"YOU CAN HAVE DRUNK DREAMS SOBER, BUT YOU CAN'T HAVE SOBER DREAMS DRUNK"

"He has to relive his past sober to forgive his past drunk." - All Drinking Aside, p. 43.

Once, when I was about 3 years and a few months sober, I had a drunk dream that was so vivid that I broke out in a drunken sweat. Stumbling to the bathroom, I careened off the walls in the hallway like a pinball, nearly falling. 

Needless to say, sometimes these drunk dreams are so real that it takes time to comfort myself. Like a mother to a child, I say to myself "It's okay, Jim. It was only a dream."

The Great Houdini, world-renowned magician, had promised his wife that should he die first, he would attempt to communicate with her from the Other Side. He even created a code for her that would prove his success. 

He failed in his promise, but I have not failed, we have not failed, we, the living who have survived the many nightmares of addiction, who have survived to tell the tale, who dream in personal nightmares, who live in proof that addiction is still alive, still existent long after it has dissipated from our physical being, walking, we dead, the dead reborn, walking, drunken, careening down hallways, struggling to awaken, please, please, please wake us up.

The previous run-on sentence is my failed attempt to show how dreams, drunk or sober, are their own state of being.

lol

OR NOT, drunk dreams seem very real. Are very real.

"He has to relive his past sober to forgive his past drunk."

Use them as a tool, a lesson in living sober. Do not live the dream. That nightmare is over. 

Breathe deeply.

You are not submerged in alcohol, like Houdini, chained and locked in a box dropped into the Hudson River.

Like Houdini, you can and have escaped the chains. Holding your breath, you rise to the surface, free of these chains.

Exhale.

You have found this sober air.

You have survived. No need to repeat the magic trick.

Breathe in.

Breathe out.

That Drunk Dream is DONE!

*****

#Enjoy my first book, the Autobiographical Fiction titled ALL DRINKING ASIDE: The Destruction, Deconstruction & Reconstruction of an Alcoholic Animal. Find it on Amazon. Book it here:  http://amzn.to/1bX6JyO 

My NEW, Non-Fiction, BECOMING UNBROKEN: Reflections on Addiction and Recovery, is also on Amazon and may be found here: https://lnkd.in/dkF767RT 

Both books are available in Print and Kindle editions.

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