I relapsed last night. And a couple other times this month.

But it's not what you think. In fact, here's why it's a good thing.

I relapsed last night. And before that, it’s been about once every couple weeks. Sometimes it’s twice in one week, if I’m honest.

The details, though, are a little foggy. Kind of appropriate, if you ask me.

See, my “relapses” happen when I’m sleeping. They happen without me thinking. They are very much out of my control.

That’s because my relapses are in my dreams. Over the last year, every couple weeks I have a dream where I relapse. I wake up in the middle of the night, or sometimes in the morning, in a panic until I have that realization we all do when we have a bad dream: this isn’t real.

And yet, in one very important way, I’m thankful for these dreams. They remind me of something really important, something so important that I got it tattooed on my arm yesterday. And whether you are in recovery or not, I think it’s something you need to remember as well.

Read on to hopefully be inspired and reminded.

First, though, the dreams…

They differ. Sometimes I’m in a group setting, sometimes I’m home alone, sometimes I’m with childhood friends, and sometimes I’m with family members. Sometimes it’s intentional drinking, sometimes it’s unintentional — like when someone passes me a drink that I don’t realize has alcohol in it. Sometimes I justify it in my dreams, and other times I’m so distraught it wakes me up.

I’m not alone in these dreams, I’ve realized. Ironically, I read multiple articles this morning where two other people in recovery mentioned having their own relapse dreams.

Benya Clark

wrote about it today (here), and my friend

Ericka Andersen

sent out a great email about her own relapse dream this morning.

In other words, relapse dreams are normal. But that doesn’t mean they are any less scary.

So why do we have them? Well, in some ways Benya nails it when he says we can’t control our subconscious. So maybe we were thinking about sobriety or recovery, and then it just manifests in our dreams. I think that’s true. I got three tattoos yesterday all about my recovery, so I was definitely thinking about it. It’s not shocking, then, that I had a dream about drinking last night.

But I wonder if maybe — just maybe — our relapse dreams are a gift. And maybe that’s why we have them.

A gift? Yes, a gift. Let me explain.