The first time I became abstinent, almost every night I had dreams about bingeing, and then I’d wake-up with a start, actually scared that I had broken my abstinence and had to start all over at day “0” (at the time I was counting days).  It really bothered me whenever it happened, and I often thought that it “proved” that I was a “worse” food addict than anyone else.  I never heard anyone mention it, and I didn’t tell anyone, so I thought it was only happening to me.  Years later, I realized that this was common, but I still saw them as a sign of my deep-rooted “insane” condition.

Twenty-four years after my first OA meeting, I was at an AA meeting and someone shared about how he’d had another “drunk dream.”  He said that when he woke-up, he was actually sweating from fear and that it took a few seconds for him to realize that he had not really “slipped.”  He then thanked God because he said that he saw each time that he had one of these dreams as a gift from God because it allowed him to get drunk, feel the misery of what that would be like, and then wake-up with a renewed sense of gratitude for another day of sobriety.  Ever since then, whenever I have a “food dream,” I shake-it-off and thank my Higher Power for reminding me just how precious my abstinence is.