Drinking Nightmare, What Does It Mean?
 

I was feeling run down, hadn't slept well because of a tooth ache. Laid down and fell asleep and the booze dream hit the fan. In my dream I was at a table at home with wine bottles and vodka bottles all piled up and I was slugging them down while thinking, this is crazy what am I doing, I quit. My ex wife walked in (wasn't ex in the dream) and I panicked and tried to hide everything but was knocking over bottles and vodka and wine was everywhere. I felt so terrible 1) because I was drinking and 2) because I was being found out. I woke with pounding heart. It was reallky a nightmare I'm still shaken. Do others have these dreams? Not this one but drinking dreams, really disturbing like post alcohol alcohol anxiety disorder.

they're very common - there's a thread in another forum today about them today actually :)

I think it's natural that we dream about something that was part of our lives for so long - and I also think it's natural that our fears of going back there can play themselves out in our subconscious.

I know they're vivid and unsettling but they do become less intense and lessen in frequency.

I just treated them as dreams - I kept working on my recovery in my waking hours - everything turned out ok Fitz - hang in there :)

D

I have had one so far (22 days in). It was about the first time I started drinking back when I was 13 and went to a party with alcohol. It was pretty weird. Hang in there Like D Said, they seem to be pretty common.

I had them several times a week early in my sobriety. I still have them occasionally. They were so real and so disturbing, I'd wake up in a cold sweat with a pounding heart.......a few minutes later, when I realized that I hadn't relapsed, I was SO relieved!

I have them fairly often and I am only 3 1/2 months sober. I dont mind them though it feels to good to wake up and realize thats all it is a dream. :)

Yeah Fitz I also had loads of them, but as the others has said its great to realise upon waking that there only dreams

I've had these too, I heard it was your subconscious trying to process something your conscious mind has already dealt with.

It can be so alarming though. I've always had horrible dreams, but I think your conscious mind always picks out something and tries to make a big deal out of it. Try writing down everything you dreamt when you wake up, then maybe the drinking dreams will pale into insignificance ;) x

I'm only 11 days in and I have had them at least 5 times. Last night I was in an Off License (Liqour Store) and the 3 people in front of me were buying empty bottles of wine but I was buying 2 full, unopened ones - my Sister was in the corner of the shop pretending not to look disappointed and I was desperately trying to work out how I could switch our bottles so that I was buying the (safe) empty ones. Obviously the logic of walking out of the shop and not buying them doesn't apply in dreams, haha.

The relief was immense when I woke up and realised I hadn't bought any though :-)

I have drug and alcohol dreams, sometimes on a regular basis. They come and go, they don't really bother me.

If they bother you a lot there is something you can do. I've studied dreams quite a bit and have taught myself to recognize that I am dreaming, thus giving me full control of the events around me in the dream, it's called lucid dreaming.

The process involves identifying common dream signs, and using them as triggers to "wake yourself up" in the dream. The good news is for us in recovery, we have a very reliable dream sign to use as a trigger; alcohol.

This is what I do, when I see a trigger in real life, I ask myself am I dreaming? I test the world around me, look and examine everything, see if anything is out of the ordinary, and almost every time there will be things out of place in dreams, you just have to look. You will make such a habit of this that when the triggers show up in dreams, you will test reality and realize that you are dreaming.

After that you can do as you wish, you will be an active participant in your dream rather than a helpless bystander. It will feel strange the first several times and you will likely wake up from the shock of it, but that can be good because you won't have to live out the nightmare. Once you become more used to it you will be able to make it last longer and will be able to reject the alcohol and be the strong person that you want to be, then go outside and fly or do something extraordinary to celebrate, it is a dream after all...

I had a vivid dream in early recovery involving alcohol, a high school friend I wasn't close to, but we talk on facebook, my family, some huge party with strangers sitting at a looooong table of people outside in a park type setting, well, it was just crazy! Just a dream, it's just a dream.... ;)