KAD

Twice this week, I have been having anxiety-laden dreams or feelings, and in those dreams there is a bottle of vodka by my bed. I awake fully expecting to see it there, feeling disappointed that it isn't, and lost as to how else to deal with what I'm feeling. I've had tons of drinking dreams in the past, but none that reach over into the real world like that. Anyone relate?

Mountainmanbob

Not sure how long that you have been sober ?
But, after sobering up I had terrible dreams for a few months.
I even woke up screaming a couple of times.
After waking I was so glad that I wasn't drinking.
For I realized what a rough road it had been.

MM

Nevertheless

I had a LOT of weird bazaar drinking dreams when I first quit. I have been sober almost 6 years,and every now and then i still have one. But I NEVER wake up disappointed to find there is no booze to be had. It is always quite the opposite. More like extremely relieved to find I am still sober,and there is no booze
Waking up expecting to find a bottle of vodka,and being disappointed that there isn't one there is not right. Kind of sounds like deep down you still want to drink.
How long have you been sober?

Fred

KAD

Today is day 48 of sobriety for me. I am used to having some drinking dreams when I quit, but up until now, all of them have been about hiding it and being paranoid of getting caught. These are the first dreams wherein I'm feeling stressed and thinking there is a bottle of vodka by my bed, where I usually kept it at night, and waking up expecting to find it. These are also the first dreams that leave me feeling disappointed that the bottle isn't there. It takes a few minutes to realize where I am and why I can't drink anymore.

It's odd timing for such a dream. I went to an AA meeting last night and it was great! I left there feeling strengthened and refreshed. It was one of the best experiences of my whole week.

KAD

I interpret it to just be the "rubber band" returning to it's normal state. Over the past year, I have dealt with an inordinate amount of stress and anxiety. I wasn't even drinking the whole year - it was about half sober and half drinking - but this last bender was brought about by being disappointed with the meds the doctor was giving me to deal with anxiety and returning to what I knew would deliver the quickest results. It's turned out to be a disastrous decision, but it's the one I'm most familiar with.

I'm not going to drink today, and today is all I have.

Db1105

Dreams are just dreams. No point of fretting over something no one has control over. Congratulations on your 48 days. It will get better.

KAD

I know. It just disturbs me to feel disappointed that the bottle isn't there. That goes away after a few minutes once I get my senses back, but it's something new for me. This last bender has caused so much destruction in my life, it would truly be insane to ever touch another drop.

Soberwolf

This is very common and although frightening disturbing etc it is just a nightmare/dream

They will fade with time my friend

Serotonin

Most nights since I quit I dream that I'm in some sort of terrible situation and can't escape. They're just dreams though. This too shall pass.

Ken33xx

I had two anxiety-laden dreams this week which I attribute to the last few days having been quite stressful. However, alcohol wasn't involved in either.

I've had fairly realistic drunk dreams in the past but not recently. Drinking rarely comes to mind when life begins going side-ways for me. It's when everything is smooth and I've got no worries the thought a drink on a nice sunny day pops into my mind.

TheNatural

I was used to getting these when I would run out of alcohol and would be laying in bed trying to get through a hangover or withdrawls. I didn't really think much of it then. But when I had the same dream a couple months after I got out of rehab, it genuinely scared me.

I was afraid because it reminded me of when I was drinking, and there would be those periods of sobriety and I would sit there intending not to drink, and maybe trying to quit for good, and hearing that little voice in your head say, "Just go get some. You know you're going to. You can sit here as long as you want, but you're going to drink."

That was always a terrible feeling, and it was the one I felt when having those kinds of dreams.

Mine were always of me feeling sort of hungover and rolling over and seeing a half full bottle, and being relieved that I had booze, almost like I had forgotten about it.

KAD

The addictive voice and all it's scheming and conniving is pure evil!

I remember one night during detox - and his happened while I was awake - I woke up in he middle of the night and looked at the dresser by my bed. On top of it was my water bottle. In the half light, and from the angle I was looking at it, it closely resembled a bottle of vodka. At that point, 3 days into detox, I wished it was. Never mind that I had trouble remembering just how I ended up in detox/rehab, never mind that I was there as a last chance to hold onto my job, I still entertained the idea of having another drink. Insanity!

JeffreyAK

I used to get alcohol dreams regularly. Sometimes it was about me drinking and liking it, a "home again" sort of feeling, often it was about me not drinking and feeling empowered, sometimes it was about me turning into a sort of robot and being compelled to drink even though I didn't want to. Weird. That went on for many months, but the dreams became less frequent and eventually stopped. Maybe I'll have another one someday, I don't know, but it's not worth stressing about - it certainly isn't any kind of "prophecy", it's just a dream.

TheNatural

Speaking of freaky dreams, has anyone heard of or experienced "Rebound REM"?

When I am detoxing and going through withdrawls, my anxiety and symptoms can keep me up for days, and when that happens you actually need REM sleep so bad that the moment you fall asleep you enter REM, and the dreams, at least for me, are incredibly vivid and terrifying. They are so intense that I usually have to wake myself up in the dream, assuming I can recognize it is a dream. A lot of the time they are dreams of me drinking, but in a much worse situation. A recurring one is a dream where I'll wake up in my apartment, but it is trashed, everything broken, and there are horribly disfigured strange people drinking and trying to get me to drink, and I always try to run away but they try and stop me and I have to try and wake myself up. Crazy stuff.

KAD

@TheNatural

My dreams during early withdrawal are always very vivid and terrifying. Violent images and loud booms and screams wake me up the moment I drift off to sleep. It's miserable!

Aellyce

Yes. I was even monitored in a sleep lab and it showed up on my profile. It was a few years ago... I was a binge drinker then and my bf of the time was a neurologist who specialized in sleep disorders. He worked with this sleep lab and got me into a couple sleep studies mostly because I was curious. Not gonna do that experiment again with drinking, but it was quite clear. My whole sleep cycle looked horrible, totally fragmented and abnormal.

GMO, first of all let me say I'm thrilled to see that you are taking this whole sobriety business so seriously now. Way to go, my friend!

As for the disturbing dreams, like others say and you also experienced before, this is rather normal in early sobriety. What might make it more unsettling for you now compared with previous times is exactly that you are now really serious about this whole thing, are doing a lot of instrospection, out of denial, etc. All that naturally make the experience more intense and realistic. Dreams come from unconscious processes and if you are anything like me, it is quite likely that the guilty and shameful feelings you are having these days trigger the emotional content associated with your dreams even more. And of course the desire and craving is still there deep in the mind even if we don't have many cravings awake. I had the most bizarre alcohol / drinking dreams intermingling with all sorts of weird stuff in my dreams when I was freshly sober, sometimes even in half awake states, especially when I was stressed.

In my case, I tend to experience a very good correlation between guilt and nightmares, and there is a certain recurring content and pattern in them that I've been having since I was pretty young. So I usually kinda know what to make of those kinds of dreams... Working on my attitude and feelings in waking life truly helps, it basically almost always makes the bad dreams of that sort of pattern go away. What this means for me is taking actions in my waking life to sort out what's causing the guilt. I find that the action is what's really effective, more introspection and analysis does only so much -- the problem has to be resolved actively, not just analytically. It even worked in early sobriety for me pretty well.

Hang in there and keep up the awesome work