Alice1

Hi guys.
I am new to all this as of tonight so please bear with me.
In the past few weeks I have found some mostly used, hidden, rot-gut vodka bottles around the house, coinciding with some Jekyl-Hyde behavior on my husband's part. (I never know who he is going to be, he's very argumentative and easily upset these days.) And when I say "hidden," I mean reaching for my hair dryer on my side of the vanity and discovering a bottle...
I am an ACOA who is still discovering many things about how I deal with others (I am a light social drinker), and I fear that my ACOA tendencies have helped me put the blinders on about my husband's drinking. Several years ago I had found some bottles and confronted him about it and he said he was just having a nip now and then and knew how it may upset me -- hence the coverup. However, we've never been a non-drinking house per se -- it's just that I am very sensitive to people being drunk -- so what he told me didn't completely make sense. But at the time it was easier to buy the story.
That all said, he said there wouldn't be any more hidden bottles and I said fine, water under the bridge. I did, though, say that I would have to act decisively if it happened again.
So... I have not said anything to him yet as I am trying to gather my thoughts, which are all over the place. But I need to say something and do something.
Advice??

tomuch2handle

I to also found empty beer cases in the shed. When I confronted my husband about it he called me f***ing sherlock holmes. Needless to say, he got very upset at getting "caught". MY theory is, If it isn't a problem, why is it hidden?? My suggestion, get the bottles and confront him. It will only get worse for you as time goes by. Good luck!

QueenOfCyprus

tomuch2handle - you are ABSOLUTELY right! Normal people don't go to the grocery, pick up a nice bottle of chardonnay and then stick it in the back of their toolbox in the garage for safe keeping.
First Rule of Alcoholics: lie and deny
Second Rule of Alcoholics: make it somebody else's fault
Third Rule of Alcoholics: repeat rules One and Two as necessary

Next he'll be cutting holes in the ceiling... but I digress

darkness_falls

This happens all the time at my house. The ones I find are always "from before" or "old." Even when all the empties have been returned and there is no booze around, there they are. In the dining hutch, behind the curtains, in the cupboard that's hardly ever opened, the garage, the basement steps, you name it. It's always the same story from him. It's to the point where I just dodn't care to hear the excuse anymore.

We had a party at our house for New Year's Eve and nobody drank the sambuca yet the other day the bottle was almost empty. This would not have been his first choice. For him it would've been beer. He blamed it on my cousin. She drank it that night. Yeah right. This after he told me he didn't have cravings anymore.

I've only been here at this forum 2 days and already I see the same patterns repeating. For so long I thought I was going insane. That I was one of only a few people on this earth going through this crap. In my opinion, if people are hiding the fact that they're drinking, there's a problem. I'd rather see it out in the open. I feel for what you're going through and the confrontation you may face. Take care.

Alice1

Thanks tomuch & Queen. Yep, if it isn't a problem, then why indeed is it hidden. No holes in the ceiling yet, thank God.

hope2bhappy

I used to find bottles all over and in the strangest places. I'm not even sure why they do this. It doesn't even make any sense. Once they've been discovered, the cat's out of the bag. But they still hide them. Maybe they are really hiding them from themselves -- part of the denial. You can confront him with it, but you do realize this behavior won't stop. He will still hide the bottles and his drinking.

nowinsituation

The hiding is what I never understood, either. We enjoyed alcohol, and always kept it in the house. When I realized my AH was hiding his drinking I knew he had a problem. I did confront him. He flat out denied, vehemently, that he had been drinking anything at all. He had never lied to me before, or had he?? I then had to question everything he had said to me in the past; and knew I couldn't live with him if I had to question everything he would tell me in the future. I left 2 months ago and have not regretted it.

bluejay6

hello alice and welcome,
maybe some recovering alcoholics will post to you with some insight. i hope so.
what i have read of the addiction is that the alcoholic functions pretty well as long as he keeps his blood alcohol level up. this might explain the hidden bottles, as he has to keep sipping through the day and night to achieve the required amount of alcohol to feel normal. it is when the BAC drops (for example, when an alcoholic is sleeping) that his behavior and personality can noticeably change, as it sends his body and brain into withdrawal. the addict wakes up feeling miserable and the using starts thereafter.

confronting him will be difficult and stressful for you. if you have not already confronted him, you might consider attending one al-anon meeting, asking if a longtime member of the group can offer phone support to you after your talk with your husband. you can also get some very good printed information at the meeting that will have great meaning for you right now.

you might also read the book "getting them sober" as well as getting some pamphlets from AA to offer your husband when you speak with him. he may throw them out, and be pretty nasty, but if you approach this with the attitude that it is a treatable affliction rather than shameful behavior, he might hear you. but maybe not right away. all addicts need to protect their compulsion to use. it is what the drug does to the brain.

it will be a long road and it is best to be educated and well-informed for your journey.

sending you all the best hope for your marriage and your happiness.

steve11694

GREAT STUFF

RosieM

OMG, the stories I could tell. At least the bottles you are finding are half empty. The vast majority of bottles I found were empty. And in the strangest places as well. In the bird seed, under the bag of salt we used for the driveway. Confronting him did not help in my case, it just made things more contentious between us. BTW, in my husband's case, the bottles were usually paired up with skanky porn in voluminous quantities. How much different can one of those magazines be from another, and why do you need a hundred of them??? Crazy stuff. Seems like shame-based behavior to me.

Barbara52

Hiding alcohol indicates a problem as the others have said.

Now what about you? How are you going to act desively as you said you would if it happened again? What is it you want to happen going forward? What do you want for your life?

frstnm

Im the one who hid the empty bottles - none of mine were half full for sure.
Cant even begin to tell you how many I found when I moved out of my last apartment.
This apartment has no bottles at all !

Thentram

Hi Alice,

I'm sorry to hear about what you are going though. I would like to offer some insight as someone who has hidden alcohol.

My problems with alcohol materialized from drinking on a regular basis in the evenings. I was very self-conscious about my drinking. I enjoyed it, and looked at it as a fun passtime, but did not want my wife to see how much I was drinking because she may "misinterpret" what I was doing as an alcohol problem. I wouldn't hide the fact that I was drinking, just how much. I tended to golp drinks when nobody was in the room or drink after my wife went to bed.

As my drinking progressed I started consuming more alcohol then we usually had around the house. This meant that if I wanted to keep having "fun" in the evenings without giving the wrong impression I needed to increase the amount of alcohol I was brining in to the house. This meant that in addition to hiding how much I was drinking I needed to worry about hiding the alcohol containers themselves. This further progressed to shopping at different stores so that none of the cashiers I was buying the alcohol from got the wrong impressions either.

The important thing to realise here is that the person being most deceived was me. In my mind I had my drinking under control, but I knew to an observer this would not appear to be the case. I'm not really sure what I would have done had my wife confronted me about the whole thing. I didn't really look at it like I was lying to her, rather I was avoiding trying to explain to her that I had it under control because she probably wouldn't believe that anyway.

What changed my actions was not a confrontation but simply me becoming sick of the way I was living. I was craving alcohol but not enjoying it anymore and the effort I was putting in to keep everyone from knowing how much I was drinking was exhausting. Had I not come to that realization I'm not sure what a confrontation would have led to, but I do know that I would have been arguing my side from a fictitious viewpoint that I totally believed.

Alice1

Hi guys. I just want to thank you SO much for all your input so far. I sometimes doubt myself about all this, but you people have helped me feel so much LESS crazy, and some of the pieces of the puzzle have come together.
Again, Thanks.
Alice1

queenteree

It sure seems alot of work to be an alcoholic.

hope2bhappy

I have an update on this burning question, straight out of the horse's mouth. Tonight I asked my AH why he used to do this. He said he has no idea -- he guesses because he was trying to hide his drinking. So! There you have it. We still don't know.

lady2424

hi .. i am new to all of this and came across these posts and need some advice .. my boyfriend is an alcoholic .. he went to rehab before i met him but it was then accepted he could drink a few and be okay so when i met him he was back to being a mess .. since dating he's gotten better but in the last 6 months its going down hill .. i've found hidden bottles and there have been more than a few terrible days when he hid his drinking till we realized he was drunk and well those days were horrible .. the last one was last weekend .. he promised to get help not to drink .. do far this week that i know he hasn't drank but what do i know anymore .. a week has gone by with him going to no meetings he keeps saying i will go so today he went (i'm afraid it may have been to shut me up and i know he needs to do this on his own i am just a disaster right now). to cut this short i found two empty bottles in our closet the receipt was from a month ago so i know he hasn't bought them this week but i am so mad and hurt and i don't know what to do. or how long to stay in this relationship .. i don't want to leave but i feel like i cant trust anything anymore

DMC

OMG at the chardonnay in the toolbox...
(I laugh, because at my house that's where he hid the scotch.)

We have been separated over a year, and I found another freaking beer can just last week. My STBXAH was really "good" at hiding them. And he'd confess every once in awhile, and show me his latest hiding places. By then, I didn't care as much because things were beyond the point of no return.

His craftiest place: In the salt bin of our water softener. Did you know that you can fit several 24 packs in there? (At least when you don't replace the salt often!)

My "favorite" place to find: The random cooler with ice in it. No booze, of course, but a random cooler of ice. What the hell?

Of course they're all old. Duh.


Lady, stick around and read. This is a good, safe place.

dollydo

My exabf has been gone for over 3 years. My shed in the back yard, which needed replacement was cleared out and disassembled had beer in it 3 bottles from a receipt dated 2007. I guess he forgot about them. There were also lots of empties.

After I tossed him to the curb, I found empties everywhere in the house and the yard, even in the dog house!

Glad that's over with!

LexieCat

Lady,

This is a very old thread. Maybe you'd like to start a new one so you can introduce yourself and we can get to know you?

I was married to two alcoholics--one recovered (and is still recovered, 30 years later) and the other went back to drinking. I remember trying to figure out where the second one was hiding his wine. It turned out he had a box of red wine in the trunk of his car--I still wonder how he got it up to our sixth floor apartment in a glass without getting odd looks in the elevator!

Later, I became an alcoholic, myself, and I became quite crafty at hiding the bottles from the guy I was living with (who seldom drank)--my favorite trick was to pour into small pint bottles and hide them in between the trash can liner and the trash can in the computer room, so I could "top off" my drinks without being seen.

Yes, alcoholics have to sneak and lie, because they do not want to stop. They do not want anyone rocking the boat. They want to be left alone to their drinking.

I suggest you check out some Al-Anon meetings. You will learn that you didn't CAUSE his drinking, you can't CONTROL it, and you can't CURE it. There are, however, things you can do that will make your own life a lot saner and help you to make good choices about how to proceed with your own life--with or without him.