Samantha X on getting sober and finding God
As Australia’s most high-profile escort, her controversial lifestyle made headlines. But after hitting rock bottom, Samantha X has spent the last year giving up alcohol and finding religion.
If last year you told Samantha X that come this Christmas, she would be praying to God every day, she would have laughed in your face. But it’s exactly what has transpired.
Call it one of the many side effects that divorced mother-of-two Amanda Goff – who decided to become a high-class call girl named Samantha X at the age of 37 – has become familiar with in nine months (and counting) of sobriety.
“I was the ultimate party girl and now I’ve become one of those sparkly eyed, happy-clappy people,” Samantha, now 45, tells Stellar, laughing at the absurdity of the statement.
“I’ve never believed in God. But I pray now. My daughter said, ‘You know those people you make fun of? You’ve become one of them.’”
The latest chapter in her story is just as gripping as the one she began writing in 2012 when Goff, who at the time was a magazine journalist, decided to change careers and start working as an escort named Samantha X.
Seven years later, and with a bestselling memoir under her belt, Samantha comes across as a confident woman firmly in control of her body, one who can buy Christian Louboutin high heels with her own money, thank you very much.
But she now admits that in private things haven’t always been as empowering, and tells Stellar for the past seven years she was battling substance abuse issues.
“I felt weak and worthless,” she says. “And like at any moment, someone was going to work out I was a fraud.”
Living a double life took its toll – clients would fork out thousands of dollars for a night with Samantha, but the men who spent time with Amanda were different.
She turned to the bottle to help numb her pain. She hit it even harder after her high-profile relationship with Seven Network journalist Ryan Phelan ended early last year.
“Life was becoming unmanageable,” says Samantha, who describes frequently blacking out during parties and waking up back home with no idea how she got there.
Cars were lost. Kids, now in their tween years, were taken to school in Ubers. Bills remained unopened. It wasn’t even that she was drinking every day; it was the behaviour she exhibited when she did.
“I felt I had a role to play as the fun, exciting one. I was embarrassing. I did inappropriate things. Then I’d wake up feeling really dark the next day,” she says.
“I’d hit rock bottom. It wasn’t catastrophic; I didn’t lose anything. But I guess I was a high-functioning, spiritually dead person.”
Change came one morning in December 2018, when she found herself once again calling up the host of a party, this one at Sydney’s Bondi Beach, to apologise for her behaviour the day before.
Instead of judgement, the woman on the other end of the line showed compassion. “She said, ‘Your behaviour yesterday was the reason I’ve been sober for 10 years,’” recalls Samantha. “That was a real light-bulb moment for me.”
So she walked herself to the nearest 12-step program meeting with the conviction that, unlike the health retreats and hypnotherapy she had attempted to manage addiction with in the past, this had to stick.
“If I didn’t go, I knew how the story was going to end. I had visions of me being found dead in a hotel room. I was just always surprised when I wasn’t,” she says.
Giving up the grog was easy. Living without it was hard. That’s where a higher being stepped in.
“I identified my issue and found faith. God did for me what I couldn’t do for myself,” she says. Samantha has since explored her feelings of unworthiness, which stem back to growing up in a privileged yet dysfunctional home in the UK.
“One of the reasons the escorting life chose me is because it was a perfect way to use my disconnection, to make money out of it,” she says, adding she hasn’t had a real relationship with her parents for decades.
“Had I grown up with a bit more guidance and a feeling of self-worth, possibly my life choices would have been different. I made the best with what I had.”
Which is why she has now literally and figuratively thrown away the Louboutins, taken down her escort advertising and has finished up her work as an escort for a second time. (The first came when she went public with Phelan.)
“The job wasn’t disempowering; it was me,” she says. “The problem was always me. I love what I did, but once I sobered up, I felt like I’m worthy of a bit more. I always thought someone was going to come rescue me. But no-one is. No man. No amount of money. It has to come from within.”
Hindsight has also brought her public coming out into a sharper focus. “There was an element of ‘F*ck you!’ to everyone,” she admits.
Her best friend of nearly 20 years, Susie White, says before Samantha joined the 12-step program, chaos defined her life.
Now she is proof of the remarkable change that can occur. “That’s the thing about my friend,” says White. “She blows stigmas out of the water; first the escorting industry, and now addiction.”
She intends to continue with her escort agency (“I employ mostly women over 40 because that’s where the demand is,” she says) but career-wise, Samantha’s focus is on counselling for relationships and substance abuse.
“It’s really scary because when I was Samantha, I was making great money and now it’s not coming in,” she says. “But I have faith that I will be looked after.”
And to prove it, she recently got a crucifix tattooed on the nape of her neck. “I feel like someone has my back now,” she says, smiling.
A romantic relationship is also on the bucket list, but for now her focus remains on her recovery and relishing the relationships she already has, especially with her two children. “They just want their mum to be happy and I think I’m finally on that road,” she says.
“I’m just so grateful that woman told me she had nothing but compassion for me. Because she saved my life. I’m so grateful I’ve found sobriety – because the alternative would definitely not be a happy ending.”
