Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have no idea why people take Ambien when low-dose (<0.5mg) melatonin exists over-the-counter in abundance in the US.
People in my family have tried taking melatonin for sleep. It gave them hallucinations. Not everybody reacts the same way to different chemicals, even the ones our bodies produce naturally.
It has a sort of vividness and trueness to real life that, given the subject of the dream, was totally unwelcome in my mind and eerily blended the dream world and real life. I’d never experienced anything like it.
Somehow the dream also felt long. Not long for a dream, but like an actual day passed. It was a seriously unsettling experience.