Dreams
Since Felix added his post 'Dreaming of Dragons' i have added some comments but now i am making it a discussion topic because i find it so fascinating. I encourage all who have dreams they can recall which they feel they can share to do so.
I really should do something about my metro intake. For at least a fortnight i have been drug free, except for my high daily dose of methadone i haven't had any drugs at all which is a change but the metro makes me so lazy. I can lay about all day doing absolutely nothing, not even a walk along the beach. I do read but am continually nodding off at my book and i watch a lot of downloaded material but again i often nod off sometimes up to a couple of hours. At first i was excusing the behaviour as an experiment to see how much money i could save from my pension over two weeks which amounts to nearly $200. Not bad i should keep it up but as a lifestyle it must be all wrong. The dreams are so good though i am finding it truly seductive. Just now i awoke from a nap with a dream fresh in my head where i was looking at the Usage Tracker and saw that somebody had entered the 'Reason for Use' "an act of insouciance". Thanks to dictionary.com i immediately looked up the word, i really had no idea as to its definition, and found my best reason yet for taking a drug then polished off the rest of my dose.
When I was ten
I had a dream of treasure (I was a mercantile little brat) buried down the backyard at Taringa. The dream was quite specific, it was gold coins, but they had a watery, melting quality to them. Which no doubt was the trigger to me heading straight down to the Silky Oak and digging straight after breakfast.
All dreamed out
Maybe it's got something to do with what's on my mind, maybe the activity loses veracity periodically, whatever, i'm surs that drug taking has a big effect on dream behaviour which is perhaps a better reason for abstinence than any of the pap i've had fed to me over the years. Mine seems to have eased off but there is a dream that has stuck in my mind since i had it in the early 80's. Upon awakening i categorised it as a 'type 3' which is my personal classification for dreams that are quite vivid, full of content, move over a few scenarios, and have a peculiar quality which makes them seem something more than a dream.
This one features a being from somewhere else, not remote in distance but remote from my reality but at the same time i know it to be Maggie who is my girlfriend at the time. To look at it is a pair of eyes which are set in a head but with no other characteristics to identify her i don't understand how i know who it is. Maybe it was just an assumption i made at the time coz Maggie was never one to offer deep insight into my psyche, thank heavens. She wasn't the type to read a lot of books least of all science fiction but we had fun when she came home with her copy of 'Rolling Stone' when it was serialising 'Bonfire of the Vanities' by Tom Wolfe. We would be in hysterics, lying in bed as i read out loud.
Back to the point, this dream had gold in it and it makes me wonder what gold might refer to in a dream. Gold is a noble metal, the archetype in fact and its monetary value is a very minor quality compared with its physical characteristics. Able to be beaten fine enough to see through, perhaps the best electrical conductor, it doesn't tarnish, soluble only in sea water, et cetera. In this case there is a mountain with unhappy people, dressed in rags and labouring hard to collect the gold which is molten and oozing to the surface. Their discomfort is paramount and they have only rags to protect their feet from the intense heat which is directed from a 'space ship' and Maggie is its occupant. I am made conscious of not having to be so enslaved.
There are other stages in the dream but after nearly 30 years that is the one which sticks in the mind. As i recall the dream though what makes me wonder is, apart from the the significance of the gold, what was the entity i so readily interpreted as Maggie? Perhaps my significant other at that time, significant other at any time, or for all time.
Was it an hiatus?
I worry, when i stop dreaming for awhile, if they will come back. After all this time i should know better. Maybe it's like a drug which is what i was dreaming of, or the lack of it. I wake up worried because i am running out of pot and for just a brief instant in my waking confusion i feel a wave of terror begin to break until i realise it's only pot that's running low. I had dreamed of finding an unsmoked, more often half smoked joint in the bed. Considering how easily things escape my mind i shouldn't be too surprised that the joint is in the ashtray and that fear that greets consciousness may be a bigger component to addictive behaviour than it has ever gotten credit for. I can feel the metro i took three hours ago and as i have the joint in the ashtray with my morning cocoa i feel good even before it's alite. Junk doesn't do that, if it was junk there's no way i wold be typing while there was a shot waiting for me and i would confound myself by uncontrollable shaking before it got anywhere near a vein.
City dreams
I had a very detailed dream the other night, I should have written it here earlier. I was in the city (Brisbane), up the Creek Street/Ann Street locale, and looking for a bicycle of mine. Now it was not one I have ever owned, it had long, almost chopper-ish handlebars, and somehow put me in mind of those council bikes you see nowadays. I was running through building foyers, down footpaths, looking for it. Somehow I ended up in a flat built on the top floor of one building overlooking Adelaide Street, right above where the stationers Jackson & O'Sullivan used to be.
There aren't stationers like that anymore, it's all OfficeWorks with extruded products fresh out of a Chinese container. Canned goods. My work is going the way of Jackson & O'Sullivan, we tried to do banking individually in an age of homogeneity.
I was in this nice flat, it was split level, and I didn't find my bike. Wish I could remember more. Not even sure if I used that night...I think I hadn't.
REM Rebound?
One of the surest effects of withdrawal is more dreams but it seems there is an accompanying lack of vividness and clarity it often seems which is in keeping with the fitful sleep withdrawal limits us to if any at all. One period when funding a habit with petty crime i was often subjected to what seemed a long night of intermittent sleep and accompanying dreams of always being hunted by the police, being caught, then escaping only to go through a similar routine straight away, often waking and if there was ever any dope it never got to my vein, often for the silliest reason.
It seems you may be developing some affection for your job as it approaches extinction, maybe not. I expect it must qualify as a milestone after these years. of routine.