Early Sobriety: nightmares turning into weird dreams??
 

For those that suffered withdrawals in the beginning, especially the insomnia, and when you did doze off, you jerked awake from a horrible nightmare.... when did the nightmares end and not-so-bad dreams begin? I had the craziest and bizarre dream last night that still has me shaking my head.

For me they started pretty much right away but went away after a week or two, notch?

D

Hi, Notch. With me the sweats and the dreams ran together. Once the sweating stopped - about a week to 10 days in - the dreams went as well. Every time I went off the booze. I still had dreams a couple of months in, and even now, after a 100 days+ I sometimes have them, but seldom and not half as bad, and there's no sweating with them...

The insomnia and nightmares ended the night after I took step 5 and got all the skeletons out of the closet.

Our bodies/brains hate it when they're used to getting the alcohol we've trained them to need and crave and suddenly they can't have it. They'll throw anything and the kitchen sink at you to try to distract you and unsettle you. I found a mindset of "When will this new madness end?" to be less helpful than thinking "I can take anything that comes up and still stay sober and sane, and long-term things will get infinitely better overall. This is the only way to go."

My early days (first 2 or 3 weeks) featured really bad insomnia, along with assorted other horrors like nonstop itching. I'd say the worst of the physical stuff lasted around a month or so, but the thing that worked for me to focus on was just staying sober for today. Some of those famous cliches are really true hahaha!