non-lucid

Great-Grandma Versus Orochimaru
I'm back in my childhood neighborhood back home. There's snow on the ground and sky. Orochimaru from the Naruto series is chasing me. Either he has poisoned me or I'm trying to prevent it. My Great-Grandma shows up to protect me. There are trip-wires setup around my house after I've made it. They are for Orochimaru. Setting up trip-wires checks out for Great-Grandma. She was a badass. I make it to my garage and Z from my WoW group is there. The dream presents him as a childhood friend and I accept it. I don't really meet him until much later in life.

Starry Flyover
It's night-time with a starry sky. I'm at the top of a grassy hill. It reminds me of the hill Dustin uses for his radio in Stranger Things to contact Suzie. There is some kind of military flyover happening. Maybe for July 4th? My friend L shows up in a small hatchback car. She was part of the flyover service. I guess she is a pilot or somehow involved. She has a phone-holder in the car with a woman's breasts as the support structure. Neat. She's driving me over to her place, but it feels innocent. As in, we aren't going to hookup. The town has tiny alleys and turns that no car I've ever seen should be able to fit in, but this car does. We arrive back at L's place.

Before WBTB

Russian Ride
I'm traveling internationally and I don't speak the language where I am at. I'm getting off a train or bus looking for the airport. I see another bus leaving and I wave my arms and chase it, yelling for it to stop. It does. I try to ask the driver where the airport is and he tells me (in English) that the bus is full. It clearly isn't. I wonder if there is some law saying there must be X number of open seats. Regardless, I stay on the bus and he doesn't kick me off. I make my way to the back of the bus. It resembles the CATA bus system from back home. In the back car is a girl with one leg. Short hair, kinda "bad-girl type". She has khaki pants on, and the missing leg has it tied to cover the stump. I sit next to her and ask for help. She's friendly.

Some time later we are back at her apartment. It's a big studio, kinda messy with paint and art all over the place. I realize that I'm a girl, and that she may be gay. I get the impression she might have been coming onto me.

Later I'm running from Russian agents. I'm running through an apartment complex, entering and leaving through doors/windows. I'm really high up. When I go outside I'm sidling on just-big-enough edges to not fall. I don't know why they are chasing me. I eventually make my way down from the tall complex and make it to the ground but I haven't shook them.

I'm in a down-town Chinatown type area at night. There is a big crowd of people and I'm trying to use them to escape from the Russian agents. I'm at a bar with two floors open to the outside. There are some TVs running with couches set in front of them. There are some dark corners I can hide in. I try out a few and crouch down, but I decide that none of them are good enough and keep moving. Then I stand up face-to-face with one of the agents. He looks like Dr. Brenner from Stranger Things.

Running again. This time it was short. I ended up in a stone building on a grassy hill, hiding underground. But they've just found me. There is the leader (Dr. Brenner) and two thug-types. They are going to torture me for information. I tell them I've only killed one time, and I wasn't sure if it was me or my uncle who pulled them trigger. I guess I was trying to intimidate them. It doesn't work. They casually talk to me about something and then without warning Dr. Brenner shoots my right ear off with a pistol.

I cry out in pain (S hears me and tries to shake me awake). It doesn't hurt as much as I expected it would. They tell me that they will shoot off the other ear if I don't comply.

I wake up and tell S I am OK.

After WBTB

W Aged Up
I'm at my Grandma P's house in the bedroom sleeping on the bed. I've slept in later than everybody else. I roll over and see some old drawings I made in my childhood on the wall. My grandma will have decided to have kept them. They are hyper realistic and drawn in pencil. Somehow, they are holographic. I think to myself that maybe I should get back into art.

W, my brother's son who is due in September, bursts into the room with his friend, Ian. He's four years old. I can't tell who is who and I feel bad about it. But now I know it is because W isn't born yet. One of them has buck teeth. I follow them around the house and then one kid is missing. I find W/Ian eating dish cleaning tablets under sink. Standard kid behavior I guess

Lucid Fragment
I'm in a large mall, reminiscent of one from an old marching band trip from high school. I do a nose reality check and realize I'm dreaming. I double take...crap! I was dreaming that whole time before with W! I think to myself that step one is to find my DG...but my lucidity slips and I wander off.

Conditions
Medium workout early in day
Big dinner
2 drinks of alcohol
Stayed up late
6hr/30m WBTB
Yuschak Primary Trigger (8Mg Galantamine, 250Mg Choline Bitartrate)

Notes
My theory on what happened here...sleep cycle issues. Instead of jumping into the same sleep cycle I was just in, I jumped into the beginning of a later one. I stayed up until about 2:30am playing Zelda and then set an alarm for 8:30am...so about 6 hours after sleep. I know that 5h45m has been a good target for me, so I was experimenting with a larger time to test and see if it can be improved. One problem though is that I didn't have an established wake-sleep rhythm. Plus, I stayed up longer than the typical 15m during the WBTB. I planned slightly longer at 20m but it was more like 30m. I don't think the alcohol will have mattered much because of the later timing, but it could have played a part. Lesson learned: Next time, have an established sleep rhythm. Gonna say data inconclusive about 6h/20m WBTB setup.

Nostalgia Sting
I'm in a house the reminds me of my Grandma M's, but the layout is also mixed with a restaurant called Bamboozle's from back home. This mixture showed up back in a previous dream back on night of Friday 3/10/23. (I didn't mention the restaurant before, description is still correct). That one ended up being lucid but this one wasn't. I'm with my brother and my old Saxophone teacher from highschool, Z. We all have backpacks on, so maybe we are just arriving for a rehearsal. Z points at my coat but I don't see it right away.

Scorpion. There's a scorpion on my chest. I don't know what to do, so I try to stay still and watch it. I think to myself that I want to appear unafraid, take care of it quickly, but I don't. The scorpion scampers over to my unprotected arm. It starts flailing its claws and tail wildly. It jabs my arm with its tail. I anticipate pain, and there is some, but much less than I expected. I wake up.

I remember mumbling something about the scorpion to S, but she was also half-asleep so I doubt she remembers.

Big Dog Station
I'm in an airport waiting area. I'm on international travel but I don't know where to. There are some big dogs in the area. I think that S would be happy to see them. One is a big poodle-looking black dog. I also see a big long-haired german shepherd looking one. I'm talking to my brother on the phone, and he is responsible for my bag being missing. I'm upset with him because he made the decision to leave it behind so that I could make my flight. I tell him that there are things I need in the bag, like my $300 headphones and work ID.

Fragment
I have vague recollection of a smokey-train station as well. Most likely connected to the above dream about travel.

I'm coming off of about 2 months break from journaling to record this dream and more moving forward, since Summer Comp is about to begin

Cold Visit
I'm at my sister's apartment, but I'm not welcome. There is a party happening with video games on the main living room TV. There are a lot of people there easily crowding the tiny apartment. Nobody explicitly tells me so, but I know that I've shown up uninvited. Some time later I'm walking outside to see N. It's night and winter-time. The scene reminds me of my brother's college campus from years ago. Snow is falling and it looks pretty against the street lamps. I don't feel cold, though. He's upset with me which reminds me of the last time we spoke in waking life. He seems to have cooled a bit since that discussion, but the result of the discussion is the same as before. Progress isn't made.

Messing with Brother A
I'm with my family on vacation at a hotel. We have a german-shepherd dog. Somebody is in the shower, and my sister M and I are playing a prank on them. We are on the floor, where there is a slit that goes into the shower. There is button that will startle the person showering. It's probably my brother A in there. We press it, and get a satisfying *YELP* from the inside of the shower. There's also a button that will slide a fake turd in the shower from the side. We haven't pressed this one yet. Dream feels positive, makes me miss my sister. Later I'm heading to the bathroom, but the german shepherd is in the shower. I tell the dog to get out and he listens. We're getting ready to go somewhere as a family but it is just my brother, sister, and my dad.

The Benevolent Alien Sages
There has been a 9/11 level attack on planet Earth. On the human race. A group of benevolent aliens has revealed themselves. There is a great pillar climbing to the sky, or maybe it descended from space. Winding around the pillar is a spiral staircase. Around this structure, there are smaller pillars of the varying height along the staircase. Atop each stands an alien. I get the sense that the higher one ascends the staircase, the higher level intelligence the alien is. The aliens are sagely, wise, kind. They tell us that they have revealed themselves because humanity faces a great threat, and they want to help.


The alien sage. Made with Nightcafe AI.

Fragment
I'm in a spaceship or futuristic bedroom. In shape, it is similar to the AirBnB my girlfriend SB and I stayed in while we were on a ski trip some time ago. I'm in a bed. The headboard of the bed has different switches to simulate a starry night and other ambient environmental effects. It's possible that this is part of the alien dream, based on the theme, but uncertain.

Pre-WBTB

Fragment
I'm in a labyrinth maze. Viewpoint is from above.

Fragment
The Youtuber ProJared and somebody else is giving an apology speech on Distractible. It's a video, and Distractible is apparently a streaming platform like Spotify. I'm looking up what their policy is. My girlfriend SB says that they don't have a policy.

Post-WBTB

Actually woke up moments before my alarm went off. That's pretty neat. I took my supplements, used the restroom, and wrote down this entry. I slept just about 5 hours and 45 minutes, so in theory I should be entering REM cycle 4 at its' end. Maybe unstable dreams then? Hope not. Maybe I can get into REM cycle 5 from the get go after that.

I tossed and turned for quite a while. I was worried that I had wasted my time and the timing reset on the supplements (once a week for Galantamine if not using Piracetam). My phone goes off (who the hell is texting me at 7AM, savages) so I put it in airplane mode. That'll show 'em.

Supplement Interaction Gone Wrong
I'm tossing and turning in bed and I notice that I'm feeling nauseous. I fall over the side of my bed and struggle to get my vision into focus. Something must have gone wrong with the supplements and the alcohol. I feel drunk. SB is outside our room calling out to me.

"I have four parents here!" she said.

She probably wants some help hosting, I think.

"Wait four? Are any of our friends there?" I ask.

She replies in the negative. Great. So there are four people there that I probably don't know terribly well that I now need to entertain. And I feel drunk. I decide that the best thing I can do is try to sleep it off and then go help, so I get on the bed and rollback over.

Post-WBTB

Thank god. I'm awake and I feel better. There hasn't been an alcohol-supplement interaction. Nobody is visiting us at 7AM. I can resume my WILD attempts. I'm very relieved about this so I relax easier. SB has gotten up to start the day so I have the whole bed to myself. REM cycle 5 here we go. Vibrations eventually show up.

I start to see images slowly forming. I remember my past success visualizing my hands to 'grab' the dream, so I try to recreate that. I see a pinhole image at the end of the void. It looks like a beach. I start thinking about things I could grab onto. I see some streetlights. Perfect. I imagine the feeling of gripping the cold metal, and visualize my hands closing around them. I can already see my arms outstretched, and my right hand closing around the lamp.

California Chaos
I'm standing on a beach reminiscent of the California Boardwalk, holding onto a metal streetlight in my right hand. It's a beautiful sunny day. I've done it again! Successful WILD #2!


Beachside Bars. Made with Holara AI.

The first thing I do is approach a portly-looking man at a beachside bar and side down next to him. He vaguely looks like RR from work, or Carlos Mencia. I turn to him.

"Hey man. What if I were to tell you that this was a dream?" I say.

"WOAH. No way!" He casually dismisses the suggestion.

"Oh yeah? Then what about THIS!?"

I attempt to put my right index finger through my left palm to demonstrate a reality check, but I can't do it.

To be fair, I've never actually done that before. But looking back this is pretty funny. In the moment, it was also pretty funny.

"Okay forget that... then what about THIS?!"

I hold up my hand and count the fingers on it...1-2-3-4-5...6-7-8!

"WOAH. That's insane!" He exclaims.

"I'm gonna go cause trouble if you wanna come with me?" I ask him.

"Nah I'm good." He replies.

I get up. It would've been cool to create chaos with a partner in crime. I forgot all about trying to summon Aeon (name I've given to the dream-guide from the Desert planet). I'm wanting to get her advice on the dream world and see if I can ask her to make me lucid whenever she sees me in a non-lucid dream. I wander down the Boardwalk and come up to some cute girls sitting at a high-top table. I figure, it's a dream I can do whatever I want.

Spoiler for Spicy Content:

I ask one of them to stand up and bend over. She's wearing jorts. I spank her ass. Nice.

Anyway, moving on. I continue walking along the Boardwalk and come up on a brick wall. I recognize that the texture would be good to help stabilize, so I start rubbing the wall like a weirdo for a bit. Can't recall if it did anything other than make me look like a weirdo.

As I walked down the Boardwalk, I noticed that the dream started to fade to black. Instinctually, I started to focus on my arms, and gripping the dream. It is hard to describe, but I actively was resisting letting the dream fade. Miraculously, it worked. The dream was back, and I was still walking on that sunny day in the boardwalk.

I come upon some stairs going down into a sewer-like structure down below. I think to myself:

"Y'know, that seems like a great way to cause a nightmare...screw it! I'm going for it."


The Tunnel and the Stairs. Made with Holara AI.

I start to descend the stairs. As I go down, I think to try and summon KF from high-school. Sure enough, when I get to the bottom of the stairs, I see her but her face is obscured. The bottom of the stairs reminds me of the bottom of the wells from the Forest Temple in The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time. KF walks by me quickly and she seems upset about something so I don't bother her. I try to project comfort and warmness her way and say:

"Hey K, I'm going exploring, do you want to come with?" I ask.

I don't get a reply, but she does stop and turn, and then turned back and walked away. I decide to move on.

I find some more stairs going up at the end of the sewer tunnel. There is a great big door. I think:

"Ah! I can use this to get to that elven forest I've been trying to get to!"

Which actually is one of my goals and has been for some time now. Really great memories of waking life in this dream. I focus on what I want the elven forest to look like (tall grey trees as far as the eye can see, fog) and open the door.

Sunny neighborhood cul-de-sac. Nope. Not what I want. I close the door and try again.

Again with the neighborhood. Come on man...I try one more time.

Still the neighborhood. Well, damn it. I guess we're going to the neighborhood. I step out of the sewer door and into the neighborhood. There actually is a grassy knoll with the great big door leading into a sewer behind me, so I give my brain consistency points for that one. Maybe that's why it wouldn't give me the elven forest, because it couldn't find a way to drop a sewer into it.

I'm walking up to the circular end street of the homes and enjoying the sun. I have another blackout-recovery episode and save the dream. Maybe I am getting close to waking. I look around and find no DCs or areas of interest. I decide to fly. I put my arms out in front of me Superman-style and takeoff. The feeling of flight doesn't feel as robust as it normally does. More like a light pickup on the wind. The dream starts to fade shortly after I am in the air, and I don't save it this time.

Pixar VR Concert
I'm standing in a central plaza. It makes me think of the Nintendo Wii U game Nintendo Land. It's all in virtual reality which is pretty darn cool. There are a bunch of concerts going on, maybe six that you can walk to. Each has an assortment of characters from famous franchises from Pixar or Disney or whatever. I can't remember specifics except for Mr. Hippo from Five Nights at Freddy's. Obviously he must be the main attraction here because his monologues are bomb as fuck. Some time later there is a tank of water and I'm helping clean it up. One of the characters is awkwardly making a pass at me but I don't recall details.

Notes
All things accounted for, I'm pretty happy with this night of dreaming. I interacted with multiple dream characters, successfully saved the dream from fading several times, summoned a DC, had some great recall for goals, and performed a teleport (although it didn't take me where I wanted, that's still progress). That also makes 5 uses of the Yuschak Primary Trigger, after which the author suggests that the reader has enough experience to try out other supplements. I'm not sure I will, but it is something to consider.

Conditions
2 drinks of alcohol
No workout, unhealthy dinner
5hr45m/10m WBTB
5th Yuschak Primary Trigger Attempt (8Mg Galantamine, 250Mg Choline Bitartrate)

The Transforming Mech-Wheelchair Man
My brother is staying with me. He was sleeping in a guest room the night before and has cleaned it up respectfully. Then I'm in the same house, but working retail at a nerdy shop. Possibly downstairs or just a different room. A customer comes in and asks about seeing physical toys. He is a hobbyist. I show him some Star Wars helmets but that isn't what he is looking for. I take him somewhere else behind the front desk and there is a build-your-own robot setup. There is a tiny black mech-like robot that I am controlling with a remote. The mech changes into a small man in a small wheelchair but I don't notice the change. I'm still controlling it. The hobbyist is impressed.

Fragment
I'm in a high-school environment, in a classroom with about 20-30 desks facing a chalkboard. I'm taking part in a competition soon.

Fragment
I'm in a Costco-like building looking at standing fans with my girlfriend SB. We have been wanting a replacement one for the bedroom.

Fragment
I'm taking part in some race. It feels light hearted and reminds me of Mario Kart.

McGonagall Deep Fries Nagini
I'm going up the center staircase at Hogwarts. It a mixture of what I remember from the movies, and the stairwell at Salem Highschool. I'm being led by a staff member or adult. It might have been Mrs. Weasley. She's admitting that something is seriously wrong at Hogwarts. At this point I feel as is I don't belong at Hogwarts, but I've uncovered something.

Later, I'm with McGonagall outside. It is raining. There are deep puddles in the field. We are in a small garden-like area. It reminds me of Grandma M's a little bit. There is a gutter-like stone structure in the ground. It has snake insignia on it. McGonagall inspects it and comes to a conclusion in her head. She leads me into the watery-puddle field, and follows the line of the snake-gutter. It leads to another gutter opening, where Nagini pops out aggressively and attacks.

McGonagall casually casts a fire spell. It doesn't immediately engulf the snake. Rather, it paralyzes it, and it stops.

Her job completed, McGonagall smugly puts her wand away and walks toward a river-like pond some meters over. She takes off her shoes and puts her barefeet in the puddle. I'm sitting nearby. In the distance, the snake bursts into a flame. The spell was a delayed flame effect. Voldemort appears on the scene by the snake in a black smokescreen.

"I'LL KILL YOU!" he bellows at McGonagall from the distance.

In a second he is on us. He has already cast multiple word-less spells, and they catch up to him seconds later. None of them land, or McGonagall deflects them. Not sure which.

"STUPEFY! STUPEFY! STUPEFY! EXPELIARMUS" I command.

None of them land. I can't think of any other spells and then:

"CRUCIO!" This shoots a jet of red light at Voldemort and it lands, but she shrugs it off like nothing. I start to wonder. If the spell works by "truly wanting to inflict pain on your opponent" maybe I could hurt Voldemort by focusing on the feeling of love and then casting the spell.

I don't get a chance to try it. I've been murmuring in my sleep, and my girlfriend SB took that as a cue that I was having a nightmare. She wakes me up.

Pre-WBTB
My girlfriend SB shows me a new type of thread she is working with. It is layered type of thing. There is red material inside a main branch of thread and it can be stretched. I'm playing with it and she asks me to stop so I don't ruin it. She is working on new home project.

Post-WBTB
I get up and take the Yuschak primary trigger. I stay awake about 10 minutes and prepare my DJ. I re-read some old dreams, go to the bathroom, and then head back to bed. I lay for awhile and the vibrations come pretty quick. I get through one cycle of them, no images. I get a second one, and then I see a white flash, then more vibrations. I think about how last time I "missed the bus" at the end. This time, I imagined a first person view of my hands in front of me, similar to a FPS game. This visual formed at the end of the tunnel. Next thing I knew, I was standing hands outstretched exactly how I visualized. My first full WILD. Nice!

I'm lucid in a place that looks like my Grandma P's bedroom. My girlfriend SB is there. I stabilize by rubbing my hands together and touching things around the room. I talk to SB for a bit but I forgot the conversation. Also, spicy content occurs but I forget the details. I lose lucidity for a bit. Later, I'm lucid in a place that looks like my friends AG and HS' old apartment. There was some conflict here but I lost the details.

Some time later I've lost lucidity and my brother A and I are in my car. We are outside a house on a sunny day. I'm yelling at him about something. I recall feeling how hoarse my throat felt. He broke something near the drink holder on my car, and is still arguing with me and trying to give me a stack of bills. I'm frustrated cause I'm trying to fix the drink holder and my hands are busy. He doesn't care.

I probably should have gotten up to record the lucids sooner. I know I lost a lot of details here, but happy I got another lucid. Seems like the supplements work for me. It's also possible that weekend extra sleep time might be doing the trick. Might be worth it to isolate those conditions and find out. I also woke up after 5 hours this time instead of the usual 6. I may have WILD'd into the end of a sleep cycle instead of the beginning, which could have contributed to the instability. Next time, 5.5 hours before waking might be better. I think the 10 minutes awake seems to be good though.

Conditions
1hr Cycling
5hr/10m WBTB
4th Yuschak Primary Trigger Attempt (8Mg Galantamine, 250Mg Choline Bitartrate)

Captured at Not-Nazarick
I'm my best friend D's den at his parent's house. My uncle K has been shot multiple times in the head with a pistol but he isn't going down. I can see fleshy material where the bullet went in. They keep shooting him. They test talking to him and he isn't coherent anymore, but doesn't go down. Some time later I'm hiding in a side bathroom that isn't normally there (it's normally in a different off-shoot of the room). I try to call 911 but get interrupted. The captors take me upstairs where D's room normally is, and it is outfitted as a 'hacker's room'. There are two hackers there and they have multiple monitor setups. They also have keyboards that virtually scroll vertical, and they explain that this makes them type faster. They tell me my 911 call is pointless because they blocked it. For some reason, the team of captors remind me of the staff of Nazarick from the anime Overlord (they aren't the characters though). We go to the foyer downstairs and they all crowd there. Apparently they have decided to let me go. There is an emotional goodbye (the leader reminds me of my friend JV) and then I leave through the front door.

I'm running through a gloomy version of my neighborhood with overgrown grass and deep dark green colors. I end up running through a random house through an open window, observe the living room while running, and leave through another open area without stopping. It is similar to how I was doing it in the Woods Nightmare dream. I was worried about waking the owners of the home as I ran through. I end up on a high patio, and I have the feeling that I am being tracked. The dream overall is scary, but doesn't have the same sense of dread as a nightmare.


The neighborhood. Made with Stable Diffusion.

Ignoring Work and the Jungle
I'm at my desk at work. My coworker D is sitting next to me explaining something. Others nearby are listening intently, but I decide that it isn't important and ignore him. I tell him that. He thinks it is funny. No hard feelings. Dream feels lighthearted.

Fragment
I recall a muggy jungle with maybe some drizzle but not much else.

Potential Influencing Factors:
Exercise - 1 hour of walking.
Meditation - About 15 minutes of visualization.
Diet - Ate heavy meal at Panda Express.

Attack on the Landing Bay
I'm in a futuristic spaceship landing bay. There is a crisis going on. Maybe we are under attack. There is a blonde woman (she was a well-known actor but I didn't write this dream down fast enough to recall) and we are running. Apparently, we are being shoved off into a spaceship to go and be the last humans. There is some high emotion involved. We may have had families that were killed by the attack, so not exactly excited to be told that we are to go repopulate. We get into the cockpit and escape.

Woods Mansion Nightmare
I'm walking in a heavily wooded area at night. Grass is above my ankles and wet. I come across my best friend D. He has a bed just outside the window of a mansion with lights shining on the grass below. We talk for a bit and then decide to go into the mansion.

I'm running sideways and side jump through an open window in the mansion. It is well-lit and makes me think an older person might live there. Meticulously clean, lots of furniture we wouldn't be allowed to sit on, bookshelves all over. Then a woman with big 80's hair appears. It is blonde and straight up. Her face reminds me of older photos of my Mom (rest in peace). The woman runs into the room frantically.

"DO YOU REMEMBER ME?!?!" the woman yells at me.

I don't reply. At this point I'm in fight or flight mode. I'm running sideways again, and I do a side jump out a window. I fell as if I'm being chased but I don't look back to check. My escape route takes me back into the mansion. I'm running inside it again. I tried to change my path and leave through a window I previously came in from, but now there is a wall there.

I had a thought as I stared at the ceiling, since I couldn't sleep after this dream. The way she said "Do you remember me?" was aggresive in the context of the dream (nightmare) but the actual content of what she said wasn't. I was thinking that if my mom was actually in some kind of collective unconscious in the afterlife, maybe she was trying to reach out and the message got scrambled by the context of the dream? I'm not normally so much the "hand wavy" type of guy. But I still find stuff like this interesting to think about.

Fragment
I'm in a more casual setting now. It reminds me of Grandma P's bathroom from a few houses ago. My mom is there, but her skin looks older. I don't recognize/recall that she passed some years ago. We spent some time together but I can't recall much.

I've had some similar dreams with her showing up like this. We were close when she was alive, so I like to think she is just dropping by to say hi.