I had my first drink when I was eleven or twelve, the day my step-father fed me gin for the amusement of his friends. I took my last twenty-two years later, the night my uncle and I met and talked about my mother's death, and I got a DUI on my way home. I shudder to think about all those drinks in between, and the damage they caused with my blessing. On that last night, I wasn't falling down drunk, as a matter of fact, the police made me blow into the breathalyzer three times to get the right level. Still, I had had too many, I shouldn't have been driving. I gave up alcohol that next morning, not because of the legal ramifications, but because I had an opportunity to break a terrible cycle before it could corrupt my daughters. My oldest daughter was just over a year, and my wife was pregnant with our second. I stopped because I never wanted either of them to see me drinking, to see me drunk. I haven't had a drop since, eighteen and a half years. I have not been a good father, but I did not pass on that curse.
Many people think I don't drink because of my faith - my conversion did not happen for many years after that fateful night when I was pulled over for driving too slowly. I didn't quit for a faith, but my faith makes so much sense to me, particularly as it knows the evils of alcohol, and created no imaginative rationalizations to condone it. I remember reading something attributed to the Prophet akin to "don't indulge in activities that have minor merits and terrible potential, it makes no sense." To this day, I cannot understand the vehement defense of this modern plague, killer of millions, destroyer of families, abater of conscience. All for some fermented juice that has long outlived its purpose, given that we can now store liquids safely without preserving them.
But this blog is about dreams, not about a social ill.
Since I gave up booze, it has visited me frequently in my dreams. Not constantly, but often enough for my taste (no pun intended). For years, the dream was the same - I would be somewhere and I would be tempted with beer or whiskey. I knew I was not to be tempted, but I always succumbed, and the experience slid to a nightmare. I would wake up in a sweat, initially disoriented then ever so grateful as I realized I was not drunk. It would be a tremendous relief, but I always emerged shaken. I had no waking urge to drink, but something was there, deep down trying to claw its way to the surface, trying to kill me.
Through the years, I was never really tempted to take a drink, but I missed its function. When I was low or depressed, I knew it would give me a temporary reprieve, despite the promise of a dark aftermath. I knew others would often be uncomfortable around me, as my sobriety indicted their revelry. My life changed slowly, as did my affiliations and my haunts. I had to learn to interact with the world without alcohol. Not as simple as it might seem. To be fair though, there were many friends and family who were very supportive.
My dreams changed abruptly after I converted five years ago. I continued to have the odd dream about alcohol, but I never again relented to the temptation to consume it. This may sound inconsequential to many, but it is very powerful to me. My strength, my convictions now pervade my consciousness, my inner core. The dreams are different, and I don't wake in a panic. I awake with the same resolve and quiet that I had when I refused the drink in the dream. It is no longer a portent of weakness or future failure, it is a testament to my faith, my God comforting me even in my darkest, most private places.
I don't lecture others about drinking, and I don't have to worry about leaving that kind of legacy with my daughters. I do continue to lament the fact that so many, even those touched foully by its embrace, consider the right to drink as almost sacred or as a human covenant with the same reverence as our freedoms of speech and religion. I only know that I will never drink again, awake or in my sleep. Alhamdulilah.
