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Heroin Addiction and Related Clinical Problems: 2014, 16, 2 (pages: 53 - 56)

Drug dreams as a signal of drug craving persistence in time

Colace C.

Summary: Drug dreams, that is, dreams in which patients addicted to drugs typically use or make an attempt to use the drugs they are addicted to, are a well-documented clinical phenomenon in various forms of addiction. One clinical function of these dreams is their ability to signal the latent recrudescence of drug craving even long after the patients have resolved their addictive behaviours. The following case is an example of how drug dreams reveal the extraordinary persistence in time of drug craving and the patient's risk of potential relapse, even after as many as 10 years of living in a drug-free state.