I don’t really dream. It’s extremely rare to the point where I’ll have a handful in a year and I don’t remember them. Waking up with an emotional reaction to an odd dream inspired by life events or entertainment… Then the details slip away from me and I can’t even talk to anyone about the experience.
What’s it like for you?
Do you enjoy, dislike or analyze your dreams?
Is it really a window to the subconscious for you?
Is like a movie that is injected into your brain, but randomly generated by AI (aka: it make zero sense and random as fuck).
Then just as things get interesting, someone wake you up and flash the Men In Black memory eraser thing and you’re like: “What the fuck was that? I think I had a dream, but I forgor”
Somewhat weird and cringe but entertaining. I usually keep my phone next to bed, if I have some dream I’d like to remember I turn on audio recording and speak whatever comes to mind. Hopefully I get to remember that in the future.
Maybe you can write your dreams down as soon as you wake up and remember them. Perhaps it will help
Yeah I’ve seen notes about sleep journals
Dreaming is like reality, but far from reality. Regardless, you accept it anyway. It looks so close to reality, yet many nonsensical things can happen. I recently had one which featured astral projection and trippy visuals. The stretching of hallways, the breaking of physics.
Foreign realms which often feel quite familiar.
Also–do your own research, but… this might interest you.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemisia_vulgaris
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oneirogen
Mugwort is known as an oneirogen. These are a class of substances known to produce vivid dreams.They are not psychoactive to any degree. I use them very, very infrequently, but they do work for me. As far as I understand, it’s diminishing returns for repeated use. If you use them daily, they stop working. Mugwort has worked for everyone I know who’s tried it, and I’d imagine it’s hard for placebo to occur here. Note that this is far from a scientifically defined class of substance–most descriptions of their effects are anecdotal. That said, they are extremely unlikely to be harmful, if that’s even at all possible.
If this is an active point of interest for you, it certainly can’t hurt to read into it. Hope this all helps!
Wow that’s. I’m down to try a herbal tea!
I haven’t tried tea, but smoking works if that doesn’t. I’d assume you want to drink the tea about an hour before bed to ensure effects take hold at the right time. You won’t notice any effect while awake. It should have mild sleep support properties, though. Also interesting is that it’s reported to work by being placed under the pillow.
Thujone is an involved compound that’s worth mentioning. In very large amounts (and I mean a catastrophic 3g+ of pure compound for myself), it becomes toxic–but typical doses are very, very far below this. Imagine how much 3g of the compound is, and how much compound is actually contained in the material.
Hope this all helps!
I didn’t plan anything with this post but I feel like I’m going to be chasing the experience of getting a dream. Even a lucid dream.
Good luck, and stay safe! Please do get back–people’s experiences will help me with my project (a work featuring dozens upon dozens of psychoactives/medicines/therapy options). Reports will help me provide better, more diverse information to people.
It won’t be for some time. But I plan to make a follow up post.
I used to have vivid awesome dreams when I was a kid and some scary ones as well, as an adult I am in the same boat as OP, handful of dreams a year that I even register and I forget almost everything once I wake up. And the worst part is most of my dreams seem related to my daily worries, like even in my dreams I can’t escape my anxiety. I remember an amazing dream I had as a kid where I could fly, it felt so real, it was like entering into a futuristic simulation.
I recall I used to dream as a kid. Only vaguely recall one or two.
It’s fun until someone cuts your arm with a sword during medieval battle, you wake up but you can’t move and can’t feel your arm so you lay on the battlefield for a while.
Have you tried learning to be better at sword fighting?
I rarely dream the same twice
Everyone dreams, FYI. It’s an integral part of sleeping. You just don’t remember it.
It’s like being awake except more entertaining things are happening. It’s a window to the subconscious in the sense I can tell problems from the day appear in them, but not in a Freudian way where they mean things.
The weirdest part is that you only realize the nonsense after waking up
Funny enough, I’ve been weirdly lucid in my dreams recently.
Congratulations! I’d love being able to lucid dream, I imagine it’s like being on some kind of drugs but without the risk.
There are many kinds of dreams, each with a different sensation.
- There’s vivid nightmares which leave you in a state of panic, often unable to go back to sleep due to a hyper focus on every little sound and touch.
- There’s action dreams which give you an adrenaline rush and a state of random anger.
- There’s emotional dreams which leave you as an empty shell, crying or full of longing for something out of reach.
- There’s horny dreams which leave a puddle in your bed.
- And there’s also happy dreams which fill you up with joy and leave you refreshed and full of love for life.
Of course there’s also the forgotten dreams which can be anything, but don’t really matter to you because you can’t remember having them. But they often leave behind the feeling you’re supposed to be doing something, which can drive you crazy during the day.
I got an emotional dream a few months ago. Woke up feeling a wreck and distraught while having no idea why. Very frustrating.
Yeah, I lose a day being on low energy every time it happens. But the subconscious dreams what it wants, regardless of an attempt to influence. We can give a scenario through our activities before going to sleep, but they tend to stretch out on their own even so.
Also the dreams that feel like distant memories and can sometimes be difficult discerning if they really happened or not
It’s like having thoughts, but weirder.
Check out the Twin Peaks series. For me that’s the closest I’ve ever seen on screen
What do you mean?
Closest depiction AND sound design to what I dream when I’m dreaming.
The type of dream I enjoy the absolute most are called “lucid dreams.” It’s when you actually recognize you’re dreaming and can take control of it. I could be dreaming of walking down the sidewalk and see a cool car, realize I’m dreaming, and then just say ok I’m going to get in that car and drive it lol
Unfortunately they’re super super rare so I think I’ve only had like 4 that I remember.
I have lucid dreams and I get excited when it happens and make some fun decisions. “Oh, this is a dream. Sweet, I’m gonna go do [X] now.” I always remember don’t try flying, because it was scary when I tried and jolted me out of the dream.
But here’s the thing. Once I’m awake, as I think about it, it seems like I did exactly what I wanted to do, but I realize that there’s absolutely no way of knowing whether I genuinely had control or just dreamed that I had control and made those choices. But in the end I did have control and made those choices because it’s my brain, right? And I feel like I did; it’s more like a memory than a dream. But following the same line, I could question reality.
Anyway, I’m currently cynical and think nobody actually controls their dreams, they only wake up thinking they did.
It wasn’t until ubiquitous social media that I realized lucid dreams weren’t the norm for everyone else. My default dreams are both lucid and recurring: I have the same fifty-odd dreams over and over and have the freedom to change the ending, rewind, or otherwise alter events. Oh, there’s one-offs too and not every dream is lucid but that’s what I considered a “normal” dream growing up in the previous century.
I don’t know how I’d feel about reoccurring dreams, but I’m definitely envious of the constant lucid dreams! Lol
Just last night I had a dream where I was fighting a Russian invasion from my childhood home. Ran out of ammo for my assault rifle and ran to my old room to get the machine gun. Somehow got stuck talking about it with other people and never got back to shooting the invaders. Just weird shit like that.
Play a lot of shooting games?
My rare odd dreams are often related to book or anime I’ve read. When I wake from those I wanna go back in.
Actually not at all!
However, I recently listened an audio book about the Continuation War between Finland and Russia (part of WW2), which might have had an impact.
It’s like getting absorbed into a memory, but the memory gets all jumbled and weird (but you don’t notice the weirdness, it’s “normal”).
I used to be like that, unable to dream/remember dreams. Turns out that was because I had nightmares and terrors and stress dreams and my brain simply didn’t want to remember them.
I took a shaman drug (that I won’t mention, because I absolutely do not recommend it for anyone ever, and regret taking it myself) over the course of many months, and it absolutely gave me the permanent ability to dream and recall, and even consistently lucid dream (I don’t recall dreams every day, but at least once a week now). I now have a whole town that acts as a hub to get to all the places I’ve dreamed about more than once. It’s kinda fun.
However, these dreams are massively emotionally taxing. I often encounter my mother (the point of the shaman drug is to interact with dead ancestors), so I’ve relegated her to a middle floor of “my house” so she’s easier to avoid… those experiences are… just so overwhelmingly taxing. They do help with some closure stuff even tho I know it’s just my brain making up both sides of things, but it’s draining all the same.
I live a extremely clean life. Zero drugs. Makes me want to try a induced hallucination…
Good call.
Hallucinations are fun, if they are purely visual and you know they are coming…
I have olfactory hallucinations as well as occasional auditory (related to migraines and headaches, not drug use) and those are just very mundane. Lol
I’ve taken every exotic research chemical and psychedelic you can think of. I can confirm hallucinations work the same with aphantasia.
Although I didn’t ‘trip’, which is the delusional state people get into when they take pills/mdma and stay up for a few days. Start talking to plastic bags, on the phone with their hand, etc. might just be me though.
This is a pretty specific usage of the word trip. Most of the time when people say it, they mean they had an above-threshold psychoactive experience (usually in the context of psychedelics). Don’t get me wrong, depending on what and how much you take you can certainly trip and find yourself doing that stuff. But many people use ‘trip’ or ‘tripping’ to describe experiences that don’t reach that point.
You sound experienced, so I’m curious how you landed on this definition of trip/tripping and what you called your experiences instead (if you use a casual term at all).
Using it like that sounds more American.
Uk loves to binge. Take a couple dozen pills each over a long weekend and people will start talking absolute nonsense. Lots of weed and coke mixed in too but seemed to be mostly the mdma and sleep deprivation that triggered it.
Small stuff like them continuing a conversation with you that you weren’t having, and then acting like a dementia patient when you correct them. To walking in on someone having a full blown conversation with a laundry detergent bottle.
No set name for the usual level of hallucinations that weren’t delirium. Usually just say something like out my tits/box, full of it, completely fucking spangled, etc.
Ahh, ok. Didn’t have the UK context, and yeah, admittedly my usage comes from a North American context.
Appreciate the answer!
I wonder what legal options there are. Can’t lose my job if I get tested.
Most psychs don’t show up on a panel just find out what the panel tests for.
I wouldn’t know where to get anything safely. Going to look into what’s available legally.
Salvia if you’re brave. World might fold in on you briefly and it’s legal because nobody has fun on it lol. But it is strong as shit and will certain fuck up your perception for a few minutes.
Most of the other legal things are pretty naff and will probably just make you feel a bit sick and fuzzy around the edges (morning glory seeds).
Depending on how strict the laws are in your area there might be some loopholes for exotic psychs but probably not the best entry. Probably best just going looking for some mushrooms, they won’t show on a standard panel.
Had nightmares as a very young child and could dream visually back then. Only when dreaming. I have total Aphantasia, and no sense memory.
I lost the ability to dream visually in my teens, so I don’t think it was a trauma response. I even remember my last vivid dream. Roller Coaster Tycoon inspired, so I can’t say it was unpleasant. My inability to remember dreams at the time followed soon after.
I managed to lucid dream once in my 20’s and very briefly had a stunning visual dream when I concentrated quite hard and it was as if smacking an old CRT TV with faulty connections. The effort maintaining that woke me up pretty quick, but for a minute I was in between huge glacial ice walls in a row boat bobbing in mostly calm deep blue sea water with chunks of ice floating around and clear skies.
That’s it though for visual dreaming.
I can remember dreams now because I trained myself to by writing what I can remember down the minute a wake up. Over time I could remember for longer and longer after walking up. This would probably work for OP too if they were interested. Gotta stick to it though.
Psychedelics don’t give me any closed eyes hallucinations and I need some pretty absurd doses of others or DMT to even see anything slightly weird open eyes. One of my motivations was to see if I could “unlock” the ability. Didn’t work for me :(
To answer out of order, I don’t analyze them. I don’t think there’s really any reason to.
Sometimes it can be a window to the subconscious, but it’s mostly just random things.It’s really hard to answer what it’s like. I dream very frequently and quite often vividly. What it’s like varies so much night by night. Lately, for maybe the past three weeks, I’ve been having one nightmare after the next after the next. For me, I tend to enjoy the scarier dreams that deal with “monster movie” plots. Zombies, clowns, ghosts, etc. Those are fun for me because they’re not real irl, so it’s easier to enjoy.
The problem I’m having right now is that these nightmares are too real and too targeted. “Nobody likes you” or bleeding out or being alone or getting cancer. Just all the horrible things my brain can do to make me wake up miserable, I guess.
When I’m stressed, I have a set of reoccurring themes that makes it easier to identify as a stress dream and therefore not be as effected by the events or emotions in the dream. Themes are: tsunamis, bears, brakes failing, or physical abuse.
One of the greatest problems I have after dreaming so vividly my whole life, is that I’m terrified that my brain will flip a switch when certain situations arise. For example, I’ve often dreamed about drowning. As in I’m in a pool or lake or ocean and for some reason am unable to get air. So I start panicking and doing anything I can. As I finally can’t take it anymore, I gasp for the air that isn’t there and… Huh. I can breathe water? It takes a bit, but inevitably the dream says look at you, you’ve always been able to breathe water, you just never tried.. So when it comes to the real world, I’m terrified that if there’s a situation where I need to hold my breath for a while underwater, my brain is going to just lean into the many lessons learned and tell me to just breathe and it’ll be fine, because I’ve always been able to breathe water, duh.
So. None of that probably answers your question. But it’s such an esoteric and personal and varied thing from person to person. Or from week to week within a single person.
If you do want to dream more, try to keep a little notebook on your nightstand and when you wake up with these dreams you rarely have, write them down. It clues your brain in to start remembering them more and then you will start to truly dream.
Sometimes I’m glad I don’t dream considering nightmares and overthinking the meaning of things.
What I’ll say about not dreaming is life feels more mundane.
Wake, self care (brush teeth, shower, eat), work, chores, brainrot, sleep.
I feel like even bad dreams would shake things up more.
Brakes failing is the worst! Also, half the time I can’t reach the pedals, and/or see clearly over the steering wheel.
Or I’m just outside of the car and have to kinda hop hobble stretch to get in and grab the E brake
