Only after getting sober at 30 did I realise the shocking health consequences of being a functioning alcoholic in my twenties. How could I have done this to myself?
Stepping through the front door after work, Heather Richard arrived home before her husband Taylor.
The then 29-year-old put her bag down and checked her phone – he was 45 minutes away and hadn’t left the office yet.
Perfect, I have time, she thought.
Heather tracked Taylor’s whereabouts on the Life360 app, not because she didn’t trust him, but because she didn’t want to get caught.
No, she wasn’t having an affair, nor was she living a double life, but she was hiding a devastating secret from Taylor.
She quickly reached for a full bottle of vodka and double shot glass and swung one back, followed by a second.
‘I never enjoyed drinking, I just wanted to feel the effects of it. Taylor knew I drank, but he just didn’t know how much I was drinking,’ Heather, now 30, tells Daily Mail Australia.
She put the vodka in the freezer, sat on the couch to watch TV for ten minutes and started to feel the buzz.
Heather Richard, who hails from Austin, Texas, but now lives in Kansas City, struggled with a drinking problem for a decade. She is now eight months sober
Heather and her husband Taylor (left) have been married for seven years. He knew about her drinking but wasn’t aware of the extent of the problem because she hid it from him
She checked the app again – he was 20 minutes away. Heather returned to the kitchen and took another two double shots.
By this point, the vodka bottle was looking a little depleted, so she added a small amount of water to make it seem like she’d had a ‘reasonable amount’ to drink and popped it back in the freezer.
With ten minutes to spare, she downed some wine, thinking that if she managed to polish it all off, she’d hide the bottle at the bottom of the kitchen bin.
The glasses were quickly washed, dried and put at the top of the kitchen cabinet moments before hearing the garage door open.
As Taylor walked through the door, Heather made it appear as if she was cleaning or doing laundry, and then welcomed him home.
Heather, who hails from Austin, Texas, but now lives in Kansas City, struggled with alcoholism for ten years, and, like many problem drinkers, her toxic relationship with booze started during her teenage years.
Heather was raised in household she describes as ‘chaotic’ and fractured.
When she was 16, she tasted her first drop of alcohol with friends. By the end of the night, she was barely able to stand up.
Like many problem drinkers, her toxic relationship with booze started during her teens. When she was 16, she tasted her first drop of alcohol and by the end of the night could barely stand
‘It immediately became a sense of escape from reality. From then I wanted to go out all the time and I would try sneak out at night or say I was staying somewhere else,’ Heather says.
She dropped out of high school in Year 11, was kicked out of her family home and started dabbling in drugs.
‘I quickly realised [drugs] was a really bad road to head down so I turned to just drinking instead,’ Heather says.
From 19, her battle with the bottle worsened. Binge drinking was socially accepted – it was fun, everyone did it, and no one noticed Heather was spiralling out of control.
But as her friends began the next chapter of their lives and moved away from college, Heather kept partying.
‘The difference between me and everyone else is they grew out of it and I continued. And it only got worse,’ Heather tells me.
Like a toxic boyfriend or devil on her shoulder, drinking was always on her mind.
Heather met her now-husband Taylor at the age 21 when they were living in the same apartment complex.
They soon went from dating to living together and marrying within two years.
During that time, Heather revealed her childhood trauma, and explained to Taylor how alcohol was a coping mechanism for her.
Taylor supported her through the difficult times but sometimes felt helpless. At age 23, Heather fell over while drunk, hit her head and suffered a concussion. She doesn’t remember the incident, only waking up in hospital.
‘It knocked me out cold. I have no idea what really happened, where I was or why I was there. I was having an argument with a friend then woke up in hospital,’ she says.
By 25, her drinking was out of control.
She was struggling with her mental health so much that she tried taking her own life and ended up in psychiatric care.
‘The psych ward was terrifying but not even that made me sober. I continued to make excuses for it,’ Heather says.
By 25, her drinking was out of control. At 10pm, after Taylor had gone to bed, Heather would go to the kitchen, reach for the double shot glass on the shelf and grab the full bottle of vodka
HIDING A SECRET
It was the same routine almost every night for a year.
At 10pm, after Taylor had gone to bed, Heather would go to the kitchen, reach for the double shot glass on the shelf and grab the full bottle of vodka.
She would take three double shots, one after the other. Then she’d pour another three shots into a glass and fill the rest with water and a dash of juice or flavouring.
‘I would take the filled glass to bed and sip on it while I felt the intoxication of the shots,’ she said.
‘After drinking the glass, I’d repeat the process until the bottle of vodka was gone.’
Sometimes she would have two bottles of vodka, put one in the freezer and one in her bedroom and slowly drink both in different rooms to make it seem like she was drinking less.
It was a vicious cycle she could not escape from.
She and her husband were sleeping in different beds, which made her drinking habit easier to hide.
At her worst, she would wake to an empty bottle of vodka, two bottles of red wine, and a 12-pack of seltzers under the bed – all of which she had drunk in one sitting.
She says she would tell herself her drinking was under control, that it wasn’t that bad – then the shame, guilt and realisation she did have a problem would overwhelm her.
This continued until she was 29, by which time she had gained 45kg (99lbs or 7st) due to the excess drinking. Every month, she would spend US$800 (AU$1,300 or £620) on alcohol alone – totalling about US$9,600 (AU$15,600 or £7,500) a year.
During those years, she and Taylor moved from Florida to Kansas City, which was challenging because all her friends from home were in Texas.
Her permanent state of intoxication made it difficult to sleep and she would wake in the middle of the night. Moreover, she became so physically unfit she couldn’t walk anything further than a short distance and couldn’t even sit cross-legged.
For Heather, the road to recovery started after turning 30 and moving to Kansas City
THE TURNING POINT
For Heather, the road to recovery started when she turned 30 and moved to Kansas City.
‘I looked back at my 20s and I was like. “I’m in the same place, except I’m drinking even more now”,’ she says.
‘All my friends had careers and children, while I didn’t have any of that.’
One evening, in the middle of the night, Heather was drunk and crying over her childhood and family.
‘I started looking up rehabs and I found one that opened at 8am. I called and the guy who answered talked to me for two hours.’
Heather cried on the phone as she blurted out her life story.
‘He was trying to convince me to come to rehab and at the end of the conversation, I told him, “I don’t think I have a problem,” then hung up,’ she recalls.
In the morning Taylor came to comfort her and she confessed to everything.
‘When he found out, he was very surprised. He could tell I had a problem, but he didn’t know what to say or what to do,’ Heather adds.
‘I told him, “I’m going to try to stop drinking and if I can’t I’ll go to rehab.”‘
Heather was sober on and off for the next week before finally deciding to go to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting.
She hasn’t touched a drop of alcohol since. Now, more than eight months sober, she says she has turned her life around.
Heather has lost 11kg (24lbs or nearly two stone), feels happier and healthier, is able to sleep through the night, and her body doesn’t ache anymore.
‘I used to have a panic attack every day, now I’ve only had two in the last eight months,’ Heather says.
‘Three months into sobriety I went to a wedding and didn’t drink, which was a real challenge. But after that it was a real confidence boost.’
‘The hardest part is dealing with my emotions head-on without alcohol.’
Heather is now in college and has grown a following of more than 42,000 people on TikTok by speaking about her experiences and helping others.
As for her advice to others who are struggling, Heather says: ‘Look at it for what it is. is alcohol affecting your life negatively? If the answer is yes then take a step back and look at your relationship with it.’
Support services are available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week across Australia:
Lifeline: 13 11 14
