Mags1

this is the fifth night in a row I dreamt I'm back to drinking, sneakily. I never have a drink in my hand but I've either drank and trying to hide being drunk or going to buy drink and planning hiding it, what the?

One of the dreams really shocked me, I was drunk, no one knew and I had to move a road gritters lorry at work, I don't drive these in real time. Anyway I reversed it and run over a child and I worried I wasn't going home that night but going to prison. No feelings for the child in my dream, that is not like me at all in real life.

I planned I'd lie to people about drinking and people from my past, way back, are in my dreams, I feel like I'm going through some sort of transition period.

By the way, I'm not thinking of booze in the day or having any cravings, and am ok with myself at this moment in time.

I expect the odd dream of drinking now and again but this seems extreme.

I've posted on other threads that we all have dreams of drinking, not blasé, but as if it's the norm.

Then again I'm getting to know me since I stopped drinking. I've never been me, I've been my mothers daughter, my ex husbands wife, and my present husbands (20 years) wife. So who am I, sometimes I like me sometimes I don't want yo be me.

Thanks for letting me ramble on. Mags xx

LBrain

Hi Mags1 (pssssst, I think you're a tiger). Our self-esteem takes a big hit when we have lived inside a bottle for so long. We forget who we are. So we become what we think we are supposed to be. We are chameleons. All we want to do is fit in. We may not even realize we are doing it. Suddenly we are faced with ourselves, who we really are. Someone we haven't seen or got to know in a very long time. We may not know how to react. To ourselves or to others. Look in the mirror and say glad to meet me to the tiger in the glass.

Your dream? It sounded like a very good recovery dream to me.

EndGameNYC

Both the driver of the lorry and the child were incapable of influencing the consequences of a poor decision. You "reversed it" and "ran over a child (an innocent child)" which caused you to fear that you'd be "going to prison." But you were helpless to "reverse" the outcome. Shifting to reverse is sliding back into alcoholism despite all the potential consequences that play out in your dream. I'll bet that you shifted into reverse without much thought...it may have seemed perfectly natural at the time, or was simply not a conscious thought while you were doing it.

Having "no feelings" for the child in your dream is analogous to becoming indifferent to sobriety, that innocent and pristine part of you, a place of goodness, that you're in touch with in your waking life. As a result of your poor decision in the dream, that part of you is now damaged, and even that makes no difference to you.

The fact that "no one knew" you were drunk was insufficient in protecting you from unwanted consequences. Essentially, no one knew until it was too late. It may even represent a wish that others did know in the dream, but you brought that about in a very maladaptive way. Keeping our drinking a secret is not without consequences.

Drinking tends not to bring out the best in us, even when we convince ourselves that we're the life of the party, unparalleled lovers or creative geniuses when we're drinking. The struggle between who we are and who we can become, or have been, is not always obvious while we're awake, but never completely leaves us.

The dream doesn't necessarily mean that part of you wants to drink or that you intend to drink. It only stages your (our) inner turmoil in a symbolic way that nicely captures the conflict.

Mags1

Hi Brain, thanks for your insight. I think I realised that my self esteem is at it's lowest and also the bottle gave me the confidence, I thought, to face up to anything in life.
I am going through the lessons on mood gym on the internet, hopefully I will find myself.

Thanks again. Mags (the tiger) lol

Mags1

Hi EndGameNYC

Thank you for your explanation of my dream. Explained as you have makes it understandable how my inner turmoil, which I keep inside except when I vent here on sr, came out in that sort of dream.

If some memories come to mind sometimes, as they do, I find it hard to forgive myself how I behaved as a drunk. I know I cannot change the past, it's gone, but, it can't stop the memories crawl in my head, sometimes.

Thanks again, it's good to be able to understand that what's going on in my dreams is natural as part of my inner conflict.

Lovenjoy

Hi Mags - i'm glad your not thinking of drinking or having cravings, that's really good! and making note of that after such an intense drinking dream would have been the first thing i did also.

in my experience having drinking dreams seemed to be another part of the healing and growth process. some of my fears and shame and blame would manifest in my dreams and whether or not i could consciously find meaning in them i truly believe they were an indication of my sobriety becoming stronger.

i didn't know this at the time. they happened often and graphically in early recovery and were very unsettling. at the time i took them as a reminder to stay strong and serious about my recovery work, and i did! i don't have drinking dreams hardly at all now and they are not usually very intense. the fact that i am now long time sober is why i can look back and see that they probably were an indication of healthy recovery work happening in my sleep! so maybe a good thing?!

i may not have drinking dreams often anymore but when i have them i have the exact same reaction today that i did in early recovery. work the program lady or lose it! (talking to myself here!)

stay strong Mags, you're doing awesome! paying attention to those dreams is a good thing, reminds us what joy there is in real life sober!

EndGameNYC

Hi Mags.

I'm happy to know you got something out of my associations to your dream, but it's just one interpretation, and one that says as much about me, or more, than about you. What the dream means to you is what's important, though I do see a lot of what RobbyRobot calls "addiction ambivalence." (Or is it "recovery ambivalence?") I believe this is a reliable and ongoing theme in recovery, and Robby describes it extremely well.

I learned that letting go of my past was a process that unfolded while I was working to achieve sobriety. We never completely "get over it," but sometimes "forgetting" is a healthy thing. If all goes well, our regrets find their appropriate place within our healthier selves, ultimately allowing us to move forward.

Hurting myself, hurting other people, is demoralizing and destructive, and doesn't allow my better self to breathe. The struggle, I think, lies within our ability and our willingness to learn from our suffering which, in turn, gives meaning to our pain. Although most of my alcohol-related suffering was unnecessary and perhaps also avoidable under different circumstances, I would be in a very dark place if my response to it were nothing other than indifference.

MIRecovery

Drinking dreams are God's way of reminding us we are still alcoholics

Mags1

Thanks Lovenjoy, the dreams were so real I'm not sure when I first wake up if it were true or not then a flood of relief came over me, I think it's because I had five consecutive nights dreaming about drinking.

I hope it is part of my recovering, although I should imagine everything we do sober is the road to recovery.

Mags1

Hi EndGame, I love dreaming, they are so vivid and I used to wake up and tell my husband about them whilst getting ready for work in a morning, needless to say he wasn't interested and said it was cos I drank.

But I remember my dreams from an early age till now, they are always in colour, so with stopping drinking I imagine it's no big surprise really to dream of drinking.

I agree, we can beat ourselves up over the past and letting go is a biggie for me, I'm sure I will get there eventually.

Thanks again.

Mags1

Hi MIRecovery, do we ever forget that we are alcoholics, I suppose as time goes on and we grow with confidence it can slip to the back of our mind.

It's always good to have a reminder, thanks.

Aellyce

Hi Mags, I love dreams, too! I've been a very active and vivid dreamer in my whole life.
I often tend to think that all these drinking dreams many of us tend to have especially in the earlier stages of sobriety are less related to our fears of relapse or past alcohol abuse per se, and more represent mental associations on deeper levels and the mind uses drinking as a metaphor. For this reason (if I'm not completely incorrect), it's hard to find universal meaning in drinking dreams.

Also, I always like to take into consideration the day after which I had a particular dream when I want to interpret, the events of that day and even more importantly, my emotional state on that day. This is because in a large part dreams are generated from memory fragments, it's subjective information processing - both long term and shorter term. In my case I find a lot more meaning and useful information in my dreams considering when I have them, what happened on that day, how I was feeling, etc. Of course that's not all, but it helps me figure them out.

If you are a fan of dreaming, I would really recommend lucid dreaming to you. There is tons of good info online. Some people have natural tendency to have conscious dreams occasionally (I'm one, got interested because I'd had spontaneous ones since childhood) but we can train ourselves to develop and master the skill using a variety of techniques. I've been interested in this for many years now and can't get bored - it's such a fantastic mental adventure stepping into these totally harmless, drug-free "alternate dimensions" - which are of course the depth of our very personal realities.

Some people like to use conscious dream control to cope with recurring nightmares also. I think lucid dreams can be some of the most exciting introspective exercises and just simply fascinating experiences without many of the constraints of the waking world. I think my lucid dreams also taught me to approach my waking life with less fear and more faith that much more is possible in life than we usually dare to think. I've gotten really a lot out of these nocturnal musings.

MIRecovery

I don't know that you ever forget but the longer you are sober the more it fades into the background. A real drinking dream is always a good reality check for me