Hungover

I'm on day 412 since I quit harming myself with alcohol. And I still have booze dreams.

Usually they're dreams where I find a bottle I'd hidden an forgotten about and decide to try a sip (or not, in some dreams I'm only tempted). Or, in the dream, I'm intoxicated and trying not to be found out.

This one was a little different. In the dream, I kept finding out myself that I'd relapsed. I had my own apartment in New York City, and there were bars I frequented as a tourist, non-drinker. Just like I do in real life, go to the open jam at the Pour House and suck down a few club sodas. It really doesn't even bother me anymore, and it's probably good to see how obnoxious some of my friends are when they get a little drunk, when you're keeping up you can't see it because you've gone idiot yourself.

In the dream where I was on the scene in New York, though, I kept getting found out as having relapsed and was surprised myself, like I drank those drinks unaware there was alcohol in them. Except was I really unaware or just in denial? It seems like that was unclear, but in any case I was drunk and being sent to the hospital to dry up, probably get a few units of blood (in real life, my own drinking rock bottom included a couple of hospital stays for alcohol induced anemia that required transfusions other save my life).

Somehow there was a job involved, and I worked for a guy I worked for many years ago, or the company that I worked for him at anyway. I had to keep the relapse and hospitalization secret from my employer. So there was an added stress.

Then I found myself in a homeless camp, where I belong with the other hopeless addicts. But they wouldn't accept me, threw garbage and their stew leftovers at me. They were enraged that I had sobered up so well and then thrown it away.

There was a Catholic priest who ran one of the bars I frequented who seemed to be helpful, but I still ended up in that hobo jungle. One of the winos in the jungle beat me up with a couple of decanters of whiskey, he cut himself as well as me in the process of that, and again, his rage was with me for blowing it when I had it made. The problem wasn't that I was at his level, it was that I had gotten there of my own volition, not due to unfortunate circumstances beyond my control.

All my booze dreams are unsettling, but this one reached full blown nightmare scale, I awakened with a lot of genuine adrenaline flowing.