Dreaming while awake

**Aerotactics** · 06-27-2015 08:41 PM

So, I remember as a kid waking up one night, seeing candy on my bed, reaching for it, and realizing I was dreaming. This was the first time I remember dreaming while awake.

Last night I was awake later than I wanted to be, so I took a shot of Nyquil to sleep. I know there are better methods to fall asleep, and different medicines, whatever, I just wanted a quick way to sleep. Even after the Nyquil started taking effect, I was still wide awake, so I decided to lie in bed and fall asleep eventually.

I remember waking up in the middle of the night and seeing my room as if it was a solid metal chamber. I knew for a fact I was awake, and that if I got out of bed, I would probably wake myself up to a point where my brain would take over and realize what I was seeing wasn't really there. For a good 5 minutes I laid in bed gazing around my room, believing I was in a metal box. Where my shelves are on the wall, there was nothing on them in this dream state. I stared at them, waiting for my brain to remember what was there and start filling in the gaps. Then a section of shelves appeared normal, with the contents appearing as they would, then everything started to appear as it would, until I found myself back in my room, as it should be.

The night before I had a dream in my room (I knew I was asleep when I woke up the next morning) so I knew I was awake last night.

**dolphin** · 06-27-2015 10:15 PM

These are called false awakenings. You can do a reality check every time you wake up to catch them!

**Lang** · 06-27-2015 10:17 PM

Then it can become lucid.

**Wisher** · 06-28-2015 12:04 AM

Hmm dolphin,

I dont think this was quite a false awakening. Or if it was, definitely not a normal one

Aerotactics! All i can say for now is that this experience/ability is extremely amazing. I've never experienced that before. To be awake and have the dream fade-transition to waking as it did for you is probably quite rare. So first, congrats on your gift and second have fun experimenting and learning about it!

**markov** · 06-28-2015 06:53 AM

Reading on Wikipedia what NyQuil is made of, I can't say I'm totally surprised!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NyQuil

**TravisE** · 06-28-2015 08:13 AM

Occasionally it's possible to be in a sort of dream state briefly as you wake up and have hypopompic hallucinations, as they're called. Personally, I only remember one time off the time of my head where I've encountered it: I woke up, saw a sort of shadowy image of one of my electronic devices in front of me, thought to myself, “Wait, I don't sleep holding onto this; this shouldn't really be there”, blinked, and it was gone. Then I immediately jotted down notes about this and the dreams I had just had, went back to sleep, and used those notes in the morning to add to my dream journal, where the entires still exist.

**dolphin** · 06-29-2015 04:12 PM

This dreaming while awake thing happened to me this morning! In my dream was outside in the air as a dog was biting me. The dreaming world faded to waking away really slowly, probably 15-20 seconds. Because of this, I could still see the dog for a few seconds while I was awake with my eyes open. It was neat.

**TravisE** · 06-29-2015 05:51 PM

Originally Posted by dolphin

This dreaming while awake thing happened to me this morning! In my dream was outside in the air as a dog was biting me. The dreaming world faded to waking away really slowly, probably 15-20 seconds. Because of this, I could still see the dog for a few seconds while I was awake with my eyes open. It was neat.

Oh yeah, I've had the fading thing happen once, too. Really interesting. Makes me wonder if I could ever have a dream end with a different sort of cross-fade, like a wipe or special effect.

Haven't seen it yet, though.

**Aerotactics** · 07-30-2015 04:40 AM

In response to everyone, I haven't been in a waking dream state since, but I did want to mention that I do have quite a few dreams of my bedroom, which is odd, because the last place I lived I never had a dream of that bedroom, and I spent a majority of my time in there. I was also having terrible quality sleep from a number of factors, so that was probably a lot of it. It's odd that as far as I remember, all the dreams in this room were dark/morbid. In one of them, it was completely burned to the ground, yet still standing, with kids playing around in it on the shelves. A couple years back before I moved, I had a dream that involved a ghostly hand come from under one of the shelves, tap my lava lamp, and tell me "well that's no fun to play with," and in that same dream, I turned around to see a couple packed boxes on my bed with a dead cat hanging out of one of them. None of these dream are scary, they are just dark when looking back at them.