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Pre-sleep treatment with galantamine stimulates lucid dreaming

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Re: Pre-sleep treatment with galantamine stimulates lucid dreaming

#11

Post by rangibaby »

madeuptempacct wrote: post #6
germinalphrase wrote: post #4

I’ve only ever had a small number of lucid-like experiences. I only remember my dreams 4-5 times a month, but those few lucid experiences were wonderful. If anyone has any advice that’s worked for them on stimulating (lucid) dreaming, I would love to hear it.

Either do reality checking every day for an hour or so, or lay down, relax, and don't move for 5 hours while staying awake. Keeping a dream journal will make the above less necessary. I find my "bandwidth" limited during lucid dreams - I can't explore wide open spaces and if I look at details, I am prone to waking up. I never found the "just like being awake and being there" trope to be true. I spent a lot of time on…

This gels with my experience.

I noticed I was dreaming and tried flying. It worked for a second, until “god” decided it wasn’t possible and I was pulled back to the ground by an invisible, irresistible force (EDIT: I think it’s called gravity?!). Trying to fight it just woke me up.

The poor rendering of places I’m not meant to go to is something I noticed when I gained control of a dream and tried going into a random building that was a “decoration”. The inside was completely empty, and the walls were gray. It seemed like a polite “fuck you” from my brain.

In a normal dream someone threw me a ball and it followed an “uncanny valley” trajectory. Almost right, but so wrong at the same time. Nice try, brain.

Lately I just try to enjoy my dreams. Paying attention to details can spoil a fun dream (I have to be careful to never check my wristwatch in dreams!)

Re: Pre-sleep treatment with galantamine stimulates lucid dreaming

#13

Post by jerf »

madeuptempacct wrote: post #6
germinalphrase wrote: post #4

I’ve only ever had a small number of lucid-like experiences. I only remember my dreams 4-5 times a month, but those few lucid experiences were wonderful. If anyone has any advice that’s worked for them on stimulating (lucid) dreaming, I would love to hear it.

Either do reality checking every day for an hour or so, or lay down, relax, and don't move for 5 hours while staying awake. Keeping a dream journal will make the above less necessary. I find my "bandwidth" limited during lucid dreams - I can't explore wide open spaces and if I look at details, I am prone to waking up. I never found the "just like being awake and being there" trope to be true. I spent a lot of time on…

'I never found the "just like being awake and being there" trope to be true.'

I've naturally lucid-dreamed for decades now (which also means I have no useful advice on how to do it), and I consider this sort of statement to either mean A: they've got a wildly better visualization center than I do (and I know mine isn't tip-top but it's not terrible) or B: they don't really have a lot of experience at lucid dreaming and haven't noticed the limitations yet. It is far from a Virtual Reality simulation.

Re: Pre-sleep treatment with galantamine stimulates lucid dreaming

#14

Post by rebuilder »

madeuptempacct wrote: post #6
germinalphrase wrote: post #4

I’ve only ever had a small number of lucid-like experiences. I only remember my dreams 4-5 times a month, but those few lucid experiences were wonderful. If anyone has any advice that’s worked for them on stimulating (lucid) dreaming, I would love to hear it.

Either do reality checking every day for an hour or so, or lay down, relax, and don't move for 5 hours while staying awake. Keeping a dream journal will make the above less necessary. I find my "bandwidth" limited during lucid dreams - I can't explore wide open spaces and if I look at details, I am prone to waking up. I never found the "just like being awake and being there" trope to be true. I spent a lot of time on…

I haven't intentionally tried to have lucid dreams, but I occasionally have them anyway. Usually there's a feeling of "slipperiness" to it, a knowledge that if I'm not very careful, I'll fall out of the dream. Sometimes that literally means falling out of it - I'll start to go through the ground and have managed to stay in by hopping back up repeatedly. Usually when I feel myself slipping out I feel that doing something that lets the dream mechanism keep grinding along will help - interacting with people for example. Also the dream world somehow feels like a movie set, as if it was only partially constructed and a lot of it just wasn't there to be seen.

Detail isn't really an issue in my experience. On a few occasions I've experimented with paying very close attention to reflections and things like water droplets. i found them not just remarkably realistic, but hyperreal, with much more detail than I think actually exists in the real world.

I'm also not sure how to tell the difference between a dream where I dream I'm lucid and an actual lucid dream. There's a definite feeling of being aware that I don't get in regular dreams, but maybe that's just part of the dream!

Re: Pre-sleep treatment with galantamine stimulates lucid dreaming

#15

Post by always_good »

I had what seemed like a lucid dream recently but realized I couldn't know if I was merely dreaming that I knew that I was dreaming and was able to control the dream.

What's the difference between that and lucid dreaming, and how can you distinguish?

Re: Pre-sleep treatment with galantamine stimulates lucid dreaming

#16

Post by AnthonBerg »

wil421 wrote: post #12

Has anyone taken Chantix to quit smoking? I did about 10 years ago and it gave me the craziest most vivid dreams and nightmares.

Yes. I dreamt I was sending psychic messages out of a dream, and woke up, and sent an SMS to apologise for the psychic message, and woke up again. So attempting to communicate out of dream layers two dreams deep.

Woke up to what I believe is reality. Am there still.

Re: Pre-sleep treatment with galantamine stimulates lucid dreaming

#17

Post by atentaten »

always_good wrote: post #15

I had what seemed like a lucid dream recently but realized I couldn't know if I was merely dreaming that I knew that I was dreaming and was able to control the dream. What's the difference between that and lucid dreaming, and how can you distinguish?

If you know you're dreaming and can control it, then it is lucid dreaming.

Re: Pre-sleep treatment with galantamine stimulates lucid dreaming

#18

Post by foxyv »

AnthonBerg wrote: post #16
wil421 wrote: post #12

Has anyone taken Chantix to quit smoking? I did about 10 years ago and it gave me the craziest most vivid dreams and nightmares.

Yes. I dreamt I was sending psychic messages out of a dream, and woke up, and sent an SMS to apologise for the psychic message, and woke up again. So attempting to communicate out of dream layers two dreams deep. Woke up to what I believe is reality. Am there still.

Reality is the dream you wake up to every day.

Re: Pre-sleep treatment with galantamine stimulates lucid dreaming

#19

Post by jerf »

rangibaby wrote: post #11
madeuptempacct wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Either do reality checking every day for an hour or so, or lay down, relax, and don't move for 5 hours while staying awake. Keeping a dream journal will make the above less necessary. I find my "bandwidth" limited during lucid dreams - I can't explore wide open spaces and if I look at details, I am prone to waking up. I never found the "just like being awake and being there" trope to be true. I spent a lot of time on…

This gels with my experience. I noticed I was dreaming and tried flying. It worked for a second, until “god” decided it wasn’t possible and I was pulled back to the ground by an invisible, irresistible force (EDIT: I think it’s called gravity?!). Trying to fight it just woke me up. The poor rendering of places I’m not meant to go to is something I noticed when I gained control of a dream and tried going into a random…

"I noticed I was dreaming and tried flying. It worked for a second until I was pulled back to the ground by an invisible, irresistible force. Trying to fight it just woke me up."

This may be a Can't Unread sort of thing for some people, but... flying in my dreams is now a source of frustration for me since I noticed that no matter how "high" I fly, there is always something on the horizon higher than me. If I fly over this building, another one even taller will be behind it; if I fly over this tree, another one even taller will be behind it.

My theory is that dreams, unsurprisingly, come from your own personal experience and the neural nets you build, and my visual field in real life always has something above me; buildings, trees, etc. I essentially never stand on the top of the horizon, let alone personally fly for real in the cockpit. Consequently, it is essentially impossible for me to dream that I'm truly flying. (I've managed some exceptions a couple of times, but it's not reliable.) Real flying is frustrating because seeing it out the side through this tiny window is not enough visual stimulation to fix the problem; I really need the cockpit view, preferably during takeoff, and preferably more than once every few months.

However, as a compensating factor, I appear to have over the years watched enough Star (Gate/Trek/Wars) and played enough space flight sims that I can be "in space" with reasonable freedom. I have managed to jump from "the ground", which is as I described above where something is always above me no matter what, to "space", by closing my dream eyes and transitioning. It's a risky move, in the sense that it definitely pushes me closer to just plain waking.

Re: Pre-sleep treatment with galantamine stimulates lucid dreaming

#20

Post by always_good »

atentaten wrote: post #17
always_good wrote: post #15

I had what seemed like a lucid dream recently but realized I couldn't know if I was merely dreaming that I knew that I was dreaming and was able to control the dream. What's the difference between that and lucid dreaming, and how can you distinguish?

If you know you're dreaming and can control it, then it is lucid dreaming.

But what's the difference between that and merely dreaming that you are?

Don't you feel like you have control and are making decisions in every dream that you have?

Is it really that interesting if you happen to dream that you're controlling a dream vs dreaming that you're controlling your flight around the world or whatever nonsense we dream about?

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