Back in the 90s I lived in a two story, above a store on the ocean front. It was a terribly busy street with both vehicle and foot traffice, so my son and I snuck out the back window as a rule, to get outside. When outside and on the store roof, you could see over my roof which was flat and had air vents in it. To hide my marijuanna smoke from smelling in the apartment, I would tape the cardboard from paper rolls together, snake them through the vent in the bathroom, and puff away. One day after enjoying a particularilly large joint, I decided to go walk on the beach. Out the window we went. I looked up once I had fit my feet through and squirmed out and to my great dismay realized there was a roofing crew sitting around the vent on lunch break, grinning away at me looking from my cardboard jutting out the vent then back to me. I was so caught it just embaressed the daylights out of me. Never did that again.
Thank you brother. It’s very sobering experience to look back at my previous behavior with a clarity I have never had before. Even in my previous attempts at sobriety I never really dug into my alcoholic behavior and how I would enable myself. I really appreciate the brotherhood here and all of the support. Thank you.
Congrats on the upcoming 5 years. That is truly inspiring. Crazy how all of these “one day at a time” day’s can pile up. I am looking forward to different mile marks and really examining my previous behavior.
Crazy how an experience like that can change us. Makes us realize that even when we think we are “getting away” with something, someone else is most likely noticing.
Lol, yup, I will always remember that feeling.
I would hide my daily hangovers by staying away from most people or working later hours. I would have all sorts of remedies from Dramamine to pedialyte ready so that I wouldn’t look as miserable. It’s a shame that I didn’t stop this earlier but I’m glad to be sober now. I don’t miss those mornings.
It is really amazing how much better I feel every morning so far and just the quality of sleep seems much better in general.
I still haven’t told a soul in my life about the painkillers… except y’all of course
I live alone though so it isn’t so difficult to hide something for me
My initial thought was that I never had to hide anything from my family but I now remember that once my husband got his diagnosis of terminal cancer I would quite often sneak a bottle of vodka in to the house and store it in the freezer or in the drawer under my side of the bed. And I remember how bad it felt whenever I found either of my parents’ secret stashes when I was a teenager.
I hid my cans all over the house and although I’m an avid recycler, even started throwing them in the trash so no one would find them. I’m still in the beginning of recovery but happy to know that I will never do that again.
Amen to never again. I’m glad we’re on this path to recovery together. Stay strong, you’ve got this.
I didn’t hide it…
I think the only reason I did was because I knew I have a problem with it but didn’t want to be held accountable for it. At least that was maybe my line of thinking then.
Same here. Regarding the “I didn’t want to be held accountable”.
So I started hiding bottles, pouring vodka in water bottles, sipping “lemonade” (vodka with just a bit od lemon juice), sneaking large glasses of vodka in the bathroom (I don’t share it with no one, so it was a great - I’m being sarcastic here 
- solution and so on.
The interesting part is that I started doing this around the time that I, on some… don’t know… subconcious? level started feeling that I do have a problem. When I was a social drinker or sometimes drank at friends’ homes or at my place but without the compulsion to drink, I never hid. I would get wasted, fairly often, even, but that was “for fun”. When I found myself feeling the urge to drink (“it’s been such an intense day at work/I’m so stressed today/Oh, what a nice day to relax…, I deserve a drink - or ten, of course), that’s when the hiding began.
That’s interesting because thinking back I was the same about when I began to hide it. When I was younger I didn’t care who saw me wasted and was proud of how much I drank. As I became older I started to become ashamed of how much I drank and how I could never get a hold on it. I think mainstream society makes drinking look so cool and rarely frowned upon that I felt cool when I was younger and thought it was cool how much more I drank than some other. Looking back it all seems so childish and immature, both the proud bolstering and the ashamed hiding aspect of it.
I never did much hiding from my problems.
I watched my dad as a child hide snorting cocaine and smoking pot, but he never hid his bottle of black velvet.
We would visit my great uncle Blackie on the farm, He was a WW1 POW VET. He would feed us breakfast as the rooster crowed, and then we would go feed the hogs or chickens or the horse in the barn… but that was just to get us out by the hay bale he had his bottle of Ouzo stuck in so he could take a big rip off that fucker. He hid his drinking from his wife.
I always swore I’d never be like that. My wife and kids have seen me drunk and high, I was never really ashamed, although maybe I should be or maybe I should have been hiding it to be a better role model, but I’ve always believed in being honest, and honest with myself, Im actually proud of that.
Drinking white wine from a water glass in spiritual online meetings or online live Yoga classes! With camara on. Yes I made Yoga drunk. WTF
Other thing is bringing the many empty bottles silently into my car… Very early in the morning or at night. 2 baskets per week regulary.
Trying not to make any clinking noises.
And buying vine boxes…
Putting the veggies on top to cover it up.
OMG! 
The dumb thing for me was I would still be drunk in front of them and would not be embarrassed at the time, often embarrassed the next day though. Even while drunk in front of them, I would still hide taking more in. Seems illogical looking back.
The drunken Yoga must have been a sight to see. 
I was living with a guy that didn’t drink nearly as much as me, so after work I started hiding my beer cans in the dresser drawers and in the garage behind things. I remember feeling sooooo ashamed and judged when he found them and confronted me about it. I wasn’t possibly the one in the wrong… That was sort of the beginning of my attempts to quit and a turning point.