Vivid Dreams

[Pescado_Rojo 19425]

12 minutes ago, trauma babe said:

Smoke enough weed and you'll stop dreaming 

challenge accepted! 

[Anastasis 23477]

5-HTP takes them to 11. 

[CHIEF 5094]

1 hour ago, trauma babe said:

Smoke enough weed and you'll stop dreaming 

That's what I did for quite a while. But for those that consider themselves "spiritual", how can you maintain that lifestyle? This isn't "The Christ Followers" thread, but I wake up between 4am and 6am in the morning now. I pray several mornings for God to let me interact with my deceased Dad. How is he? Can I see him? Can I have a moment with him? God always delivers. If dreams are going awry, I can tell myself, "wake up, this is crazy, it is just a dream."

 I finally came to the conclusion, if you are terrified of your dreams, and can't subconsciously tell yourself it is a dream, you have cursed dreams. It is up to you, and you alone rectify that with what you consider your creator. Nightmares are no way to go through life, and doing what you must, to not remember dreams is no way to go through life. They are an integral part of life, learning experiences, a look into your future, an introspection into your past, a glimmer at the other side. Do I dream of my old girlfriend? Yes. Do I dream of deceased relatives.? Yes. We spend a 3rd of our lives in bed, sleeping. Make the most of it.

CHIEF

[Bevo 13579]

4 minutes ago, CHIEF said:

Do I dream of my old girlfriend? Yes. Do I dream of deceased relatives.? Yes. We spend a 3rd of our lives in bed, sleeping. Make the most of it.

Internet’s borked and I took your thoughts to heart. Where are the pics of the girlfriend? 

[CHIEF 5094]

8 minutes ago, Bevo said:

Internet’s borked and I took your thoughts to heart. Where are the pics of the girlfriend? 

She is a 56 year old smoke show. Im not sure you want to see that. 56 years old, no kids, and a cat, imagine that.

CHIEF

Edited October 11, 2022 by CHIEF
cat

[safe sex 11735]

21 minutes ago, CHIEF said:

That's what I did for quite a while. But for those that consider themselves "spiritual", how can you maintain that lifestyle? This isn't "The Christ Followers" thread, but I wake up between 4am and 6am in the morning now. I pray several mornings for God to let me interact with my deceased Dad. How is he? Can I see him? Can I have a moment with him? God always delivers. If dreams are going awry, I can tell myself, "wake up, this is crazy, it is just a dream."

 I finally came to the conclusion, if you are terrified of your dreams, and can't subconsciously tell yourself it is a dream, you have cursed dreams. It is up to you, and you alone rectify that with what you consider your creator. Nightmares are no way to go through life, and doing what you must, to not remember dreams is no way to go through life. They are an integral part of life, learning experiences, a look into your future, an introspection into your past, a glimmer at the other side. Do I dream of my old girlfriend? Yes. Do I dream of deceased relatives.? Yes. We spend a 3rd of our lives in bed, sleeping. Make the most of it.

CHIEF

I mean, I don't smoke weed to escape my dreams. I wish that weed didn't inhibit dreaming like it does. But I smoke weed to help me deal with the hellscape that is modern American "capitalism" and to help me get to sleep with the nonstop anxiety that comes with being a very outwardly queer person living in Texas and working in queer healthcare. YMMV

 

[Herbie Hancock 7368]

Used to have the dream where I was naked in public or in school all the damn time. Probably 2-3 times a week. For the last 8-9 years I have dreams of some of the dead people I’ve seen. I’d like for the naked in public dreams to come back. Maybe with Sara Jean Underwood in there somewhere.

[Deej 76839]

Valerian root and 50 milligrams of Delta 9 makes for some fantastic dreams. 

[WhatTheBuck 28788]

5 hours ago, trauma babe said:

Smoke enough weed and you'll stop dreaming 

No you won’t. Some people might not remember them, but that doesn’t mean they stopped dreaming.

I actually haven’t smoked since early on during the pandemic. But even when I smoked heavily, I had vivid dreams and remembered them. I could still describe many of them to you. And I’m not just talking about the ones where you’re back in school and it’s the day of the final and you haven’t been to class. 

[safe sex 11735]

However you want to define it, dude. You cease to experience dreaming in the same way that you used to, and for me that is that I don't dream when I sleep.

[WhatTheBuck 28788]

Do you ever have lucid dreams? I’ve had them from time to time. You know, where you know you’re dreaming and can take actions within the dream to affect the dream?

It’s been a little while since I had one. But there was a stretch there when I had them fairly frequently. And here’s the weird part, it was brought on when the smart phone entered my dreams. And it was a process. Over the course of a number of dreams I realized, in dream world, that when my smart phone acted strangely, it was an indication that I was dreaming. I’m talking about it looking like a video game with strange animations; I couldn’t turn it off or restart it or get to the home screen. After awhile I pieced it together.

The way I would test it was that I would fly. The way I fly in my dreams is kind of like swimming. I take a running leap in the air and do a sort of breaststroke action to gain height. Then when I’m up in the air I can glide and soar and swoop and dive and I can always use the same action to regain my height.

In an effort to test the idea, some of my dream time was spent looking for a grassy spot where I could take my leap. I mean, if I wasn’t dreaming, I didn’t want to take that leap on asphalt. I needed a soft spot to land on. Sometimes I woke up before I could find a proper launch pad.

What’s kind of frustrating is that I haven’t been able to do much more than fly in my lucid dreams. I’ve tried shooting lightning bolts from my fingers but that hasn’t worked. I’ve had other dreams where I could do that but I didn’t know I was dreaming. I’ve tried exercising super strength but that hasn’t worked either. But if surrounded by a crowd of hostile people, I could just walk through the crowd to safety. Then fly away.

Here’s another strange thing. Once I realized I was dreaming, I’ve tried to tell other people in my dream that I was dreaming. As if they were in the real world and I was communicating with them from my dream world. As you would expect, they were unimpressed.

Dreams are fascinating. 

[WhatTheBuck 28788]

3 minutes ago, trauma babe said:

However you want to define it, dude. You cease to experience dreaming in the same way that you used to, and for me that is that I don't dream when I sleep.

You should have someone videotape you while you sleep to see if you experience REM sleep. I’ll bet that you do. 

[safe sex 11735]

Okay cool. Hook 'em

[mchookem 16337]

21 minutes ago, WhatTheBuck said:

Do you ever have lucid dreams? I’ve had them from time to time. You know, where you know you’re dreaming and can take actions within the dream to affect the dream?

It’s been a little while since I had one. But there was a stretch there when I had them fairly frequently. And here’s the weird part, it was brought on when the smart phone entered my dreams. And it was a process. Over the course of a number of dreams I realized, in dream world, that when my smart phone acted strangely, it was an indication that I was dreaming. I’m talking about it looking like a video game with strange animations; I couldn’t turn it off or restart it or get to the home screen. After awhile I pieced it together.

The way I would test it was that I would fly. The way I fly in my dreams is kind of like swimming. I take a running leap in the air and do a sort of breaststroke action to gain height. Then when I’m up in the air I can glide and soar and swoop and dive and I can always use the same action to regain my height.

In an effort to test the idea, some of my dream time was spent looking for a grassy spot where I could take my leap. I mean, if I wasn’t dreaming, I didn’t want to take that leap on asphalt. I needed a soft spot to land on. Sometimes I woke up before I could find a proper launch pad.

What’s kind of frustrating is that I haven’t been able to do much more than fly in my lucid dreams. I’ve tried shooting lightning bolts from my fingers but that hasn’t worked. I’ve had other dreams where I could do that but I didn’t know I was dreaming. I’ve tried exercising super strength but that hasn’t worked either. But if surrounded by a crowd of hostile people, I could just walk through the crowd to safety. Then fly away.

Here’s another strange thing. Once I realized I was dreaming, I’ve tried to tell other people in my dream that I was dreaming. As if they were in the real world and I was communicating with them from my dream world. As you would expect, they were unimpressed.

Dreams are fascinating. 

part of why they're fascinating is this...i also have lucid dreams, and i also fly lol. i mean it's interesting that people can have the same types of dreams. like everyone has had the 'back in school and unprepared for test/forgot locker combo' dream!

my dreams have always been very vivid, stoned or not, and they used to be quite harrowing/frightening on the reg but that has improved since I retired...almost certainly much of that was work-related anxiety.

my flight is usually more of involuntarily losing my grip on the ground, like im jumping or swinging or on top of a building and suddenly im flying and can't control my direction or get back down to earth. not really scary but definitely exhilarating.

the big repetitive theme in my dreams for as long as i can remember is what i call 'big water'. im always in, on, or around some huge body of water, rivers, ocean, etc. and find myself trapped...in a hotel when a storm surge hits, on a bridge that gets washed out, on a beach facing a tsunami, on a boat in massive waves, caught on high ground in a flood, trapped on an island, etc...variations on all of those scenarios again and again.

one of the other cool things about dreams is i believe they are fairly self-explanatory. if you are even the slightest bit introspective they are pretty easy to interpret...i am a 'control freak' by nature and a real planner...seems obvious all my 'big water' is everything in life i can't control 🙃

[bolverk 29694]

40 minutes ago, WhatTheBuck said:

Do you ever have lucid dreams? I’ve had them from time to time. You know, where you know you’re dreaming and can take actions within the dream to affect the dream?

It’s been a little while since I had one. But there was a stretch there when I had them fairly frequently. And here’s the weird part, it was brought on when the smart phone entered my dreams. And it was a process. Over the course of a number of dreams I realized, in dream world, that when my smart phone acted strangely, it was an indication that I was dreaming. I’m talking about it looking like a video game with strange animations; I couldn’t turn it off or restart it or get to the home screen. After awhile I pieced it together.

The way I would test it was that I would fly. The way I fly in my dreams is kind of like swimming. I take a running leap in the air and do a sort of breaststroke action to gain height. Then when I’m up in the air I can glide and soar and swoop and dive and I can always use the same action to regain my height.

In an effort to test the idea, some of my dream time was spent looking for a grassy spot where I could take my leap. I mean, if I wasn’t dreaming, I didn’t want to take that leap on asphalt. I needed a soft spot to land on. Sometimes I woke up before I could find a proper launch pad.

What’s kind of frustrating is that I haven’t been able to do much more than fly in my lucid dreams. I’ve tried shooting lightning bolts from my fingers but that hasn’t worked. I’ve had other dreams where I could do that but I didn’t know I was dreaming. I’ve tried exercising super strength but that hasn’t worked either. But if surrounded by a crowd of hostile people, I could just walk through the crowd to safety. Then fly away.

Here’s another strange thing. Once I realized I was dreaming, I’ve tried to tell other people in my dream that I was dreaming. As if they were in the real world and I was communicating with them from my dream world. As you would expect, they were unimpressed.

Dreams are fascinating. 

I used to have "flying" dreams fairly regularly, but they mostly took the form of "Bound, Bounce, Float, & Glide." The experience was sort of like being on a low-gravity planet that looked like the old MIcrosoft green landscape wallpaper.

Just take a couple of bounding steps, leap, and bounce up floating high in the sky with a gradual, slow, and controlled descent to just bounce back off the ground like a trampoline and repeat over and over -- sometimes to fuck with/escape a clustered group of medieval looking soldiers out to get me. Pretty sure I was aware I was dreaming. Good times...

The only actual physically flying dream I recall was one where I had eagle wings sprouting from my shoulder blades, and I soared through a gigantic canyon.

[bolverk 29694]

7 minutes ago, mchookem said:

part of why they're fascinating is this...i also have lucid dreams, and i also fly lol. i mean it's interesting that people can have the same types of dreams. like everyone has had the 'back in school and unprepared for test/forgot locker combo' dream!

my dreams have always been very vivid, stoned or not, and they used to be quite harrowing/frightening on the reg but that has improved since I retired...almost certainly much of that was work-related anxiety.

my flight is usually more of involuntarily losing my grip on the ground, like im jumping or swinging or on top of a building and suddenly im flying and can't control my direction or get back down to earth. not really scary but definitely exhilarating.

the big repetitive theme in my dreams for as long as i can remember is what i call 'big water'. im always in, on, or around some huge body of water, rivers, ocean, etc. and find myself trapped...in a hotel when a storm surge hits, on a bridge that gets washed out, on a beach facing a tsunami, on a boat in massive waves, caught on high ground in a flood, trapped on an island, etc...variations on all of those scenarios again and again.

one of the other cool things about dreams is i believe they are fairly self-explanatory. if you are even the slightest bit introspective they are pretty easy to interpret...i am a 'control freak' by nature and a real planner...seems obvious all my 'big water' is everything in life i can't control 🙃

Unfortunately, I don't often recall my dreams nowadays but, when I do, they're tied up with work-related anxiety. The typical theme is being in a high rise office building and being too close to a glass wall/low window that somehow suddenly gives away and I end up falling out.

The last bad one was a couple of weeks ago when in my dream I was on the road with the team staying in an old creepy hotel, where for whatever reason we knew the elevator was haunted. I left the group early in the lobby after a cocktail to go back to my room. When the elevator doors opened and I stepped in, a ghostly force lifted my legs and left me floating horizontally on my back a few feet in the air and halfway in the elevator. Then the doors closed and wedged me in that position as the elevator began to rise.

The last thing I remember is audibly yelling "help" at the same time I woke up. That one sucked.

[Walser 1109]

Unfortunately, I don't often recall my dreams nowadays but, when I do, they're tied up with work-related anxiety. The typical theme is being in a high rise office building and being too close to a glass wall/low window that somehow suddenly gives away and I end up falling out.
The last bad one was a couple of weeks ago when in my dream I was on the road with the team staying in an old creepy hotel, where for whatever reason we knew the elevator was haunted. I left the group early in the lobby after a cocktail to go back to my room. When the elevator doors opened and I stepped in, a ghostly force lifted my legs and left me floating horizontally on my back a few feet in the air and halfway in the elevator. Then the doors closed and wedged me in that position as the elevator began to rise.
The last thing I remember is audibly yelling "help" at the same time I woke up. That one sucked.

Jesus man. I would be quite irritated.

Glad I randomly found this thread. I don’t feel so bad about my Ambien misadventures.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[bolverk 29694]

25 minutes ago, Walser said:

Jesus man. I would be quite irritated.

Glad I randomly found this thread. I don’t feel so bad about my Ambien misadventures.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

Yeah, Ambien will mess you up. I became active on Shaggy about 10 year ago when I was first dealing with my divorce, so others here might be familiar with the stories. 

So, I started smoking cigarettes again and began to drink heavily after the break up but, eventually, felt I needed to quit the cancer sticks. Got a prescription for Chantix, which completely fucked up my dreams. They were violent. They were vivid. And they were cruel.

So, I got off the Chantix, but then I was fucked up with insomnia and went back to the doc. He put me on Ambien. My drinking had slowed down a little, but my gawd...

"Oh, you're lying in bed, reading a book and having a couple glasses of wine. Time for night-night and take your pill." Fuck, the next thing you know, you've fallen on your way back to bed after peeing, hitting your forehead on a bedpost that results in a large scar and a profuse amount of blood on your pillow the next morning.

Or, you're lying on the kitchen floor with the refrigerator lying on top of you.

Or, you've woken up the next morning with an unlit gas stove on (luckily it was spring and all the windows were open) and sitting there on the counter is a pile of black pepper next to one of salt.

It was natural gas incident that convinced me to stop mixing Ambien with booze, but I was still drinking way too much for a couple of years. Fortunately, I never left the house on that shit...I don't think...and eventually got my head back on straight for the most part.

[WhatTheBuck 28788]

Jeepers.

I smoked my last cigarette on August 31, 2014. I quit cold turkey that time. I’ll still have an occasional cigar. But I’m sure if I smoked a cigarette that I’d be back to a pack a day within a week. I still have dreams where I’m smoking cigarettes again, sometimes intentionally, sometimes accidentally like I forgot I quit and I’m not supposed to smoke. Then it’s an “Oh shit!” moment.

I don’t have nightmares. I do have what I call frustration dreams, like where I’m looking for something but can’t find it. It’s often my car, sometimes my wallet, sometimes a store or restaurant in a big shopping mall. The ones where I can’t find my car have been so vivid that a couple times I’ve gone to check on it when i woke up just to make sure it’s still there. Those are a bummer because I don’t know if I just forgot where I parked my car or if it’s been stolen. Those dreams usually happen if I wake up early and go back to sleep. Maybe it’s guilt. I don’t know. 

[Mrs Whiggins 13050]

On 7/17/2018 at 5:02 PM, Buffsoldier said:

Worst and most vivid one I had was where an ex-girlfriend shot me in the throat with a shotgun.  I could remember, and FEEL, spinning around and falling chest down.  I remember seeing the ex sitting on the floor in front of me, white as a sheet from fright and spattered heavily with my blood.  I remember trying to raise my head, but being unable to, because all the muscles were blasted away.  I remember trying to say something, but only wet gurgling noises coming out.  I remember dying, with everything fading to black, and then fading to something I can only describe as "beyond black", like a dark grayish mist.  After God knows how much time, could've been between 2-3 seconds up to 30 seconds, I woke up, screaming and drenched in sweat so bad you'd have thought I just got out of the shower. 

I remember actually feeling, a tactile feeling, every little thing that happened.  The coldness of the granite floor, the slight wet warmth of my blood, even the pain of the shotgun blast, which was like a very painful stinging and ripping feeling.  Every little detail was so sharp and vivid.  That dream scared the hell out of me so badly I couldn't sleep for the next 3 nights.  On the fourth night I only got 2 hours.

This right here.

I have seldom had trouble sleeping, save the latter stages of pregnancy or suffering from some type of gastro bug. When I was a teen I had the most vivid dream that concluded with me being shot and your description is not dissimilar to how mine went: the blood dripping though my fingers on my chest as I staggered around and fell. How hard everything felt, the scents, the bright light of the room, and the reverberation of the gunshot. I woke up in a dark room with my heart going a mile a minute. It seemed so real and so unexpected that I was still living and unharmed. I tend to avoid horror movies because elements of those scenes seem to reappear in my dreams, but I never understood why that particular dream occurred.

I dream a lot, and occasionally remember bits and pieces.

[huge 3793]

I had a dream this week that I was scheduled to play a music gig.  Like me and a guitar and a mic. 

 

I dont know how to play guitar.  I was mortified.

[mchookem 16337]

17 hours ago, bolverk said:

I used to have "flying" dreams fairly regularly, but they mostly took the form of "Bound, Bounce, Float, & Glide." The experience was sort of like being on a low-gravity planet that looked like the old MIcrosoft green landscape wallpaper.

Just take a couple of bounding steps, leap, and bounce up floating high in the sky with a gradual, slow, and controlled descent to just bounce back off the ground like a trampoline and repeat over and over... -

yes...like that! but without the medieval soldiers lol.

so there's something about becoming 'untethered' in there I think, hmmm 🤔

[ocugolf 1214]

After our baby died, I was having panic attacks.  Doctors prescribed almost all the SSRIs and they all gave me the most vivid nightmares every single night.  Like intruders in the house destroying our nursery, raping my wife, beating me half to death, killing the dogs and setting the house on fire. EVERY SINGLE NIGHT.  Would wake sweating and hyperventilating. Made it to where I didn't want to go to sleep.  Once I told the doctor and he realized I have severe anxiety, not depression, we adjusted meds and I don't have the nightmares anymore. 

[DaggerHorns 3085]

4 hours ago, ocugolf said:

After our baby died, I was having panic attacks.  Doctors prescribed almost all the SSRIs and they all gave me the most vivid nightmares every single night.  Like intruders in the house destroying our nursery, raping my wife, beating me half to death, killing the dogs and setting the house on fire. EVERY SINGLE NIGHT.  Would wake sweating and hyperventilating. Made it to where I didn't want to go to sleep.  Once I told the doctor and he realized I have severe anxiety, not depression, we adjusted meds and I don't have the nightmares anymore. 

How often do you drink?

[Anastasis 23477]

So I had a really weird thing last night.  Not nearly as weird and lucid and some of the stuff that others are describing here, but it was the first time that I can recall ever experiencing something like it.  

Was having a hard time with sleep onset, basically tossing around for a long time, which is not uncommon for me. Anyways so as doze off, I have this really strange dream. I had this sense of having headphone cans on, and this blend of dark gray tone visuals. I am not sure that I can recall what was coming over the headphones, sounds blended with a message that was either "you are in your home" or maybe "we are in your home". Either way. It was not as much the audio or visuals...but the thing that was weird and I have never really experienced before was a profound dysphoria, with this like sinking characteristic as it got more intense and deeper. Something did not feel right about it at all and I very clearly recall consciously saying nope, thats enough.  I pulled my self out of sleep and then tossed around for a few hours more. Had some further dreams after I was able to knock out, but nothing memorable. Was weird and had not experienced that particular sensation before.   

[DDD Dad 14343]

1 hour ago, DaggerHorns said:

How often do you drink?

 

[BurdineBandit 815]

One thing that bothers me is my inability to sleep on my back if I put the pillow pressure directly on the back of my head, where my head connects to my neck, right under where the skull softens up back there. I've also though maybe it's that the blood is pooling in that area, but it gives some gnarly nightmares if I fall asleep that way. Started out of nowhere in my mid-20s, and still affects just about every time I accidentally fall asleep that way a decade later. I became a side sleeper or a back sleeper where my head is turned at least 45 degrees to a side. 

 

I had two dreams where I literally woke up and got to work immediately started coaching myself to forget whatever I just dreamt and not think about it too much, because I know what causes it (the sleeping position), and that position activates some of the darkest things my imagination has ever come up with. Luckily I don't remember them, I just remember waking up terrified twice, one of them definitely screaming. Definitely had sleep paralysis a few times in that position too. I do remember one dream where I fell asleep with the back of my head on my couch armrest and it triggered a dream with my grandma in it a few years after she passed away. We were just chillin in her living room but she was there and it felt so real but instead of being happy to see her I remembered she was dead and started crying. I blame the sleeping position on that pain feeling so vivid. Certainly just as vivid as when I was at her funeral, but the despair and pain came back out of nowhere that night. I feel like if I would've had the dream while sleeping in a different position the feelings of pain/sadness wouldn't have hit at all, maybe would've just had good memories.

[ocugolf 1214]

10 hours ago, DaggerHorns said:

How often do you drink?

Maybe once a week if I play golf, I’ll have a couple beers. At home, never. At restaurants, never. Occasionally try a brewery or two on a weekend. Why?