Drinking Dreams

[hippie37]

This is a fantastic way of looking at the drinking dream from a whole new perspective. This excerpt is taken from a book published through Hazeldon by Tav Sparks called "The Wide Open Door". This book is not only beneficial for those following a 12 step program but for anyone who is looking to deepen their recovery experience.

"Have you ever had a dream during your recovery where you were engaged in active addiction again? There are many ways to interpret this. I think that the most restrictive viewpoint is to assume that we are doing it wrong or are in danger of relapsing. Although this maybe true there are other ways to perceive it.

Instead of being a sign of sickness, the drinking dream might be a sign of health. It could be a way that our higher power is healing us at a deeper level. The emergence of this type of material into consciousness during sleep could be signaling a clearing of patterns of behaviour in the unconscious, to which we could not have access in our waking state.

When I am having a dream like this, sometimes I wake up, still in the dream state and remember that I am in recovery. Then it becomes a nightmare and I experience tremendous anguish and remorse just as if I had actually relapsed. Might it not be that this experience is a gift from our higher power, through the unconscious, allowing me to have firsthand experience of what it used to be like? If I can have this experience in the non-ordinary state of a dream, I might not have to experience it in my waking life. In this sense the dream is a healing gift."

I know this talks of a 'using' dream that I think we've all had at some point in our recovery, but if you see ANY dream/nightmare as a gift and a healing process that you're going through then it may be easier to work through it. I totally believe in the power of dreams as I've had far too many that have shifted something in my own psyche not too. Sometimes the content is not the important thing but the feeling I get before, during and after the experience. God never sleeps and neither does our consciousness and that for me is where the greatest healing takes place. Whether that be in waking OR dream state.

Love and Light
Phil
xx

[shine on]

Drinking Dreams

I have just found this website today and actually cried out to God to help my uncontrollable state. In my experience of drinking in my dreams, I found it to be a warning of things to come, because I couldn't quit drinking, and of course I ended up drinking a short amount of time after the dream.. I am at work and probably need to change my profile to receive messages, but have felt so bad that I am only two days sober..I believe finally that there may be an answer for me..

[shine on]

Drinking Dreams

:new:[FONT="Comic Sans MS"]

shine on;807163 wrote: I have just found this website today and actually cried out to God to help my uncontrollable state. In my experience of drinking in my dreams, I found it to be a warning of things to come, because I couldn't quit drinking, and of course I ended up drinking a short amount of time after the dream.. I am at work and probably need to change my profile to receive messages, but have felt so bad that I am only two days sober..I believe finally that there may be an answer for me..

[/FONT]

[JackieClaire]

Drinking Dreams

:welcome: shine on,

Great job on you 2 days sober.
You've come to a place with no judgement and masses of support.

Click on the link below to help you to get a plan started.

https://www.mywayout.org/community/f1...box-27556.html

Keep reading,keep posting. Let us get to know you.

J x

:l

[startingover]

Drinking Dreams

Hi there Shine, welcome to MWO.
You have found a great place for support here.
it might be an idea for you to start a thread of your own, that way you will get some help without your post being lost in another.
2 days sober is a great start. You are on your way!!

Nice post Phil.

[Doggygirl]

Drinking Dreams

:welcome: shine on! There is hope. The journey to sobriety is not easy, but it CAN be done and IS being done all around this web site. Strength and hope to you!

Hippie, I always enjoy your posts and deep insights. I occassionally have drinking dreams and for the first year after quitting smoking, had even more smoking dreams. I have always wondered if it wasn't my subconsious mind trying to "get a fix" when it become clear that my conscious mind was refusing a fix.

One thing is for sure, I am always glad when I figure out it's only a dream!

I do believe that there is a spiritual power within and among us, and that it speaks to us if we are open enough and quiet enough to listen.

DG

[mario]

Drinking Dreams

welcome shine on,this is a great community,keep on posting


When we are addicted we are in the power of our cravings for our drug. We may dream but they tend to be unrealistic dreams. They are dreams of desire not dreams that may be fulfilled. As we get sober we are free to dream life changing dreams, dreams of a future that could be filled with happiness, with freedom.


The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.
Eleanor Roosevelt

[shine on]

Drinking Dreams

drinking dreams

It has now been 5 days for me AF. I had a dream last night about drinking, and I still believe that what happens in the spiritual, happens in the physical, why, because forever, even if I hadn't drank in 6 months and had a drinking dream and told the devil to get the hell out, I would eventually drink within the next few days..These are not good dreams, these are usually stressed dreams, so I am glad that I am getting feed back from others who dream drinking dreams and think of them differently..My whole family drinks, my husband makes his own beer, and is totally not addicted. He goes all week and works hard and then on Saturday night he has a few beers with the boys, at our huge party house on top of a hill, which he built,, and then we usually have a bottle of wine or two with dinner, usually steak, and lots of good music, and that's it until the next week. My problem, is that about four to ten times a year I binge for a week or so,, usually when I am sick or under some sort of family distress, it has been going on for years.. my way out is usually drinking ginger ale in a wine glass and just telling everyone I need to loose weight, that is my plan for tonight... I usually get real honest as far as telling everyone I need a break from drinking, but after a binge, I never know if I can just go back to a few glasses of wine, usually that is what happens until something comes up, or a dream and bam! Im gone again.

[Cindi]

Drinking Dreams

I had a drinking dream a few nights ago. When I was actively drinking I could never feel calm unless I knew there was alcohol in the house-it didn't matter if I was planning on drinking or not but I would get a feeling of sheer panic when I would start to get low on the junk. My Kitchen and cabinets were always well stocked. It gave me a strange peace of mind just knowing it was there if I needed it. That's probaly why my house was a favorite place to get our nights going out started with my drinking friends.

Well this dream entailed me running out of alcohol and the sheer panic I felt in my dream actually woke me up-I was sweating and felt incredibly nauseous. Got up sat on my patio, drank some water took deep breaths. Went back to bed with a deep sigh of relief that it was just a dream and a calming thought and feeling..I know I don't EVER want to go back to that place again.

[Gearhead]

Drinking Dreams

I've had alot of them. In the dreams I'm back on a binge. I wake up soooo relieved that it was only a dream. Maybe when I choose not to drink in the dreams I'll truly be healed.

[Chillgirl]

Drinking Dreams

Hippie - Apart from a couple of drinking dreams in the 1st AF week I hadnt had any until last night. I had an incredibly vivid one of breaking my abstinence starting with drinking water in my old haunt then moving on to a nearby bar and drinking a bottle of wine before heading back home with an ex boyfriend for a full scale alcohol party!

When i woke up (or thought I did) i was still in the dream state and remembered all the details of my binge. I lay there in bed dreading getting up to see the carnage from the night before, I was full of shame and sorrow at what i had done and the disbelief of relapsing was a dagger through my heart. I remembered getting my 1st month coin at AA and my mind was now saying how i didnt deserve it and that I was back to day one. I went over all the people in my mind that id let down as well most importantly, myself.

I was horrified at having been so strong and having failed, quite honestly I was so remorseful I wanted to die! As I lay there with this all going on in my head I started to realize that maybe it had been a dream! My mind began to figure this out and the possibility grew until I was almost certain it hadnt really happened.

The most bizzare part of this was I felt hungover and even once I had worked out it was a dream the hangover remained! I stumbled out of bed feeling worse than I had done in weeks.

I truly believe this dream had a purpose and was a gift. As memories of the misery have faded I was in need of a reminder just what I would be giving up if I relasped and the relief that it was a dream will hopefully stay with me for a while longer.....

[hippie37]

Drinking Dreams

Your post chill just reminded me of a similar dream I had whilst I was in treatment.

A lot of my peers in treatment were still having drinking dreams and I almost felt left out to be honest. But I was coming up to a period again where I was reaching that critical stage of nearly 4 months sober. I'd never gotten past this stage before and to be honest I was still in denial of the true extent of my addiction. I was at a stage where I thought to myself that I could still take 'magic mushrooms' under the guise of them being an entheogen for a spiritual experience. (I know, that's why this illness is one of delusion rather than denial I think!).

Anyway it was during this period that I had a very profound using dream. An old school friend of mine who progressed like me into the hippie/new age traveling scene was injecting me with heroin at a house party because I was too drunk to do it myself. Now this is a guy who only drank real ale (and not that much might I add) and the only drug he'd ever taken was (drum role) 'magic mushrooms'!!. I've never actually injected heroin either I only used to smoke it. I didn't try and analyze it too much but the feeling I had that day was incredibly morose. It did feel like I was coming down off a binge and funnily enough we were all asked to take a drugs test that day because it had been a bank holiday week-end. (We always got tested after long week-ends) But my head was telling me all sorts as to the reasons we were all getting tested. I felt so paranoid that my urine test was gonna come back positive because I actually felt that I'd taken something.

Love and Light
Phil
xx

[shine on]

Drinking Dreams

Cindy, I know what you mean about the strange calm when you know that things are stocked. What a crazyass way of livin. Once it's stocked I don't think about it for awhile, but then the dreams come and I know that it is kind of like a tormented feeling. Sometimes I think it is hell itself knocking on my door. All I know is that it has to stop. I can go for weeks without a dream, even months, and then I have to plan way in advance for any kind of real social gathering so that I am not recovering after a binge at a wedding or something, and no I cannot just stay in bed either because I have to get up and think about it. I am glad that there are others that go thru this..the dreams that is. I live in a house where everyone gathers on the weekends for music, games working on cars, etc. and it is impossible to get everything out. When it is stocked I don't seem to think about it. I can go into a bar, like today and order lunch for my boss and sit and watch the Olympics and no problem,,Saturday night around 5:00 and everything changes..

[~EVA~]

Drinking Dreams

Thanks for this post Phil. I love to analize dreams.

It's weird~all my alcohol dreams consist of me trying to obtain alcohol & hiding it from my loved ones. Kind of makes sense b/c I was a "hider"! I never had any dreams of using tho. But those dreams of hiding my booze caused such anxiety that even after I'd wake up I'd still feel anxious.

[shine on]

Drinking Dreams

One of my dreams was that there was just about 1/4 bottle of white wine left in the fridge and there were allot of people in the kitchen doing cocaine etc. this was years ago,,all the doors were locked from the inside and I couldn't get out. We used to have a taxi stop at the liquor store for us and bring it up the hill, so that we didn't have to leave, but then I couldn't get out, and that's when I started relating my dreams to torment.. literally to keep me in torment. I will always remember that dream because it was a big turning point in my life to stop doing drugs, but the drinking has kind of lingered on foreverr..I will be drinking in my dreams searching for where I hid my bottle, or trying to hide it from the family, and then i'll wake up just totally spent by such a crazy thing, because really my life is not like that anymore, as far as that crazy..