holly, now 52, was arrested in 2000 after being caught with 30 grams of heroin and spent seven years at Lard Yao Women's Correctional Institution in Chatuchak, Thailand.

After growing up in a violent household where drugs were always around, Holly's own addiction began when she was just 15 after being given heroin by her mother. "I wish I'd never tried [it] because that was the beginning of the end for me," she says.

SURVIVAL MODE

Charged with drug trafficking and possession alongside her friend and fellow drug smuggler Bob Halliwell, Holly ended up being the longest incarcerated Australian prisoner returned from Asia.

Nicole Kidman's famous 1989 miniseries Bangkok Hilton showed the grim conditions inside the prison, but Holly says the reality was even worse.

"It was sweltering in that cell with everyone's bodies pressed against each other," she says, describing the experience of living alongside 2000 inmates with no food, personal space or medical care.