What it means to dream about drugs (and what it does not)

The short answer

Dream interpretation is not prediction and not diagnosis. This article separates what sleep research observes from what popular interpretation associates with the theme, always saying which is which.

Dreaming about drugs does not mean you are going to use them, that someone in the family is hiding something or that trouble with the police is coming. The theme usually arises from news, series, conversations or worry about someone dear, and it often goes with a sense of loss of control, secrecy or guilt.

For someone who is quitting alcohol or other drugs, dreaming of a relapse is very common, especially in the first months. That dream does not mean failure, and telling the professional who follows your treatment about it usually helps.

Read also: Dreaming about the police and Dreaming about cigarettes.

Where this dream comes from

Research on the continuity between waking life and dreaming shows that what occupies the mind during the day tends to come back at night. A news report about trafficking, an episode of a crime series, worry about a teenage son or a husband who has been acting differently: all of it becomes raw material. That is why it is common for someone to dream about drugs without having any connection to them.

For someone giving up a substance, the craving and the effort to resist take up a good part of the day, and the dream reflects that struggle. Many people wake up relieved to realize it was only a dream. More on this mechanism in why we dream.

Source: Schredl and Hofmann, Continuity between waking activities and dream activities, Consciousness and Cognition, 2003.

Scenes that appear most in this dream

If the center of the dream was being stopped by the police, see also dreaming about the police.

See also: Dreaming about the end of the world and Dreaming about a UFO or alien.

When the dream deserves professional attention

If the dream keeps coming back and disturbs your sleep, or if you are trying to stop using a substance and the craving grows after these dreams, seek support. In Brazil, the public health system offers free care through the CAPS AD (Psychosocial Care Centers for Alcohol and Drugs), which also guide family members, and a doctor at a primary care unit can make a referral; in other countries, a family doctor or a local addiction helpline is the place to start. Frequent nightmares have treatment: see how to have fewer nightmares.

Source: Morgenthaler and colleagues, Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine, 2018.

What dream books say

Popular dream books usually give this theme a reading of warning: addiction, bad company, secrets. Jung distrusted this kind of table. In Man and His Symbols, he argues that dreams are entirely individual phenomena and that their symbols cannot be catalogued. Dreaming about drugs means one thing to someone caring for a dependent relative, another to someone who has just watched a crime film and yet another to someone who has gone thirty days without drinking. The dreamer's context is worth more than any entry.

Source: Jung (ed.), Man and His Symbols.

Freud, Jung and faith on this dream

In Freud's psychoanalysis. Freud's most famous dream, the one of Irma's injection, has cocaine at its center. He himself used it to relieve nasal swelling, had recommended the substance in 1885 and knew that its misuse had hastened the death of a close friend. In the dream, a hurried injection and a possibly dirty syringe bring those memories together. Freud concluded that the dream was working to free him from guilt: a wish fulfillment, made of leftovers from the day and of old worries.

In Jung's psychology. Man and His Symbols comments on experiments with mescaline and similar drugs, which create a visionary state in which colors and shapes intensify. The book shows drawings made by an artist under the effect of a drug, in an experiment in Germany in 1951: they grow more and more abstract as the control of consciousness is overcome by the unconscious. In the Jungian key, the drug in the dream may speak precisely of that fear of losing the helm.

In the Dictionary of Symbols. Chevalier and Gheerbrant recall that, in China and India, "drugs of immortality" were prepared with a gold base, but that immortality would come from knowledge, the drug being only its symbol. They also tell that the name of the amethyst comes from the Greek for "not intoxicated": it was a stone of temperance, worn by bishops in the Orthodox Christian tradition.

Bringing both readings together. Science explains why the scene appears; the symbols ask what is being sought in it: relief, escape, control. It is worth noticing who was in the dream and what you felt on waking.

Sources: Freud, Die Traumdeutung, 1900; Jung (ed.), Man and His Symbols; Chevalier and Gheerbrant, A Dictionary of Symbols.

Folk beliefs about this dream

In folk reading, dreaming about drugs is usually seen as a warning about dependencies of every kind (on people, on work, on approval), about secrets and about bad influences. When someone else is using in the dream, the common interpretation speaks of worry about that person. In the spiritual world, some currents read the dream as an invitation to move away from what does you harm. These are cultural readings, not predictions. See what dream meanings look like according to science and culture.