A Good REM/Lucid Alert? I'm on HARDCORE cough medicine...

**oneironeer** · 02-03-2011 04:00 PM

January was a mixed bag for me. It was my return to attempting to lucid dream (I got three LDs of various quality, all too short), and I just HAD to get a bad cold that's settled into my system and requires antibiotics and cough medicine to kick.

So mixing tons of drugs, supplements and herbs probably isn't the BEST idea.

But this COUGH medicine, phew, if I don't drink a lot of liquid before I go to bed, I end up sleeping deep throughout the night. My alarms sometimes almost don't even wake me.

I purposefully drank a cup of apple juice last night before bed, and within an hour, so I'd get up within an hour or so, and I set an alarm just to be safe. I had prepared a Blue Vervain pill and tea, along with some Mugwort drops. When I woke up again in the morning, I had to double-check that the tea was gone and pill taken, because I barely remembered DOING it.

This medicine's intense, so MY QUESTION IS: Since it's keeping me good and under, what would be a good method to induce lucid dreams? Audio? Alarms? Something just before bed? WBTB is hard, cause I'm SO drowsy with this stuff.

~oneironeer

**oneironeer** · 02-04-2011 05:55 PM

Since I got no response/feedback, I figured I'd just let any lurkers who read this know... I HAD A LUCID DREAM! Here's what I did...

Since the cough medicine's so strong, I tried thinking of what could penetrate the fog and create lucidity. I made a Blue Vervain tea mixed with your basic Camomile tea, and made a Blue Vervain capsule. I made a silent 90 minute MP3 with a blip at the end (since REM starts roughly every 90 minutes), and looped it on the iPhone on my bed side. I drank some apple juice before bed and read some of the book I've been reading. Went to bed at midnight, and at 1:30a.m., I barely woke up to the first blip, but had to take a leak, so I struggled up and saw the note I had left myself in the bathroom. "TEA!"

I heated up the tea, added honey (god these herbs are bitter), and sat down with some Hershey's chocolate pieces. I'd take a hot sip, and put a piece of chocolate in my mouth to offset the taste. I slowly finished off the tea, took the capsule with it, and went back to bed.

The next blip woke me up at around 3:00a.m. without my even knowing it had gone off, I must've turned off my loop in my sleep, and I tried concentrating as I went back to bed. "I will lucid dream, I will lucid dream."

I dreamed I was in a fancy restaurant where people started ice-cream food fighting, when I saw Al Pacino walk by and a friend ribbed him for getting hit with two scoops of vanilla, I thought, "Wow, I'm DEFINITELY gonna have to write this in my Dream Journ... wait a minute!"

I rubbed my hands together and rubbed the carpet, ran outside, and walked past people in the outside cafe and touched their clothes and skin randomly. I had to resist the temptation to just start tossing people into the air (I did that last time, and I'd rather it NOT become "my thing"). I looked around at landscape, which was disappointingly bare except for a few random buildings and lots of trees. I wanted a city to destroy, so I tried imagining one, but the sky grew dark. At that moment, a monorail train sped by the outside cafe. I was getting antsy, "You're wasting lucidity!", so I jumped on the side of the train thinking, "Faster than a locomotive!"

Sadly, the speed and shaking of the train "woke me up" (False Awakening, but I didn't realize it).

I woke up soon, and saw it was around 5:30a.m., so I'm wondering if my mind was expecting that next blip and didn't get it. I think I'll set that to go off every night I'm on this medicine, and after a few days of that, go without it for a night. See how that works.

Not sure if it was just a random occurrence, or if the blips were what did it. Just thought I'd share.

~oneironeer

**Suena** · 04-04-2011 07:43 AM

Wow, sounds intense. I know this is a month old, but I was looking up the effect on lucidity when taking cough medicine. Just curious, what medicine is this? I've only taken two doses of robitussin because of my cold and just downed a mucinex (most amazing cough suppressant ever.)

Your lucid sounded amazing. It's been too long for me, hope I can do it soon. =)

**oneironeer** · 04-04-2011 12:10 PM

I'm pretty sure it was extra strength, robitussin, actually. I -may- have also been using delsym. Many of the methods I'd try, like the above, would work once, and then not repeat itself, but it's worth a shot. Honestly, I should probably try and recreate some of these older attempts, to see if they have a "refresh" quality.