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I haven’t had many drunk dreams in my sober time. I’d say maybe 10, total—about once every year or so. It’s not a normal part of my life. But I had one the other day.
I used to investigate them to try to figure out if something was a little off in my program, or if I had been in a bar or party setting that triggered something deep within me. I never did find a forensic trail to why I dreamt of relapsing, and so I landed on the idea that I don’t know and that it doesn’t really matter. I’m a recovering drunk, so maybe once in a while I’m going to dream about getting drunk.
What always sticks with me, though, isn’t the actual pills and beer from the dream. It’s the lying. It’s how easily I dive right back into the old lifestyle of just flat-out lying to people. In my most recent dream, I got a bunch of pills and alcohol and disappeared for an entire afternoon. My work colleagues were looking for me. My family was looking for me. Sober friends were calling me.
And in my dream, I just came up with a wild excuse about a car accident blocking off the highway, and I threw in all these little details about the car being on fire and how the lousy local fire department couldn’t get their s**t together to put the fire out. I even showed some people a picture of a burnt-up car—I actually have one in my phone from seeing a burnt-up car from a year or two ago.
Think about that for a second. My brain immediately went into hyperdrive to cover my ass with lies and head shakes and sighs… and even was willing to bust on some poor first responders!
That was the scary part. When I woke up in the morning, it took me a minute to remember it was a dream, that I didn’t actually relapse, because my mind did such a good job of creating this fairytale that even I believed it for 30 seconds.
Like I said, I’ve never been able to connect the dots between my drunk dream and what inspired me to think about relapsing. But I will tell you that I do still have to be on guard for my mind to start wanting to tell tiny little lies to either impress people or cover my ass on something. Perhaps I fibbed to somebody earlier that day and felt guilty?
I still remember about three years ago, when I had 10 years sober, I was talking to a guy who had been a good Division I wrestler. I had been an okay high school wrestler and could have maybe gotten some scholarship money to go to a Division III school and wrestle, but I wanted to go to a big party school, where I wasn’t nearly good enough to try to walk on with the team.
But in that conversation with the really good college wrestler, he said, “Did you wrestle Division I?”
And I said, “Yes, I did. I wrestled Division I.”
I just flat-out lied. I felt insecure about my own accomplishments and reached right back onto the b******t shelf and pulled that one down for immediate use. I didn’t even have to think about it, and it was convincing when I said it. I’m not going to lie and say I corrected myself during that conversation, but I did recognize right away that I need to be really careful with my ability to spew lies. Because that muscle is still in there, and it’s pretty strong, even if I don’t drink or drug any more.
I think for me the only answer is to constantly be plugged into meetings and a spiritual program of recovery. I think if I ever drifted and got down to one meeting every week or so and stopped calling sober people every day, one of the first things that would come back in my life—honestly, probably before I actually pick up a drink or drug—is that I would start being full of s**t.
It might not start out as blatant lies, but I think I’d be sugarcoating things, stretching the truth, maybe telling the truth but not the WHOLE truth… and then I think my radar for lying would disappear. That is not a good outcome, even without a relapse.
So I will be working very hard try to keep my Pinocchio radar as highly effective as possible!
In case you missed it, I put together a fun mini comedy special about my 10 favorite addiction/sobriety jokes. Check it out HERE! (It’s behind a paywall)
This newsletter is a place of joy and laughter about the deadly serious business of sobriety. So, as I will often do, let me close with a joke:
A newcomer: “I tried to drown my sorrows—until I realized they knew how to swim.”
(Credit: AA Grapevine, July 2006, from Judy and Lou L. of Worcester, Massachusetts)
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