cookiesncream

I've been doing a lot of reading over on the Friends and Family forum where the impact of our addictions is sobering to say the least. That said there is a thread about all of the ridiculous things they have heard from their loved ones to justify their drinking which at times are just over the top. I've thought more than one time about all of the HIDING of drinking and just how I did it, where I "hid my stash." Its almost sadly amusing in retrospect. So I'm curious. I'll show you mine if you show me yours.

-Took mostly full wine bottles, drank the rest, refilled the bottle
-Filled travel mugs full of booze and put them in far corners of bookshelves behind piles of books not read in years.
-Took empty soda bottles, filled them with wine, tossed them in shrubbery to look like errant trash and had my nightly fix while gardening. This graduated to having two stashes, one just down the street tossed in the weeds where I could claim to be picking up trash
-Empty booze bottles in backpacks (got caught one time)
-Always bought cheap wine with cash to avoid electronic trails
-Had a big enough purse so that smuggling wine in the house was pretty easy so long as I unloaded my loot quickly
-Small bottles of wine in my needlework bag

Think that about covers it. Admittedly there ARE things that I DO still miss about drinking but I do NOT MISS AT ALL all of the flipping WORK it took to HIDE it all. I don't miss worrying about being caught not remembering certain incidents or conversations and trying to cover up why I didn't remember them. All of that stuff was not fun, don't miss it at all. I don't miss worrying about being caught either.

So for those that are willing I admit I am curious about how you managed to hide yours?

silentrun

Right on the kitchen counter. No point in trying to hide it because I slur really bad when I drink. No point in having a stash because if it's in the house I am drinking it. I did once add coke to a bottle of whiskey so it didn't look like I drank as much. After that I just started buying pints so I would run out and have to stop for the night.

FeenixxRising

I never hid my drinking; it was what it was.

Tonymblue

Used to hide vodka in the heat ducts. Would hide a flask right behind the toilet. House full of girls would never glance that way. Also one outside in the cable box. Would do a lot of "yardwork". Garage was full of shooters, since no one really went in there. Bad withdrawal mornings when i was out of booze i would go out and start pouring "empty" shot bottles together. About 20 of these remnants i could get about 1 shot. Ingenious or just bleeping sad?

Soberpotamus

Same as Silentrun, I didn't hide the wine bottles because if it was in the house I was gonna drink it until it was gone. And that's also how I controlled it to some degree... By not ever having more than two bottles in the house. Oddly, I stashed wine bottle openers all in the house, car, garage and purse. Lol.

Sent from my iPhone using SoberRecovery

hollybear

Put vodka in the water bottle when I went out so it looked like just water. When I drank at home I would hide it in my closet behind all the clothes and then when the bottle was empty I hid it in my underwear drawer until no one was around and I could throw it out with the recycling.
Ugh. So much work. For what? Nothing. God I really want to kick it this time for good.

LadyinBC

I lived by myself so I never hid the booze. However I did hide the empties! Had to get every last drop out of them.

MattM316

I ran out of hiding places in the end but I would hide bottles all over the place. Under the mattress, tucked in corners.
They were always found in the end and that's somewhat of an awkward situation when someone confronts you about it :/

cookiesncream

Agreed Matt. Most of mine were never found but the ones that were were very awkward. Tossing of all the booze in the house scenarios just made me want to get smarter on the hiding. Sadly I like so many others, had to be ready to confront "the beast" and deal. The amount of energy involved in all that hiding... still boggles my mind in retrospect.

KAD

OMG, anywhere and everywhere. If I had put as much energy and imagination into doing something with my life as I did concealing my addiction, I could be a millionaire by now! I stuffed bottles between mattresses, behind toilets, in the little cutout area of a sink pedestal, cabinets that were too high for others in the house to reach, in my car trunk, my toolbox, just about anywhere I could think of that wouldn't be noticed. I moved them around a lot, too.

One time I got busted was really bad, though. I used to hide them under my ex-SO's hope chest. Well, once while her parents were in town and I had to leave for a bit, I came back to find they had completely rearranged the bedroom. The hope chest was completely on the opposite side of the room! I stood there in a daze and then turned around to see my SO looking angry, sad, and confused. Her parents had seen it, too. What a terrible day that was...

cookiesncream

Feel your pain buddy. Been there and wrote the book. Until my final confrontation I had felt like outside of my hubbie (who I knew I was hurting but was mad at him) I wasn't hurting anyone thus i could continue my drinking. When an awful scenario like yours and mine plays out, you get caught red handed in front of many people and suddenly you've got extended family aware and in my case a child you can no longer DENY that your drinking is affecting numerous people. For me that was the last drink I had too. Hubbie threatened to toss me out if a repeat scenario ever ensued and I believe him, and frankly don't blame him.

Peace

thatcat

My main areas were on the floor the bottom drawers of my bedroom dresser, in between mattresses, and in pockets way in back of the closet. I always kept it in my bedroom. I moved it around temporarily too, usually while drunk, which makes me wonder if there are other unfound bottles still here somewhere... and that scares me a little because I think I might drink them if I came across them. Ugh.

least

I had a secret place, behind a shelf. I could stash four wine bottles in there.

Serotonin

I used to hide beer cans wherever I thought clever at the time. In my boots, behind the sofa, in places I could go to be alone for a few minutes and claim to be busy doing something else while I chugged them down. I used to fill soda bottles with liquor and act like it was just soda. I cannot recall how many times I got busted. I also slur after just a few so that plus my breath was always a giveaway.

Amester

Well to be honest I recently started drinking again thinking that my problem was just drugs, if I could stay away from the hard stuff then a little alcohol every now and then is ok. But it's not ever "a little alcohol" and it's becoming a lot more "now" than "now and then."

I live with my parents and they know I'm drinking, my mom drives me to the liquor store and my dad is an alcoholic. But I'm still hiding the frequency of my drinking and amount that I'm drinking from them.

So there's half a bottle of Ice 101 in my clothes hamper, a bottle of gin in a shoebox next to my nightstand, a can of shock top under a pile of clothes. Empties go in the trash can I use to scoop the cat litter into, no one's gonna go through used cat litter. I drink after my parents go to bed, alone in my room. Oh and I alternate between the family's alcohol that we share and my own stash so if they look at the bottles the next day they think I only drank half as much as I really did.

I know that these are not good signs and that I have no business drinking at all. I have a few very close friends who I'm confiding in who are supportive and are going to help me get back on track. I didn't drink last night so that's a start I think.

Croissant

Clothes hamper. Or in the back of a cupboard, or my wardrobe. I'd go upstairs for a cigarette (when I smoked)....and drink and chain smoke, lose track of time, go back downstairs. Watch tv for 5 mins, go back upstairs.

Sozzled. When apparently I stopped drinking hours ago, at dinner.

I'd also fill wine bottles up with water and swap them over.

And I'd forget where I'd hidden them.

When I moved house last year, it was so sad to find bottles after I'd stopped drinking. Must have been when I had visitors.

Empties were always soooo hard to get rid of.

I still love the victory walk to the recycling with my empty fizzy water bottles now I'm sober. Never again do I have to put newspapers in first so the neighbours don't hear the bang!! Crash!!

Rosie88

I didn't really hide anything. My boyfriend works a lot of long hours. (Restaurant general manager... Like 60-70 hours a week). So I would buy two bottles of wine and drink them before he came home. I would throw them (empty) in the garbage and just throw it out before he got home. Then when he got home... He would sometimes bring me wine (not knowing the extent of my problem) and I would drink a few more glasses of that. It was sad.

dwtbd

Anywhere the evidence couldn't be seen by the casual eye.I kept the pot in the shed the path to the shed was in danger of being worn to the ground actually used to try and walk it so as not to make it seem so bad, trouble was alternating routes just made the dank thing wider, and going out there multiple times a.night and drunk meant I didn't stay strict to any plan. The grass has all regrown nicely, just go there to get the mower now, and when I decided I was serious I took my wife on a little.garage tour go show her stash areas.

Carlotta

That's me. I would wake up at 3 in the morning so I could dispose of the empties in the neighborhood church's recycling bin >rolling eyes<
My xabf would hide his in the toilet tank. He did not know I knew and I left it there rather than dump it because it saved water and anyway he would just have bought more.

gaffo

When I was an art student living in an Oakland sh*thole with a bunch of house mates we used to hide our beverages so they wouldn't get consumed by someone else. I painted the inside of a tall mayo jar, perfect size for a 16 oz malt liquor. The weight is also just right for a lightly modified empty dozen egg carton. Inside a head of lettuce. I kept my water cold in a 1.75 liter vodka bottle. It was funny to me that people weren't more disturbed that we would all guzzle out of it at any time. Maybe they were.