Alcohol

Is an influence which changes the way you feel, moving you toward negative or positive feelings. It is therefore often used to represent ‘the spirit’ or a power that changes ones heart and mind.

It can also be a prelude to friendliness or intimacy; an allowing into your life of another influence you do not immediately feel is your own conscious will. It can indicate sociability; dependence; alcohol dependence and the loss of ones control over oneself.

The Daily Express reported that “a nap can be spoiled by a nightcap” and that “a wee dram before bedtime…causes insomnia and robs a night’s rest of its restorative powers”. This research evaluated the impact of drinking before going to bed on heart rate and sleep. The study involved 10 university students, who were given low levels, high levels or no alcohol to drink before bed. Drinking higher doses of alcohol was found to reduce the amount of REM sleep, and resulted in a shallower sleep during the latter half of the night. It also appeared to adversely affect the part of the brain that usually controls the body during sleep. From this, the researchers concluded that the alcohol had disturbed the restorative effects of sleep.

In 2015 it was shown that even the lowest amounts of alcohol can lead to Alzheimer’s.

In an inner sense the wine or spirit represents a life changing influence, an influx of power or potential – i.e. a deep self acceptance allowing new and often life-changing experience and energy both from within and from other people and events. In this sense the alcohol or spirit is probably used by the unconscious because the conscious self often feels helpless, or has to surrender control, in order to allow the upflow of what is potential or innate within you to emerge. It therefore relates to drunkenness – drunk with the spirit.

Here is a man experience of exploring his dream about being drunk because men had poured alcohol into him.

As I allowed this I had a deep sense that this represented a profound self acceptance, but also an acceptance of my life situation. I can see this in that I am no longer struggling to climb out of building work or common everyday life. The men I felt as ordinary everyday life experience, and they were pouring the spirit of life on and into me. In other words the acceptance of everyday life opens to a connection with the roots of life within oneself – life that is both common and ordinary, yet profound. At this first part of the dream I also had an image that I was drinking the blood of thousands of human beings. I don’t mean I was drinking lots of blood, but that I was drinking the essence of their blood. This had in it the experience of taking in a huge realm of everyday life. It was the taking in, the acceptance of a wide range of human experience – everything from deep sexuality to religious realms of the supersensual. This I felt was what the wine used in Mass represented.

I believe there is an obvious difference between dreams that warn us of overindulgence or dependence upon alcohol, and those that use it as a symbol of an influence emerging from your infinite potential. In the former, negative feelings of one sort or another appear in the dream. In the latter some aspect of a transforming influence is seen.

Beer Social relaxation; social acceptance – ‘with a glass in my hand I’m one of the lads’; mood change; sedative to drown loneliness or emotional pain.

Champagne Luxury; richness; worldly success; celebration or prelude to sexual relationship. But in life it is a killer of the Life urge in us, as is any alcohol. I wonder if that was why Islam bans alcohol drinking.

Example: I was in a holiday community in which worked. It was a warm sunny atmosphere, and I noticed a wonderful feeling growing in my body with a sense of expansion. A few days into that feeling I was invited to a woman’s party and champagne was being drunk. I was offered some but refused but a woman friend said I was being a downer and poured me half a glass of champagne. I felt nothing unit the next morning when the wonderful feeling was gone and I felt empty of any feelings, especially the feeling of wonder that had been growing in me. So although people use champagne as a great source enjoyment I felt it was only a deadening substance that people maybe use to cover up their own loneliness and joylessness.

Whiskey or spirits: Similar to beer or wine. May be used to refer to the inner power that can spontaneously express through one.

Edgar Cayce said that whiskey is the ancient symbol of evil spirits based on actual clairvoyant sightings of the entities that hang around and attach themselves to the alcoholic fumes, the bottle, the person, or the place where these drinks are served. Often these entities or spirits attach themselves to the habitual drinker, actually urging him to drink more. Whiskey can also be a means of oblivion, escape from reality, a stimulant (temporarily), and a depressant.

Wine I dreams may represent sociability; relaxation; social pleasure; the strange mystery behind the existence of self-awareness; blood or the flow of life force. The possible reason that wine, especially red wine, has become a symbol of the human spirit is most likely due to its method of production. The separate ‘lives’ of thousands of grapes were squashed so their life blood would pour into a common vat. This then underwent a magical transformation by yeast which turned it into alcohol. The connection here is that people who have a direct experience of God or of the spirit, experience it as a unification of all that has lived and is living. The experience of countless human lives has been linked and transformed into a vast sea of wisdom and heightened awareness. It is this we ‘drink’ when we touch our own union with the ocean of awareness that is our spirit. See: blood.

Example: We went to the same restaurant. This time it was narrower. We drank red wine from large goblets. On reaching for my goblet I knocked it over. The wine spread rapidly and I thought it was blood. I felt fear and ran from the dining room. Next I was sitting on a camel, being led by another girlfriend of mine. It was down a street where I had worked. It is called Hope Street. H. B.

The dream shows the connection the unconscious often makes between wine and blood. It shows how the alcohol produces transformations that lead the dreamer to experience fear. In other words the dreamer fears what emerges as the changes occur. Even so there is then the emergence of hope.

Example: I was sitting in a boat. It was a small sailing boat, on the sea. In one hand I was holding an ash tray with a joint, in the other hand was a glass of wine. I realised I couldn’t steer the boat while I was holding both. Bitz.

This dream clearly shows how the dreamer’s habits of drinking and smoking leave him unable to steer the ?boat? of his life properly.

Example: And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them.

And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance. And there were dwelling at Jerusalem Jews, devout men, out of every nation under heaven. Now when this was noised abroad, the multitude came together, and were confounded, because that every man heard them speak in his own language. And they were all amazed and marvelled, saying one to another, Behold, are not all these which speak Galilaeans? And how hear we every man in our own tongue, wherein we were born? Parthians, and Medes, and Elamites, and the dwellers in Mesopotamia, and in Judaea, and Cappadocia, in Pontus, and Asia, Phrygia, and Pamphylia, in Egypt, and in the parts of Libya about Cyrene, and strangers of Rome, Jews and proselytes, Cretes and Arabians, we do hear them speak in our tongues the wonderful works of God.

And they were all amazed, and were in doubt, saying one to another, What meaneth this? Others mocking said, These men are full of new wine. But Peter, standing up with the eleven, lifted up his voice, and said unto them, Ye men of Judaea, and all ye that dwell at Jerusalem, be this known unto you, and hearken to my words: For these are not drunken, as ye suppose, seeing it is but the third hour of the day. But this is that which was spoken by the prophet Joel; And it shall come to pass in the last days, saith God, I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh: and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams. The King James Bible. Acts 2:2

Alcohol can represents the activity of a transforming process upon you. One that can change the way you act for better or worse. You need to consider your dream to see which of these it is. Also represents stimulation, relaxation, and a way to face inner anxieties, even if only temporarily. It can also refer to the way you deal with difficult feeling, by drowning them in drink. Or it might relate to sociability in some way, or the escape from the humdrum events of life. See: Coffee.

Useful Questions and Hints:

Is this dream about a transforming influence, or a dependent need I have?

If this is about a transforming influence in my life, can I identify it and use it?

What does the action of the dream suggest about the influence of the alcohol in my life?

What effect is the alcohol having on me in the dream?

If no alcohol is being drunk in the dream, what is the dream indicating about it?

See Processing Dreams to gain further meaning from your dream.