One of the Ways I “Hid” My Drinking

I like to occasionally remember specific incidents during my drinking that really stick out as hallmarks of the alcoholic mind. They remind me that I wasn’t fooling anyone, except maybe myself.

Right after college I moved into an apartment with two childhood friends. I had my own room, but it was a tiny cave in an overpriced Manhattan apartment building. This was the point when my drinking really escalated – recently graduated, back from a three-month stint in Europe, it was time to settle down and find a career. I was really too good for all those entry level jobs. A typing test? I graduated Ivy League! Who are they kidding!  My arrogance didn’t really help matters, and I was slowly falling into a depression.  I didn’t know what to do with my life.

I knew my good friends were alert to the fact that I was drinking too much, so I started to go to all sorts of lengths to hide the level of consumption.  One favorite was to put the bag with booze bottles outside my bedroom window, go into the apartment empty handed, then retrieve the bottles in private with my door closed.

But the best “hiding” method was to put a bottle of booze on the kitchen counter and not use it too often – and just use the ones hidden in my room – so it looked like I wasn’t drinking that much.

The roommate situation soured and we all went our separate ways, and soon after I went to rehab. I decided to tell my friends the story – hey, it was kind of funny (in a demented way).

“Hey, I used to put a bottle of vodka on the kitchen counter and not drink from it much, and instead I’d drink from bottles in my room so you would think I wasn’t that bad,” I told my old roommate.

She looked at me strangely and replied, “That’s funny. I used to think that bottle in the kitchen went down awfully fast.”

OMG!  I was horrified, then burst out laughing. Even with my little “trickery” there were times I ran out of my “room bottle” – and hit the kitchen-counter(feit) bottle – and even trying to control the use of ONE bottle was hopeless.

Just one of those moments when you have total clarity.