Hey all,
A couple of nights ago something strange happened to me. Normally I sleep all through the night once I fall asleep but a dream that I had awoke me a long time before I should have woken normally. I went to bed at 9:00 PM and I probably fell asleep about ten minutes later.
I dreamed that I was in a nightclub/theater that I visit pretty regularly in my dreams. I swear every time I go there it is one big party and I always have a blast and remember these dreams fondly for days to come. I became lucid without trying and I was then ushered up a set of stairs to the second floor theater by a good friend of mine. She stood me in front of a mirror and asked me to try on a nice-looking black dress. I did so and the hyper-realistic sensation of the fabric of the dress sliding across my skin was so stimulating that I almost lost the dream right there and then. I had to focus intently upon my reflection in the mirror in front of me to not wake up.
Once this was accomplished I went back downstairs to a bar area and began conversing with a man in his late sixties or early seventies who was apparently a bartender. He gave me a small glass that contained a very pale red-pink liquid that looked as if somebody had poured a glass of water and dripped two or three drops of red food coloring into it. I do not remember what he said beforehand to me, but I remember that he wanted me to drink the drink. He told me “you will feel chunks in your mouth, and if you can’t drink it it’s okay.” I proceeded to drink the liquid in the glass, and true to his word even though the glass contained only liquid I immediately felt large chunks of something in my mouth, like ice only with no sensation of coldness. I swallowed laboriously and found that after this first swallow I lost the ability to swallow entirely despite my best efforts. The dream then destabilized rapidly and I soon found myself wide awake in my bed.
I remember thinking to myself that it must surely be close to my normal time to wake up and get ready for work as, after all, I generally only remember dreams that I have right before I wake up. I turned over and looked at the clock, and instead of it being 6:30 AM it was only 11:00 PM, only slightly under two hours after I had fallen asleep.
I remember reading somewhere that there is brain activity during early periods of sleep but I didn’t think it led to full-fledged dreams. Is a fairly fleshed-out dream a usual occurrence within the first two hours of sleep, or is this more unusual? Granted, I was pretty tired when I went to sleep, so perhaps this has something to do with it!