Drinking dreams
For the first few weeks I was sober, I had frequent drinking dreams. They were very mellow, and in them, I mostly found myself in social situations. I didn’t have any particular feelings about them upon waking. Then my dreams changed; instead of drinking, I became that really nice person who takes care of her drunk friends at the end of the night (during my drinking days, I was never that person, I was waaaaay too drunk by closing time to be her). These actually made me feel pretty good, as if something in my psyche had changed and I no longer viewed myself as a drinker. Then I just stopped dreaming about drinking situations completely.
Well, not completely. Just until a couple of weeks ago. That’s when I had my first “feel bad about it” drinking dream, and it was awful. It was a dream so intense that I woke up feeling as if I really had gotten drunk. After several minutes, I woke all the way up and realized that it had thankfully just been a dream.
Last night I had another such dream. In it, I was sitting in a bar by myself, with some sort of clear mixed drink in a high ball on the counter in front of me. I don’t think my dream actually involved me ingesting the libation, instead it focused on right before and right after. Before I drank it, I was thinking about having just celebrated 90 days of sobriety, and if I really wanted to drink it. Which, incidentally, I did. After consuming it, I felt awful because I realized I had just thrown away those 90 days. What followed was a very intense internal dialogue about whether or not I’d tell anyone I’d just relapsed. Should I declare that I’d slipped up and change my sobriety date or just pretend that it never happened and move on?
My good friend J says that she had dreams like this when she quit smoking. She’d smoke and smoke and smoke, and then suddenly become aware that she’d quit. When she woke up, she felt grateful that it had only been a dream and go through the rest of her day being so happy she wasn’t a smoker. She shared this with me when I told her about my first really intense drinking dream, and gave me her opinion that dreams like this are your subconscious rooting for you. What?? “I woke up feel so beyond awful, like I’d done something terribly wrong. Even though I knew it wasn’t real, I was shaken all day.” How could that possibly be my subconscious telling me it’s on my side? ”Think about how awful you felt relapsing. You don’t have to really do it to know how it would make you feel now.” Oh. Hmm, yes, that makes a lot of sense.
Last night’s dream was on my mind throughout much of today, but fortunately this time I was able to frame it in J’s terms. One of the things that has thus far kept my sober is the thought of having to tell everyone that I’d relapsed. When you quit drinking, everyone is so happy and relieved. They believe in you and encourage you. I very much imagine that instead of such a response rarely comes when you relapse and then get back on the proverbial wagon. In my dream, I experienced what it was like to relapse, and the anguish it caused me. It’s enough, for now, to remind me that sober is what I want to be.
