Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Using Dreams

If anyone else out there is recovering from some addictive behavior, then you're probably already very familiar with using dreams. I hate them. When I first got clean in January 2003 and went into treatment, I had a using dream every night for 114 nights. I know this because I journaled about each and every one of them, filling in every piece of detail I could recall. In other words, I was driving myself crazy.
On the morning after night 115 when I didn't dream about using I thought, "that's it! It's over! I have to have a bank of only so many using dreams and my magic number was 114, so the bank is empty and now I'm safe." Then came night 120 and I was back at it: using again in my dreams.
Some of these dreams are SO powerful I have woken up and torn my apartment a part looking for a stash somewhere. Most often I was using in my own house, so there had to be a little "something" I'd hidden somewhere and had forgotten about in a glorious drug-induced haze. Of course there never was any hidden stash. I didn't use like that: I used whatever I had right NOW and would figure out how to get more later: after I was usually dope sick and out of my mind.
So I had a using dream last night. I was at a really big version of Summerfest in Milwaukee and met up with a couple of women my age who were hanging out and having fun with a bunch of resident doctors (the whole medical/doctor dreams are for another day, but that is a constant theme in my unconscious mind too.) Thankfully, none of these residents were the infamous Dr. Dick (not his real name, but fitting, which is a story for another day too.) So I had to give myself infusions of saline due to kidney failure and was getting my needles and IV lines from these residents. Then I saw these two women walk away by themselves and I asked one of the nurses where they were going and she answered, "To use stuff they shouldn't be using." Well those are magic words to any drug addict so I went up to them and one of them gave me a container like you would keep coffee, tea, or sugar in and I looked inside. Inside, of course, was beautiful, untouched, powdery heroin. I slammed the lid on the jar and flew (literally flew, up in the sky) away from them. I checked my pockets and had an IV set on me...then I woke up. I didn't use. I DIDN'T USE.
Sometimes my brain protects me from myself and this is one of those times. I woke up tweaky enough this morning; if I had actually used in my dream, I would likely be out of my mind right now running potential using options through my head until I calmed myself down. Now I'm a little jumpy, but I'm not obsessing about using or how to score. I'm doing something productive with that energy - writing my blog. After I'm done here I'll read my daily affirmations and probably put away the dishes and do other inane household duties that need to be done and I won't give it a second thought. That's the beauty of the brain protecting me and getting some clean time under my belt. The using thoughts flicker through every now and again, but then regular life seeps its way into my thoughts and my life and I go on. I go on for one more day clean.
Enjoy.

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