'Drugs, anorexia and what I think of my ex-husband'

Earl Spencer's ex-wife has spoken of her continuing battle with addiction.

Former model Victoria Spencer revealed that she needs help on a weekly basis to stop the risk of her falling back into drug abuse.

'There are no holidays from this illness. The price of freedom is constant vigilance,' she told Hello! magazine. 'I attend recovery meetings every week and I will do so for the rest of my life.'

The 37-year-old mother of four, has previously said that she once considered suicide.

Now she insists she bears no illwill to her ex-husband - who married Caroline Freud, the former wife of public relations expert Matthew Freud, in December.

'I'm happy that he is happy and settled because it will bring an element of stability to the children to know that their father is in a committed relationship,' she said.

However it is a telling sign that after the break-up of her high profile marriage and the end of a subsequent four-year relationship with pharmacist Guy Wood, the one-time model appears alone.

She cuts a slender and slightly disconsolate figure in photographs accompanying the seven page interview in the latest edition of the magazine.

She looks a different character to the woman who three years ago leaned against Mr Wood on the front cover of the same publication.

But while she talks bravely of getting her life back on track she still, as the magazine proclaims, 'yearns for a man who will love her'.

'I've reached a point in my life where I don't need to be in a relationship to be happy,' she says.

And there is a hint of resignation when she adds: 'I want to be with someone who will love me, protect me and support me without controlling or dominating me or feeling the need to possess me. Maybe I'm asking for the impossible.'

She later adds that she loves the idea of the family unit - something she has 'never really known'.

It was in 1989 that the former Victoria Lockwood became engaged to Princess Diana's brother within six weeks of them meeting.

The marriage soon came under strain after his confession to a fling with an old flame. Revelations of more affairs followed during the couple's acrimonious divorce in the South African courts in 1997. Victoria, Countess Spencer recently returned to her exhusband's family home at Althorp, in Northamptonshire, for the first time in seven years to collect the children.

It was something the attractive brunette would previously have found too difficult. But now she claims to feel differently.

'I have no horrible feelings left for anyone at all and I don't feel any bitterness,' she said.

'I have no regrets. I feel my journey has been the journey I was meant to have.'

For most of the year the four children - Kitty Eleanor, 11, ten-year-old twins Eliza Victoria and Amelia and Louis, eight - live with their mother in Cape Town, South Africa.

She said the Earl, who paid an impassioned tribute to his sister at her funeral five years ago, was playing an active role in his children's lives.

'I believe that it is a lot better for a child to be loved by both parents individually than to be in an environment where there is conflict, pain or animosity,' she said.

And she revealed that Louis would not be following family tradition and studying at Eton.

Instead, he will stay in South Africa, where his mother says he is 'thriving'.

'Surely it's an archaic idea that Louis should have to go through a certain system to become equipped to run Althorp and I think Charles agrees with me,' said Victoria.

She said her relationship with Mr Wood had ended because the pair realised they wanted different things. But he remained a 'special and supportive friend'.

Victoria, who has battled with anorexia and alcohol abuse, became hooked on heroin after she was introduced to drugs at the age of 19 through the New York modelling world.

Now she works as a counsellor at the Stepping Stones treatment centre she opened four years ago.

Referring to her addiction problems, she insisted: 'I've now developed the skills I need to deal with whatever life throws at me without running away and resorting to my old coping mechanisms.'