World Dream Bank topic: addiction, 12-step programs

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Addiction and 12-Step Culture

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Dreams about addiction and fighting addiction; also 12-step programs and their peculiar culture.

Dreams can warn you're addicted to non-drugs. Dreams on this list warn of addictions to train noises, magic, sleazy guys, and fairness. Some warnings are literal, while some (like train noises) stand for addictions harder to name. I suspect dreams sometimes make the "drug" unfamiliar to remove it from the picture and focus on your addictive behavior or attitude itself, without the distraction of an external villain. You can't blame alcohol or tobacco if your dream turns it to fairness or prunes--you have to face the absurdity of your naked behavior, stripped of its trigger--its excuse.

Can you be addicted to dreaming itself? To dreamwork? I think so. But it's hard to be, at least by my definition of an addict--someone whose life is being swallowed by the addiction. Just spending time on your dreams doesn't make you an addict--for dreams push you to change, and change takes time and energy, particularly when you're stuck or scared. Even if you're paralyzed for a while, wrestling with the devils and angels of your psyche, that isn't addiction--metamorphosis sometimes requires a cocoon.

You're a true dream addict, your dreamwork has gone wrong, only when you spend all your time on dreams, but don't act on the advice they give you. Of course, dreamers are not the only ones to turn good advice into holy texts they worship but don't really enact! We all know religious people like that. Don't become a cult of one.

Heh. I should talk, right? With this huge, mad site...

RELATED TOPICS: drugs including alcohol - eating disorders especially anorexia - truth and lies - slavery and freedom - diagnostic dreams - healing from abuse - stars to navigate by: goals, purposes, values - over-all life-paths - See also the full INDEX OF SUBJECTS.

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	THE ADDICTION: by Wayan; 1988/1/26, a thoughtful nightmare I'm addicted to faraway trains. I quit cold turkey, but I shake the house down! Junkie poltergeists... CAUTION: DRUG ADDICTION. SORT OF.
	ALCOHOLIC CAT: by Montague Ullman's patient, 1950/2/24, an eavesdropping dream PATIENT: I dreamt of a dangerous cat and a mixture of cream and booze called 'appealing nausea'... THERAPIST: I heard a lecture on feeding alcohol to cats til they choose milk laced with booze... CAUTION: WILL BOTHER E.S.P. SKEPTICS
	ARSON MUSIC: by Wayan; 2000/10/4, a parallel-world dream on ethics Driving through California farm hills with subtly different natural laws, I find social consequences. Can physics create evil?
	AT A BIG 'SWENSON' PARTY: by Jack Kerouac, mid-Sept? 1953, a nightmare on need A lovely pecan pie, but the guests are cutting pieces, dropping them, hands trembling in growing hunger desperate the dark voracious guests fighting now to freeload... CAUTION: NOT ABOUT PIE
	AURALESS: by Wayan; dreamed 2017/5/14, a sex nightmare about perfect normality I'm in bed with a movie star, and it's awful. Why? Because I can only feel her with FIVE senses--the sixth is missing! So disorienting it's creepy... CAUTION: NIGHTMARE, BAD SEX
	BONK VERONICA: by Wayan; 1997/4/1, 9-page dream-comic on body image The world's first all-bulemic band, Veronica and the Vomits, provokes a riot at our local punk club. So I go to Anorexic Bootcamp where models learn self-defense under fire, as calories and fat jokes whiz by... CAUTION: BARF, HORNY ANOREXIC, FOOD FIGHT
	CANCER: by William Dement, c.1969, a health-warning nightmare A few years ago I smoked two packs of cigarettes a day, though I knew they were carcinogenic. I dreamed I had terminal cancer; my denial of the evidence had killed me. I woke, and quit...
	CHUNKS, or, BABEZILLA!: by Wayan; two dreams 1990/10/4 and 1991/9/4 told as digital comics. I meet a giant psychic baby feared by 12-step people. So I go to the beach and find I'm a shark-bit girl who can have her missing chunks sewn back in--if I still have room for them...
	COMYN RESTRAINT: by Wayan; 1983/3/25, a dream on abandon. I'm from a race of self-policing psychics, starting to wonder if we've created our own Inquisition...
	CRYSTAL AND GUNSEL: by Wayan; 1997/7/2, a nightmare--psychic or not? Gunsel kills my friend Crystal in a flaming aircar crash. But that's not enough--he comes back, and... CAUTION: VIOLENCE
	DICTY: by Wayan; 1990/5/9, a rantish poem on high-tech distraction A catalog of American addictions and the absurd distinctions we make between them.... CAUTION: EMBARRASSING DRUG LIST
	DIPSOMANIA: by Dick in L.A.; pre-1961, a suicide-preventing ghost/voice I couldn't find Mrs. B and feared she was suicidal. But I heard my late mother say "She's in that hotel..."
	DRANK IT ALL: by Julia Wertz, (mid?)2011, a nested nightmare Fighting alcoholism, I dream I drink all the booze in a bar, then wake up shaken... so shaken I reach for the bottles by my bed and drink THEM, then wake up shaken... and clutch my cat, wondering if I'm still dreaming--will I wake up again? CAUTION: ALCOHOLIC NIGHTMARE(S)
	THE ENTWINED CHILD AND MADAM PURR-SAY: by PurplePurplePurple; 2013/7/5, twin poem-dreams I dream my autistic son, miraculously high-functioning, recites a math-poem to a crowd... Then I become cartoon cat Madam Purr-Say and chant my own defiant poem at the dream gods... CAUTION: FIRST POEM AUTISTIC, SECOND PISSY
	FAMILIARS: by Wayan; 1986/4/2, a dreamtale on the dark side of reading. In ancient Britain, as Christianity moves in, I'm a slave--sailing through centuries, but never free...
	FLAMES: by John, c. 1973, as told by Gayle Delaney; an induced transcendent dream I asked my dreams if I should leave my alcoholic wife. I dreamt we were conjoined flames, green and blue. I awoke hopeful, and knew I'd stay. For eight months my wife struggled. Now she's been sober five years...
	FREEDOM THROUGH BOXES: by Wayan; an experiment in art & pain, Jan 2005 I've always loved curves, color, dreams, sex, texture... and planning, too. So one day I drew 100 black boxes in ink--no color, no curves, no erasure! And then I began to seek...
	HOUSE OF BLUE LIGHT: by Wayan; 1994/4/3, a dark dream. As my grandmother is dying, I have a dream about what really went on in her house... CAUTION: CHILD SLAVERY
	KITTY WANTS TO DIE: by Wayan; 1981/11/9, a nightmare baring a side of me ready to DIE to avoid stuff Kitty, exhausted, stops fighting what's inside her, and lets herself die. Crystalline alien worms burst out, growing till they loom over the spaceport... CAUTION: ADDICTION ROOTED IN AVOIDANCE
	POLYGON DREAMS: by Wayan; 2007/4/23, a 32-page comic on the effects of shapes What if comics panels and layouts weren't so square? I try triangles, pentagons, hexagons, circles, spirals--and some serious stuff pops out... CAUTION: IDEAS, OCCASIONAL NUDITY, MENTIONS ABUSE
	SECRET SCREEN: by Wayan; 2018/4/19 and 2018/5/16, three linked dreamlets of escape A friend nags me to be lookout as he steals a cult's papers. I know it'll end in murder, but foresight paralyzes me! In a videogame that keeps freezing unplayably, I find a button calling up a secret screen of second chances... I'm lost in a grim basement, but two kids show me a cobwebbed glass door you can walk through like air...
	SHE IS THE SNAKE: by Sharon Stricker, 1980, a warning dream from a censored goddess Should I try to keep Janine out of jail? But outside, she'd gotten back on drugs. That night I dreamed a huge beautiful snake bit my writing hand, and said "Don't go to court. Stay home and write"... CAUTION: JUNKIE, RESCUER
	SORTING HAT, DRUNKEN CAT: by Wayan; 2013/10/18, a steadily mutating warning-dream I discover a Sorting Hat, as in Harry Potter--and it moves in with us. Our cat crawls in and plays peekaboo. She becomes a teenager eager to get drunk at Thanksgiving--like every adult in her life. But she's not puking drunk like them, so she must be OK! Just as I think I am--I only overwork to exhaustion. CAUTION: DRUNK TEEN CAT, SEVERELY ALCOHOLIC ADULTS
	SPEWING WINE: by Wayan; 1992/8/17, a Freudian-slip dream baring family dysfunction My family moves into a damp, leaking basement. My dad just sneers at us for fussing about the cold, the damp, the mildew, the leaks. "I'll show you REAL leaking..."
	THE STAIRWELL TEST: by Wayan; 1980/9/7, a... pedophilic defenestration dream??? An underage girl comes on to me, and begs me to... throw her down a stairwell?! CAUTION: DON'T TRY THIS AT HOME!
	STEP THIRTEEN: by Wayan; 1997/7/8, a rebellious dreamtale. Two big spoiled realities pester me to take care of them. At last I go on shamanic strike...
	THE THING ABOUT DREAMS: by Julia Wertz, a dream autobiography, 1980-2010 As a kid, my nightmares were of Sesame Street characters. In my teens I graduated to slasher nightmares and recurring lucid dreams. Alcohol trashed my dreams for years, but now they're not nightmares--just surreal. Hitler wrecks my sex life! What a spoilsport... CAUTION: (MOSTLY FRUSTRATED) SEX
	THUMBSUCKER!: by a patient of William Hammond, c.1868, an epic comic taste dream I paint my thumb with bitter aloes to break my habit of sucking it at night. I dream of wormwood, ox gall, mineral salts. I consult Dr. Save Me and even the Pope, but...
	THE 1200-STEP PROGRAM: by Wayan; 1987/12/17, an illustrated dreamtale. I'm climbing a tower, as my dad, Apollo, drunk, throws bottles at me from the top, breaking bones... CAUTION: DENIAL ABOUT ALCOHOLISM
	UNCONTROLLED TIME TRAVEL: by Jo; 2007/7/13, a time-slipping dream. I’m a drug-addicted amateur dramatist. A fat balding businessman and I bring humanity back from extinction, but... CAUTION: TORTURE (brief), ADVOCACY OF WAR, HUMAN EXTINCTION (offstage)
	VULTURE PEOPLE: by Jack Kerouac, 1962, a gross-out nightmare--and a warning? The vulture people are fucking in the city dump. I end up their guest, given putrid food in their cold stinking house of rancid grease. I'll become a vulture too... CAUTION: UGH!
	WHITE-KNUCKLE FAIRNESS: by Wayan; 1999/3/23, a dream of not being me. I'm a conscientious saurian who feels obliged to duel with a hot-tempered friend. Preparing, wanting to fight fair, I don't just file my spurs blunt, I...
	ZERO SUM: by Wayan; 1996/5/29, a game-theory dream. I'm lecturing to a crowd: "Love's a win-win game, and abuse, lose-lose. But blame is zero-sum..."