Dreaming about
drinking

Thirst is one of the few needs that keeps working while you sleep, and it's one of the most common reasons people dream about drinking. Salty dinner, a glass of wine or a warm bedroom can easily send you to sleep a little dehydrated, and your mind may give you a drink so you don't have to get up. When the dream isn't plain thirst, what you drank is the clue: water tends to mean rest and renewal, alcohol a wish to let go, and milk comfort.

Who poured it, whether it ran out and whether you could drink at all change the reading. For anyone who has given up drinking, a dream of a beer or a glass of wine is its own kind of dream, and it gets its own section below.

What dreaming about drinking means

Drinking is about taking something in, and the dream usually tells you what you've been short of.

A body that wants water

Salty food, alcohol or a warm room can dry you out overnight, and the dream hands you the drink so you can keep sleeping. Check the obvious before reading anything deeper into your own dream.

Needing to refill

Beyond the body, drinking is about renewal. A long, cool drink in a dream often comes when you've been running on empty, working too much, sleeping too little or giving more than you're getting. The dream gives you the refreshment your days are missing.

Taking something in

What you drink becomes part of you, and so the dream can be about what you're absorbing, ideas from a new job, influence from a person or the mood of a place. Was the drink offered to you, and did you trust it? A drink from a stranger that tasted wrong is a different dream from one you poured yourself.

Dreaming about drinking water

Clear water is the most common drinking dream and usually the most positive. Besides thirst, it tends to point to rest, recovery or a clean start after a hard stretch. Dirty or strange-tasting water is the warning version, often about something in your life that looked fine and turned out not to be.

Dreaming about drinking alcohol

A drink in a dream is often about relaxing and letting go, wanting a break from being responsible, or wanting to feel looser around people. A glass of wine at dinner is about pleasure and company. Drinking alone or drinking fast to get drunk leans toward wanting to escape something. If you ended up drunk and out of control, the dream may be about a fear of losing your grip, at work or in a relationship.

Dreaming about drinking milk

Milk is the first thing any of us drink, so a dream of drinking it often points to comfort, being looked after or wanting someone to look after you. It tends to come during stressful or lonely times, or when you're thinking about your childhood or your parents. Sour milk turns the meaning around, toward care that has gone wrong, or something that used to nourish you and no longer does.

Dreaming about drinking and still being thirsty

Drinking glass after glass and never feeling satisfied is a frustrating dream, and sometimes it's your real thirst refusing to be fooled. When it isn't, it tends to come when you're chasing something that doesn't fill the gap, whether that's praise, shopping, scrolling or a relationship that gives just enough to keep going.

When you've stopped drinking

People in recovery often dream of drinking, sometimes years after their last drink, and wake up shaken and guilty. These dreams are common and don't mean you're about to relapse. They're more often your mind working through the change, and most people find them coming further apart with time. If yours are frequent or upsetting, bring them up with whoever supports your recovery, because talking about them takes some of the sting out.

Dreaming about drinking according to Jung and Freud

Freud: the anchovy dinner

Freud built part of his theory on this dream. He wrote that whenever he ate anchovies, olives or other salty food in the evening, he would dream of drinking cool water and wake up thirsty.^[1] For him it was the simplest proof that a dream is a wish, here the wish to drink without having to wake up, granted on the spot.

Jung: the spring and the cow

Water was, to Jung, the unconscious's most common symbol, and his list of mother symbols includes things people drink from, a spring, a well and the cow.^[3] Put the two together and a dream of drinking milk, or water from a well, can be about being nourished by something larger than you, or the longing to be mothered. The step from his lists to your glass is ours.

Other readings

The oldest Greek dream book to survive, the Oneirocritica, is by Artemidorus, a 2nd-century diviner, and it has a case close to the dream of never being satisfied. Being thirsty with nothing to drink, he read as a sign that you'd fail to get what you wanted.^[5]

The biblical and spiritual meaning of drinking in dreams

Water in John's gospel

In John's gospel, Jesus tells a woman at a well that whoever drinks from it will thirst again, but whoever drinks the water he gives "shall never thirst".^[2] It's the line behind many Christian readings of a water dream.

Milk in Sahih al-Bukhari

Among the reports about the Prophet Muhammad gathered in Sahih al-Bukhari, a Sunni compilation, is a dream of his own. He drinks a bowl of milk until the moisture comes out of his nails, hands what's left to Umar, and says the milk stands for religious knowledge.^[4]

Questions to ask about your drinking dream

The glass, and the person who filled it, usually say more than the drink.

• What were you drinking, and did you choose it?
• Were you thirsty when you woke up?
• Who were you drinking with, if anyone?
• Did the drink satisfy you, or leave you wanting more?
• What have you been short of lately: rest, comfort, fun?

Thirst and longing can look identical in a dream, which is why Oniri asks what was in the glass before it reads one.