I really appreciate all the help you gave me last time I posted about being a dry drunk. I've been working on the ideas you gave me and my HP is back in my life. I'm finding that I really have to listen hard to hear my HP...it's like someone whispering from a distance. But I'm working at having that close-up flow of conversation like I used to...I just have to listen harder and bring my HP closer.
I want to tell you about my drinking dreams. I can't find anything on the dreams that I have. As before, I welcome your thoughts, feelings, insights, support and anything you want to share with me.
I have them at least once a month and usually more. They are very upsetting. They are always about ways I have accidentally drunk alcohol and I am distraught in the dream. The length of my sobriety in the dreams is always accurate and I cry and get very upset about having lost that time.
I had one last night where I went to a pub with a friend. She bought to drinks. One for her and a beer for me. It was hot and noisy in there and I was really thirsty. I picked up the glass and gulped down a big mouthful before I remembered I was sober. I panicked over my lost sobriety but it was too late. I had already swallowed it.
In a previous dream I was sitting in the garage talking to my Dad while he tinkered with the car he is restoring. He drinks red wine and I accidentally picked up his glass and sipped a mouthful before I remembered my sobriety. Again I was distraught and crying over my lost sobriety.
As you can see these dreams all have the same pattern. It's always because of an oversight that I end up drinking. It's never much alcohol. And by the time I realize I have already swallowed a mouthful.
In last nights dream I remember the heartbreaking moment when I realized that warm feeling in my chest and stomach was the alcohol going down into my body and that meant I had just ruined everything.
I always wake up unhappy. You know when you have been crying or upset in a dream it's a horrible feeling when you wake up?
Hi everyday, I've had that dream and the same feelings that accompany it. This past week, I actually had a dream with people from AA in it too so that was pretty freaking weird too. I know not to make too much out of dreams other than that they are often filled with our conscious and unconscious fears. Of course you have a fear of picking up a drink. That is a healthy fear in many ways. Also, you have heard over and over again how alcoholism is cunning, baffling, and powerful. You know that for over a year and some you have put a pretty strong effort into staying sober and also probably heard so many relapse stories about how the disease snuck up on people and they relapsed hard. Hence, the whole thing about the alcohol sneaking up on you makes sense cuz that it how it works right? This is also consistent with your other post which had the same elements of you feeling like your sobriety (or rather the quality of it) was creeping away from you. All I can say is it's okay and you are doing just what they taught us to start (I am assuming you learned the same things) which is sharing it, asking for suggestions, and working on changing it if you can and letting it go if you can't change it. You might think you aren't doing things right and I sense that because you sound a lot like me, but you are actually coping and getting stronger day by day.
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Thank you so much pinkchip. I really appreciate your supportive words. It helps me to let go off the fears when you say that this is normal, makes sense and I am doing the right thing.
Sure remember those drinking dreams, very scary, but not REAL.
No longer drinking dreams now...ther were there for sure a lot in the first year, and still today I will have an occational nightmare, maybe 1, or 2 tops per year.
But I thought this over and created this theory for myself. That we have a place in our minds where we store our fears, and when those memory banks get full and cannot take on any more fear issues, they come flying out of us in our sleep, when the subconscious has more to do with our sleep than at any other time, well more power, if you will. And the follow day is always the same, feel like I was hit by a large Mack truck, and feel exhausted all day. But the good news out of this stuff is I feel I have just emptied the "fear vault" and will not have to worry about any more for one long time.
So my take on my drinking dreams, way back when was that I would relapse, and after all, relapse was almost my middle name, made sense that I would fear this, or rather be terrified of this happening again. But it never materialized.
So good to see you again today, hope you have a wonderful holiday. Happy to hear that you are doing well.
I'm newly sober and I got my first "drinking dream" last night, frigging horrible, freaked me out, In it, all around me are telling me its fine for me to drink, can't remember much about it but it distressed me and I am going through a fair bit of stress at present
Aloha Everyday...My experience with dreams and drinking dreams (same thing its my subconscious which has been affected along with every other part of me) has been somewhat the same...They disturbed me before I learned how to use them for good. I started having drinking dreams around my 21st year in sobriety. Real graphic and full of drama before, during and after. I had just gotten a new sponsor who was older than I and with several years more time. I complained about the dream and my reaction and his question? "Well had you actually left your bed and gone out and drank?" he asked. I said, "no but it was soooo real." He went on, "Well if you didn't really drink, enjoy it. It was a freebie!!" WOW what an undestanding and lesson in simple acceptance. I still have drinking dreams and have the benefit of being able to read the dream and my subconscious. I know what the dream and the parts of the dream support in my daily life as a alcoholic person. I know how deep the disease reaches and that it is always with me regardless of whether I am actively participating; mind, body, spirit or emotions. I know that the disease has never slept as others have spoken about. It doesn't and is ready always even against my own resistance on a conscious level on the sub-conscious level it will do what I have not done for years...drink. Before I use to take the drink from another whether it was the bartender or friend or whomever. My last drink I was asking for it. There is a difference and my meetings are increased because of it and my listening on this board. I hang with relapsers so that I can learn to acclimate myself before the event presents itself. Subconsciously this disease has screamed at me for the next drink and presented itself in a way that I had to stop doing what I was doing at the time and sit and do nothing but relax and meditate while it skulked off into the corner to wait for another opportunity and then go on with what I was intending. "Cunning, Baffling and Powerful"...remember those words. "Real"...remember that word. "Powerless over ..." remember that part of the 1st step and every other description of your disease that has ever held you in awe. Read the prior and current post on this board from other brothers and sisters in recovery so that you can create a constant mindset, "We are alcoholic. We have no defense against it by ourselves. We support and keep each other sober in the program of AA or we are taken over. Besides ourselves there is one who desires our sobriety more than we do and that I believe and call is HP and the reason is that we can help others who live with this fatal disease.
Keep coming back...The fear is "False Evidence..." only a dream. The disease cannot overtake you if you keep your honesty and willingness to learn and live the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. Always stay connected to your HP and the fellowship and that you step out to share it all and spend it all with other alcoholics so that they may enjoy what you have...including your experiences with drinking dreams.
Thank you guys again!! I haven't found anyone before who has had the same dreams. It's usually the one's where they wanted to drink in their dream. Toni...where's the baloney?
"the follow day is always the same, feel like I was hit by a large Mack truck, and feel exhausted all day"
You described everything better than I could! Your perspective on it really helps give me a better way to deal with the dreams.
I feel like I did when I was a kid "WHY, why, why, why...". Thank you guys for being as patient now as my Mother was then!
I had drinking dream during my first month sober. I drank on "accident" in the dream, but was sober and upset about losing my birthday and having to start over. After waking up, I was freaked out at first, but later came to see it like Pinkchip said, as powerful reminder of why I choose to be sober and how slinky and sly the disease is. In my dream I got to taste 5 or 6 different awesome beers, which I love for the taste. So I now count it as a cool freebee like Jerry mentioned. In my dream I didn't recall any drunk sensation.
More recently, I had another dream where I wanted to drink and almost did. I was again upset about ruining my sobriety in the dream. After waking from this dream I was amazed to realize that neither in the dream or so much in real life could I immediately recall the sensation of being drunk. In the dream, I wanted to be buzzed, but wasn't sure exactly how this would feel.
I decided to take this dream as another cool and important reminder of why I don't drink anymore and how far I have come in 3 months. I attended a meeting 2 weeks ago where people shared about drinking dreams, it assured me that this is quite normal. If you think about it, we have all sorts of dreams about stuff in our lives. Here's another way the freebee notion can be applied. I've had sex dreams that weren't with my partner. Sometimes I awake feeling like I should feel guilty. However, I have no desire or will to be with anyone else in waking life. I think dreams are powerful movies that can help us work on things in our daily life, and sometimes they just are what they are, a good fun time with no strings attached. -A.
I had a recurring dream about drinking, waking up in the dream and saying it's just a dream and then a voice said "but you cheated here and there and your sobriety doesn't count..." It's chilling because of the dream in a dream thing but I didn't give it much thought after the first minute or so that I was awake and eventually the dream went away.
What's astounding about my dreams is that I cannot remember having dreams about other things I use to do with interest like, fish, dive, pilot an airplane, boat racing, guns, past sexual affairs or the like. My dreams from the past are all about drinking or they are about my fear state (nightmares). My nightmares have never been about drinking. When it comes to the other stuff I mentioned I have thoughts about them but not dreams about them..clearly a difference between the conscious and subconscious state. I can remember only two pleasant dreams both of them a subconscious journey into happiness and joy. I want to have another soon.
I had this dream too, Thought there was apple juice in front of me and started to take a drink didn't swallow but once I realized it was wine. I spit it all out and woke up sweating, heart pounding. I had thoughts of those months gone. What if this happened for real? do you count intent? or do I start over?
These things happen. I look on them as my HP 1. reminding me to be vigilant, for this is how 'accidents' can happen and 2. my HP is giving me a little reminder, a nudge, that there is something deeper down in my life, which if not attended to, will eventually put me at risk.
So maybe your HP talks to you through your dreams?
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It's not having what you want, it's wanting what you got. BB
