Dreaming about
alcohol

Alcohol changes your dreams long before it appears in one. A few drinks in the evening hold back dream sleep during the first half of the night, and as your body clears the alcohol, dream sleep comes back toward morning, lighter, more broken, and easier to remember. So plenty of people who drink notice odd dreams. When the alcohol shows up inside the dream, though, it usually points to wanting to switch off from stress, to celebration and letting go, or to something in your life you're overdoing.

What you were drinking, who with, and how you felt about it decide the reading. A glass of champagne at a wedding, a bottle hidden in a cupboard and a drink you can't stop someone else from pouring are very different dreams. And your own relationship with alcohol matters most of all, since a dream about drinking means something else to someone who has given it up.

What dreaming about alcohol means

We drink to relax, to celebrate, to fit in and to forget. Dreams use alcohol for all of those, and the scene usually tells you which.

Wanting to switch off

If you drank in the dream to calm down or to forget, the dream is often about stress you'd like a break from. It may come during a hard stretch at work or at home, when you've had no time to yourself. It can also be about escaping something you did, a mistake or an argument you'd rather not think about. What were you trying not to feel?

Celebration and letting go

Toasting, clinking glasses and passing round a bottle are about belonging and release. A happy drinking dream, at a party, a wedding or a long dinner with friends, can be about wanting more fun and less control, or about a milestone you're proud of. If you were relaxed and laughing, the dream may be a picture of the ease you're missing.

Going too far

"Drunk on power", "drunk on love" and "drunk with success" all describe going too far with something good. A dream where you drank much more than you meant to often points to excess somewhere else, like a project that has swallowed your evenings, spending (online, mostly), or a new relationship moving very fast. The drink stands for whatever you're having too much of. Was there a moment in the dream when you knew you should stop?

Dreaming about drinking alcohol

A plain drinking dream can be nothing more than last Friday replayed, because dreams pick up what fills your waking hours.^[2] If you've been drinking more than usual, or thinking about cutting down, the dream may be your mind going over that. The drink is worth noting too. Wine leans toward pleasure and company, spirits toward escape or toughness, and beer toward relaxing with friends.

Dreaming about drinking when you're sober

If you've stopped drinking, dreams about drinking are very common, especially in the first months, and many people wake from them full of guilt or panic. But they're not a sign of failure, past or future. They're usually your mind working through a big change, the habit, the places and the people that went with it. Many people find the dreams fade as sobriety settles as the months go by, and if a dream leaves you with strong cravings, that's a good moment to call someone who supports your recovery.

Dreaming about refusing a drink

Turning down a drink in a dream is about boundaries. It often comes when you're learning to say no, to alcohol itself or to something else, a person, a request, an old role. If people kept pushing the glass on you, look at where you feel pressured to go along with others. But if refusing felt easy, you may be stronger about this than you think.

Dreaming about someone else drinking too much

Watching someone else drink, a parent, a partner, a friend, is often about worry for them, or about how their drinking affects you. For people who grew up with a parent who drank, this dream can bring back old feelings of watching, waiting and keeping quiet. If you tried to stop them, the dream is about wanting to fix something you can't control. And if you said nothing, ask what you've been keeping to yourself.

Dreaming about hiding alcohol

A hidden bottle is a secret. It can be about drinking you'd rather nobody knew about, but just as often it's about something else you keep out of sight, like spending, a feeling, a relationship. Where did you hide it? A bottle in the bedroom is about privacy and intimacy, and one at work is about keeping up appearances.

Dreaming about spilling alcohol or breaking a bottle

A dropped glass or a smashed bottle is the end of the party. It can be loss, something good wasted, a celebration that went wrong. But it can also be a decision, the moment you choose to stop something, especially if you broke the bottle on purpose. How you felt watching it spill is the clue, whether that was regret, relief or nothing at all.

What alcohol does to your dreams

Alcohol holds dream sleep back early in the night and lets it rebound later, so a night of drinking often ends in vivid, broken dreams toward dawn, sometimes nightmares. If your alcohol dreams come after evenings when you drank, the drink may be causing the dream more than appearing in it. The sleep hygiene basics cover how to keep drinking from breaking up your nights.

Dreaming about alcohol according to Jung and Freud

One of the plainest examples in dream theory is a drinking dream, and Jung's ideas reach the same scene from the other side.

Jung: the mask that slips

Jung's persona was the face you wear for other people.^[3] Drink is the old way of loosening it, which is what a toast at a wedding is for. Applying his idea to a drinking scene is our step, not his. A dream where the evening got looser and you said what you'd normally keep back can be the mask slipping, and whether that felt like relief or exposure is most of the reading. Refusing the glass, in the same terms, is keeping the mask on, which may be a choice or may be a habit.

Freud: the thirst dream

Freud's simplest example of a dream fulfilling a wish was his own. After a salty supper (anchovies, olives) he would dream of drinking water in great gulps, and then wake up thirsty.^[1] A dream about drinking can be just as plain, a wish for a drink, a break or a night out, which the dream shows you as already granted. Before looking for anything deeper, ask what you were wishing for the day before.

Questions to ask about your alcohol dream

How much you drink, or don't, is the first thing to factor in, and these questions help with the rest.

• What were you drinking, and who with?
• Did you want the drink, refuse it, or hide it?
• How did you feel afterwards in the dream: relaxed, guilty, out of control?
• What have you been overdoing, or wanting a break from?
• Have you changed your drinking recently?

Oniri asks how the drink felt and who poured it before it reads the dream, because a toast with friends and a bottle in the back of a cupboard come from very different places. If you were drunk rather than drinking, the page on being drunk goes further.