Dreams
 

I've had 3 vivid dreams of drinking in the last month. When I wake up I'm panicked and ashamed. After I realize it was just a dream I have relief but still am having anxiety over the thought that I drank. Does anyone else have these dreams? I want them to stop. I'm right at 9 months sober.

I used to. Very very rarely get them now. Dreams are a way of releasing the sub-consciences mind, it is quite normal to have drinking dreams in recovery, nothing to worry about, it’s all part n parcel of recovery. Hopefully like me they will become less and less as you progress x

Right around anniversaries i get them a lot. A lot less than I used to, but even at 2 and a half years i still get them.

I remember right around a year for me was pretty brutal for dreams.

I have had them too- one really early, I think in the first 6 months, that I could tell you every detail about. I have a couple others I recall sort of, but they weren't scary traumatic like the first one or two. With time, I now just have weird funny or weird dreams like I did way before my drinking days. Nine months is awesome, and still so early for our brains to be processing sobriety and emotions and such.

Hang in there.

Hi lady! Glad to hear from you!

This is extremely common. I used to get smoking dreams years after I quit smoking. I’ve even had drinking dreams in my short lived sobriety.

I’ve seen similar posts about it and I’d wager there’s a ton of posts about dreams in the archives.

I wouldn't worry about them.

For me, they are a fact of life.

Beats having actual relapses.

They are disconcerting, but then you awake and everything is okay with no new sobriety date.

Frank Skinner the English comedian was a glass of Pernod in the morning drinker by the time he was in his late twenties. He often comments that he still dreams about drinking and wakes up guilty about it.

I dreamt of high school for a long time - didn;t mean I wanted to go back there :)

I think dreams are common - drinkings something I did a lot of. I don;t there was any wish fulfilment or subconscious desire in it for me, so nothing to feel guilty about IMO.

I had drinking dreams in early sobriety. The pattern was always the same: someone gives me a beer, I have a sip and then I panic – I shouldn't be doing this, I don't drink anymore. I always woke up relieved.

My drinking dreams disappeared after a couple of months of sobriety, but if you still have them after nine months of sobriety, there's nothing to worry about. They're just dreams.

YES!
They come in waves- very real, very dramatic- I even seem to have the sub-c thoughts in these dreams of how to get, maintain and resupply a'stash' of booze.
I wake feeling so bad...racing pulse, sweating....and slowly the realization it was a dream kicks in- and I can change the outcome of the dream...and that works.
They still suck..2,5y sober now- I think it is just a process brains need to go through.
Support to you.