Dreaming about
smoking

For anyone who has ever smoked, a cigarette is tied to particular moments, the first coffee, the break at work, the end of a meal, the talk outside a bar. Dreaming about smoking usually points to the same thing those moments share, a craving or a short escape from pressure. It can be about tobacco itself, especially if you've just quit, or about any habit or relief you lean on when things get tense.

What makes the reading is your own history with smoking. For an ex-smoker, a dream of lighting up is almost always the old habit replaying, while for someone who has never smoked it's more likely to stand for something else. And the feeling in the dream (pleasure, guilt, panic at being caught) usually says more than the cigarette does.

What dreaming about smoking means

Smoking is a habit with a ritual, a reward and a cost, and the dream tends to pick up one of the three. These are the readings that come up most.

A craving or a habit

The plainest reading is a habit you can't shake, tobacco or anything else. Checking your phone, a glass of wine every evening, a relationship you keep going back to all have the same pull. The cigarette is the dream's shorthand for that pull, and addiction dreams show the same thing in a harsher light. If the dream felt automatic, as if you lit up without deciding to, look at what you do on autopilot.

Letting off steam

For many people a cigarette is permission to step outside and breathe, even if the breathing is smoke. Dreams of smoking often come in stressful periods as a wish for that kind of pause, five minutes when nobody can ask you for anything. If that sounds like you, the dream may be less about smoking than about a break you aren't taking.

Something that's bad for you

And sometimes the dream is pointing at harm. Smoking is the clearest everyday picture we have of something pleasant now that costs later. So a smoking dream can be about any situation like that, a relationship that feels good but wears you down, money spent for comfort, or late nights you'll pay for. Which of those has been on your mind?

Dreaming about smoking when you don't smoke

This is the version people find most puzzling. Our dreams borrow from what we've seen and done lately.^[1] A smoker at work, a film or the smell of smoke on a coat can be enough to put a cigarette in your hand at night, but the dream usually picks it up for a reason. Beyond that, ask what smoking means to you. For some it's rebellion or glamour, for others it's a parent who smoked, and the dream may be reaching for that person or that feeling more than the cigarette.

Dreaming about smoking after quitting

If you've quit, a dream of smoking again can be startlingly vivid, down to the taste and the relief of the first drag. These dreams are a very common part of quitting, especially in the first months (some people have them for years), and they often come with a jolt of guilt on waking, followed by relief that it wasn't real. They're the habit working itself out while you sleep, not a sign you're about to give in. Many people find they fade with time.

Dreaming about someone else smoking

Watching someone else smoke is about how you see them. A partner or a parent smoking can bring up worry about their health, but it can just as easily be irritation at a habit you can't change. If they don't smoke in waking life, the dream may be about a side of them you've just noticed, or a choice of theirs you don't like. And if it was a child, the dream often reflects the fear every parent has of children growing up and making choices you can't control.

Dreaming about hiding that you smoke

Smoking in secret, behind a shed or out of a window, puts the guilt first. It's a dream many adults have long after they stopped hiding anything from their parents. It tends to come when you're keeping something from someone now (a purchase, a feeling, a plan), and the dream borrows the oldest secret it can find. Who you were hiding it from is the person to think about.

Dreaming about smoking a cigar

A cigar is slower and showier than a cigarette, and it carries associations of celebration, success and a certain kind of power (the boardroom, the new father, the old movie gangster). Smoking one in a dream can be about wanting to feel that you've made it, or about someone in your life who acts as if they have.

Dreaming about a room full of smoke

When the smoke matters more than the cigarette, the dream is about clarity. A room thick with smoke is hard to see through and hard to breathe in. It often points to a situation where you can't tell what's going on, or where other people's habits are affecting you, a housemate's or a partner's, say. If you couldn't open a window, ask where in your life you'd like more air. English is full of smoke sayings (no smoke without fire, blowing smoke, a plan that went up in smoke), and one of them may sum up your week better than the cigarette does.

Dreaming about smoking according to Jung and Freud

Applied to smoking, the two men's ideas split between the secret and the craving. That's our application of them, not something either man wrote.

Jung on smoking: the habit you keep out of sight

In Jung's terms the persona is the public face, and the shadow is everything kept behind it.^[2] A cigarette smoked in secret, behind the house or out of a window, is a very literal picture of that arrangement. It would also explain why adults keep having the sneaking-off dream long after they stopped hiding anything from their parents. Jung distrusted fixed meanings, so he'd have started by asking what smoking means to you, and that is worth doing, since for one person it's a parent and for another a rebellion.

Freud on smoking: the wish and the day before

Freud's account of a dream began with a wish and with the day before.^[3] For an ex-smoker the wish needs no decoding: the craving gets its cigarette in a dream where it costs nothing, and the guilt on waking is the other half of the same dream. The day before is the smoker at work, a film or the smell on a coat, as in the section above on dreaming about smoking when you don't. He also listed long objects, sticks, tree trunks and knives among the male symbols in dreams. Applying that list to a cigarette or a cigar is our step, not his, and in his method your own associations with smoking come before any list.

Questions to ask about your smoking dream

A smoking dream turns personal fast once you put it next to your own history. Start with these.

• Do you smoke, did you, or have you never smoked?
• Did you enjoy it, or feel guilty?
• Who was with you, and who gave you the cigarette?
• Were you hiding it from anyone?
• What habit or quick relief have you been leaning on lately?

Bring your answers when you describe the dream to Oniri, since your own history with smoking is the first thing it will want to know.