Are you remembering experiences from your childhood?
 

More and more frequently, I am intensely but vaguely remembering memories from my childhood. I'm talking like 7 or 8 or 9 years old. Surprisingly (to me at least) it seems like this happens most often when I randomly happen to smell certain scents.

The memories are usually painless, harmless ones. I was in the library today, and a smell reminded me of my elementary school cafeteria (weird, huh?). Actually, I often find it hard to place precisely what the memory is. I just have a certain sensation that feels familiar from years and years ago.

Every now and then, memories will surface that make me angry or upset, but I'm well aware that this is part of the healing process. Hell, I was drinking to begin with to not feel those thoughts. Naturally, I didn't have these sorts of experiences AT ALL when I was drinking.

Can ya dig?

I do it too, I think we all do. The brain stores memories through the sense of smell easily. Especially early childhood memories. It's pretty cool, isn't it?

Drinking dulls the senses... I couldn't smell easily toward the end of my drinking career. People thought it was weird when they smelled things and I had to really sniff to try to smell it. :)

I think that memories are stored forever, and the emotional ways we were affected at the time stay in the 'sense memory', they can be triggered now and then by certain things and we become conscious of them again. You're right, I think that it is part of the healing process to have the 'flashbacks' sometimes. Somebody told me that these things usually only come back into our thinking consciousness when we are ready to process them. There's no chance of that happening when we are just numbing with chemicals.

Some people don't want the memories though because they are suffering from PTSD, there are some good CBT techniques for dealing with these things though, usually mindfulness and learning to 'stay in the moment' and recognize that there is no real present danger. It is worth seeing an expert in the field if it is a problem in sobriety.

Related to this, I live in the same city where I went to college. About a month ago I walked around an entire day to all the places I used to hang out in college, including apartment complexes (not actually walking inside the apartments, of course). It was a very powerful experience. It is strange re-visiting places where I had very emotional experiences. I would see people and think they were people that I used to know, but of course they weren't. It was good to confront those ghosts.

I'm glad someone else posted this - I have the same thing...Usually, it is triggered by music for me. A Journey song came on last night, and it immediately took me back to a school dance from Junior High...I really enjoy it when this happens, as I seem to recall having a pretty decent childhood....It makes me realize exactly how much I was avoiding and depriving myself of while I was drinking....

Going on 8 months now.....Still love lurking around on here and occasionally posting. It is always nice to hear others sharing similar experiences while we keep at this.....

Good to see you again musicman66 :)

D