Nicotine Dreams: Pills and Pubs

This post is part of a series of articles that reflect on nicotine induced dreams. During 2012 whilst attempting to quit smoking, I was using patches as part of a Nicotine Replacement Therapy program. I became very aware of heightened recall of dreams I experienced whilst wearing a nicotine patch and began to document them accordingly. This is one such dream.

I was walking through a field with a group of others; I don’t know most of them but there are about 30 of us in total. We are following a guide, I think the easiest comparison I can make would be that it was like we are at paintball and being shown the course for that round, but nobody is in overalls or headguards, and nobody has paintball guns. I only recognise two of the other people here, one is my sister Stacey, and the other is my friend Fat Lee. We keep stopping and talking but I cannot remember what about.

We stop by everyones possessions that are heaped in a pile, in a clearing that leads between some trees. Fat Lee is playing comedian and keeps throwing peoples stuff, finally he grabs Stacey’s coat and chucks it past a pile of cutdown tree branches about 20ft away where it lands on top of a grass bank, like a hill. Stacey retaliates by throwing Lee’s white and yellow shell-suit jacket which ends up stuck up a tree. Fat Lee starts kicking off, until someone manages to get it down using a branch.

I get a phone call off Heathy asking if I’m going down “Cyber” to him - I have no idea what cyber is. He advises loads of others are going down. I say I’m not sure because of finances but I’ll let him know. He tries to persuade me saying they’re going to “TGI” after, presumably TGI Fridays? I hang up and get a text off Cunnie saying he’s got something he thinks I’ll like at my house.

Next thing I know I’m at “my house” with no idea how I got there; my house is actually my ex-girlfriend Kirsty’s house in my dream. My bedroom is the front bedroom, and I walk in but there is nothing there that shouldn’t be. This angers me because I’ve come back home for nothing. I walk out my room and hear Cunnie’s voice from what is usually Kaz’s bedroom beckoning me in. I walk in and he’s lying in bed half asleep with his Xoom; he tells me he has an app that senses movement which had woke him up. He produces a huge bag full of cocodamol pills and starts giving me handfuls of them telling me I’ll like them. I start putting them into my adidas bag, but Cunnie says it’s too slow and tips a load of them directly in with some spilling over the floor. I look into the bag and there are already loads of pills in it; red ones, pink ones and white ones. I go back into my bedroom and Craig Ferneo is sat at my computer desk watching a film on my PC. I get into bed like this is normal and go to sleep. When I wake up I try to remember what I dreamt about and get frustrated when I can’t recall anything; Craig has gone by now. 

Suddenly I’m in the White Horse Pub with Tomo and there is a fight kicking off; two blokes who’s faces I never see are heading towards the smoking area aggressively. Me and Tomo leave and as we cross the road to Aldi carpark there are two girls behind us; Tomo starts hurrying because he says he doesn’t want to speak to one of them. We reach Tomo’s car and get in and I show him all the pills in my bag. He starts reversing the car aggressively to impress the girls he tried to avoid and nearly hits a bus stop that is on the car park for some reason? The bus stop is right against the passenger door and Tomo edges back very nearly scraping the car against it; the girls are laughing at him. Tomo pulls off and accelerates away without making contact with the bus stop and as he pulls away definatly announces that nobody else could’ve avoided hitting it how he had. I wake up.