Drugs ,, cocaine to be precise ,, were once 'breakfast, lunch and dinner' for Edgware man Richard Wilkins. But now he gets his kicks from poetry.

The former model and actor looked comfortable as he sat with his rescued cat, Tig, in the garden of his Edgware home. But he wasn't always this content.

Still sporting his good looks at 38, Mr Wilkins admitted he fell prey to the temptations of drug and alcohol abuse back in his modelling days. 'Yes, I did drugs, cocaine mainly,' he said. 'In the business, both the performing arts and modelling, there are drugs everywhere, they are free. I started taking them about ten years ago, there was just so much around.

'The acting and modelling was too stressful and too fake. They don't know who they really are. The industry is like the drugs,' said Mr Wilkinson, who lives with his elderly mother in the family home in Harcourt Avenue.

'It's about highs and lows, insecurities and egos. The cocaine was breakfast, lunch and dinner.'

But a near-fatal motorbike accident ten years ago changed all that and gave Mr Wilkinson a new perspective on life. Now he chooses to use his writing, in particular his poetry, as an outlet for his pent-up emotions. 'It's a great way of getting everything out of my system,' he said. 'I strongly believe that if someone reads my work who is on drugs themselves, it could help them too.'

Mr Wilkinson, who started off in the modelling business then progressed to television work, won the Millennium National Open Poetry Competition with The Gluttonist, affording him his place in the anthology A New Age Dawns.

Now he has his sights set on a larger project ,, a book of his own poetry which he has just completed. 'I have done the modelling and the acting and I've been in bands, but that's all in the past, that's the negative. The poetry is the positive, it's a great outlet.'

Mr Wilkinson has not stopped writing. 'I took a year out of my work and went out on the streets with some Christian organisations, helping the homeless, talking to them and trying to give them advice and support,' he said.

His faith and religious conviction is something which has helped him get through, not only the drugs, but also his road accident. 'I almost died,' he said. 'I remember coming along and I hit another car. I remember getting up and thinking 'oh, I'm fine, I feel fine'. But then I looked down at my legs and one was twisted right round and the other one looked like it was almost dangling off.'

He still has metal plates in his leg but says he is now fully back on his feet, thanks to his writing and his sense of inner peace. 'I have made mistakes and I'm not proud of it, but you can always learn from your mistakes and I'm back on my feet now. The poetry is very honest, very genial. But it is also outrageous, I've never been scared to be myself.

'I want to be published again now, I have written my own book and it is all very personal and very therapeutic. I feel that this is where my career lies.'

A New Age Dawns is published by Poetry in Print and available from good bookshops.

icoe@london.newsquest.co.uk