So for the past few nights I've been trying WBTB with DILD, but I seem to be having issues with the timing. Each time I've woken up about 4:45AM after falling asleep around midnight, so nearly after five hours. At first I would stay up around 40-45 minutes and go on Dreamviews before going back to sleep with the mantra "This is a dream". The problem I had was that I was too awake and couldn't fall asleep for quite a while so I think the thought left my head and I couldn't go lucid and also had recall problems.

I decided to change this and have been staying awake for roughly only 15 minutes and have been listening to an mp3 from Really's thread in Lucid Aids during that time. I also go and drink a cup of apple juice as this is supposed to help with vividness. Unfortunately, I still had the same problem of being too awake even though I was only up for 15 minutes this time.

My question is do you guys think I should continue to wake up around 4:45 (About 5 hours of sleep) and just stay up long enough to go get a cup of apple juice, this would only be a couple minutes? Or, would it be a better idea to get up at an earlier time and continue using this mp3? If the second choice, what time would you suggest waking up at?

I was thinking of waking up more around 3:30 (Three and a half hours of sleep), but I wasn't sure if this would be too early and longer REM periods wouldn't start until later.

Thanks