Hollys Hell P1

Summary

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Podcast Summary: What I Survived – “Holly’s Hell, Part 1”

Host: Jack Laurence
Guest: Holly Dean Johns
Date: June 2, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this gripping episode, “Holly’s Hell, Part 1,” host Jack Laurence introduces listeners to Holly Dean Johns, whose life spiraled from a high-flying, unconventional childhood into full-blown heroin addiction, significant criminal convictions, and a harrowing stint in Thai prison. The episode traces Holly’s early years, the progression into drug use, her beliefs about criminal loyalty, and the consequences that followed her decisions. Through candid storytelling, Holly offers rare first-hand insight into family dysfunction, addiction, and the devastating ripple effects of drugs—culminating in heartbreak and prison time abroad.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Deadly Reach of Heroin (02:13 – 03:18)

• Opening Context: Host Jack Laurence details the global scale and lethality of heroin and opioid addiction:

  “Opioids, including heroin, account for more than two thirds of all drug related deaths on the planet. Over 100,000 people a year. Gone.” (02:37)

• Personalization: Holly is introduced as one among millions affected.

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2. Holly’s Childhood: Wealth, Violence, and Secrecy (04:49 – 09:23)

• Normality Unraveled: Childhood to age 10-11 felt normal until Holly realized her father’s alcoholism and violence:

  “My dad was a very heavy drinker and he would very often beat my mum up… We would see the aftermath of it after it had, you know, finished.” – Holly (04:55)

• Family Business Shift: Parents’ real estate business collapses; an escort service operates from the home:

  “A typical night would be us all in the lounge room watching tv. The phone would ring, we’d all have to be quiet while Mum took a booking.” – Holly (06:14)

• Material Wealth: The family enjoys significant financial prosperity.
• Secrecy & Social Isolation: Holly recounts inventing cover stories to keep her unconventional home life hidden:

  “I just said that they ran an import export business, so that would explain the weird times of the phones ringing.” – Holly (07:54)

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3. Parental Relationships and Early Independence (08:16 – 09:23)

• Mother-Daughter Bond:

  “My mother’s relationship and mine was more like best friends… As a teenager, I loved that… But looking back now as an adult… totally wrong.” – Holly (08:35)

• Crucial Choice: After her parents’ divorce, Holly chooses to stay with her mother, a permissive parent, instead of her strict father—a choice she later reflects may have shaped her downward trajectory.

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4. Heroin Enters the Picture (09:54 – 16:48)

• Mother’s New Partner: Holly’s mother begins dating Simon, who is eventually revealed as a heroin addict and ex-convict.

  “We didn’t know people like that. We’d never seen drugs before… until this guy came on the scene.” – Holly (10:12)

• Drug Exposure Escalates: Heroin becomes commonplace in their household; Holly helps package and distribute it.
• Her First Hit:

  “I would ask her very often… can I try it? … And I asked again one night and she said, okay, yeah, try it. And little did I know… that night was the beginning of the end for me.” – Holly (12:02)

• Ignorance of Impact: Holly defends her mother, stressing their naivety about heroin’s dangers at the time:

  “If my mother had known what that night of having that snort would do to me, there’s no way in the world she would have said yes.” (12:35)

• Addiction Sets In:

  “For a person trying heroin for the first time, one of two things will happen… I had the greatest part of that and I just wanted that feeling all the time… I was gone.” – Holly (14:24)

• Discovery: Mother eventually becomes aware of Holly’s addiction after sending her away due to suspected emotional breakdown:

  “I spoke to her on the phone and I said, look, you know, this is what’s going on. And I told her.” – Holly (15:07) “Oh, devastated. Absolutely devastated.” (16:18)

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5. The Domino Effect and Criminal Code (18:45 – 25:12)

• Addiction’s Cost: Holly echoes a poem:

  “First it takes your health, then it takes your home, then it takes your car, then it takes your job… It’s so true, you can be this high one minute, then just fucking lose everything.” – Holly (18:58)

• Early Police Trouble: First arrested as a teenager for meth possession—brief detention only.
• Major Conviction:
  • Describes being set up in a controlled delivery operation and sentenced to 18 years in prison:

    “They rang me, they said, look, we’re back, everything’s fine… So I went around there, got the gear… just all these cops have run out at me… I ended up getting 18 years for that.” – Holly (21:08)

  • Those she helped implicated her while cutting deals for themselves.
• The Code of Silence:

  “I’m a firm believer, I always have been and I always will be, that you keep your mouth shut. I’m not going to put anyone else in the firing line.” – Holly (24:17) “If you’re not prepared to go to prison for what you’ve done, don’t fucking do it.” (24:35)

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6. Prison Life and Personal Turmoil (25:12 – 29:23)

• Australian Prison:

  “I walked in and… Hey, how you going? It was like a reunion.” – Holly (25:32)

  • Holly describes jail as tough, but manageable given her connections.
• Drugs in Prison: She continued using intermittently, accepting consequences:

  “Didn’t worry me… That’s part of the game.” (26:58)

• Childhood Responsibility & Anger:

  “I sort of became… a mother role to my younger brothers and sisters… I did have a lot of anger that I had to be this person.” – Holly (27:33)

• Loss & Grief: Receives news her mother has died from a heroin overdose while both she and her younger sister are still in jail:

  “We said goodbye to our mother handcuffed to a screw… mum was everything to us.” – Holly (28:35)

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7. Release, Relapse, and Thailand’s Deadly Laws (29:23 – 35:29)

• Work Release & Relapse: Holly succeeds in staying clean during a six-month work release, but quickly relapses into heroin and reunites with her husband in Thailand.
• Life in Thailand: Holly joins a group of expatriate Australians, living lavishly and using heroin, despite perpetual risk.
• Drug Trafficking Scheme: Describes how she sent heroin from Thailand to Australia concealed inside calendars, aided by a corrupt post office worker.

  “Insert 15 grams of hammer… into these calendars… so that when I was home, I’d have heroin to use, I wouldn’t be sick.” – Holly (33:15)

• Betrayal and Surveillance: Another Australian on the run is apprehended and implicates Holly in exchange for a reduced sentence; she’s then watched by authorities.
• Husband Arrested:

  “My husband… got busted in Melbourne. … I thought, I’ll give it about a week to wrap everything up and then I’m gone.” – Holly (34:18)

• Impending Doom: Narrator foreshadows Holly’s own arrest and the brutality of Thai prison life.

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Memorable Quotes

• “That night was the beginning of the end for me. I didn’t know it at the time, but that’s exactly what it was.” – Holly Dean Johns (03:34 & 12:04)
• “If you’re not prepared to go to prison for what you’ve done, don’t fucking do it.” – Holly Dean Johns (24:35)
• “I sort of became a bit of a mother role, I suppose, to my younger brothers and sisters… I did have a lot of anger that I had to be this person.” – Holly Dean Johns (27:33)
• “We said goodbye to our mother handcuffed to a screw. So that was pretty traumatic because mum was everything to us.” – Holly Dean Johns (28:44)
• “You always know there is a potential for being arrested. Your addiction overshadows that worry.” – Holly Dean Johns (31:32)

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Timestamps of Key Segments

• Global Opioid Overview: 02:13 – 03:18
• Early Childhood Details: 04:49 – 07:36
• Exposure to Drugs and First Use: 09:54 – 13:22
• Addiction’s Onset & Discovery: 14:24 – 16:48
• The Criminal Code Explained: 22:21 – 24:35
• First Major Arrest & Betrayal: 20:34 – 22:21
• Prison Reflections: 25:12 – 27:24
• Mother’s Death in Prison: 28:35 – 29:23
• Relapse and Thai Life: 29:49 – 33:10
• Drug Trafficking Tactics: 33:10 – 35:21

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Tone & Style

The episode is raw, reflective, and unflinching. Holly’s candid narration is peppered with dark humor and hard-earned insight, while the host maintains empathy and focus. The storytelling does not shy from controversial details but avoids sensationalism, aiming instead to illuminate the realities of addiction and the criminal world.

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To be continued: The episode concludes on a cliffhanger, promising details of Holly’s harrowing time in Thai prison and the repercussions of her choices in the next installment.

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Transcript

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[Narrator/Interviewer]

Heroin. We all know the name and we all know it's bad. We're all taught that taking it just that one time can have catastrophic consequences. But still. According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and crime, an estimated 10.6 million people around the world are using opioids, including heroin, right now. That is roughly the entire population of Sweden or Portugal or the entire state of Michigan. Opioids, including heroin, account for more than two thirds of all drug related deaths on the planet. Over 100,000 people a year. Gone. Not from violence, not from accidents. From a substance that began its life as a flower. Now, if you're one of the lucky ones who isn't killed by it, then your life will almost certainly be destroyed by it. Debts start to mount, functioning society becomes almost impossible, and you can very quickly spiral out of control. Hello. Hello.

[Holly Dean Johns]

Hi. How you going?

[Chris Gillebo]

Good.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

How are you, Holly?

[Holly Dean Johns]

Yeah, good.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

Holly Dean Johns would be one of those 10.6 million people who became addicted to the drug. It took hold of her life and ultimately sent her on a path of self destruction.

[Holly Dean Johns]

That night was the beginning of the end for me. I didn't know it at the time, but that's exactly what it was.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

One which culminated in a devastating sentence in a Thai prison.

[Holly Dean Johns]

As we were walking to the car, I made out I was going to run to see what they'd do. They pulled their guns and they said, we will shoot you.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

But before we even get to that wild story, we first have to go back to Holly's incredible childhood. Because I am willing to bet it is unlike any you've heard before, a childhood. To most people, that would seem crazy. But to Holly, at the time, it all seemed pretty normal for a while.

[Musician/Singer]

Moon in the sky I'm looking at the moon in the sky this shouldn't come as a surprise But I can't sleep War in my mind I'm trying to fight a war in my mind I don't know who's the winner tonight but it ain't me.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

Chapter One. Okay, try it.

[Holly Dean Johns]

Yeah, look. It definitely felt very normal to me until I was probably maybe 10, 11 years old. That's when I realized sort of what was going on between my parents. My dad was a very heavy drinker and he would very often beat my mum up. This was always done behind closed doors. We never saw it, but we could hear it. And we would see the aftermath of it after it had, you know, finished. So that was sort of, I think, the beginning of things not being so normal. And it was around that time as well. They used to own a real estate agency. I was young then, so I don't know what the circumstances were that it closed down, but it did. And my mum and dad then opened up an escort business from the family home.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

So the family's business pivots quite severely from selling homes to, well, selling sex. And by all accounts, Holly says business was good. Business was very, very good.

[Holly Dean Johns]

There were three telephone lines in our lounge room. For the business, a typical night would be, you know, there was five of us kids, mum and dad. Typical night would be us all in the lounge room watching tv. The phone would ring, we'd all have to be quiet while Mum took a booking. Back in those days, there weren't mobile phones, so the women carried beepers. So Mum would beep one of the girls, relay the job, the address, et cetera. The girl would go out and do the job, come back to our house and drop off Mum's cut of the money. So Mum had this business for many, many years and it was very, very lucrative. Like, we always lived in mansions. Mum always drove the latest Mercedes. She went out one day and brought a Rolls Royce just because she felt like it, you know, Mum would think nothing of going into a dress shop and spending $5,000 on a dress. That just gives you some sort of idea that money wasn't an issue for us.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

The business, in fact, was so busy that Holly says at one point, around the age of about 14, she offers to help take the bookings for a fee, of course.

[Holly Dean Johns]

Typically the women would start work at, say, six in the evening. But if one or more girls wanted to work during the day, I just said to Mum, look, I'll take bookings. If the girls want to work, just pay me 10 doll dollars a booking. So, yeah, that's what I did. I mean, looking back now, I should have asked for more.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

Yeah, you're really underselling yourself.

[Holly Dean Johns]

So, yeah, I, I was doing that when I needed some money and yeah, that was just our life, unfortunately, because of that lifestyle as a teenager, you know, I wanted to bring friends home, of course, you know, but I couldn't be a normal child because how am I going going to explain three phone lines ringing, women coming in and out all night on the odd occasion? I did bring a friend home. I just said that they ran an import export business, so that would explain the weird times of the phones ringing. But typically I didn't really have a normal childhood in that sense.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

You know, we talk about relationship with our parents and, you know, there's parents that are very much like, I'm not your friend, I'm your parent. I'm here to bring you up and teach you right from wrong and all the rest of it. But I'm not your friend. We'll be friends when you're adults, did you have a more of a relationship with yours when you were younger where you were more like friends as opposed to they were your parents, so to

[Holly Dean Johns]

speak, with dad, dad was very strict, so with him it was always parent, kid, relationship. With Mum, she was the total opposite of dad. She was very soft, she was very giving, I guess. Well, it was my mother's relationship and mine was more like best friends. And it wasn't a typical mother daughter relationship. As a teenager, I loved that. And all my friends would say, fuck, your mum's so cool. You know, I wish my mum was like that. And I did love it. You know, I was living my best life and doing what I wanted and, you know, getting money whenever I asked for it to go out. Yeah. I mean, looking back now as an adult, looking back on that, that totally wrong.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

Looking back on life now, Holly says in hindsight, there would be things of course she would do differently. And one of those things is after her parents divorced, she says that she probably would have gone to live with her father. But when you're a young teenager and you have the choice between the strict parent and your mom who lets you get away with murder, it's not a hard decision. However, it is a decision that would determine the course of her future after her mum meets a new man.

[Holly Dean Johns]

Then, when I was about 15, I think I was 14, 15, she met this guy Simon, and we all liked him. We thought he was a really nice bloke, treated Mum good. But a few months into that relationship, his facade started to crack away. And we were then seeing the real him. It came out that he was a heroin addict. He'd been in prison for heroin offences. Yeah. So that all came out and we were like, what the fuck? Like, we were shocked because we didn't know people like that. We'd never seen drugs before. We didn't know anybody who ever used drugs. That just wasn't in our world until this guy came on the scene. Eventually, Mum started using because he was. My mum had a lot of money and I'm sure that was the main attraction for him, seeing dollar signs. So there was always heroin in the house. Usually just had an ounce of heroin sitting around. At that stage, I was the one like, say, if we got an ounce of heroin, I was the one that would go into a bedroom, tip it out, cut it, put it in packages, all that type of thing. So I was doing that on my own. That became a good thing for me because when I did start using, I would take some out for myself. Nobody knew I was a heroin addict for a long, long time.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

This transition from family real estate business to escort agency and then ultimately heroin dealing with feels like it happened in the blink of an eye. And Holly says it really did happen very quickly and just continued to spiral. And in fact, the penultimate moment in Holly's life came when her mum would finally allow her to try heroin for the first Time at around just 15,

[Holly Dean Johns]

You know, I would ask her very often when. When she was having a snore, I'd say, mum, can I try it? And she's like, no. And she said no for a very long time. And I asked again one night and she said, okay, yeah, try it. And little did I know that trying it that one time, that just me, that was. That night was the beginning of the end for me. I didn't know it at the time, but that's exactly what it was. And I like to make this clear as well, because when I tell this story, you know, people tend to put a lot of shit on my mum, like, oh, what a fucked parent, you know, blah, blah, blah. We were so naive about all this type of stuff. If my mother had have known what that night of having that snort would do to me, there's no way in the world she would have said yes. It's just. She wouldn't. We just didn't know about it. We didn't know what would happen. We didn't know that about the addiction and all that thing. You know, these days it's very openly talked about, especially meth addiction now. You know, back in my day it was heroin, but it wasn't talked about like it is today. So, yeah, like, we had no idea what would happen.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

So, as we already mentioned at the start of this episode, heroin is not a niche problem. It's not confined to the margins of society either. Not the dark corners, not the forgotten neighborhoods. It is everywhere. In the last 30 years, the global death toll from drug use has more than doubled, from around 61,000 deaths per year in 1990 to over 137,000 deaths a year in 2021. Not because more people are using drugs than ever before, because the drugs themselves have become more lethal. Because the systems designed to help people escape just addiction have not kept pace. Behind every one of those numbers is a family, mother, a father, a child, a person who started somewhere, a house, a suburb, a single moment in time, and ended up somewhere they never imagined they would be. And at the age of 15, nearly 16, Holly, of course, could never have imagined in her wildest dreams where that one snort would see her end up.

[Holly Dean Johns]

For a person trying heroin for the first time, one of two things will happen. You'll have it and you'll just feel amazing. You'll just want to keep that feeling forever. Or on the other side of that, you will feel extremely sick. You will start vomiting. Now, if I had have had that experience, I would never have touched it again. But I didn't have that experience. I had the greatest part of that and I just wanted that feeling all the time. It's hard for people to wrap their heads around that if they've never been an addict, you know. But that's exactly what it was. It was that one time and I was. I was gone. I was using heroin on a daily basis for probably a year, a year and a half, before it came out that I was an addict. I was just a functioning, normal teenager who was an addict.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

And how was it found out that you were an addict?

[Holly Dean Johns]

My mother was noticing that my moods were changing a lot, like, sort of unstable. And she actually thought I was having a breakdown at one stage, but I wasn't. I was just on the drugs. So she sent me away to a friend's house up north for a couple of weeks. About two. Two days into my stay, I was like, fuck this. I got on a bus and went back to Perth. The first thing I did was go to the backyard of my mum's house where I'd buried some heroin, dug it up and started using again. And, yeah, mum found out that I had left. And I spoke to her on the phone and I said, look, you know, this is what's going on. And I told her.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

What was her reaction?

[Holly Dean Johns]

Oh, devastated. Absolutely devastated. Because by that time, she. She did know what it did to people and, you know, it had a hold on her. So, yeah, she knew then what. What the story was. Yeah. But it was too late.

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[Narrator/Interviewer]

Chapter 2, the Criminal Code of Silence. Just wild how quickly a family can go from being again, air quotes normal to, you know, that situation, it's just, it's incredible. And I mean, drugs have got a. A lot to answer for.

[Holly Dean Johns]

Oh, yeah, look, definitely, you know, it's. Yeah, very dangerous. You know, I was reading. I was reading a poem a couple of nights ago that somebody had put on social media and the way it was worded was just so true, you know? You know, first it takes your health, then it takes your. Your home, then it takes your car, then it takes your job. Just went as a domino effect. And it's so true, you know, you can be this high one minute and then just fucking lose everything in the next. It's. Yeah, it's very scary what it does to people and families.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

Did you ever get in trouble with the police when you were a youngster?

[Holly Dean Johns]

I did. Fuck, how old was I? I think I was about maybe 14. 14 or 15. The police raided our house and there was some methamphetamine of my brother's that my mum had, and I grabbed it out of mum's hand and I put it in my pocket because I thought, they're not gonna. They're not there for me. They're not gonna, you know, search me. They did. They found it. And I went to a youth detention facility, but I got bailed out that night, so I didn't stay there overnight.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

But Holly would eventually have an overnight stay in prison. In fact, many nights when she would get herself an 18 year conviction for a drug importation that she says really had nothing to do with her at all. And all started when some friends asked for some help.

[Holly Dean Johns]

What ended up happening was a couple that we knew had done an insurance job on their car and got back. It was either 16 or 18 grand. And they wanted to make some Money. And they knew that we knew people in Thailand to buy the gear from. And they asked us, look, can you come over with us, buy the gear and give it to us, you know. And my husband was like, yeah, no worries, you know, it was purely friends doing friends a favor. We weren't making any money off it. We were just helping them out. They didn't know anyone to sell big amounts to when they bought it back. And I said, look, just ring me when you get back. I'll come and pick it up, sell it and bring you back the money again. This was a fucking favor. They got stopped at Perth Airport. They were taken to rural Perth Hospital to be X rayed. They both had five ounces of heroin in their body. The police asked them who were they doing the run for, and they said, me.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

Oh my God.

[Holly Dean Johns]

Yeah. Which was total great friends. Yeah. So the cops then got them to do a controlled delivery of it to me. So they rang me, they said, look, we're back, everything's fine, we're at the hotel, you know, come round. So I went around there, got the gear, I'm walking towards the lift and just all these cops have run out at me. And of course I had the gear on me. So I. I didn't even realize until about two days later that I'd been set up. I ended up getting 18 years for that. I had to serve a minimum of five years before I could apply for parole. And the couple, they ended up getting out before I did.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

In most criminal circles, the worst thing you can be called is a rat, a snitch, a grass, someone who talks to police, someone who grasses on another to save their own skin. To not speak is the criminal code. The most infamous criminal organization with this intense code of silence was the Mafia. It even had a term, omerta. Omerta is a Sicilian word and a concept most closely associated with the Sicilian Mafia and later the American La Cosa Nostradamus. It is most commonly translated as a code of silence. But the meaning runs deeper than that. It encompasses an entire philosophy of non cooperation with authorities, absolute loyalty to the organization above all else, and the settling of disputes internally rather than through an official channel. In practice, omerta meant that speaking to police, prosecutors, or any government authority about anything under any circumstances was the most unforgivable act a member could commit. Not just punishable, punishable by death. The old school criminals lived by their code of silence. And many went to prison for long stretches, even for crimes they had nothing to do with, because they refused to Speak with police. However, as the sentences and punishments that started to be handed out became longer, with many facing sentences that would see them die behind bars, well, that code of silence began to crumble and more and more members turned government witness to save their own skin. Now, I know what you're thinking. What has the Mafia got to do with Holly? Well, no, she wasn't the head of a mafia organization or even a member of one. However, what she does have in common with these old school crooks is that she says she very much believes in that code of silence and that's why she spent so many years behind bars.

[Holly Dean Johns]

I'm a firm believer, I always have been and I always will be, that you keep your mouth shut. I'm not going to put anyone else in the firing line. That's just not me. There is a code within criminals and I always live by that code.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

Even it costs you potentially 18 years of your life.

[Holly Dean Johns]

Look, what I've always believed is if you're doing illegal activity, you know, potentially, there's a chance you're going to get caught one day. If you're not prepared to go to prison for what you've done, don't fucking do it. And I've been like that my whole life. That's why I always have been given very large sentences, because I don't cooperate. Well, that's just part of the game.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

Chapter three, you'd have to be deaf, dumb and blind. So she's off to prison for her first long stretch and says that she really had no fear of prison itself for the simple reason that she was walking into an environment where she knew a lot of the faces staring back at her.

[Holly Dean Johns]

If I didn't know anyone, I think, yeah, I would have been worried, I suppose, of, of the unknown. What am I walking into? But for me, it wasn't like that. I walked in and, hey, hey, how you going? You know, it was like a reunion. So, yeah, walking into jail for the first time, it wasn't a big deal for me.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

You know, I, I deal with my other show, I deal with a lot of American prisoners who tell me about, you know, prison in America and what that's like and that sort of stuff. I mean, for Australian prisons, what's the conditions like? Is it a place that you go to and you go, well, there' way in hell I'm ever going back in there. Or is it, you know, cruisy or.

[Holly Dean Johns]

It's a good question, actually. If I'd never been to prison in Thailand, I would think that jail here is the worst. But it's actually not, you know, look, anybody losing their freedom for any amount of time, that, that's what kills you. You know, you're not with your family, you're not with your friends, you can't go out, you know, you're stuck. And it's like a pressure cooker situation. You know, you can always feel the, the vibe. You always know when something's going to kick off. Yeah, it can be violent, a lot of fighting, but. But again, that's just part of that world.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

I mean, I know drugs are rife in prison. Did you manage to get hold of drugs in prison?

[Holly Dean Johns]

Yeah, yeah, I was using in jail. Not all the time. Occasionally. Sometimes I got busted and I'd have to go, you know, they call it down the back, you know, in segregation for a week or whatever it was. But again, that's just part of the game, that's part of that life. So I always knew, like, that could potentially happen, but I didn't give a fuck. I didn't care. I didn't mind, you know, going solitary. Didn't worry me.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

Were you an angry kid or a young adult?

[Holly Dean Johns]

That's a really hard question to answer. I was a very happy kid, but there was a lot of anger in me, 100%. I wasn't a typical kid. I didn't have a childhood really. A lot of the time I had to look after my younger brother and sister. I'd have to get them up, give them breakfast, do their lunch. I sort of became a bit of a mother role, I suppose, to my younger brothers and sisters, I guess, you know, if I'm really honest about it, I did have a lot of anger that I had to be this person. I'm a kid, but I've got responsibilities of an adult. I'll say, yeah, 100% I was angry. I didn't know it at the time, but I definitely was.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

So. Holly is serving her 18 year prison sentence, a sentence she got because of heroin, the drug she continued to use while in prison. A drug that had already taken so much from her and was about to take even more.

[Holly Dean Johns]

I was a year into my sentence at this stage and I got called up to the office and said, there's a phone call for you. Well, that just doesn't happen unless it's bad news. A friend said, your mother is dead. She died of a heroin overdose. At the time, my younger sister was in jail with me as well. We got the option to either go and view her body or go to the funeral. We both chose to go to the funeral. And, you know, we said goodbye to our mother handcuffed to a screw. So that was pretty traumatic because mum was everything to us. She was just everything. And to think of getting out of jail and her not being there, yeah, that was really, really hard.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

Eventually, Holly gets released and placed on a six month work release program designed for her to give back through voluntary work. And all the while constantly being tested for drugs. If she returns a positive result, it's straight back to prison. So she stays clean for the entire six months, but as soon as it's over, she's back to heroin and making plans to head to Thailand where her husband was.

[Holly Dean Johns]

Well, what ended up happening was when those two got busted, my. My husband, he was meant to ring me that night just to make sure everything had gone okay, you know, so when all the police were running at me, I had time to put my hand in my handbag and switch my phone off, because I knew doing that when Stephen rung and the phone was off, he would know something was wrong. So when I got to jail, I got a message to him not to come back because my lawyer had told me he would end up serving about three times whatever I was serving. So I knew then that I was doing five. So the message I got to him was, stay there, don't come back, because why should two of us be in jail? I'm already in jail. So after my work release finished, I got on a plane and went straight over to Thailand to be with him.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

Holly's husband was wanted in Australia, so had remained in Thailand for her entire prison stretch and in fact would meet up with two other Australians who were also on the run and had been for 10 years. The three had established themselves quite nicely with a couple of properties and more importantly for them, a steady supply of pure heroin that was cheap. In essence. Holly says at that time in their life, they were living their best life. However, getting caught with drugs in Australia is one thing. Getting caught in a place like Thailand is completely different.

[Holly Dean Johns]

There always was that worry in the back of my mind, but not enough to stop me. You know, you always know there is a potential for being arrested. Your addiction overshadows that worry. It pushes it to. Right to the back of your mind. But yeah, of course, you know, especially Thailand. Like, you know, you'd have to be deaf, dumb and blind not to know what's going to happen to you if you get caught with drunk. You know, it's serious shit.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

Heroin is classified as a Category 1 narcotic under Thai law. The most dangerous classification available, sitting alongside methamphetamine and MDMA for trafficking a Category 1 substance. The penalties range from life imprisonment to the death penalty. The death penalty applies to those convicted of possession of more than 20 grams of the category one substance with intent to sell. Thailand carried out its last execution in 2018, but death sentences continue to be handed down by the courts to this day. As recently as March of 2025, a trafficker was sentenced to death for heroin offences, demonstrating that capital punishment remains very much an active tool of Thai drug law. And Holly wasn't just using in Thailand, she would eventually start exporting it back to Australia. She would spend four years in Thailand. However, she would travel back and forth to Australia around twice a year. And when she got back home, she didn't want the hassle of buying crap heroin off the street and paying street prices. So she came up with a plan on just how to get her own cheap heroin back home.

[Holly Dean Johns]

So I was getting a guy over there who, you know, made fake passports and all that type of thing. I said, look, I want you to start making up calendars for me, you know, like about that size. I knew a person who worked in a post office and I said, what sort of amount would start alarms ringing? And she said, if you keep it under 15 grams, it'll get through no problem. So I'd tell him, insert 15 grams of hammer a heroin into these calendars. They were paper thin, you wouldn't even suspect there was anything in it. So I was sending these back to myself in Australia so that when I was home, I'd have heroin to use, I wouldn't be sick and I wouldn't have to spend a large amount of money buying it off the street. So that's what I was doing. And a guy, one of the three guys that I just mentioned, he was from Sydney, he'd been on the run for about 10 years. He knew what I was doing. So he had a kilo of heroin that he'd taken from Thailand to Darwin. When he arrived in Darwin, the cops were there, so they busted him with a kilo. Who are you doing the run for? He said, me, absolutely not fucking true. Had nothing to do with me, but he knew what I was doing. So, yeah, he, he got a reduction in his sentence as well for giving the cops me. And I was then put under surveillance by the Thai and Australian police for three months. In that three month period, my husband Stephen, he had done a run with a kilo as well. He got busted in Melbourne. He went to jail. The day after he got busted, his dad phoned me. And as soon as I heard his dad on the phone, I knew something's happened, you know? So he told me that Stephen was arrested. And I was like, okay, I'll wrap things up here. And my intention was to move to Melbourne so that I could be a support to Stephen. So I thought, I'll give it about a week to wrap everything up and then I'm gone.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

Little did she know she wasn't going anywhere except getting herself a one way ticket to Thai prison.

[Holly Dean Johns]

And I've got the mother of the room, the boss. I said, come here. You translate exactly what I'm telling her. And I said, you tell her if she ever goes to hit me again, I'll grab that fucking rod off her and wrap it around her fucking head.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

Next time on what I Survived.

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[Narrator/Interviewer]

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[Chris Gillebo]

A photographer in Texas earns an extra $47,000 a year shooting Star wars cosplay portraits. A teacher in Maryland turns her woodworking hobby into a five figure side income without leaving the classroom. And a couple in Pennsylvania will rent you backyard chickens for the season so you can try the egg laying life without commitment. My name is Chris Gillebo. I'm the host of side Hustle School. I share these kinds of stories every single day in detail, with full transparency about the numbers. The point isn't just to inspire you, it's to show you what's possible. Proof that ordinary people are quietly building extra income in surprising ways, including a few ideas you can borrow less than 10 minutes a day, every day. Subscribe or follow side Hustle School wherever you get your podcasts or find us [e-mail] Acast helps creators launch, grow, and

[Holly Dean Johns]

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