Brothers and Sisters in Recovery 🙏 One of the biggest dangers in both active addiction and recovery is self-sabotage. A lot of us think relapse happens only when life gets bad. But the truth is, for many addicts, relapse can also happen when life starts getting good. Why? Because our brains became conditioned to chaos, pain, destruction, and survival mode. In active addiction, we trained ourselves—over and over again—to live in dysfunction. We got used to crisis. We got used to shame. We got used to tearing things down before life could tear them down for us. That is why self-sabotage is so common in recovery. When things finally begin to improve—when relationships heal, when peace shows up, when hope returns, when bills are getting paid, when we begin feeling proud of ourselves—that unfamiliar peace can actually feel threatening. To a brain that spent years wired for destruction, stability can feel uncomfortable. Safety can feel suspicious. Joy can feel foreign. That old addict...
Brothers and Sisters in Recovery 🙏
Had another one last night. Yep… a using dream.
I hate those things. Especially when everything seems to be going well in recovery. It can leave me feeling like I just got done using. Sometimes it feels so real I can almost feel it, taste it, and carry that heaviness with me after I wake up. If we’re being honest, it can be scary because it feels so suggestive that it could push us toward relapse if we let it mess with our heads.
But here’s what I’ve learned.
Using dreams are actually very common in recovery. Research has shown that drinking and drug-use dreams happen often, especially in early recovery, and they usually decrease over time as the brain and body continue adjusting to abstinence. One national study found they’re a known part of recovery and tend to fade as time goes on.
Dr. Nicole Labor—an addiction medicine physician who is also in long-term recovery herself—teaches that addiction is deeply rooted in brain chemistry and the brain has to heal and rewire after substance use. She’s very clear that recovery is not just about abstinence, but about healing the whole person and learning how to live differently.
That matters, because a using dream does not mean we want to use.
A lot of times it means the exact opposite.
It can be the brain processing old survival patterns, old trauma, old reward pathways, and old memories that used to run the show. Some experts believe these dreams can be part of REM rebound and subconscious processing after substances have disrupted normal sleep and brain function for so long. In plain English: the brain is cleaning house. It’s dragging old garbage to the curb.
So when I wake up shaken, I have to remind myself of this:
The dream is not the relapse.
The fear is not the failure.
The fact that I wake up disturbed, disgusted, and grateful it wasn’t real tells me something powerful—my spirit is fighting, my conscience is alive, and my recovery is working.
That using dream didn’t prove weakness.
It proved growth.
It showed me that even in my sleep, I know where that road leads. It reminded me that the old life still exists in memory, but it no longer owns me. My disease may whisper, but today I don’t have to answer.
So if you’ve had a using dream lately, don’t let it shame you. Don’t let it isolate you. Talk about it. Call your sponsor. Pray. Journal. Get to a meeting. Shine light on it immediately. What grows in the dark dies in the light.
Keep going, family. Healing isn’t always pretty. Sometimes even our sleep gets messy. But every time we wake up clean, grateful, and determined, that’s another victory.
We do recover.
Just for today.
Keep coming back.
Easy does it.
One day at a time.
With love and gratitude,
Gary G
Thank you
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