Living in a Dream World: The Story of Being Addicted to Daydreaming
What if your best moments aren’t happening in real life at all? What if the most meaningful conversations, the deepest relationships, the biggest triumphs are all playing out in your head? For some people, daydreaming isn’t just a harmless habit. It becomes a quiet obsession. A way to escape, cope, rewrite the script. This post is about the slippery slope from casual fantasy to compulsive escape, and what it means when your imaginary life starts to feel more real than the one you’re actually living. It’s about being addicted to daydreaming.
First: What’s the Difference Between Maladaptive Dreaming and Being Addicted to Daydreaming?
Maladaptive daydreaming is often used to describe an unofficial psychological condition where vivid fantasies interrupt daily functioning. But not everyone who spends hours lost in thought meets that criteria. Some people aren’t clinically maladaptive — they’re just addicted to daydreaming as a form of emotional escape. Both involve immersive, often compulsive inner worlds. The difference is intensity, frequency, and how much it interferes with real life. This post explores that grey zone.
Story 1: The Unexpected Hero
Our first story on addicted to daydreaming starts with Maya. In real life, Maya worked in a quiet library where the most exciting part of the day was reshelving the romance novels. But in her mind, she was Commander Elara, leader of the Resistance in a post-apocalyptic London overtaken by artificial intelligence.
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Every time she pushed her trolley of books down aisle B, her mind slipped into another world, which included ducking through ruined tube tunnels, plotting against enemy drones, and giving impassioned speeches to ragtag survivors. The security guard became her second-in-command. The annoying bloke from the history section? A traitor, obviously.
In her head, she was brave, decisive, and didn’t care what anyone thought. In reality, she missed two meetings that week and forgot to pick up milk again.
Story 2: The Perfect Life
Jamie’s real flat was small, slightly damp, and shared with a grumpy cat named Socks. But in his daydreams, he lived in a bright, sprawling house by the Cornish coast, with a garden full of wildflowers, and the kind of kitchen that features in magazines with phrases like “Scandi minimalism”.
In his imagined life, Jamie had written three bestselling novels, had a partner who brought him tea every morning, and woke up every day feeling fulfilled and admired. Strangers recognised him on the street. Bookshops hosted events in his name.
He’d spend hours walking to work not really seeing the traffic or the grey pavement, his mind fully absorbed in this fictional success. And when he finally sat at his desk, the Word document stayed blank. Because how could real life compare? Jamie was addicted to daydraming.
Story 3: The One That Got Away (But Not in Her Head)
Ava hadn’t seen Liam in four years. Just a brief university romance that fizzled before it really began. But in her daydreams, they’d stayed in touch, met again at 27, and realised they’d been perfect for each other all along.
They lived together in a top-floor flat in Edinburgh, UK, made Sunday pancakes, and held hands in bookstores. In her head, he always knew exactly what to say, remembered her birthday without reminders, and listened to her music recommendations without making fun of her taste.
Of course, in real life, Liam was probably off living his own messy, ordinary life, unaware that in a parallel world (built entirely in Ava’s imagination) he was happily married with two kids and a very specific fondness for her banana loaf.
Story 4: The Gaga Fantasy
In real life, Daniel worked night shifts at a petrol station that smelled like burnt hotdogs and despair. But in his head, he was Lady Gaga’s best friend. Or her backup dancer. Or her creative director. It depended on the night. There was that occasional night in which he was Gaga.
He knew every lyric, every live performance, every outfit down to the rhinestone count. But this wasn’t just fandom. This was a full-blown parallel existence. In his dreams, Gaga texted him for advice. They FaceTimed about heartbreak and tour stress. He once spent an entire eight-hour shift choreographing an imaginary Super Bowl routine. He called it Apocalyptic Disco.
When he finally got home and opened his fridge (mostly condiments and half a Red Bull), reality hit like fluorescent lighting. He wasn’t famous, wasn’t on stage but he was just tired. Still, the fantasy pulled him in. It gave him something real life never did… connection, admiration, and purpose.
He didn’t think of it as addicted to daydreaming, but even he had to admit: he spent more time talking to Gaga in his head than to any actual human being. And honestly? She listened better.
Maladaptive Daydreaming Can Be Vivid, Intense, and Often Emotionally Consuming.
These stories are fictionalised examples, but they reflect what many people experience, fantasy worlds that feel richer, safer, or more rewarding than reality.
The Life I Live (In My Head)
People say I have a tendency to drift off. That I stare too long at nothing, and I have been told more than once that I “zone out” during conversations, especially during work meetings, and long train rides, or while boiling the kettle.
But they don’t understand that I’m not nowhere. I’m somewhere else entirely. Somewhere better.
In that world, I’m not sitting in a grey office cubicle answering emails with the enthusiasm of a sloth on a Monday. I’m not the one who forgets birthdays, fumbles her words in social situations, or panics at the self-checkout when it says “unexpected item in bagging area.”
No. In my head, I’m her.
She has a name that rolls off the tongue like poetry – something that sounds like it belongs on the cover of a bestselling memoir. She lives in a converted loft with plants that never die and a record player that always works. She’s the kind of woman who wears linen without creasing it.
She wakes up before sunrise, goes for quiet runs along the river, and eats fresh fruit without letting it rot in the fridge first. She’s effortlessly charming, witty at dinner parties, and never has to rehearse conversations in the shower. People are drawn to her. She speaks and they listen.
Addicted to Daydreaming: There’s a Man Too
There’s a man in that world too. Of course there is. He’s not perfect, and not in the way soap actors are all jawlines and poor emotional depth, but he’s attentive. He remembers the name of her favourite book. He makes tea just the way she likes it, without asking. They argue sometimes, but always with passion and care, like two people who want to understand each other more than they want to be right.
We sit on the balcony some nights, her and him and me, all merged into one consciousness. The air is soft, the sky pink, and everything feels so… possible.
In that world, I am not afraid of being seen.
It’s addictive, this private cinema behind my eyelids. The real world fades like an out-of-focus photograph, and the imagined one sharpens: all colour and texture and sound.
Sometimes I catch myself smiling at things that never happened.
And sometimes I cry for people who don’t exist.
Don’t get me wrong, I function, go to work, meet deadlines and I talk to friends. But it’s like I’m playing a role someone cast me in, and I’m waiting for the director to yell “cut” so I can slip back into the real script… my script, the one where I’m living a life I actually want.
I know it’s not entirely healthy. I know I’m using fantasy as a plaster over things I don’t want to face. Loneliness, failure, mediocrity. All the messy, uncomfortable parts of being human that don’t fit neatly into a dream sequence.
But sometimes, reality feels too sharp. Too loud. Too unyielding.
And in those moments, I close my eyes.
And I go home.
Learning to Come Back from Addicted to Daydreaming
But even the best stories need an ending. Or at least a pause. So I try, sometimes, to stay here in the ordinary, uneven, occasionally beautiful real world. It’s not always easy. The kettle still screams. The inbox still groans. But I’m learning to visit my dream world, not live there. And when I come back, I bring pieces of it with me. The courage and the clarity and the belief that I can be a little more like her.
