DriGuy

I wonder if drunk dreams are our alcoholic voice in an act of desperation. I'm guessing both originate in the same place in our brains. The drunk dream is calling you back to a place of comfort and familiarity, but as recovery becomes more important, your reaction is quite different to dreaming you are drunk when you were a drunk.

Gottalife

I don't know about others but my dreams never took me to place of comfort. Instead they took me back to a place of terror, bewilderment and despair, the reality of drinking. Hence the relief on waking up sober. I never woke up wishing the dream was reality.

DriGuy

All I can observe from comments here is that drunk dreams seem to be common and similar to many alcoholics in recovery. Whether our AV is the cause and what it is trying to accomplish, I can't say.

They were terrifying for me also. I never drank in my dreams. They would begin with me noticing that I was drunk again, but with no ability to recall events leading to that state of consciousness. That was followed by disappointment and self loathing realizing I had slipped without understanding why. My emotions would then begin to escalate. Anger, loathing, and helplessness would grow into terror. Mostly, this was due to the fact that I could not remember slipping, and I was not even present in that part of the dream. How could I stay sober if I could not be there to take preventative action?

In fact, this very closely reflected my scary fantasies when I was not sleeping. While I knew it was absurd, I imagined being so powerless over alcohol that I might start drinking without even realizing it. A worst case scenario would be like a power overtaking my arm as would happen to Dr. Strangelove, who in the film was possessed by a Nazi demon that forced him to do the Heil Hitler Salute, only my demon would force liquor into my mouth.

Eventually, I rejected the literal metaphor of alcohol as cunning baffling and powerful. It has no such sentient properties. I also rejected the literal metaphor that I was powerless over alcohol, and that this is a false belief when taken literally. No one was responsible for my consumption of alcohol other than myself, and no one was going to stop me from practicing such behavior other than myself. I eventually accepted that these metaphors have no literal truth, although they do describe our seemingly hopeless situation through the use of exaggeration.

I don't know if these insights stopped the dreams, or if the dreams led me to a better look at reality. In hindsight, they were just dreams from a mind in the process of sorting or unscrambling or whatever it is our minds to. I don't miss the dreams.