Beauty and Fashion became my Armour

It wasn’t until I turned 28 that I became openly honest about my alcoholism to everybody, not just people within the recovery community.

Before that, secrecy had become part of my identity.

Hiding it.
Minimising it.
Making excuses for it.
Convincing people — and myself — that things were still under control.

And I think beauty and fashion became deeply tied into that secrecy for me.

Because as long as I still looked polished, feminine and “put together,” it was easier for people to miss what was really happening underneath.

I didn’t fit the stereotype people expected.

I still cared about my appearance.
Still loved fashion.
Still did my makeup.
Still posted photos smiling.

Meanwhile privately, my life revolved around alcohol, withdrawal, fear and survival.

Beauty and fashion became my armour.

The makeup.
The hair.
The outfits.
The designer handbags.
The jewellery.
The perfume.

All of it became part of the illusion that everything was completely fine.

And the frightening thing is — sometimes I even convinced myself.

If I still looked beautiful, maybe I wasn’t really that ill.
If I still cared about fashion, maybe I still had control.
If I still looked polished, maybe nobody would realise how much my life privately revolved around alcohol.

My dad taught me from an early age how to pose for photos.

He loved taking pictures of me.

And I think somewhere along the way, I learnt how powerful an image could be.

How much you could hide behind one.

I became very good at masking pain through photographs.

I could be internally collapsing and still know exactly how to angle my face, position my body, smile correctly and upload a photo that looked like I was living a completely different life.

Sometimes I look back at old pictures now and feel disconnected from the girl in them.

People saw beauty.
Holidays.
Fashion.
Confidence.

They didn’t see the withdrawals.
The fear.
The hidden bottles.
The panic.
The dependency.

And that’s one of the strangest parts of addiction — how far away your outside appearance can become from your internal reality.

I think women often hide addiction differently.

People expect addiction to look chaotic and obvious. They picture somebody visibly falling apart.

But many women become experts at looking put together while internally collapsing.

I know I did.

I could be experiencing withdrawals privately while still spending time perfecting my makeup.

I could be mentally falling apart while still carefully choosing an outfit.

I could be hiding alcohol in water bottles while carrying a designer handbag and looking completely normal to everybody around me.

That’s why addiction in women can be so misunderstood.

Because sometimes it hides behind beauty incredibly well.

Behind lip gloss.
Behind expensive clothes.
Behind fake eyelashes and perfume and “wellness.”

I think from a young age women are taught to perform being okay even when they are not.

To stay attractive.
To stay composed.
To stay functioning.
To keep smiling.

Even while suffering privately.

And in my addiction, beauty became part of survival psychologically.

It became a way of protecting the version of myself I was terrified of losing completely.

Because alcohol dependency strips your identity away piece by piece. It makes you ashamed, frightened and disconnected from yourself.

But if I still had my makeup done, maybe I was still me somewhere underneath all of it.

I was only 22 when I attended my first recovery meeting.

And I remember hiding behind my lipstick, my designer handbag and my accent.

I sat there terrified somebody would realise I was “really” an alcoholic.

As if alcoholism only belonged to certain types of people and not somebody like me.

So I clung onto the things that made me feel protected.

The makeup.
The way I spoke.
The way I dressed.
The version of myself I thought looked more acceptable.

I think part of me believed that if I still looked polished enough, sounded articulate enough, appeared feminine enough, then maybe I could somehow separate myself from the reality of what I was experiencing.

But addiction does not care how you look.

It does not care about class, beauty, intelligence, education or appearance.

And I think that was one of the hardest things for me to accept.

Because for years I had hidden my alcoholism behind beauty, fashion, humour and presentation.

I had become so good at performing “fine” that even sitting in a recovery meeting, part of me still felt like I needed to wear armour.

And I think that’s why so many women suffer silently for years.

Because female addiction often hides differently.

It hides behind functioning.
Behind routines.
Behind glamour.
Behind being “the girl who always looks nice.”

I was told by someone close that I was masking my outsides to fill my insides- a line I will never forget.

Sometimes the woman who looks the most polished is actually the one struggling the most privately behind closed doors.