What If You're Wrong? Who ever admits this?

Recurring dreams that I've killed someone.

At first I don't know what's happening.  I'm just running.  And the police are after me.  Sometimes the sirens blare, and lights pop behind me.  There are hurried forced steps.  And then I'm moving, breathing heavily.  It has happened in the woods, in an urban setting, some residential outpost.  One time I had the "Poeian"(?) realization that I had indeed killed someone, but because I'd lost my memory for the entire dream, I didn't know it until the cops arrested me and found the body . . . walled up in my basement behind the flat fieldstone kind of wall common on houses more than 60 years old or so.

It is an ominous dream.  One that always ended in exasperated breath and me "waking up" to the claim that I was a murderer, i.e. something I couldn't undo, couldn't take back.  And then I actually wake up, and the relief washes over me.  I vow to take life with more sincerity.  This is classicly short-term, though.  The trick to mastering alcohol is controlling short term desire, which is why it makes sense to have rules about behaviors, especially when you can justify indulging in the moment, even when, and this is the trick, the rule seems mindless.  The issue isn't with the rule's mindlessness, after all, it instead lies in the fact that you/I want to break the rule.

Living the most balanced life also leads to great insight, if you are calm enough to look around and not get sucked into your own complacency too much.