Well, I guess I've always wanted to have that attitude but my parent's views on alcohol are strong enough that being transparent about my drinking habits hasn't felt like an option. Now I realize what a mistake it was to hide it so they find out like this, and I don't know how to rebuild their confidence even if I gave up alcohol for good.

And my friend returned all my items a few hours ago untouched. I didn't want to deviate too much from the main topic (since it's already a novel anyway) but in the car he had told me our things were taken by someone we knew and he would get them back. However, as I said that turned out not to be accurate. I was able to log into my account from my phone provider online early the next day and see that at least the cell had simply been left somewhere in the car and he got it with the rest of his things. I'm trying not to put too much identifying information into this post, but I don't think my gender is relevant to what happened. If I suspected a sexual assault, I'd have said that to the other poster.