Another aspect of dreams I’ve been having lately stems from the fact that I went on the wagon for a year in mid-December. I’m trying to see if I can go a year without drinking at all. I used to drink by myself when I was bored, or on weekends, just to get a buzz and sit back and enjoy movies. It was never a problem, but it was A) expensive and B) kind of disquieting. It wasn’t hard to imagine it going from chillaxing to something necessary to get through the day if it went on long enough. So I quit drinking at home last summer. Made it strictly a social thing.
Then I noticed I was really looking forward to the weekends… getting out with guys to heft a few. One day one of my friends baled at the last minute, and I recruited Larry, my roommate, to head out and go instead. He was game, but afterwards I started wondering if I was drinking to be with my friends, or going out with my friends to drink. Unrelatedly, and at about the same time, Larry mentioned that a bunch of his friends had just come off a year of self-imposed sobriety, and I started wondering if I could manage that myself. So, a week or so before Christmas, I just decided to give that a go myself.
We’re coming up on three months now during which time I haven’t touched a drop. Except in dreams. I can recall about a half dozen dreams so far (including one last night) – and who knows how many I don’t remember – in which I’m out with friends at a pub, and I order a beer or a mixed drink, and I’m two or three mouthfuls in before it dawns on me I’ve blown it. My dreams keep rapping me on the knuckles. I’ve been out with friends to pubs a dozen times since I went dry and, of course, I’ve never once made this mistake. I haven’t found it at all difficult (this is not to say I haven’t thought it would be really nice to have a drink or a beer or two from time to time, usually at the oddest times). And yet, for all that, I’m a miserable failure at even this simple and obvious task when it comes to my dreams. I must be masochistic or something.
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2 comments:
Such dreams likely speak to your anxiety over the alcohol and perhaps to a subjugated desire to drink anyway, and perhaps even to some shame over your past drinking.
That sounds good to me! :)
Yeah, I would imagine it's some part of my psyche beating me with a stick to keep on the path, sure. I'm likely going out "drinking" tomorrow, less the ethanol content, and I suppose it's a finger-wagging in advance of that. I just wish the pub managers who charge for refills of pop got the same drubbing for doing that. :D
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