I am happy, healthy and free. It wasn't always that way. I was an escort, a really well paid escort, but still an escort.

I grew up in Montreal and had a difficult, but still happy childhood. My parents were separated when I was just a baby, and my older brother and I grew up without our father, who decided to disappear. Still, my mom worked hard, I did well in school and had good friends growing up. I loved dance, which led to theater, where I discovered I also loved acting. I studied acting in college and when I graduated, I flew to New York on the dreams of landing a part and becoming a famous actress.

Caught up in the opportunity and excitement, I moved my life to New York without much of a game plan. I thought everything would take care of itself. And for the most part it did, but there was a small problem. I had another side to my life as well -- one I'd kept hidden from everyone who cared about me. I had been living a double life, doing drugs since I was about 14.

To my family and most of my friends, I was smart, pretty and popular. When I was alone I felt scared, and I had a hard time wrestling with feelings of emptiness. Like many people who do drugs, I started with pot. The first time my two best friends and I smoked was before a school dance. By the time we got to our high school, I felt dizzy, disoriented and really scared. No one else seemed to be affected, my friends said they didn't feel a thing. They also said I must be faking, as it didn't make sense that I was so messed up and they were fine. But I wasn't faking; I spent the next three hours sitting on the gym floor, trying to act normal and hoping the feeling would go away. You'd think after that experience I'd never touch any drug again, but I did. I was stubborn and saw drugs as a challenge. Once I could control the way the drugs made me feel, I felt strong and invincible and I kept doing them.

I also wasn't very good with men and relationships. I know it sounds cliché, but I still had too many unresolved issues about my father leaving to be able to open up my heart without becoming fearful it would get shattered. But I was comfortable with sex. I never had a problem expressing myself physically and I never had a shortage of sexual adventures. Sex was one of the only things I was secure with, therefore I liked it. Eventually came to like it too much. I never felt like sex should be negative, sex should feel good. I had a hard time expressing myself verbally, so sex was like a creative outlet, where I could be myself.

So my drug use was a disaster waiting to happen, but I managed to keep it under control, not to let it rule or ruin my life. My sex life was always wild, but a few long-term relationships kept me from getting into too much trouble.

Cut to about four years later. I was twenty-four and doing well in my career. I was getting roles in independent films and interesting theater. I had quit doing drugs. I felt happy, even optimistic. For the first time in my life I felt a growing sense of confidence. I was allowing myself to be happy... and then it all fell apart. My loving boyfriend started hitting me and I didn't know what to do. I didn't want to turn around and go home to Canada, but he had isolated me from all my friends and I had no one to turn to.

Then, one night, I met someone who owned an escort agency. He was professional and charismatic. He made it sound so simple and fun. I listened with rapt attention to the amount of money he claimed I could make. I started putting together a plan in my head. I would work for just a few months and finally be free and independent, with my own apartment and more than enough money to support myself.

Then it happened. Like lighting a match, I became an escort.

The clients were wonderful. They were successful, well-dressed, for the most part attractive guys who were either single and too busy with their high-flying careers to have time to date, or unhappy in their marriages and looking for some companionship. I started earning $800/hour, but before long I was making $1,200+ because I had become so popular. I can't sit here and speak of those first few months like they were a nightmare, because they weren't. I felt strong, happy and in control of my life for the first time.

In my mind I wasn't doing anything wrong. I was trying to survive.

I was living a fast-paced, crazy life. My bills were paid, I was traveling and staying in fancy hotels, eating expensive meals and thinking to myself that all the bad stuff was behind me, but then, slowly, I hit the biggest low of my life.

Here's how it happened. I was lying to my friends and family about how I was earning all this money. I told them I got a really well-paying bartending job. I started doing drugs again, this time to quiet my conscience. Everything was spinning so fast, I could hardly see what was going on around me, and my life was spiraling out of control.

I had started dating the owner of the escort agency. He told me I was going to be famous. We started filming a reality series about our love and the escort agency. I was photographed and interviewed for a cover story in New York magazine. I figured if I wasn't going to be a successful actress, I might as well be rich and famous -- all of the glory with none of the work. Then I was arrested and spent a month in the most brutal jail in New York City.

When I was released on bail, my drug addiction took over and I lost everything: my apartment, all my Manolos, my walk-in closet full of clothes and most of my friends. Only my mother and a few other people were willing to stand by me and help me stand back up.

I decided it was time to change, and if I were going to make it through this alive, it had to happen immediately. For the first time in my life I started to take responsibility for myself, my choices, my life and my happiness.

This is my truth. This is my story, my life.

Check back tomorrow for part 2 of our 4 part series: Ashley Dupré, the escort who brought down New York's Governor, Eliot Spitzer.

Natalie McLennan is the author of The Price: My Rise and Fall as Natalia, New York's #1 Escort. She currently lives in Canada where she has been working to rebuild her life. After moving back home from New York to start over, Natalie began counseling and focused on developing healthy and positive relationships with her family, friends and men.