A month and a week ago I stopped smoking (and drinking heavily frecuently), and since then I'm having trouble sleeping more than 4 or 6 hours straight. The thing is that after a while of starting dreaming I sort of become aware that I'm dreaming and then I start trying to modify the dream or make the things I want to happen happen.

After a little while (it feels like 5 or 10 minutes) I will wake up. This is usually accompanied by very strong willings of going to pee and an occasional itching from a mosquito bite.

Today I had a dream álà "Inception" and it was really cool. We were a very big group of people and we had to enter a building to rescue someone. The building was of course guarded by "matrix-like agents" and our plans were constantly frustrated by them so we had to improvise a new plan (I think we made up to three plans). It was a very long dream and had a lot of characters and dialogs. The most remarkable thing about it was that the plot, from the beginning to the end, stayed quite logical and things that happened at early stages of the dream would remain as cause of other things that happened by the end (ie: a door that we "hacked" to exist in the first plan was later used by the agents to come in and frustrate plan two).

I don't really have much to say about it. Maybe someone can make an interesting conversation out of this.

I have the same thing when I quit. I find it pretty darn awesome It makes up for the shit your brain gives you during the waking hours as it goes without.

Being uncomfortable while asleep seems to feed it - having a full bladder, or overheating under a thick blanket seems to cause my brain to invest more energy in dreaming to escape the discomfort.

If you want to transition back into a 'normal' dream, instead of trying to make interesting things happen, try to make yourself go to bed (in the lucid dream) or do something equally boring/mundane.

Its interesting that they seem to be brought on by kicking a habit for the both of you.

I've had them occasionally myself (though no habit here) -- there was a period a few months ago where I was having them quite frequently. I say enjoy them. They can be a crazy good time -- You're basically invincible and there are no consequences, basically the best video game money can't buy -- just be certain of when you're dreaming and when you're in actual reality


And as they say, what happens in Las Psyche, stays in Las Psyche

Today I had a dream álà "Inception" and it was really cool. We were a very big group of people and we had to enter a building to rescue someone. The building was of course guarded by "matrix-like agents" and our plans were constantly frustrated by them so we had to improvise a new plan (I think we made up to three plans). It was a very long dream and had a lot of characters and dialogs. The most remarkable thing about it was that the plot, from the beginning to the end, stayed quite logical and things that happened at early stages of the dream would remain as cause of other things that happened by the end (ie: a door that we "hacked" to exist in the first plan was later used by the agents to come in and frustrate plan two).

I don't really have much to say about it. Maybe someone can make an interesting conversation out of this.

That doesn't sound like a lucid dream. It just sounds like a dream where you are more aware than you might normally be. Lucid dreams are where you are conscious of the fact that you are dreaming and can control the dream, not where you are more aware and in control of your own person in the dream.

I've only ever had one, and immediately following I had a waking dream, which is easily the freakiest feeling I've ever had. Still gives me goosebumps. For those who haven't had them, waking dreams happen when you wake up, but you are still stuck in a dream state. You are usually completely paralyzed until you become fully awake, and you hallucinate things around you. Usually they happen after nightmares. In my case I had had a nightmare that became a lucid dream where I just blew up all the bad guys with my mind or threw trees and stuff at them, then woke up with the kind of feeling that someone else might be in the room. Then I tried talking and couldn't make any sound. Then the blanket on the floor next to my bed started being tossed around. When I tried to scream nothing came out, which only made it worse. Pretty terrible feeling being so entirely out of control in the middle of what seemed like a crisis. It would have been reasonably freaky on its own; hallucinating things in the real world, but the paralyzing accompanying it made it a really horrifying experience.

I'd have to say the longest lucid dream I had was:

So essentially some magical world decides to visit ours and invades. We lose. I end up getting turned into a slave technician(since this particular wizard couple loved our tech). So I have a pretty long dream of just trouble shooting electronics and some computers. Zip forward a decade or two(with a few failed adventurer parties, assassination party more appropriate I guess), and I'm still doing the same thing. Turns out the people don't want me to die or age any more so they turn me into something else, a giant wolf centaur thing. A couple months later another adventurer party decides to try to come through, this time instead of trying to attempt some sort of rescue they just go straight for killing since I pretty much look like a 'defender'. So I pretty much start to defend myself, end up killing their mage, turning someone else into wimpering ball of pain, and pining down two other people(did I mention I'm twice human size). One of the wizards decides to come down to see what's up and was pretty amused and captures the party. A few days later I pledge loyalty since i pretty much can't go back anymore, and get a bunch more freedoms.

All in all it was pretty interesting.

[font=arial, verdana, tahoma, sans-serif][size=2]This topic is pretty interesting since I just watched Inception last night, and after I finished the movie I watched the special features where they talk about dreaming and lucid dreams. According to one of the scientists/researchers, it is possible to 'make' yourself have lucid dreams by basically telling yourself before you go to bed that you're going to have one. He said it takes practice and isn't always 100%, but it is possible.
So I thought I'd try it. When I laid down for bed I kinda kept it in the back of my thoughts that I'd have a lucid dream. I ended up having one of the weirdest dreams I've had in a long time. It wasn't really lucid because I wasn't changing anything happening, but I was fully aware that I was dreaming.[/font]
Basically I had a dream that my mom got pregnant again and it was the day she was scheduled to have a C-section. The weird part about the dream is that my mom is 60 and my parents are separated. So I spent half the time trying to figure out who the father was and how it was possible that she is even having another kid at that age.

You are usually completely paralyzed until you become fully awake, and you hallucinate things around you.

I used to have these occasionally when I was in college and living in the dorms. Needless to say they are scary as hell. I hallucinated my roommate walking into the room, asking me a question and leaving one time. The whole time I was laying there and couldn't move or talk. I actually thought that he had come into the room until later he said that he had been gone all morning and was never in the room.

Strange stuff. I find it hard to believe some of you are having long, coherent dreams - or even a story to them. Everything I've read and experienced suggests that they're wild messes of illogical scenes built from mostly recent experiences.

Mine certainly fit that description. I don't think I've had any dream scene that lasted longer than maybe 30 seconds before transforming into something completely different. Plus the usual stuff: running doesn't work, light bulbs are very dim and dream scenery is mostly a permutation of places I know with some walls shifted. The few times I went lucid, I lost it again very quickly by starting to think/daydream in my lucid state, which of course turned into a dream of its own

I also can't remember any nightmare in the last decade. At least none that woke me up or was intense enough that I would remember it. But I did have this sleep paralysis thing maybe 4 or 5 times in my life. The first time it was scary, but after that, when it happened I was awake enough to rationalize and willed myself awake (usually by trying to become agitated and by finding some limb I can twitch - then forcing that limb to move as hard as possible). One time I heard a loud metallic screech (like dragging a metal fork across an iron radiator) sound through the room that unnerved me a bit, but I never found an explanation or any indication whether I hallucinated it.

What does one have to do to get cool dreams like those posters above me?

What does one have to do to get cool dreams like those posters above me?

I've always had some problems falling asleep, and about a year ago it was getting pretty bad. I would just toss and turn in bed for an hour or two, sometimes more, before I'd finally fall asleep. I read that Melatonin could help you fall asleep faster and stay asleep, so I picked some up. One thing I missed in my research was that one of the 'side effects' is very vivid dreaming.

For the first month or so that I was taking it I had some really crazy dreams, and they were vivid enough that they were border line real. I still take it during the work week to help me fall asleep faster, but the vividness of my dreams has seemed to decline, although occasionally I'll still get a very vivid one.

I also can't remember any nightmare in the last decade. At least none that woke me up or was intense enough that I would remember it. But I did have this sleep paralysis thing maybe 4 or 5 times in my life. The first time it was scary, but after that, when it happened I was awake enough to rationalize and willed myself awake (usually by trying to become agitated and by finding some limb I can twitch - then forcing that limb to move as hard as possible). One time I heard a loud metallic screech (like dragging a metal fork across an iron radiator) sound through the room that unnerved me a bit, but I never found an explanation or any indication whether I hallucinated it.

I wouldn't have thought to describe it as 'sleep paralysis' until now, but perhaps thats what is was (at least partially) -- anyhow, I once had what I presumed to be something of a nightmare where I was lying in bed feeling unable to sleep. The door to my room was open and it was quite dark in the adjacent room of course, being the middle of the night. But as I was looking through the door, something which I felt compelled to do, it became even darker -- I would say unusually and unnaturally dark -- and it was then that I got a sense that something was coming -- not there, not invisible, but like something was about to materialize. This was quite an uneasy feeling of course, but still I was unable to do anything but continue to look. Then, the bedroom ceiling started to darken starting nearest to the doorway. This darkness spread across the ceiling steadily and evenly -- not like you might expect smoke or something to fill a room, but more like when a fast-moving cloud blots out the sun. Like the other room, it became unnaturally dark, especially given the lamp just outside the window. The room outside was now utterly black. At this point, I had a very strong feeling that whatever I had felt was coming was now in the room with me, though I never saw any kind of apparition. A very strong sense of dread was washing over me now, and my ears were filled with a constant rumbling, starting something like a thunderstorm rolling in off in the distance and then getting louder, as if that storm had overtaken and engulfed me. These moments are probably the only time I can recall feeling truly terrified, before or since. Shivers ran up by back and I felt myself tighten up, as if I were straining to shrink below the covers, if even just a little. With the room still dark, lying there utterly terrified, the noise in my ears faded away rapidly, but not instantaneously, and I heard a woman's voice that sounded not more than a foot away. Her few words rang clear as could be, delivered with utter sincerity, conviction and a tinge of self-satisfaction, but without any sign of exclamation or elation, "I'm going to fucking kill you." Simultaneously everything became pitch black. A moment later, the feeling of terror faded away to mere agitation and the room lightened. The room outside was still darker than my own, but not unnaturally so. I no longer felt as if anything was there, though I found it very hard to convince my logical mind that the experience was an illusion or that whatever it was had gone away. It took some time before I allowed myself to fall asleep again, or even to look away from the doorway.


This all felt very real at the time, and typing that out just now I'm quite amazed with the vivid detail I can still recall of it, something like 6 years later. I passed it off as simply a nightmare, but I can see that something like a waking nightmare combined with sleep paralysis could lead to such an experience. Whatever it was, it was truly the creepiest, most terrifying experience I've ever had.

According to the special features on Inception, sleep paralysis happens because part of your brain is responsible for shutting down your muscles during the REM sleep cycle. This basically ensures that we don't act out our dreams (ie sleep-walking). Sometimes your mind will wake up (or at least partially), but your body is still in it's paralyzed sleep state, thus causing sleep paralysis.

They also mentioned a story of a man named Kenneth Parks who killed his girlfriends parents while sleep-walking and was found not-guilty by the jury because the murder wasn't a conscious act. I just googled it and the wikipedia page has some interesting info about sleep murdering: Homicidal Somnambulism

Crazy/Scary stuff...