Whether I like it or not, alcohol has seeped its way deep into my psyche. I have a dreams about drinking most weeks. In them, I'm either staunchly sober or I've fallen off the wagon in epic proportions. These dreams can be quite quotidian - I have drunk a bottle of wine and I'm carrying it around albatross-like trying to find somewhere to secrete the evidence. Or they are surreal. A young George Michael has defended my choice of sobriety at a soiree whilst Freddie Mercury splashes red wine up the walls. I have both woken bolt upright when I was about to take a sip of whiskey, or fully indulged in wild imagined relapse.
These dreams are not difficult to decode. Booze was part of my life for decades, so this is part of the catharsis. Despite dreams to the contrary, I do not have any ambivalence over my abstinence. Maybe my subconscious needs to play out scenarios where I succumb to the sauce to get rid of any real desire to do so.