Drunk dreams/nightmares
 

I'm a few days passed 6-months now, and for about the last month I'm having dreams all the time where I'm drunk and feel horrible. When I wake up I'm terrified - these dreams are not fun. I will say though, I'm sleeping SO WELL and dreaming all the time now, something I never did when I was drinking.

Anyone else have these dreams? I can deal with them, just hope they go away at some point

I used to have them often, but as time goes by, they are less frequent. It gets better. :)

drinking dreams are very common Donny - most people get them at the beginning of recovery, but they can occur at any time.

I know it's hard not to be rattled by them but I chose to put no meaning to them - and I stayed sober :)

I used to dream of high school for years - now I dream about my first job - doesn't mean I want to go back there.

D

I had forgotten until I read this, but I had a dream about drinking last night too. I remember being ashamed of it even in my dream, and when I woke up I was so relieved to still be sober. Love Dee's point about dreaming about old things, but not wanting to go back there. Hope the dreams get better.

Yes, going back to high school naked or going to take a final for which you forgot to study all semester sound like bad ideas. Pretty sure I read that these are two of the most common dreams.

Had a few dreams about a week in, like I had been digging around in a cooler looking for a beer.

I had a drunk dream 4-5 days ago, and I woke up so disappointed in myself. It took me a few minutes to realize it was a dream. Like you, I’m sleeping really deeply these days and love it! I could do without the drinking dreams though.

Not just drinking dreams, but I am sure I sleep-walk. I actually get out of bed when I sleep and go outside. I am only about 60 percent sure I went out because I don't really know if it happened. Money and bank records tell the story.

The other 40 percent of the time, I am not sure because there is no financial records of me being in a bar at this time, yet they seem like real memories. Cash is still in my wallet. It's tough to be an alcoholic. I live in a big city and can walk to a hundred bars within 10 minutes probably....

I've had about 2-3 drinking dreams since last Summer. They can be unnerving for sure but it is nice to wake up and you final realize that this wasn't real and was only a dream!

I think dreams like the drinking one, or the exam or whatever reflect our anxiety about something. With you it's worry that you might relapse. That's a good sign as it shows you're really benefiting from sobriety and don't ever want to go back.

Yes I have them frequently and I'm 9months in. I had one last night, I was at my parents house and I was desperately trying to sneak into their booze cupboard (which is so full of every kind of alcohol). I managed to talk myself out of it in my dream though and that's the first time that's happened. Still feel unnerved when I wake up though so I know what you mean.

Me too! The first months I was sober, certainly the first 6, I went from very real feeling nightmares about drinking to very real feeling dreams of ALL kinds of stuff, and gradually to a much less frequent occurrence of drinking kinds. Occasionally they pop up and I've usually found it connected to some kind of emotional stress going on.

I take it all in stride, see if a morsel I remember of any dream makes me pause to think about something IRL, and lots of stuff has become silly or funny or weird, only.

Good job on being sober- keep going!

A guy in the rooms gives those dreams a positive spin when they come up by saying that if you had any desire to drink again you got to do it in your sleep and woke up sober, so keep moving on.

I used to get them. Disturbing as they are, I don't think they are a bad thing.

I do indeed have using dreams, mostly about those dirty cigs, but some about drinking too. I wake up with these phantom hangovers too. Our minds are so amazing. That all disturbed me at first but now that I know the hounds of hell aren't coming for me, I am fascinated. The dreams and the phantom feelings are surely our bodies' ways of healing and/or trying to trick us into using again. I think maybe both.

I don't know about drunk dreams, but I can confirm from personal experience and extensive research (though I'm not a doctor) that alcoholism makes rem sleep difficult if not impossible.

It wreaks havoc on our brain chemistry.

You just reminded me about my son and smoking. When he was a teenager I was terrified he'd take up smoking and used to dream about him sneaking cigs. I would tell him about about the dreams and he'd say of course I'm smoking, I'm just really good at hiding it from you.

Actually he never smoked, lol, and now he's 37 yo.

Less often, but still have drinking dreams after 19 months sober. The drinking dreams usually combine with other unpleasantness, like people from my past that I have bad feelings about.

Often, I'm trying to drink but unable to. For example, I need to sneak the alcohol but can't for one reason or another.

I forgot that early in sobriety I had generally unpleasant and disquieting dreams. That's faded, but not altogether.

As I have healed, I have went from faking it, being overly sensitive, to where I am now... appreciative of my health.

I strut through my sober life. It is cool.

Something that helped me mellow out was scary movies. Something about the stress of watching the scariest movie I can find makes me cool as a cucumber the next day.

Scary movies made me less nervous.

Thanks.

I haven't had any sense I quit. But I used to have them fairly often when I was still drinking. None of them were ever pleasant. They were always themed around fear of running out of alcohol. They would be those intense sort of dreams that you can vividly recall a week later.

I'd be somewhere with friends and we'd run out of alcohol and all of the stores would be closed. They were basically an addict's nightmare.

I had those at about 6-8 months of sobriety. Scary as hell. Gave me a lot of introspection though. Keep it up. They do go away.