Alyzarin

So, I tried taking 1500 mg of aniracetam at midnight to see the effect it would have on my dreams. My advice would be that if you are sensitive to hallucinogenic states of mind (like I am) and/or have a history of panic attacks and general anxiety (like I do), that you DO NOT try this. In my previous experiences using aniracetam as a nootropic, I had noticed that it seemed kind of like piracetam but a bit more trippy, it just has sort of a dissociative energy to it. Now I know that I shouldn't take more than a standard dose (750 mg) or possibly even that if I'm not willing to deal with that. :T

Basically, as it was setting in, my thoughts started racing. I also realized that it may not be good to take a good dose of something that pushes a lot of oxygen to the brain while trying to go to sleep, but that's my bad. I was zoned out and into a mild hypnagogic trance (I get very light, transparent hallucinations easily) when suddenly the weird patterns I was watching became really strong and pushed me into alertness. I sat up thinking "Okay, that was odd. >_>" After that there was an abrupt shift in consciousness, I honestly did a RC to make sure I wasn't dreaming. It didn't really feel like a dream though, more like a trip. In the same way that hypnagogia can involve things like loud noises or images that appear really quick and then vanish in a way that makes them immediately feel really distant, I started getting sensations of chest pains that would last barely a second, then feel like they almost never happened in the first place, and I started to hear my heart beating and it sounded somewhat erratic. Though I've never had it quite as fleeting as this before, I've been here a million times... the point where I have to suddenly get myself under control or I'm going to launch into a panic attack.

I forced myself to get a grip, and started doing some of my normal calming exercises. The anxiety and sensations didn't fully go away, but it didn't make me totally freak out or anything. I frequently was getting the unsettlingly strong dissociative feeling of having all of my senses pulled away from me, like I was about to snap into an anesthetic OBE, but this also came and went pretty quickly. It took me a long time to fall asleep after that, and I think I had one dream before the first one I logged but I can't really recall anything about it. However, all of my dreams after that were considerably more vivid than they had been the past few days, or even really more than any dreams I'd had in a while.

I'd always wondered about the supposed 5-HT2A and D2/D3 action of aniracetam. I'm still not sure if they've verified it yet, but I'm more willing to believe it interacts with those receptors in some way now. It was a lot crazier than I expected.... I know people take doses much higher than that normally and are fine, too. I guess I'm just really sensitive to its effects. If I try it again in the future, I'll probably stick to the 750 mg doses, and probably a couple hours before bed. It does seem to have an augmentative effect, but it needs to be used correctly.

Anyway....

#1 - Meeting Up With Laura [Non-Lucid]

I was hanging out with this guy J I met in high school but haven't seen much of since graduation, and I was supposed to be meeting up with some girl I don't know named Laura soon. I asked J if he wanted to go to her house with me and he said sure. This part of the dream is hazy, but we got in my car and I drove us there, and somewhere down the line J turned into D. We got to her house, but she wasn't there! Her parents and my parents were, though. They were having some kind of breakfast feast with a bunch of pans on the stove that included hash browns, eggs, and mini pancakes, possibly among other things. I went into Laura's room and gave her a call on my cell (I think) and it turned out she had actually gone to my house looking for me, so I felt bad about missing her. :T I told her we'd go bowling to make up for it when I got back. I saw her as I was talking to her, but she's hard to remember. At this point my mind started associating her with Laura Palmer, from Twin Peaks, and she was blonde like her but she didn't really look like her otherwise. I thought to myself maybe we can bring some drugs or alcohol to the bowling alley to surprise her, that'll make her happy. After I got off the phone I went back and saw D pigging out on all the breakfast food. I told him we needed to head out and that he should make those pancakes he was getting be his last plate, and he said "Even worse, I think they're Chinese." and laughed. At the time, I knew what this meant.... It was some reference to the way they were cooked. I have no idea what it means now, though. After that, we were getting ready to leave and I woke up.

#2 - Talking About Disgaea [Non-Lucid]

I spent the night at someone's house talking about drugs or something, then in the morning when I woke up and walked out the front door (into a big auditorium-like building, on the second floor ) there was a huge band/orchestra event going on, so I wanted to get out of there quickly. I distinctly remember walking past this chibified version of another J I knew in school, and he even had a squeaky voice to go along with his look. I ran into an old friend (some random DC?) and the scene changes to a huge department store, and she gets mad at me for not forcing her to play Disgaea before when she thought she wouldn't like it because she said she finally decided to try it after all these years and loves it. She asks for some teaser details about what she can expect out of the game, so I gave some vague information about the plot and some cool stuff you can do in the game, which were amazingly accurate considering I was saying this in a dream, but then the dream ended.

#3 - Glitchy New Pokémon Game [Non-Lucid]

Playing a copy of an unreleased Pokémon game that I somehow downloaded on to a flash cart. (Even in the dream I admit to not remembering how I got it.) I refer to the game as Black version, but I think I might have meant Black 2. It looks cool, but because it's a dream it's extremely glitchy and not consistent at all. Yet somehow, I managed to realize that if you keep going back and retrying the options you were pressing over and over again intending them to work, they eventually would. I don't remember much about the content, though I was actually able to read everything perfectly fine, and I remember seeing a picture of Link (in child form) from his art in Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. Meanwhile, my parents are also walking around the house (I'm moving around while playing) and arguing about whether or not someone will be able to fix some issue if my dad contacts her, but I can't remember exactly what.

I decided to try using aniracetam as a sleep aid last night, I'm not totally sure if it had an effect yet but my dreams did seem different than normal. I took 750 mg, maybe I'll try 1500 mg tonight. I did manage to remember a good few more dreams than normal, but I think that's mainly because I decided to stay in bed and keep falling asleep again for longer.

#1 - The Water Slide Accident [Non-Lucid]

I'm at some public pool working as part of some "water-raising" experiment. (Like literally... I think all we were trying to do was increase the water level in the pool. ) There was a gigantic rectangular tent at the top of a long water slide on one end of the pool, and I climbed up the slide (somehow) and into the tent. In it was Sheldon from The Big Bang Theory, a couple other random people (maybe other characters from The Big Bang Theory but it's hard to remember), and my middle school orchestra teacher. Sheldon was doing something to conduct the experiment, and we all stepped forward to look out the window to see if the water in the pool was rising, but we shifted too much weight in the tent and it started slipping down the slide and into the pool. It was completely closed in and we were all freaking out thinking we might get trapped inside of it and drown. We hit the water and I expected to die, but somehow I made it up and slowly I saw everyone else popping up out of the water as well, including Linkzelda41, actually as Link! (For those not game-savvy, the character in his avatar.) I made sure everyone was okay but noticed that my teacher had never come up, and when he finally did he wasn't breathing. I went over to him and we dragged him out of the water and I started doing CPR, though without the mouth-to-mouth, just the chest thing. (The dream switched to third-person around this time, too.) I did it for a long time but it wasn't working, and I started crying but I didn't stop doing it. But he finally gasped and woke up! When he did I gave him a big hug and wouldn't let go. The dream jumped forward to me being in the hospital and getting prescribed some random drugs for... something, I guess mental trauma? :T I don't know, but the dream ended at that point.

#2 - Trapped In Darkness [Non-Lucid]

I'm home alone watching a movie almost totally in the dark, and the darkness is starting to creep me out a bit. I read online (or maybe heard from someone, or something...) about how some secret FBI agent or some other government agent on a plane accidentally stabbed someone they were sitting next to by activating a lightsaber unwittingly in his bag because it was built with an on switch that was too easy to access because the designer was lazy. I also remember that the lightsaber was red, because I actually saw it happen in a third-person kind of way. This had revealed to the world that the US government had successfully created lightsabers, so I texted J (who's a big Star Wars fan) about it and then read something about how they were launching a new moon into the sky to make up for it. I looked out back through the glass doors and saw a plane in the sky, so then I went out front and saw a rocket (really tiny) launch off in one direction across the sky, and a HUGE, absolutely gigantic moon launch off in the other direction, but from the same source. It went behind the house so I went back in and to the back yard, and looked straight up in the sky and saw it there, still enormous. All of the stars in the sky were constantly scrolling across it like the night sky was just a huge spinning wheel, but that didn't really seem to bother me much. The darkness outside was getting really thick though and it was still scaring me, so I went back inside and walked into the bathroom. I tried to turn on the light switch, but it wouldn't work. () That made me even more freaked out, so I ran out into the living room just generally frightened and hoping my mom and dad would be home soon, but then I woke up.

I'm never going to get better at doing RCs.

#3 - Dreaming About Sleep Paralysis? [Non-Lucid]

There's some presentation going on at my house in the den by some orchestra guy, with lots of orchestra teachers there sitting in rows of chairs, including my high school orchestra teacher. My friend J (the one I texted before) and his mom are also sitting way up at the front, right by the TV. The guy puts on a song and each of the teachers has a music sheet where they're supposed to be writing down the notes as they hear them, but almost none of them do, instead opting to wait until the end to just jot them all down, which I find pretty impressive at the time. After they all finished and walked away, I walked up to J and told him I thought I'd have some awesome news to tell him about lightsabers being real, but that turned out to be a dream. () He laughs, and we go out into the living room to hang out with some random girl and OpheliaBlue. We start watching a movie, and I can't remember what I was wearing but I just remember thinking of it as something really informal to the point that it would be embarrassing to be seen wearing it, and then the doorbell rang. I didn't want to answer it like that so I went into my bedroom to change, and that's when things got weird. My room was dark, and my fan was sticking out of the wall to the left of me when I walked in, but still running. My movements became incredibly jerky and snapped back as if I was in sleep paralysis with my eyes open, but honestly... I'm not sure if I actually was, or if I was just dreaming that I was. Part of the reason I think that is because I "realized" that I was in sleep paralysis, but I don't think I was really lucid about it, and I never realize it when I actually do wake up into it. I don't know though.... It was incredibly vivid, so maybe I was and I just realized it for half a second and then started hallucinating. Anyway, after the realization my vision switched to a third-person view from the perspective of the road in front of my house, looking up at a bunch of trees hanging over it (which aren't actually there). These trees were very mystically mechanical in their movements and had something that I call the "IMAX 3D" effect, which is something I get when I'm tripping really hard where everything is more detailed then anything in reality actually is. I started to wonder if I was on DXM, but then I started thinking that the doorbell ringing was probably just my parents coming home (since they were still gone from the previous dream, I guess) and I could've just answered it how I was. I saw that playing out in my mind's eye, but after that I woke up and noticed that my fan wasn't exactly in the same position in my view as it was when I thought I was in sleep paralysis, so... I just don't know.

#4 - Testing A New MMO [DILD]

I'm at my aunt and uncles' house. I don't remember much of the first part of the dream, but I end up going in the little kids room and slide across the floor in the weird way I do in dreams sometimes, and that warps me back to the front of the house. Some MMO has come out where you play the game in real life and you use these rifles that shoot green plasma bullets. I get one just to see how it is, and S ends up getting one too so he comes over to play it with me. We run around the house shooting at each other, and then I run back into the little kids room and end up doing the slide again. I say "Oh, this is a dream, isn't it?" and become lucid. Unfortunately, after this dream ended I didn't wake up enough to write it down, I fell back asleep and had some other non-lucid dream, and when I woke up again I tried to write down this one as quickly as possible but I still can't remember what happened after I became lucid, though something did happen. I also don't remember the other dream, either. Oh well....

#5 - An Intense Argument [Non-Lucid]

I get a hotel room for some reason with an old friend J (different J than before) and some guy who's just a random DC, but apparently a very close friend of mine. I'm trying to have a good time talking to both of them, but there seems to be a lot of tension between the two. (I know what this is based off of, it has to do with J. :T) They end up getting into a big argument and both strip naked to show their dominance. And then they start wrestling! One side of me is like, come on guys, don't do this, you're being childish.... :\ And the other side of me is like !!!! They break up the fight and the guy tells J to get out and not come back, so he does. I'm planning to go drop J off and come back to hang out with the guy, and I tell him it'll only take me about twenty minutes but he says he has to be at a football game in that same amount of time. So I say goodbye, and shake hands with his girlfriend (who just randomly appeared, and apparently I had just met) and hug him, and they left. J is texting me to hurry up, and I'm trying to switch from shoes to sandals for some reason but my socks are being illogically weird feeling and won't come off. Finally I just walk into the hallway, which is actually the music hall in my middle school (and the hotel room was where the orchestra room is) and I hear D's voice telling me we'll never make it in time because the middle school is right by the football game and the traffic will be terrible.

#6 - The Secret Codes [Non-Lucid]

This one shifts back and forth between first- and third-person a lot. I remember Hank from King Of The Hill talking to a group of kids about some (fictional) famous singer and guitarist's weird-sounding name and he corrects them on how to say it, and when they ask him how he knows he sighs and says "He told me." Somewhere in here there is a discussion about some gum or candy that you're supposed to chew if you're freaking out or having a bad trip. I remember that but not the visual of it. Then my dad and I are at a movie theater seeing some movie I can't remember anything about and it switched back to Hank, now in a flashback, walking around awkwardly at a concert or rave of some kind. He meets some young guy that turns out to be that musician who tells him how to say his name, then some weird "secret code" used in the gay community (I think specifically involving politics, which was definitely not real and very bizarre sounding, though I don't quite remember it). He walks off past John Redcorn who is on acid or something and freaking out, and he sees Hank but clearly isn't sure whether or not he's actually there and he says to himself "Where is that candy!?" Back at the theater, the movie's starting and my dad tells me more about the secret gay political codes claiming that the guy told him (I guess carried over from Hank) and I'm like "Uh-huh...." >_> Then back at the concert, John Redcorn is chewing on some of that bad trip candy and looks really happy, and he sees Hank again and they talk and he says he'll help Hank get out of there, because I guess he's lost somehow. Once again back at the theater, my dad is still going on and on more in-depth about these secret codes, and I'm like, seriously, I'm trying to watch the frickin' movie. >_____> And that was it lol.

Whew, that took a while to type up! At least a I was able to recall a lot, though.