A former teacher and mother-of-two broke down in tears as she was jailed after slipping into the 'shadowy world' of drugs when the 'fabric of her life unravelled'.
Angela Davey told Norwich Crown Court how drug dealers had threatened her before moving into her home on Wall Road in Norwich, where she had previously lived with her husband and children.
The former University of East Anglia graduate and history teacher was arrested in January, having been on the run for three months after admitting conspiracy to supply Class A drugs.
Giving evidence on Monday, she told the court she had been 'scared she would never see her children again' if her use of heroin and crack cocaine was exposed.
Jailing her for 27 months, judge Katharine Moore said: 'What remains unclear is why it is you failed to access help and support for your addiction.
'As an intelligent, articulate woman, you must have known help was there for the taking. Instead you permitted yourself to be drawn into this shadowy world of drugs.'
Davey, 38, of no fixed abode, won a scholarship to study at Norwich School for Girls as a child before graduating from UEA with a 2:1 in history in 2003.
She stayed on to complete a PGCE with a term of teacher training at the Hewett School, and soon moved into teaching children with special educational needs at the Clare School and, after, Eaton Hall.
But by 2016 her marriage had broken down, and within two years she ended up homeless.
Judge Moore told her: 'The fabric of your life unravelled rapidly from 2016. You have lost very much of what you once held dear.'
Giving evidence, Davey said she began taking crack cocaine and heroin in 2016 after losing her children in a divorce.
'I knew where I could get it and I knew it would numb the pain I was feeling at the time,' she said.
Drug dealers known as the 'Jacob' line eventually moved into her Wall Road home and began storing drugs there, the court heard.
They used Davey as a clean front to hire cars to ferry drugs between London and onto the streets of Norwich.
They would pay her 'eight bits' - two £5 shots of heroin and six of crack - as rent for using her family home.
'I was a drug addict and I was getting drugs for them staying in my house,' Davey told the court. 'I knew they were drug dealers. They weren't my first choice of house guest by any means.'
The woman who bought Davey's home on Wall Road said she thought Davey was 'a vulnerable person' and a 'victim' of drugs and her new relationship.
'I just sobbed my eyes out when I saw what had happened to her life,' she said. 'Seeing all the children's stuff among all the other things from her life made me so upset. To think a life could go downhill so quickly.'
The woman, 40, who asked to remain anonymous, said artwork and memorabilia had been left at the house, alongside drug paraphernalia and needles.
'It is just a tragedy of a life gone,' she said. 'In the end, she made the choices she did.'
Davey said one of the dealers, David Tiexiera, who was 17 at the time, had threatened to 'expose her drug use' to her family.
'I was so scared people would find out what I was doing and I was so ashamed,' she said. 'Everything going on in my life magnified all my worst fears.
'My mental health had taken quite a nose dive and I was having panic attacks.'
She added when she hired cars for the group she knew 'full well who the people were and what their business was'.
'I had no other income and didn't have any other way to buy drugs,' she said.
'Whatever the consequences may be today I have to take the consequences of that.'
Judge Moore told Davey: 'You allowed your home to be used by a drug dealer and you hired cars to be used by those in the dealing network.
'I have no doubt you became engaged for your own financial advantage in the sense you were receiving drugs.
'I am in no doubt you were encouraged to become involved against your better judgement.
'You have lost your career, you family, your children and your friends. Your finances are precarious, you have lost your home and your health has been jeopardised both physically and mentally.
'Your vulnerability was exploited after your mental health plainly took a significant turn for the worse.'
Davey was given 26 months and two weeks for the conspiracy and two weeks concurrent for failing to appear to answer bail.
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