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Old 04-15-2012, 10:57 AM
  # 9 (permalink)  
Admiral
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Join Date: Mar 2012
Posts: 360
I have drug and alcohol dreams, sometimes on a regular basis. They come and go, they don't really bother me.

If they bother you a lot there is something you can do. I've studied dreams quite a bit and have taught myself to recognize that I am dreaming, thus giving me full control of the events around me in the dream, it's called lucid dreaming.

The process involves identifying common dream signs, and using them as triggers to "wake yourself up" in the dream. The good news is for us in recovery, we have a very reliable dream sign to use as a trigger; alcohol.

This is what I do, when I see a trigger in real life, I ask myself am I dreaming? I test the world around me, look and examine everything, see if anything is out of the ordinary, and almost every time there will be things out of place in dreams, you just have to look. You will make such a habit of this that when the triggers show up in dreams, you will test reality and realize that you are dreaming.

After that you can do as you wish, you will be an active participant in your dream rather than a helpless bystander. It will feel strange the first several times and you will likely wake up from the shock of it, but that can be good because you won't have to live out the nightmare. Once you become more used to it you will be able to make it last longer and will be able to reject the alcohol and be the strong person that you want to be, then go outside and fly or do something extraordinary to celebrate, it is a dream after all...
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