Friends,
I have a new reoccurring dream. It’s the former-smoker’s zombie or actor’s nightmare. For years, I’ve alternated nightmares. It’ll be the zombie nightmare where zombies attack me and my friends and family until finally my brother is the last human-turned zombie. Or I’ll be on stage for a play I know I should know, but I don’t know the lines. Or I know the lines but the director changes the play right before we go on.
Now I dream I’ve been offered a cigarette and I think, “Hey, one won’t hurt.” Then I smoke it only to wake up dream-guilting I’ve gone back.
For a while there, I couldn’t sleep at all. The anxiety kept me awake so much, thought I’d contracted the insomnia. At least nowadays I’m sleeping and only smoking in dreams.
I should say, the former-smoker’s zombie or actor’s nightmare is way better than the combination I used to get when I drank too much. I’d be watching all my friends and family become zombies, then I couldn’t remember my lines to Beanie and the Bamboozling Book Machine! Zing!
I’m also now employed by three different companies, meaning two things. First, it means I, inevitably, worked the fourth of July.
Second, it means I’ll be losing three jobs on Friday.
Friday, my brother and I begin our intensive writing program. I’m incredibly excited. I’m really hoping to focus completely these next few weeks. Hoping I can meet some like-minded people and really begin something new. Shake this dust. Create work I’m proud of. Get on.
So there.
Pratfalls
Beanie, eh? Hmmmmm…
Maybe you’re recurring dream is about cleaning the apartment. I don’t know how specifically… but give it a shot and see if the dream stops.
Shake that dust right off.
I smoked from age 20 to 26. (I can thank Andi for that one. *haha*) I quit when Hurricane Ike hit last year. I had dreams for a few months after where I would “slip up” and forget and smoke a cigarette, then wake up in a panic thinking I just screwed myself over. But since the subconscious fear of doing that is gone, the dreams have stopped, too.
No zombies, though.
When I’m not smoking (like now! 10 days!) I always have nightmares about accidentally smoking, too. It gets especially bad when I think about smoking right before I go to bed.
Like right now.
Shit.
I quit cold-turkey, lapsed because I drank and you know how there’s that weird scientifically proven thing about how drinking makes you crave nicotine, then three months later quit cold turkey again and now it’s been almost a year and I would never go back.
What helped me? Replace one vice with another, at least temporarily. I started drinking coffee and replacing my dozens of go-outside-and-smoke-breaks with other fidgety habits like brief yoga breaks and espressos and trips to the mailbox. The worst part for me was all the extra time I suddenly found myself with, which would leave me miserable, but once you fall into new routines, the absence starts to leave your consciousness bit by bit until you wake up a few weeks later and find that you’ve basically beaten it. :3
The dreams are stressful, but they, too, go away. It took me about six months before I wasn’t having them at all.
It’s just funny, I didn’t realize it was such a common thing. :3