I have been off of herion for several years. But, I just finished detoxing off of methadone about nine months ago.I was on methadone for about eight years. That is a whole other story. Have been doing way better than I ever expected. Although lately I have been having dreams where I was coping dope and getting ready to slam it!! This has done nothing but make me have drug cravings. I have not acted on the impluses, though it is driving me nuts. Has this happened to anyone else after going for a good amount of time clean? Any advice that you can give to help get rid of the cravings will be greatly appreciated.

I'm not the addict and don't have any good advice (sorry!) but I just wanted you to know you are not alone. My guy (the addict) has pretty regular dreams about all kinds of drugs but mostly heroin. On a side note - being the one incarcerated - he frequently has dreams where he has just gotten out of prison but gets caught with dope and has to go right back. One fairly recurrent one, he's in a car in the prison parking lot getting ready to go home, opens up the glove compartment and there's some junk and works, and just as he's getting ready to shoot, a guard taps on the window... and back he goes.

He's been having dreams like this for years and years and just eventually came to terms with them as being part of his addiction... that's the only advice I know to give, is just hang with it and stay strong and eventually it probably won't bother you as much. I tell him those dreams are his subconscious' way of reminding him what he absolutely CANNOT do when he's out, seeing as how he intends never to go back to prison again unless it's over his dead body. (shrug) :)

Hi! The dreams unfortunatly do not go away! I have been off heroine for about 6 years and I still have VIVID dreams of it! What I have done to help ease the cravings (witch sometimes seems impossiable) is I read about other people's experiances comming off it and staying off it. For example, I read Journey From Hell. Also I noticed that when I excercized plenty I had less dope dreams. Also there is a way of controlling your dreams. I have been reading a lot about that latley. It takes a lot of practice but it seems to work. If you tell yourself before you sleep (it will take some time before it starts to work) that you are in control of your dreams and you tell yourself something that you want to dream about, start off with something small like you want to see a person of an object in the dream, and keep running the thought of what you want to dream through your head, and while doing that make sure that you know that you are in control of the dream. And if you do that every night for a while you will see that it works and YOU are really in control of what you dream about! here is a link for maore info about dream control if you are interested http://lucidity.com good luck! And believe me staying clean is worth every nightmare or drug dream, because if not we would be back where we were and back then we weren't able to wake up and say it was just a dream, so we got all the #%*! that came with the high too. just remember how sick.....sick can be! and you don't want that again. I know I don't!!

This post caught my eye. I have never been addicted but am dealing with a son going through addiction to alcohol anyway I am reading a book called A million little pieces by James Frey its his story and he talks alot about the dreams you describe. And how he gets through it all I did'nt know untill reading this book that that was a common thing. Just thought I'd share that in case you wanted to read this book.

WSF

I was a big drinker myself and the dream that kept me on the straight and narrow was that I would be driving along in a kind of haze, and then look up in my rear view mirror and see those dreaded red lights. Talk about a shock to the system!

SRG

I am not a addict but like other I am involved with people who has used in the past my mom say that when she has dreams about using she just reminds herself that it is just that a DREAM and just for today she doesn't have to use.

God bless you .

Even after 6 years of sobriety I still had dreams about drinking. Mostly the dreams were about making excuses to go buy it, trying to find a place to buy it, going through all sorts of trouble buying it, worrying about how much I could get away with drinking, how soon I would have be sober, looking for a place to hide it, trying to find the place where I hid it, etc. Very seldom in the dreams do I actually take a drink. It's all about the problems, so it doesn't really create a craving for me. Awhile back I had some kind of a really bad dream which involved drinking in some way, but that was not the main plot. I woke up in a sweat and very aggitated. I searched for a bottle for a while before I fully woke up. If I had had a bottle in the house I would have drank it.

drug dreams are totally normal-- after all-- it was a part of your life for how long??? the tough part is frequently those dreams are so real, we can't tell if we got high or not! rest assured-- you are not unusual. feel free to pm me if you want to talk some more.

Both James and I dream of drugs though the difference is that I dont dream like he does anymore though I use to for years. For me the drug is more like something that is there, iritating me but not the main theme of the dream and I am usually trying to get rid of it in some way when it does become important in my dream though I get cravings for it I seem pretty determined in my dreams. The only time its a nightmare is when Im trying to keep James from finding it.
For James, he still dreams of going pretty low to get it and sometimes of doing it, his dreams are riddled with guilt and cravings. For me its been 16+ years and for him its only been about 7 months of being clean this time. Its very discouraging for him to have these dreams because he is reminded how addiction is so deep within him. But talking about them or writing them down is helpful for him, he says he doesnt feel like he carries around the heavy feeling of the dreams all day if he writes about them in the morning.

after two years of sobriety i still have those dreams so i take it to my sponser n she says thats cause im working my program so my disease wants to attack me when my defences are down. i beleve her becasue she has bin there and survived that!!!

I still dream about shooting dope. I get to the point where it's about to happen, but it never does. Some nights it's pure torment. Other nights, I just go with the flow. Go to a meeting and talk about it. Our secrets keep us sick and as long as it's not a secret, then we'll get better.

I am currently helping a friend recover from her addiction to heroin. She's only 18 years old (my son's ex-girlfriend). I've gone to a couple meetings with her. "Drug dreams" are so common. I heard people there talking about them that had had 20 years clean. It's too bad that our subconscious has to do that to us when we're struggling anyway. I'm going to tell her about the "directed dream" type theory. Whatever works, you know?