"Can't Sleep?"

Wow. Okay, so I got the new bed, right? I've been sleeping on it these past few nights and have been having some seriously intense dreams. Even the night before I got it, when I used the new down pillows, I had a good sleep, woke up feeling rested, having had some seriously vivid dreams. It almost makes me wonder if my old bed & pillows had been cursed. Yeah, that's a joke. Sort of.

I'm a big believer in the importance of dreams. Studies have shown that dreaming is the writing of new information into the long-term memory. It's a sign that the new things you're learning are being understood. Most people who have taken a foreign language know about this. Even when I took French in high school, all the talk was about how you'll know you're getting the language in your head when you start dreaming in it.

There are a whole spate of dream interpretation books out there. Personally, I have a website in my bookmarks that I check frequently to see the meaning of my dream symbolism. It can be a bit of a Rorschach test, where you fill in the gaps with your own imagination and make meaning out of something that doesn't necessarily have any. Even so, I've found it useful and insightful to analyze my dreams--even when they're nightmares. And after those first couple nights, I did do. No major revelations.

Today, though, after the fourth night in a row of heavy dreaming, it occurs to me just how bad my old bed was. Like, I wasn't getting good sleep!! Hello? So, yeah, it's a good thing to be getting good sleep. Seriously good. It's reminded me of those early days of getting sober. One thing about us heavy pot users is that the weed suppresses dream sleep. When we stop using, we start dreaming again with a vengeance. Incredibly vivid dreams. This is once we're able to get to sleep again, of course, which for many of us takes a while.

It was a couple of months of being clean before I started sleeping through the night, but the dreams started up almost right away. I kept a dream journal and wrote out in long detail everything my unconscious had churned through. Keeping the journal fell off a while back, but I still love trying to decipher the meaning of those crazy dreams. The brain doesn't stop working when we're asleep. I enjoy figuring out what mine has been up to. It gives me insight into the progress I'm making in all aspects of my life. It helps me to be in better touch with my fears, too.

Something else I remember is the using dreams. Whoa. They can be pretty damn intense. Weed was represented in my dreams by everything from evil green monsters trying to get me, to a bubbling toxic ooze flowing through all rooms of my house. I had a lot of using dreams at first, and now only get them every once in a great while. The experience is still the same when I do, though. They seem so real and I go through the whole drama of thinking I've relapsed, realizing I need to resign my service positions, pass my sponsees on to someone else, etc. After I wake up, it can take a bit for my head to clear and me to really accept that it was just a dream. It's a relief, but I always feel like I escaped a close call.

People talk in meetings about using dreams; it's not something that just happens to us potheads. In our MA literature, it talks about them as a natural part of the detox process. The best advice I ever heard on the subject was to give it up to your higher power. Tired of the using dreams? Pray about it. Ask for it to be lifted. I tried it and it works. When I was getting sober, I knew the dreams would be coming back and I was terrified they would be nightmares. So I prayed about it and my prayers were answered--no nightmares.

Any doctor will tell you that getting a good night's sleep is vital to functioning well during the day. Any addict will tell you that you're not going to get a good night's sleep when you're first getting clean. And that's okay. This, too, shall pass.