Withdrawal Dreams

[entropy]

The most vivid, intense, meaningful and powerful dreams I've had were during the early stages of withdrawal. The stage where you are sick but still able to sleep without waking up every few minutes. i.e., 12 hours after last dose, going to bed knowing tomorrow you'll be waking up sick. The dreams that happen the night before.

Last night I had dreams that were so full of deep imagery and meaning, it blew my mind. Very dark, dystopian scifi future stuff. I dreamt I came down with an alien disease that morphed my body grotesquely and gave me amphibian-like features. My skin changed color, the structure of my face and body morphed, and I had these disgusting black and green splotches with thick black hair growing out all over my body. I was being treated in this fucked up scifi hospital with other people like me who had varying stages of the disease, and in the dream I had to come to terms with the fact that I would forever be disfigured in this way, and forever be a societal outcast. The dream revolved around experiences at this "hospital", and generally feeling like I was literally in another real fucking world.

When I'm about to withdrawal, I always have dreams like this that blow my mind. In some ways, these dreams are pleasant. But, they are also very unsettling.

Upon waking up from this particular dream, I immediately related it to my addiction to opiates. I mean, I do not look healthy. In some ways, I have disfigured my body. This condition does cause me to be a societal outcast in many ways. and obviously, my health suffers. It immediately made me think... "is it always going to be this way?" and "wow, this is so fucked up." It was as though the dream was some sort of cosmic/karmic reinterpretation of my current life, in some alternate reality.

I'm sure this dream doesn't sound too profound or fucked up. The intensely vivid imagery is what made it so profound to me. The dream was indistinguishable from reality.

Does anyone else have these "withdrawal dreams?" I'd be interested to know, because I haven't seen any threads here about it, and it's something that I have noticed and come to love/hate.

[Doublewire]

I stopped vaporizing weed (from being a very heavy 1-3 times a day user) several weeks ago and had extraordinarily vivid dreams for quite some time. I think it's still going on, actually, but perhaps not to the degree that it was before.

[entropy]

I stopped vaporizing weed (from being a very heavy 1-3 times a day user) several weeks ago and had extraordinarily vivid dreams for quite some time. I think it's still going on, actually, but perhaps not to the degree that it was before.

I had the same thing when I quit smoking weed. Though I will say it was not as intense as opiate withdrawal dreams. Early stage methadone withdrawal gave me the most intense dreams ever in my life.

BTW -- awesome signature. I love that song by Arcade Fire.

Living in the sprawl, dead shopping malls rise
Like mountains beyond mountains
And there's no end in sight
I need the darkness, someone please cut the lights

[Smaxie]

I can not sleep at all once I come down from that last dose, so I have no idea about withdrawl dreams. I thought this was going to be about those dreams where after you have stopped using for a while, maybe while still on maintainance, and you dream you are tearing the house apart, going wherever, doing whatever you have to to find some drugs, then just when you are pushing that plunger in, awake! Arrrrgh.

I dream everytime I fall asleep, but they are very realistic dreams of things and people that are familiar to me. Except for sometimes dreaming about places I have never been, then after dreaming of it once, returning there several times later in subsequent dreams.

[Matt]

I get the ugly withdrawal dreams and I hate it. They're not too bad, it's just my minds' way of laughing at me I guess. It only happens when I haven't dosed for too long or enough before going to sleep so this is when the withdrawal is beginning and I have dreams about doing dope, having dope, seeing people who have dope, etc
This only happens when I know I'm not going to be able to get well right away when I wake up, and maybe even not at all depending on my luck during the day.
The subconscious is a very powerful thing in influencing the content of your dreams
Of course when I have dope and have dope for the morning, and I go to sleep sufficiently high/satiated, I'm not thinking or worrying about not having dope but when there's nothing of course I'm just thinking about how I'm gonna be fucked and feeling like shit when I wake up so my dreams are always about heroin.

[smokey]

The craziest/most realistic dream ive had in the state of early withdraw was in a detox facility. It was one of my first nights there, and they gave me a dose of trazadone among other pills for sleep. The dream started like this; i opened my eyes, and i am lying in bed at the detox facility. I decided i can sneak out, get high and come back in without anyone knowing what happened. So i get out of bed, get dressed and open my door very quietly. I exit the room, and go to the outside smoking area, being as quiet as possible. (There are a lot of cameras keeping an eye on every angle of the smoking area) I get to the first barrier, a tall metal wall. I jump the wall, and get to the second barrier, a large wooden wall, i jump that as well.

So i am on the outside, about 1 and a half - 2 hours from where i need to be(with car). I have absolutely no cash, phone, nothing. I remember that i have a check waiting for me at work, and a little cash stashed by the house. I get a taxi and tell him to drive me home. I get there put my hand in my pocket, and find exactly enough money for the cab ride, and the keys to my car which is in the driveway. I get into my car, and drive to work to get the rest of my money to hook dope with. Mind you, it is very late at night.

I get in the car, drive to work, pick up my check. While im walking back to my car my check turns into cash, and i spot my connect in the parking lot near my car. (gotta love dreams) I hook up a fat sack, get back into my car and get loaded. I kick it in the parking lot for a good couple hours, then decide i should be getting back before i get burned. I make the drive out there, the whole time thinking this is perfect, now every time i want to bounce again my ride will be outside the door.

I get back to the facility, decide i don't feel like hopping walls, and ill walk in through the front door like a G. I get in, somehow, and get spotted by a nurse, or someone on duty at the time. They are speed walking towards me, with a nasty look on their face, and i think FUCKKK IMA GET KICKED OUT, AND EVERYTHING IS GOING TO BE FUCKED ALONG WITH MY PLANS.

I open my eyes, and BAM I see the dirty curtains in front of my bed, and realize IT WAS ALL A DREAM.

[Badly Drawn Girl]

My wd dreams always feature me desperately trying to get high and running into obstacle after obstacle. They are incredibly vivid dreams. My most disturbing one featured me dragging my younger son around various crackhouses until I finally scored. Then we were in the backseat of a car that was being driven by a chick and her friend, and all of a sudden my son had a glass pipe in his mouth, a lighter in his hand and he was inhaling! I remember being so freaked out and convincing myself that he couldn't really inhale it properly.

Although it's exhausting to spend my night chasing after drugs, the worst dreams are my relapse dreams. When I actually use in a dream, I wake up with terrible feeling of shame. And I cannot shake it for the whole day. It's like my brain has actually relapsed and no matter how much I intellectually KNOW that I am still sober, my brain still reacts as if I used. In the beginning of my sobriety, I would be dreaming that I was using, wake up thinking I had something in the house and then I would burst into tears when I remembered I was sober. That shit SUCKED

[entropy]

I HATE dreams about using.

Something always happens that prevents me from actually using whatever I have in the dream. I've had dreams where I found huge bags of dilaudid and methadone, but ended up losing the bags. I have had dreams where I managed to score dope, but was unable to get a pharmacy to sell me needles and the hunt for needles went on for a long time before I finally just woke up, still feeling anxious and unsatisfied because I never got to do the dope.

These dreams are torturous. I don't have them too often now. I had them most often AFTER I went through withdrawal and was in PAWS. Literally, dreams of dope plagued me for months when I was clean.

[dioxyhyrdoheroin]

I HATE dreams about using.

Something always happens that prevents me from actually using whatever I have in the dream. I've had dreams where I found huge bags of dilaudid and methadone, but ended up losing the bags. I have had dreams where I managed to score dope, but was unable to get a pharmacy to sell me needles and the hunt for needles went on for a long time before I finally just woke up, still feeling anxious and unsatisfied because I never got to do the dope.

These dreams are torturous. I don't have them too often now. I had them most often AFTER I went through withdrawal and was in PAWS. Literally, dreams of dope plagued me for months when I was clean.

WOW this resonated with me ALOT. i was at this rehab called high watch in kent ct for four months, whenever i wanted i had the option of taking "the cocktail" as i referred to it as with the medicating nurse on duty, it consisted of 100 mg trazadone 75 mg Vistaril and 100 mg seroquel the only thing i had to see the doc once for was the quel, which i took every night but if i was hankering for some fucked up dreams or at least a really dissociated feeling for a half before i passed the fuck out. i could stay up and eat my face on the quel everynight but if i tried to talk i would be slurring my words and passed the fuck out. but this fuckin rehab was handin out 100 mg traz nd 75 vistaril to whomever asked for it without a script, it was like getting high but really shitty and taken for rehab granted. anyway the dreams i had whilst clean of all substances (aside from this retarded array of substances this supposedly classical AA getaway was supplying me with) were some of the most fucked up dreams i would never want to experience again, always tortorous.. either about trying to get drugs and failing or having drugs and waking before doing (FUCK!) but occaisonally i would get REALLY fucking weird dreams that would be an introspective journey through my psyche and a culmination of everything horrible ive ever experienced in my life manifesting it self in the shape of whatever saw fit to scare me most. one time i awoke before my body {sleep paralysis} and i was trying to scream out as i was being tortured by spirits in my bed but could not even move my lips but could see all of this happening to me through my own eyes and above myself at the same time. something about not having weed or opiates in your system makes your dreams go all fucking whacky, trazadone just adds to the mess.
FCK SOBA DREAMS

[Opiofiend]

I havent, praise be the gods, had to experience wd in years and years so cant talk to that, but I have had crazy dreams that seemed vivid and real about pills. The settings are always different, but each time I have the dream I keep finding pills scattered in different places and I would take them and stash them in my pockets. By the end of the dream I would have dozens if not hundreds of pills in my pockets of all types. It usually ends with me worrying about losing them either to cops, or falling out while I was running from something. Its crazy how vivid and real it seems and sometimes even dream about specific pills, such as the ole school OCS. Just thought Id add my $.02 worth of experiences

[normus420]

I cant sleep while in opiate wd but when im close to wd or in the very early stages I get wet dreams and I never get those when im not in wd. on a similar topic, I had my first taste of mild benzo wd a couple weeks ago and lemme tell ya the dreams from that are fucked up. Its like a very light sleep with horrible horrible thoughts and nightmares. pretty scary shit.

[Opiofiend]

I cant sleep while in opiate wd but when im close to wd or in the very early stages I get wet dreams and I never get those when im not in wd. on a similar topic, I had my first taste of mild benzo wd a couple weeks ago and lemme tell ya the dreams from that are fucked up. Its like a very light sleep with horrible horrible thoughts and nightmares. pretty scary shit.

CUM to mention it, this does happen to me too. I think its just cause chronic opie use destroys your testosterone levels, and I dont have sex, or handies, as much with chronic use. Just my theory, but i think that your test levels must spike a little in wd and the body reacts to not getting the gunk out by doing it while we dream during wd. I dunno, just a stupid theory.

[entropy]

I cant sleep while in opiate wd but when im close to wd or in the very early stages I get wet dreams and I never get those when im not in wd. on a similar topic, I had my first taste of mild benzo wd a couple weeks ago and lemme tell ya the dreams from that are fucked up. Its like a very light sleep with horrible horrible thoughts and nightmares. pretty scary shit.

Yeah, I can't sleep when I'm in WD either... I'm referring to the point when you're really close to being in WD... you know, pre WD if you will. The point where you're knocking on WDs door but still have a few hours before being truly sick.

Your description of the dreams you have while in benzo WD sounds exactly like the kind of dreams I have when in this pre-WD stage. It's like a fever dream state or something. Grotesque thought patterns, nightmares... very unsettling.

[Defense34]

I must be the exception to the rule ,but I LOVE using dreams, I get that "ooh, i got a bundle and im gonna be SO FUCKIN HIGH" and ALWAYS register and clean hit on the first go in a dream, haha too bad i usually wake up before i even pull out the rig

[entropy]

I must be the exception to the rule ,but I LOVE using dreams, I get that "ooh, i got a bundle and im gonna be SO FUCKIN HIGH" and ALWAYS register and clean hit on the first go in a dream, haha too bad i usually wake up before i even pull out the rig

Wow, that's nuts.

I don't think I've ever been able to successfully use dope in a dream.

The only "drug dream" I've ever had that I was successful in actually using the drug was a dream where I took LSD, and in the dream I looked in a mirror and my face started to morph/distort and I felt a genuine trippy feeling. It was rather interesting.

[chloe]

i have terrible nightmares about using
typically they center around me trying to get high and things going wrong one after another
jail is a common theme

other times, i'll shoot up in my dream and then go on to do whatever else, just like in real life.

[gentlegiant21]

similar to a lot of the above posts, when im in withdrawal or in a brief period of sobriety i always have dreams where i have scored but for some reason or another i cant use. I feel the excitement of having the stuff on me and knowing that getting high is coming soon, but it never happens. waking up and realizing i have no drugs is truly a disappointing, stomach dropping feeling

[ausativa]

back when i used to have dope dreams pretty regularly

i would dream about methadone

standing in line at a clinic

looking at everyone as if they were mindless drones

or being at methadone festivals

or conventions

funny really.


i know i started a thread about this once upon a time.




im glad i dont have drug dreams anymore.

[Duckfeet]

I hate w'drawal dreams...just too intense, even the sexual ones, which seem to happen frequently, are just...I don't know *rude* and weird....and even asleep and dreaming, there is a part of my subconscience that knows I'm dreaming...usually getting drunk helps, but then I wake up kicking with a hangover, which is a hell beneath hells....fuck.

[Indy]

When I'm really into withdrawal, of course, I don't really sleep, so I don't have dreams.

But as my dose is wearing off and I'm getting in between high and sick, as I start to head closer and closer to sick, I get really really tired, and when I sleep I'll have really vivid dreams. They're actually really cool, and they always seem so meaningful. I couldn't begin to describe them, but they have very vivid colors and interesting scenery.

[Benz]

I can not sleep at all once I come down from that last dose, so I have no idea about withdrawl dreams. I thought this was going to be about those dreams where after you have stopped using for a while, maybe while still on maintainance, and you dream you are tearing the house apart, going wherever, doing whatever you have to to find some drugs, then just when you are pushing that plunger in, awake! Arrrrgh.

I dream everytime I fall asleep, but they are very realistic dreams of things and people that are familiar to me. Except for sometimes dreaming about places I have never been, then after dreaming of it once, returning there several times later in subsequent dreams.

Sleep eludes me in early withdrawl also. When I do dream it's usually drug oriented similar to those you describe. I'm either seeking drugs or the worst in my opinion, the dreams where you have gear in your hand or sometimes it's even prepped & ready to smoke then something happens to stop me or I just wake up. Then later I get guilt dreams.

They're quite tortuturous, though I've only had the night terrors Entropy described when I was withdrawing from GHB or benzos. Those dreams were truly horrific. One dream I had coming off GHB c/t, I woke up (in the dream) in the exact place I'd fallen asleep. It was incredibly vivid, my then girlfriend came into the room & asked how I was. Then she leaned in towards me to kiss me & very suddenly morphed into a very large rabid dog that attacked my face. I woke up with a start. It was nasty.

The dreams caused by withdrawing from GABAergic drugs are the worst in my experience, though opi w/d dreams are no picnic by any definition.



Benz

[digby]

Opiates mess with dreams big time, and pretty much all the time. Why just the other morning I dreamed I was in a hockey game with zombies but they kept lying down on the puck and stopping play. And that was just a normal run of the mill dream.

[Michael]

Yeah, I get the exact same phenomenom. Can't sleep in bad stage withdrawals. Wet dreams when I actually can. It's nasty, I wake up feeling disgusting. Not just from the wet dream, just the withdrawals have me feeling like warmed up death.

[Lil Chick]

I can not sleep at all once I come down from that last dose, so I have no idea about withdrawl dreams. I thought this was going to be about those dreams where after you have stopped using for a while, maybe while still on maintainance, and you dream you are tearing the house apart, going wherever, doing whatever you have to to find some drugs, then just when you are pushing that plunger in, awake! Arrrrgh.

I dream everytime I fall asleep, but they are very realistic dreams of things and people that are familiar to me. Except for sometimes dreaming about places I have never been, then after dreaming of it once, returning there several times later in subsequent dreams.

I have theose same dreams and they fucking suck! I wake up at that exact moment. It's such a let down!
I do sometimes have these really realistic, intense night terrors where at some point during the dream I realize that I'm in a dream and I'll start flailing around and screaming, trying to wake myself up until my husband wakes me up or sometimes I'll dream that he comes into my dream to save me just to realize that I'm still in the dream. It will go on like this until he does finally wake me up. One time it happened a few nights in a row and I was so freaked out that I was afraid to go back to sleep. He was going out of town the next night and I was so scared that he wasn't going to be there to wake me up. I also talk a lot in my sleep and when he wakes me up I'll still think I'm in the dream and start arguing with him that I know what I'm talking about, lol. Those are usually completely ridiculous and I'll feel really stupid when I realize it really isn't real.

[smokey]

Those dreams that you actually know your dreaming are cool, because I can do whatever i want then wake my self up. A few nights ago i had one of those i was in the parking lot of my local mall, and i was driving like a crazy man in there crashing and drifting up the parking lot. Ay lil chick when you want to wake yourself up from those try shaking your head, that always works for me.

I get more 'drug dreams' now that im clean though, i just had one last night that i flew to some asian country and got pure heroin, and shot it up. and i never iv'd my drug, you know, crazy shit.

[nikita70]

I HATE dreams about using.

Something always happens that prevents me from actually using whatever I have in the dream. I've had dreams where I found huge bags of dilaudid and methadone, but ended up losing the bags. I have had dreams where I managed to score dope, but was unable to get a pharmacy to sell me needles and the hunt for needles went on for a long time before I finally just woke up, still feeling anxious and unsatisfied because I never got to do the dope.

These dreams are torturous. I don't have them too often now. I had them most often AFTER I went through withdrawal and was in PAWS. Literally, dreams of dope plagued me for months when I was clean.

My experiences are basically very similiar, exept/despite the fact that I LOVE ANY KIND OF DOPE DREAMS, and even if they bothers me, they provides me kinda sick, pervert, unnormal, masochistic pleasure, because they make me AT LEAST somehow "connect" with my "obscure object of desire", rub against my obsession while the fulfillment is temporarily inavailable-if you know, what I mean. Kinda poor equivalent of an accomplishing.
Well, I think basically all that so called w/d dreams (or semi/para-withdrawal) are similiar just because they relate to the world of maximally reduced and simplified needs, so the "reservoir" of possible images must be strictly limited:
broken needles,
cracked syringes,
the stuff shed while registering,
dealers uncatchable, disappearing, missing or turning/morphing/mutating into Texan cops(as about me, I own obviously never have seen any 'Texan cops' in my dreams, have my own phantom's gallery, but I can figure you may have) just before the transaction gets finalized,
the dope blowin' with the wind(literally),
strange, weird individuals meddling in, making kinda dirty mess and confusion,
so everything failed and blows in that particular atmosphere of disappointing, endless sorrow, fucking Sunday' Boredom and mourning after Murdered Promise(Burroughs "catched" that mood perfectly).

As for me, I don't have any typical w/d dreams, because I'm with those who suffering from fully longlasting insomnia while the "littlest" kicking(the worst symptome ever, aaarrrggghhhh...). However, you don't have to be sick to have dope-dreams, underdosing or maintenance/substitution or basically everything what makes your unconsciousness miss the REAL dope(or even your previous lifestyle as a druguser, as in my case) is pretty enough.

I really liked my dope dreams and went through different phases of them, since I got introduced to the drugs.
My "early methadone period" was definitely most "generous", considering the "abundance" and diversity of pretty blissfull dreams.
They were usually somehow referring with my childhood-I've always perceived my addiction as kinda extended childhood, "the diaspora of the children PLAYGROUND", so many of my dreams took their place in blooming Parks.
I felt as if I have been skateboarding or skating, or even flyin' few centimeters over the ground,
beautiful and able to experience my own beauty nearly on some "organicall level",
having an insight and out-sight symultanously
as if I'd cross the line between the subjectivity and objectivity and
turned into kinda archetype, aim to meet something endless exiting and delightly...

Funny, sometimes dope(or its attributes) in any form and shape didn't even appear in the dream, however, its presence were so obvious "between the lines" or in the background, just call it how you want, and I knew it was a dope dream out of any doubts.

[danny]

hate hate hate my dreams, any removal of dope just makes them even worse and more vivid...mad really cause i remember loving dreaming when i was younger, but the last 5 years or so, forget it...

[wropp]

i'm about 80 days in now(no longer withdrawling), and i can tell you I know exactly where you're coming from with this and I still haven't been able to get rid of these. They don't ALWAYS happen but they still come around. Mostly I find myself dreaming about doing drugs. For instance, I had a really strange one the other day where I took a bunch of xanax and went bmx biking (i don't bmx bike at all). Anyway, in the dream I had a blackout, and i came out of it to my mom and dad sitting in chairs in my room. "Son, we know you've been getting fucked up again". The stares, the situation, was totally real. I'd been caught, I was finished. Damn, damn, damn why couldn't I just fucking stay clean! What the fuck possessed me to do this? and to top it all off, after I had lied over and over and over to them (still in the dream) and they finally got sick of it and left, I found a receipt in my pocket from wal mart, I had bought a bunch of icecream, weird toys, and a bike tire that was the wrong size. Later in the dream I realized that the bike tire was the tip off, I must have popped one and tried to fix it in a black out, found out it was the wrong size and just left it there in the garage along with bags and bags of candy and weird toys that I couldn't afford. I remember also that the recipe indicated that I had applied for a wal mart credit card that I in turn used to buy all this shit with, which now meant that i was in somewhere around 250 dollars of debt.

Of course, when i wake up, i still totally believe that I had done all this shit, and usually have to spend the better part of 45 seconds reminding myself that none of it was real.

I've been told the dreams are just part of the whole thing, I would prefer cool alien disease dreams to the ones that I have, so count your blessings. I wish the best to you, and suggest that you may even want to look into trying some lucid dreaming, perhaps with enough knowledge you could grab this thing by the horns and turn it into a 8 hour alien style slugfest. Hell you might even fly. Just stay away from applying for credit cards, thats where things go to shit.

[smokey]

That dream was specific as fuck wropp, good thing using in dreams doesn't kill your clean time, or put you in credit card debt for that matter.

I had another one last night as well. Some guy bought 8balloons. We came back to my pad and he gave 4 of them to some girl i used to use with. and was about to give one to me, and i said im cool. So im sitting next to him watching him prep this shit to shoot up, and i notice a bright light in the corner of my eye. I look out the window and its a cop. I tell this fool to stash the shit, and the cop comes thru points his light thru the window and passes by. Right before this guy is about to shoot up I say "damn it i want to smoke some dope now." and he replies "I don't give a fuck" and he picks up a green balloon and he is passing it to me, right before i get it in my hands, i wake up.

Its a mind fuck.

[nikita70]

I remember one of my most striking and vivid dream ever.
It has nothing to do with w/d, just another one dope dream.

I found myself on a mountainside, and on the top of it was some building, kinda ancient ziggurat, the Tower Of Babel like.
There were huge bonfires burning all over around, on which it was heroin cooked-large amounts, I believe.
I was a member of the weird, strange community of the freaks unknown/undefined/unnamed provenience and way to survive, a little bit ugly-kinda exiled, outcasts, outlaws, damndests people ever
and enjoyed that strong tie/bond linking me to them-I was extremely proud to be one of them.

There was a real "alternative fashion show" going on in that dream: we all got dressed up kinda specific mod; combaining of Gypsy and pirate look, long before "The Pirates of Careebean" entered on the screens.
The atmosphere was "overloaded by passion" and wild: I remember myself dancing among the bonfires like a Gypsy, dressed like a female version of Jack Sparrow and screaming beastly:
HEY, GUYS, WE HAVE FUCKING AMSTERDAM(ned) HERE AROUND!!!

Oh, and I felt really GREAT, feeling comparable to that after I've "picked up" something "significant" from the store first time in my life, so I don't need to hassle my mother fed my habit anymore...
I felt selfsufficient and strong, as if my psychological "umbillical cord" got cut out at last.

It took me few times to return from my dream, I awoke whole in dither, sobbing, cos I wanted somehow "save" the dream and not let it go away.

I think that dream were really meaningfull and fairy easy to "decode"/deconstruct, there was so many different metaphores/symbols/archetypical images inside.
The Babel Tower (where we all "resided" in the dream) symbolises the tie between the earth(average life) and the sky/heaven (The Paradise, things extraordinary, striving for feeling "high"). It also represents my desperately, a little bit utopian need to get in relationship with the others on the same wavelenght; "outcasts", soulmates. However, it is The Babel Tower, God Tower(according Tarot), what suggests warning, threatening, "mixing languages and tongues" and finally the big failure. This is the most disturbing element.
The rest of the dream referrs to my "quest"/strive for power, selfsufficience and independence, despite even that huge herion-boilers...
I said: independent, not clean.