Harriet Wran believes she can create a drug-free future for herself. Picture: David Moir/AAP

The 28-year-old daughter of celebrated Labor state premier Neville Wran and Woollahra socialite Jill Hickson Wran had hit rock bottom — no money, no freedom, but also no drugs.

By her own brutally frank admission it was the clearest she had been in a long time.

“I felt my thoughts and decisions were mine again,” she told a packed courtroom at the NSW Supreme Court on Thursday.

For the first time since she was 10-years-old Wran was free from either prescription or illegal drugs. Her mind was free to fret about the future and also chart her descent into a drug-induced madness that saw her caught up in the stabbing murder of an ice dealer.

Wran is awaiting sentence after pleading guilty to accessory to murder and robbery in company after prosectors dropped the charge of murdering Daniel McNulty, 48, last month.

Her ex-lover Michael Lee and Lloyd Haines both pleaded guilty to murder before their joint trial and are yet to be sentenced.

For Wran, the “cravings” for ice proved time and time again to be too strong. She just couldn’t refuse. And the havoc would begin.

Harriet Wran was all smiles for a security guard as she arrives in a prison truck for her sentencing hearing at the Supreme Court in Sydney. Picture: John GraingerSource:News Corp Australia

ICE HELL

“I had done other things, ecstasy and cocaine but I never felt anything like what ice did. All my insecurities were just gone and everything that was difficult to deal with just wasn’t there anymore.”

The confidence the drug brought completely consumed her.

“I hated using it...I have cried all the way around to a dealers house.”

And yet, she did it.

By the time of her arrest she had been losing a battle with ice addiction for two-and-a-half-years. The most recent stint back on the drug had been five weeks. This time there would be no checking in and out of a rehab clinic. This time it ended in jail.

“I never thought in a million years I’d end up in jail — let alone for murder.”

Her dependency on drugs began as a child when she was given ritalin to control ADHD. It was a drug she was continued to prescribe until she was 23.

She took it, even as an adult, because she felt it helped her “function normally” and be less insecure. School hadn’t been a happy time, she said, and she had trouble relating to other girls.

Harriet Wran and her mother Jill Hickson Wran.Source:Supplied

Those feelings never left her.

As she got older, she began to abuse ritalin — taking higher does than she should have to cope with her crippling bulimia.

She’d seen an article in a magazine where a US teen did the same thing. She copied it.

At university, she added ecstasy to her list of drugs she’d used. When she joined the workforce it was cocaine.

Finally, there was ice. She met an addict at the South Pacific Clinic, on Sydney’s north shore, and thought he had so many “funny stories” about the times he and friends used the drug.

“They were experiences I’d never had,” Wran said matter-of-factly.

They meet for beers one day. He brought an ice pipe.

The drug electrified her. “I never felt like I did when I was using ice. I felt so different, more confident. There was a chemical high I didn’t know existed and I knew my brain was never going to forget that.”

Before that she thought she linked ice use with images of people with their skin rotting away. Now she was an ice user.

Harriet Wran will be sentenced on July 26.Source:AAP

‘I WAS HANGING ON, ONLY TO USE ICE...’

For most Australians the arrest of Wran on August 14 for the murder was the start of a gripping ‘fall from grace’ case. But for Wran in many ways it was the end of a drug-induced madness. And if she is to be believed, the start of her healing process.

During her astonishing three hours of evidence, she revealed how she and Lee spent their time between the robbery and eventual arrest.

They smoked and injected the drugs into their veins that had been stolen in the robbery. They looked for more. They skipped between people’s homes. They had sex.

Wran said she only slept for 90 minutes in six days before the robbery. “I was hanging on, only to get ice and use again...”

Eventually she would fall down, exhausted.

Harriet Wran says she started using ritalin, then ecstasy, cocaine and then ice.Source:Supplied

The cracks in her relationship with Lee were widening. It was basically about drugs anyway, but now they were forever tied to the fatal Redfern robbery.

A friend of Lee’s warned she would “be a problem”.

“I hope you’re not the biggest mistake I’ve ever made,” Lee wrote to her in a text message.

She said she could be trusted. Secretly, she wanted to be away from him.

“He’d shown me who he really was,” Wran said. “I’d seen his true colours. I mean I should have known [after] that night.”

The night before she was arrested she used crack cocaine. It was at another dealer’s house, in Liverpool, and by now Wran knew McNulty had died.

Crown prosecutor Peter McGrath SC spent a significant amount of time on this during his cross-examination of her. He wanted to know why she hadn’t gone to police even when she learned a man had been “stabbed to death".

Redfern stabbing victim Daniel McNulty.Source:Supplied

“You didn’t want to know what happened,” he said.

The answer, as always, was drugs.

Her voice shaking, and cheeks wet with tears, Wran said admitted her whole life at that point was about scoring “a hit”.

Looking back if she hadn’t been arrested it was only ever going to end one way. With her death.

“I think I would have killed myself using drugs.”

Her arrest came as a shock then but was also her saviour. “I was relieved it was over and Michael was going to be taken away from me.”

JAIL: “IT CHALLENGED MY MENTAL STATE’

For five months she was kept in solitary confinement for her own safety. Guards had overheard threats being made, and authorities were worried about her safety.

She was a high profile prisoner — “no one likes anyone on the front page” — but they eventually lowered her security.

“I think they realised I needed some human contact.”

Her new home was far removed from the charmed life she knew as a child. But her life in recent times that saw her exposed “to some really shocking things” in drug dens would have prepared her for what blasted her senses in prison.

“It challenged my mental state..The screaming and banging kind of undid me a bit..I had to hold myself together.”

THE FUTURE

Free from her drug haze and with her bulimia under control, Wran has turned her mind to the future.

She will avoid a lengthy jail term. The Crown has suggested a sentence of up to five years, her barrister wants less than two years, and she has already served two years. That means she has a future in the not too distant future as a free woman.

It’s an opportunity she has vowed not to waste.

She wants to study at the University of Technology, Sydney, get involved with animal welfare, which she cares passionately about, and when she is stronger help other ice survivors.

Harriet Wran gives a speech at the state funeral for her father Neville Wran. Picture: Adam TaylorSource:News Corp Australia

Harriet Wran has hopes of a drug-free future.Source:Facebook

“As soon as I can I want to be able to do something (about the fight against ice) and be prominent, if I’m allowed.”

Much of that will hinge on whether she can stay away from drugs.

Her voice picked up slightly as she spoke of her resolve in court — for Justice Ian Harrison’s benefit, but with the massive media contingent hanging off her every word.

She thought of ice still, in her dreams, which were always “very bad ones”.

But she won’t go back to her drug-using ways.

“I just know it won’t happen. But I know I have to be vigilant.”

Wran will be sentenced on July 26.

andrew.koubaridis@news.com.au