By Aly Prades 

A dirty clothes hamper is a great spot to hide alcohol, in case you’re wondering. Dirty underwear deters curious eyes.

An empty suitcase is a close runner up, but more difficult to get into if you’d like to keep your habit quiet, like I did. Those pesky zippers can also be difficult to fumble open if you’re already tipsy.

If you’re married and your husband has a well-stocked liquor cabinet, you don’t need to hide your own stash at all. You can just rotate your alcohol of choice, draining the bottles slowly, imperceptibly, strategically, so that he never notices the lowering levels or your slurring words.

***

From my earliest memories, I remember lying awake in bed. Replaying my day. Second guessing my choices, wondering how I could have done better. I’d scrutinize the shadows on the wall, trying to picture what the mobile or the bookshelf looked like in the daylight, but unable to see them as anything but menacing clown faces or lurking figures.

Years later, I started drinking with my friends when we moved off campus from our small, Christian university in San Diego. I discovered not only a "social lubrication" for an awkward, shy girl, but also something that could quiet my mind, silence my inner critic, and toggle my brain “off” as I tried to sleep.

In my early twenties, I experienced burnout from my first job as a grant writer and I couldn’t stop the onslaught of anxious thoughts. As I lay awake, my mind racing, I remembered the big bottle of Costco vodka my roommate and her fiancé left in our freezer.

As my roommate’s breathing deepened and slowed and the house quieted, I slowly peeled back my fleece blanket and stepped out softly onto the hardwood floors. Using the glow of my phone to guide me, I walked to the kitchen. I intentionally clanged the cabinet with the water glasses, filled one up to the whir of the refrigerator, and then drank with exaggerated gulps and sighs. If anyone came out, the sounds would match my story: I was just getting a drink of water.

Then I silently opened the freezer, reached back to the frosty vodka bottle and steadily guided it out like I was playing Operation, careful not to let it clank against the ice dispenser or knock out the bags of frozen brown rice from Trader Joes. That first night I sipped straight from the oversized bottle. As my drinking continued, I’d pour the vodka into my water glass and sneak it back to bed with me. I always made sure to return the bottle back to the same position: label up or down, behind the salmon burgers or beside the organic green beans. I kept track.

I’d sip and wait for the burning liquid to warm my throat, my chest. I’d wait until my fingers tingled and my brain calmed. And I’d finally sleep.

*** 

Guatemala is where I got the idea to hide alcohol bottles in my suitcase. After I left my job, I packed my whole life into one large roller suitcase to live with my best friend’s parents in La Antigua, Guatemala for a year while working as a contract grant writer.

If it had been easy to sneak alcohol in San Diego, it was even easier in this tourist town that flaunted Ladies Nights at bars with names like Sin Ventura and Las Palmas every day of the week. Women could enjoy “All you can drink” Cuba Libres (rum and Cokes) for 5Q, or the equivalent of 65 cents. I could get an entire bottle of quetzalteca (a Guatemalan version of mezcal) for a few dollars at the Bodegona, or local grocery store.

At first, I felt liberated by the Spring Break vibe. But as tourists cycled in and out, enjoying their days or weeks of partying then going back to normal life, I had nowhere to go back to. Alcohol became my normal life. I went from not knowing my limits to not caring.

One time, I drank so much at a concert that it took me a full week to get treated for strep throat because I was sure I just had a killer hangover. Another time as I left a bar, a “friendly” Guatemalan man stopped to offer to drive me to my house just a couple blocks away. I got in his car and he took me to a hotel instead. I made it home safely that night, but I have dozens more memories that make me both sick and grateful that I made it back to the U.S. alive.

When I packed to fly back to San Diego at the end of the year, I first had to stealthily remove dozens of empty alcohol bottles from my suitcase. I waited until I was alone in the house, then tossed the bottles in a large kitchen garbage bag, tied the top, and threw it out on the cobblestone curb, evidence of the problem I was still trying to deny.

***

“What brings you here today?” the therapist asked as she brought me back to her “office” that looked more like a hipster Instagram account with all the succulents and macrame than a clinical space. Back in San Diego, I sought out a counselor to help me get my drinking under control.

My therapist was a pretty woman about my age, soft blond hair with a hint of curl. Her demeanor was gentle, inviting, like “mmhmm, tell me more.” 

“I should be able to drink responsibly. I don’t know why I can’t stop.” I confided.

We talked about my triggers and she offered grounding techniques to reduce my anxiety. Name five things you can see, four you can touch, three you can hear, two you can smell, one you can taste.

Easy enough. But whenever I was on my own, by the time I worked my way down to taste, the only thing I wanted was alcohol on my tongue.

"How does it feel when you hide this from your friends?" my counselor asked a few months later as the sun streamed through her office window. I had just admitted to getting drunk before meeting up with my girlfriends.

“Conflicted, I guess,” I responded. “I feel a thrill when I get away with it, but I also hate myself more every time.”

She helped me see that I did not want to live this way anymore. But I wasn’t ready to bring everything into the light.

***

Some days I knew I would get drunk. When my roommates left the house, I'd grab my keys, wallet, and teal blue iPhone 5 and drive to the CVS down the street to buy flavored Bacardi rum (usually pineapple) to hide in my hamper and drink until I either threw up or passed out.

Other days it would sneak up on me.

I would be out with friends, not intending to drink too much or even at all. They'd ask if we wanted to split a bottle—should we share a red?

Sure, I thought, surely, I can be okay to have a glass of wine with friends. It's healthy even! Antioxidants!

I'd be a glass and a half in when dinner ended, and I’d head straight to the store to buy a bottle of the cheapest red to finish off at home.

Other days I didn’t think about drinking at all. And that was the kicker. I could go days or even weeks without a drink. There’s no way I could have a problem or be a real alcoholic. I could get by without a drink. I could “stop at any time.”

But that didn’t explain the hampers, the hidden hangovers, and vomit stains.

***

I met my husband shortly after starting counseling.  Although I was under strict instructions from my therapist to “stay away from men,” I couldn’t stay away from this man who was gentle and kind and respectful. He was the exact opposite of the leering, pressuring men I’d encountered before.

Dating him was a gift, a chance to walk out of a life of secrecy and shame. I told him about my struggles with alcohol. I purposely used the past tense. He believed those days were behind me. I wanted to believe it, too.

Joy bubbled up more often than anxiety. I was falling in love with a tender-hearted man.

But the secret drinking didn't stop with marriage. I could go weeks limiting my drinking to happy hours with friends or craft beers with my husband. But when I felt particularly anxious, I’d turn to my husband’s well-stocked liquor cabinet. I was back to sneaking sips, pretending I was getting water, monitoring and measuring which bottles I drank from so he wouldn't suspect anything. 

***

I got pregnant a few months after we got married. I stopped drinking cold turkey. I had no problem not drinking for the sake of my unborn son. No one batted an eye when I didn't order a drink at happy hour. I didn't even miss it.

My first drink after pregnancy was just a few days after I brought my son home from the hospital. I had a glass of wine while playing cards with family as my newborn snoozed in the Mamaroo.

I found myself wanting more wine after everyone left.

I could do it, I thought to myself. I could time out my drinking with my nursing sessions so that my son wouldn’t be affected. I could convince myself I wasn't hurting him. I wondered what kind of mother I was. What was I risking to keep my secret?

I shoved those thoughts down and swallowed a burning sip.

***

A few months after my son was born, I read an article by a spiritual mentor who gracefully and eloquently recounted her conviction to quit drinking.

She just quit drinking, “quietly. Without a lot of fanfare.”

Her words were like a direct message from God to my heart. I had always sought to stop the secret drinking. The drinking too much. I never considered stopping altogether. For good. Forever.

Those words were an invitation, to lay down the burden of figuring it all out.

I didn’t have to learn moderation. I could just be free.

What I thought would feel like prison—the weight and label of being “sober”—was, for me, a door to deliverance.

I started by telling my husband. Moments after I read that post and before losing my nerve, I texted him while he was in the middle of one of those “live your best life” conferences with a friend downtown.

“We need to talk. I have a problem with alcohol.” I sent it with trembling hands and my heart in my throat.

He responded right away.

“It’s okay. I love you. I’m on my way home.” He supported me wholeheartedly. He listened. He did not condemn. He asked if he should get rid of his liquor.

I told my immediate family next. And then my friends.

“No, I am not pregnant, but I have stopped drinking. I have a problem,” I told them one by one over cold brews or lavender lattes. “I have been hiding it from you for a long time. I’m sorry.”

I know for many there is physical addiction and greater help is needed. I know not everyone can just stop. By the grace of God, I did. I have lived a life without alcohol for over three years now.

I grieve the lies I’ve told my friends, roommates, and family. I grieve the decisions I made while drunk. I still have bridges to mend, confessions to voice, and I do not consider my work finished. I still ask for accountability. I am still learning to forgive myself.

Today, my hamper holds no secrets, just dirty yoga pants and my potty-training toddler’s pee-soaked underwear.

Guest essay written by Aly Prades. Aly is a writer and educator who lives and works near San Diego State University with her husband, two toddlers, and two cats, Aaron Purr and Abner Stubbins Hamilton. Having traveled to some far parts of the globe, she now works with students around the world in SDSU ’s ESL program. She loves finding typos, Spanish accents, and turning pop songs into kids’ parodies. Her writing has been published in Relevant Magazine, The Burnside Writers Collective, and San Diego Magazine. She also blogs. 

Photo by Lottie Caiella.