Christiane F. - After Christiane F.

After Christiane F.

After the initial success of the book and the film, Christiane found herself becoming something of a celebrity, both in Germany and other countries in Europe. A subculture of teenage girls in Germany began to emulate her style of dress and to hang around the Bahnhof Zoo station, which became an unlikely tourist attraction. This concerned experts on youth drug abuse, who feared that despite the film's bleakness and the many sordid scenes (particularly those portraying the horrific realities of cold turkey), vulnerable teens might regard Christiane as a cult heroine and role model. The book sold so well (it was translated into most major West European languages) that Christiane is still able to support herself from the royalties.

In the early 1980s Christiane released several records under the band-name Sentimentale Jugend in collaboration with her then-boyfriend Alexander Hacke, with whom she also appeared in the 1983 German film Decoder.

An animal-lover since early childhood, Christiane is a keen equestrian.

She lived in the United States and in Greece before returning to Germany in 1993. Through adulthood, Christiane has continued to struggle with drug addiction on several occasions. In 1994, she enrolled in a methadone programme, a course of action she has repeated several times since then. At one point, she spent time in prison for drug-related offenses. She lived with her son (born 1996) in an apartment in Teltow. However, in 2008, she moved to Amsterdam with her son and reportedly fell back into drug abuse. As a consequence she temporarily lost custody of her son, who was taken from her by the authorities during a visit in Berlin in August 2008. According to reports in German media, she was seen about a month later, buying drugs at the Kottbusser Tor, Berlin's current drug center. In late January 2011, Christiane was once again in contact with the police, when she had her bag searched during a drug raid at Moritzplatz, another Berlin train station known as a central point for drug trafficking. However the search did not reveal any drugs in her bag. Christiane still receives fan mail and is occasionally contacted by the German media, wanting to know how she is doing after all these years.