I was going through and trying to fix some broken links in the archives and ran across this favorite from 2-1/2 years back. Figured I’d finish up with the site maintenance and use this for my update tonight. Take care and have a great and sober weekend!
Last night I killed someone while driving drunk. I had to flee, move away to avoid prosecution. I told everyone that my company had asked me to work overseas on an emergency project; I thought it was a good cover story. I had already forfeited my sobriety and life as I knew it, so of course there was no reason to stop drinking. I got a hotel in a town down further south that had a fab shop I had done a little business with in the past, shady business. I stayed in a hotel with cash obtained from a car title loan.
I figured I would drink myself to death, but unfortunately I just drank myself thirsty. Not real continuity or sense here, I found myself with a shopping car full of electric motors and five gallon bucket of paint that I tried to get twenty bucks for at the fab shop- they gave me ten. So I broke in later to make up the difference they owed. I used what little cash I had pretending I had money at bar, did so good I impressed another barfly so much she took me home.
Yea it was a drunk dream and no I didn’t quit before I got to the juicy part, in fact I skipped the part where I was beat unmercifully. Not quite sure how that happened because I woke up (momentarily depressed, scared, and shamed), but I can tell you with absolute conviction there was nothing juicy or enjoyable about this nightmare.
These dreams used to occur often in my early sobriety although they have become a rare event these days. They are still very powerful… as a reminder, a reminder of my past and what would be my future without recovery. I know of people who have relapsed after decades of sobriety. How this could happen after such a long period seems unexplainable, unless of course you asked me right after I woke up this morning.
Things like this are a great reminder that I still have those destructive tendencies; they have just been filed away. The alcoholic rut still exists in my brain just waiting for me to slip back into the old patterns. I may have sorted out a new life, but all it would take is one drink to take me back to where the filed things are.
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Thanks for the post! I had an awful drinking dream the other night, and woke up scared. Our disease is just lying in wait. Guess that’s my brain reminding me to not get complacent. When that happens to me, I go to a meeting as soon as possible.
THanks!
Your subconscious knew that you needed a bit of a reminder about where you came from. Sometimes we can get this attitude that there is no way that we would ever use again. Then your brain says “oh really?…Take a look at this.”
Consider yourself reminded.
it wasn’t the dream itself that suprised me, it was that during the dream I found myself “thinking like an alcoholic”… rationalization and defeatism at its best.