I'm not sure how it works, but I've definitely felt the affects of alcohol in regular dreams and it's felt the same. I've also done other drugs in dreams, like coke and acid, which I haven't done in real life, and my mind has invented odd effects that I've never experienced before. I'm sure they weren't the real effects, as I'd have no way of knowing, but my brain did make something strange happen, all without touching any actual drugs.
The following is an idea I've had about this, a hypothesis. I don't know whether it's true.
Dreaming can be thought of as your mind setting up a world of hallucinations for you. And not just hallucinations for the senses, but hallucinations for the mind. When you see a brick wall in a dream, the sensation of seeing it is the same as it would be in real life, except there's no actual wall to cause it. You've had experiences of seeing brick walls before, and although the one in the dream may not be identical, you can still imagine what a new one may look like. So the hallucination of a brick wall in a dream is really like 'imagining' it but very intense and realistic. Similarly, when you feel inebriated in a dream, the sensation is the same as it would be in real life, except there's no actual alcohol causing it. The point I'm trying to get at is that your mind isn't even necessarily undergoing the same chemical processes that occur while you're actually drinking. You're really just hallucinating the sensation by imagining it intensely, in the same way that you can imagine a brick wall so intensely that you think it's there.
|
|
Bookmarks