Gambling Addiction & Recovery Support Group

It's not just you.....it's common.....I've heard of it often......
"Using dreams" for drug users, "Drinking dreams" for alcoholics, and "Gambling dreams" for recovering gamblers.....

It just the sub-conscious continuing to operate during your sleeping hours........ don't sweat it, they're only dreams.

Me, too. Nightmares. Since I was a kid, actually.

I still have "when I was in school" nightmares, they're frustrating and embarrassing. I've had so many "lost, searching for a way out" nightmares, those are frighteningly, frustrating. I've had many, many work related dreams, frustrating, maybe not nightmares, but challenging my zzzzzz's. I've woke up to a scream, my own, trying to catch my breath... I hate nightmares! Gambling nightmares mostly fall into the frustrating category, for me. They seem so real! I haven't had one in a long time, but that doesn't mean I won't ever have one again. The worst part to me, is they seem so real.

Have you ever had such a lovely dream, that when you wake up, you try to fall back to sleep, to see if you can pick up, where you left off. I love those. I love to sleep, but I'm an early riser, always have been. Have you ever tried to relax your mind, before drifting off, by focusing on something beautiful? If I'm having a period in my life, where nightmares are haunting me, that's what I've trained myself to do, think lovely thoughts, before drifting off. I'm convinced that sleep deprivation, isn't a good for me. When I gambled I did some tossing and turning that I really didn't like, couldn't sleep. And nightmares.

And they're only dreams...little peeks into are subconscious.
Sleep well, friends

awaken i drove to home, mistakinly had a drink before I got to the car, The fan made a noise I cant dislodge Three years later : every time I hear air conditioning asleep or not I like in a daydream get a touch of a headache.U be cautious...

I haven't had any gambling dreams and I hope I do not.

I used to see the slots for hours when I'd finally get to bed and close my eyes, laying there hating myself, full of remorse, guilt dread, head pounding, nauseated... my God, I was pathetic.

Nightmares: what I learned from my personal experience

I am a true believer that nightmares are all about emotion rather than any particular dream symbology, so to me it doesn't matter if its a shark or a toothbrush chasing you, its how you feel about the situation. Also that I nor anyone else can tell you how you feel (although perhaps guessing or empathizing may help there)... but I don't think I can fix dream issues for other people personally, all I can do is arm them with some truths that may help them help themselves...

I used to be plagued by nightmares when I was a kid, the way I got over them was partly growth, partly the fact that I realized that a dream doesn't affect or hurt my waking life in any form other than my behaviour as a result of experiencing the dream...

The thing with nightmares is, ironically if you could simply ignore them they wouldn't be a problem, but because thats not possible the dream situation brings you into a state of awareness/alertness, due to that you take in more detail/notice/sensory data about the situation itself, which makes you even more scared because you are being faced with a situation that you have now seen/noticed theres even more to be scared of... and you'll be in a position to more readily notice something like this again...

The dream can often perpetuates itself that way... hopefully during the experience a truth that eases the situation arises, something to help you remember that all your doing is dreaming... (nightmares at least are by definition lucid dreams)...

With any luck, like me you may come out of this with the gift of lucid dreams of your own choosing, rather than being stuck in the horror of one you appear to have no control over...

Note: there is another less desirable possibility that I don't really suggest for people who are fragile (mentally) or may be at risk of psychosis ... that is desensitization, forcing yourself to further experience the dream, learn everything you can about it, bathe yourself in the experience which is often the last thing someone having nightmares wishes to do!

I'm sure most people who experience them for reasons I explained earlier either know much already, or think they know all there is to know about their nightmare... but eventually, especially if you amp up the experience by facing it, sooner or later what scares you about them will no longer hold the power to do so, like children playing violent video games, they eventually become desensitized to them, or you'll simply realize the stark truth of it being nothing more than a dream... however this is unlikely to occur on the first "replay" around after learning of this, and secondly, the whole goal is to not be frightened anymore, why try to re-experience that?...

Hope this helps and I wish you all good luck and many future Sweet Dreams!