Top Model Contestant Ravaged by Meth

Nearly six years after appearing on season eight of America’s Next Top Model, 28-year-old Jael Strauss reveals that she’s fighting an addiction to meth. “Do the drugs get her and take her life? Or do we get her and save her life?” asks Dr. Phil McGraw in a preview for today's episode of Dr. Phil, in which the self-help guru will interview the former model and stage an intervention. On the show, the former model—whose physical appearance has been radically altered by drugs—walks towards the stage, and then suddenly takes off running in the other direction. “She just opened the curtain, pivoted on her heel and is running through the Paramount lot,” says McGraw. Before arriving on the set, Strauss is seen struggling with the camera crew and her parents in order to get on set. After running off set, the cameras, along with Dr. Phil, follow Strauss into the parking lot, where they talk behind a dumpster: "(For) the first time in 10 years, I came out here to you," he says to Strauss. During her stint on America’s Next Top Model, Strauss lost a close friend to a heroin overdose. “This is the worse thing I could possibly hear in the entire universe,” she said after hearing the news. “I don't understand this... this doesn't make any sense. I'd rather not be dealing with this situation with what's going on in my life, but I think modeling is a good distraction for me right now.”