LD for me (Long)

Quest for Lucidity
1

Phew!!! It’s very satisying when you trawl the Internet looking for something, and eventually you find exactly what you’re looking for. And ld4all.com is the place I’ve been looking for for ages.

My first LD experience was when I was about 10 years old and during a dream I was able to tell others in the dream that ‘This is a dream, everybody!!!’ Of course, they all told me that I was being silly. However, I remembered that night and have spent the next 30 years trying to build on it.

Initially, I was successful with one recurring pleasant dream. I am skiing and as I like to go over bumps and fly a bit (irl), during the dream I search out the big bumps and go over them and take off into the sky flying over the mountains. Sometimes, I get a bit nervous and say to myself ‘Careful now, this may not be a dream - in which case I’m in for a rough landing (from 1000 feet up!!!)’. This recurring dream comes back maybe once a month. I’ve not really managed to get it fully under control because sometimes I drift back down to earth and although I want to fly up - my ‘power’ just seems to abandon me (very annoying!!! :smile:).

There are a couple of other less frequent pleasant recurring LD’s, but I’m not on top of those yet. Instead, something else is on top of me and I need to deal with it as it’s beginning to cause me severe problems during the day.

It initially started off with Old Hag - but in my case I was waking with paralysis with the belief that a burglar/intruder was in the house and I couldn’t get up and confront them. I then got to grips with the paralysis to the point where when I woke I was no longer afraid of intruders and that it was just a matter of waiting a bit until I really woke.

Then the trouble started. I dreamt that I had woken (A common problem apparently). I then told myself not to worry about that. I then started dreaming that I had woken, but in reality I had only woken from one level of dreaming into another level. Now, it’s at the point that I can go through several levels of ‘waking’ and not know whether I am awake or not. Combined with this is paralysis and the ‘evil’ following me and I am at the same time trying to protect my one year old son. Like last night, my wife was asleep in another room and I knew that I was in a dream, I woke from that dream and tried to call to her to help me. I went from room to room looking for her but she was nowhere to be found. (I thought I was awake but I was still dreaming, actually). I had my son with me and I eventually found a room with a balcony. I said that this must be a dream and to prove it I should jump off the balcony. I decided though that just incase I was sleep walking, I had better not as I had my son with me. I was able to take him and place him in a place of safety whilst I went looking for somebody to wake me up. I was calling out (or at least trying to call out) ‘Please wake me up!!’. Eventually, when I managed to wake myself up I did so with a gurgled scream at first followed by immense relief.

When I have these LD with paralysis and self doubt (LD nightmares?) I am left feeling completely exhausted the next day. Irritable, tired, confused, unable to think properly.

From what I’ve read here on ld4all, it appears that I should try and harness positive thoughts when I’m having an LD nightmare. Try and say - ‘Hey, this is good if I let it be - so don’t go round asking people to wake you - instead look for something to do that’s ‘nice’’. My main concern now is that I am worried that I’ll be sleep walking and may bring harm to myself, although I’m not aware of having done any sleep walking since about 8 years old.

My wife tells me that I grind my teeth a lot in my sleep and talk gobbledegook. This then leads me to worry that I have great anxiety whilst I sleep and that my whole thought processes are screwed up.

To be honest, I’m scared now of what’s happening to me.

I wonder if it’s because of some medication I take which does have a slightly psychotropic effect. Sunday nights are worse. I only drink alcohol (moderately) on Saturdays and Sundays. Is that causing a problem?

In any case, I’d really like to get to the bottom of what’s up. Is it a good thing happening or something that I need to stop?

Pete

2

These dreams of waking up are called ‘False Awakenings’ (or FA for short).

That are not a problem, nor unusual. Pretty much everyone has them, to a greater or less extent. They seem to occurs the most after nightmares and LD’s.

There is an easy way of knowing if you have really woken up, or if you’re actually just having a FA.
Take a RC (or three) whenever you wake up :smile:.

These RC will tell if you are dreaming or not. If you are dreaming - then enjoy the LD. You can either explore your lucid house, or you could leave it and go somewhere else (anywhere you can think of).

I can understand your fear that you may be sleep walking - I too use to have that fear when I became lucid in my FA’s. Now, if I ever have that fear, I simply remind myself that my real body is still paralised.

Talking gobbledegook isn’t too odd. My little brother does that as well sometimes. I’m not sure what cuases it, but it’s not dangerous.

I’m not sure about the teeth grinding thing. But I doubt it’s anything to be worried about.

The reason you feel tired and irritable after your FA’s is because you spent your time in them worrying. If you can take a more relaxed approach to it (for example: having fun flying around) you should feel a lot better in the morning.

3

Hi Hagman! (Funny nick! LOL! :lol: ) Welcome to the forum! :wave:

To be honest, I don’t think that you have to be scared of what you’re experiencing now. I’ll try and reply to you the best I can, but some questions can’t be properly answered on this forum.

Many people use to naturally experience lucid dreams. And about one person per six has experienced sleep paralysis, though just 1% of the population has very strong hallucinations in it. There is absolutely no danger with SP, as you have already realized. Of course, there is no physical danger, and moreover, having SP doesn’t mean you have any psychological trouble. It seems it’s just related with a high melatonin rate, which happens naturally during adolescence for instance.

“Natural” lucid dreamers often become lucid amidst nightmares. Curiously, though it seems obvious with some LD’ing experience, they generally don’t realize it’s harmless and want to wake up. What is not really the best solution. (You can find a current thread about lucid nightmares here.) It means their lucidity level is rather low. There are some techniques in order to increase it. For instance, in a lucid nightmare, I’ve shouted “Lucid! Lucid! Lucid!” until I reached a sufficient level and fully realized it was a dream.

By the way, with some experience, the nightmarish feelings disappear quite immediatly. Indeed, the main thing you have to do is think about this in real life : when you realize it’s a dream, you realize that your environment is illusory, thus you don’t have to scare : nothing can harm you. You just have to decide what to do next, and leave this stupid nightmare. Most often, when you realize this in a dream, you’ll experience that the nightmarish conditions lose all their interest; then you are in a normal lucid dream.

You have two main problems, but they can be easily overcomed:

  1. doubting you’re in a dream, due to false awakenings: in order to completely realize that you’re dreaming, you have to perform reality checks in your dream. There are a lot of RC’s, you can find a lot of them here. You have to choose 2 or 3 different RC’s, so that you can perform another RC when one fails. I can’t tell you which will be the best for you, you’ll find it by testing in your own dreams.

  2. worrying you may sleepwalk: it’s an irrational fear. Sleepwalking happens during another sleep phase than lucid dreaming. It could be a long subject to develop here, so to make a long story short, we never heard that a LD’er woke up in his kitchen, or broke his leg on the stairs while LD’ing.

Don’t worry. It’s not really a big problem and it happens to a lot of “normal” people. Psychotropics may have such slight side effects, they disappear when you stop the treatment.

About this point, you should read the uses on the warnings notice of your pills. It’s generally given the advice not to drink alcohol with psychotropics. It mainly depends on the drug classification. With some of them, you can drink moderately from time to time, but you have to know that psychotropics and alcohol increase each other’s effects. For instance, the mother of a friend, who had Prozac, drank just a bit of whisky during her daughter wedding, got immediatly drunk and they had to carry her to bed. And with some psychotropics, alcohol is very dangerous. You should ask to your physician, but of course he won’t answer you about lucid dreaming side effects!

I hope all of this could help ! :smile:

4

Many thanks, Sureal & Basilus.

You both seem very very knowledgable about LD’s, and what you say makes great sense.

Last night I was hoping to have (any sort of) LD as I was prepared with the RC’s.

All, I do know is that the dreams I did have were pretty ‘in control’. By that, I mean that they were not LD’s exactly, but in the dreams I was making things happen that I wanted to happen. (If only RL was like that!!).

Re. Alcohol. I only take the medication when the alcohol has worn off, or at least nearly worn off because (as you correctly point out) it is not adviable to mix.

The alcohol may be a misleader. Perhaps, as there are so many more stimulating situations at the weekend compared to the working week, that this leads to greater ‘sleep activity’?

I’ll post my next experience when it occurs. Hopefully, I’ll be able to report success!!

Pete :smile:

5

Thank you Hagman! :clown:
The most funny is that I didn’t saw Sureal has already replied while I was preparing my (long) answer, so that I just noticed later that we said the same things. :grin:

That’s a possibility, but I really don’t know. :confused:

I’m longing to see your further reports! Good luck! :smile: