Thread: Possible Dangers Of Lucid Dreaming!

sorry i had scanned for it in this section and did not see it, plus had not seen it in this thread.

hurd's article is a good counter balance to the negativity, which is why i posted it btw.

**ahh i see the thread i missed. apologies.**

You want a Fact? here is a fkin fact. I had a friend who killed himself b/c of a lucid dream. dont tell people there is no fking risk you dick

Originally Posted by renegade13

You want a Fact? here is a fkin fact. I had a friend who killed himself b/c of a lucid dream. dont tell people there is no fking risk you dick

...what? How exactly did he kill himself from a lucid dream? Could you explain more, please? I have been lucid dreaming for a long time and nothing harmful has ever happened to me.

I was going to post something stupid and witty, but I stopped myself. Because this thread should be taken seriously! Everyone should know how dangerous this is! *snicker*

losing touch with reality can be a bit dangerous, say you thought you were dreaming and did some crazy shit like tried to superman punch a moving car... your'ed get owned, i mean it all depends on the mental stability of the person, but if you have trouble differentiating real life from your dreams then there may be some decent risks

Originally Posted by nzshaman

losing touch with reality can be a bit dangerous, say you thought you were dreaming and did some crazy shit like tried to superman punch a moving car... your'ed get owned, i mean it all depends on the mental stability of the person, but if you have trouble differentiating real life from your dreams then there may be some decent risks

Every time I turn on my gamecube the health warning screen ones up, telling me that it could cause seizures if I have a previous history of epileptic issues. Since I don't, I have nothing to worry about. Your point is valid, yes, but is it the standard?

My opinion (as a qualified psychologist :] ) - a bunch of b***it

Show me the data, show me statistics, reports, research - then we can discuss
Sorry, but Wikibooks (especially without direct references to solid literature) is not a reliable source of information.
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Thats true but... Lucid dreaming hasn;t been fully discovered so these are just things that might happen.

Originally Posted by Lovelucid

Thats true but... Lucid dreaming hasn;t been fully discovered so these are just things that might happen.

From : A History of Sleep and Dreaming

We have to thank the eighth century Tibetan Buddhists for the discovery of lucid dreaming. They learned how to control dreams with Dream Yoga.

Lucid dreaming has been around for a LONG time. If there was anything like this, we'd know about it by now.

I've had lucid dreams for around 17 years now or 2/3 of my life, the only real consequences is length of time dreaming, time dilation & conflict escalation. All other claims sound improbable to me & likely stem from preexisting circumstance.
For my experiences, the length of time spent lucid dreaming has steadily increased over time. It started insignificant enough, around fifteen minutes to half an hour every night. Now it's often between an hour or two every night, which can get annoying at times. This can also become exceptionally distorted if I wake up to my alarm & hit the old "snooze" button, going back to sleep. In these cases it isn't irregular to experience a (1:10 min ratio) time dilation. I can only validate time dilation during these periods of time, but suspect it occurs during normal sleep as well. I'm still rather young, so in the back of my mind I wonder how extreme this time dilation can get.
The other primary consequence I've experienced is conflict escalation. I strongly believe my lucid dreaming evolved as a consequence to nightmares. My ability to recognize when I'm dreaming, also gave me a quasi sense of immortality. Knowing you can't die when your enemy certainly can is an intoxicating feeling for anyone. Nightmares ceased existence soon after, but what soon came can only be described as an arms race. Instead of a nightmare dream-scape, my controlled dream-scape can sometimes encounter intruders. These intruders always meet a quick demise, but only because I've evolved faster then they apparently can. These interruptions although infrequent are extremely annoying & drag innocent entities into the conflict. I've never been a religious person, but through lucid dreaming I understand my Creator's paradox. To be all powerful & yet unable to save everyone. For those who think your lucid dreams are a theme park for all manner of immoral mischief, consider this. In the beginning I was reckless, but was confronted by an individual with a simple question. It asked me, "Just because you gave us life, do you think we don't exist?". I never answered because I didn't know how to. I could only think what If I was in that entities place facing my Creator. Even if at the time I was unsure, how crushing would it be if your Creator told you that you don't exist? For those who think lucid dreaming is an escape, they're vastly misinformed. Lucid dreaming is the opportunity to be a god, but what you do with that power defines you as a person.

I deal with disassociation in waking reality, tons of feelings of "derealization", which has nothing to do with lucid dreaming nor was it induced by lucid dreaming. However, lucid dreaming opens one's mind to the endless possibilities OF the mind. It requires a deep amount of awareness and self-awareness and questioning reality. I can see how someone who hasn't dealt with some derealization can experience a small degree of such in waking reality, but not enough to induce a psychotic state or have lucid dreaming be "dangerous".

Originally Posted by PrinceMorpheus

Can you truly become so good at lucid dreaming that you can't stop?! what would be some ways to stop the habit?

I get the feeling this was written by someone who studies LDs but doesnt actually have any real experience. I think his intentions are good so i'll cut him some slack. What he says can be true of someone who watches too much tv as well. His most important takeaway is that you can stop LDs if you want. Heck, most of us expend a lot of mental effort trying to figure out how to HAVE them!

So newbies, worry about lucid dreaming to the same degree you worry about television.

Well....ok, maybe it is addictive....being one of the most awesome things I can do in my life does tend to make you want to be a repeat offender

Originally Posted by mrdeano

Although, thank god for Inception. Hopefully this will open up peoples minds.

I wish I had a bunch of guys hanging out in my dreams trying to help me achieve lucidity. That would be great.

Although this conversation is a bit outdated, I'd still take the chance to comment. Everyone knows that lucid dreaming should be avoided when suffering from any type of mental illness (schizophrenia, PTSD etc.) or in case of general neurosis, increased anxiety etc. The problem with people dealing with such conditions is, that they are afraid of what they can find in their own head. And if one is not prepared to find out the rules of the subconsciousness, that he/she should not practice lucid dreaming altogether. I read an interestin article about dangers of lucid dreaming here http://howtocontroldreams.com. 'Nuff said!

The whole OP's post shows a general misconception of lucidity. Lucidity is synonymous with awareness therefore becoming dissociated or neglecting reality will diminish ones ability to become lucid. Why do you think people on this board cultivate All Day Awareness (ADA) and generally wakeful awareness techniques. Sageous on this board is able to be lucid without RC's because he progressively works on his awareness during waking life. The ideas of dissociation, problems with memory and addiction from this context make absolutely no sense.

Originally Posted by nzshaman

losing touch with reality can be a bit dangerous, say you thought you were dreaming and did some crazy shit like tried to superman punch a moving car... your'ed get owned, i mean it all depends on the mental stability of the person, but if you have trouble differentiating real life from your dreams then there may be some decent risks

Once again you don't understand that awareness is fundamentally what lucidity is. Therefore how can you believe you're dreaming in waking life, you would in that circumstance be worse then the average person in terms of awareness.

I doesn't really understand the danger of sleeping normally at night while being lucid ..Most of all it just only a dreams..The different is maybe just the awareness and you can tweak it a little bit..But in the end the reality after waking up is all the matter..Just like games is addicting..But people still live up normally..It just like some kind of hobby that you do at night..Exploring the dream world..I think that there is no harm in that..In short its a choice in life..Some prefer to live in reality and some to live in fantasy..Its up to each of the single individual out there..For me..I choose to Live in both

Why do LDer adore LD's? its true because I've experienced 80% of this including the multi false awakening that makes you think, "I'm trapped!, is my life now over?". I detect a conspiracy lol

Originally Posted by Tim_PL

Please, don't mix science and religion. It's one of the biggest mistakes. It doesn't bring anything to the discussion. Thank you

I gotta say, Religion and Science go together nicely...

Science can only prove things wrong/incorrect but religion can only prove things right... I Certainly it's an idea that shouldn't be dismissed

Originally Posted by Tim_PL

My opinion (as a qualified psychologist :] ) - a bunch of b***it

....
If you have no mental disorder, everything is fine. If you do however, then i guess, you are not able to achieve lucid dreaming.

I didn´t read the whole thread - but to assume mentally ill people can not lucid dream - is not professional - why shouldn´t they be able to?
Being a psychologist - you are surely aware of the fact that most people with psychosis spend most of their time outside of acute phases - so why the heck should they not learn it then?
I mean - in the midst of psychosis - you won´t be able to learn a lot, probably - but otherwise..
You say, you guess - okay - but I tell you this does not make overly much sense - I would go as far and call is BS.
Otherwise agreed with you.

I made a poll a while ago - on the addiction potential:

http://www.dreamviews.com/general-lu...-shortcut.html

Might be of interest.
There is another thread - I will dig it out - about if you can get psychosis from LD-practice - there is also a small discussion on if it would be good/detrimental for a schizophrenic to learn it.
Oh - and - I have come across people on here, who gave their psychiatric diagnosis/mentioned taking neuroleptica - and LD anyway ..

Well, LaBerge in his books said that lucid dreaming is not recommended to people with mental disorders that make them unable to differentiate reality from non reality. On the face of it initially I thought that makes sense, but I have thought about it some more, and here is my current thinking: if someone is already unable to differentiate reality from non reality, so they already have times when they are incorrectly thinking their experience is real when it is not or vice versa thinking reality is not real. So they are already doing that. In such a situation what would be the harm for such a person to try to learn to differentiate reality from dreams. Now granted they likely will be unsuccessful since they already have issues with this, but attempting to become better at it, wouldn't that be desirable? Of course, especially such people should avoid ever doing anything that they would regret if their assessment of their state was wrong, thus no shooting people with gun if one thinks it is just a dream. Lucid dreaming practice is fundamentally about increasing awareness, and even if someone is mentally ill, wouldn't attempting to increase awareness be more likely to help rather than harm? Now I may be wrong about that since I am not a psychologist of psychiatrist, so this is just speculation, and if you think I am wrong please correct me.

I just reject sources with have no references to any reliable data. Nothing more.

If you have no mental disorder, everything is fine. If you do however, then i guess, you are not able to achieve lucid dreaming.

So much for standing by your principles 0o

When people start saying that lucid dreaming can be addictive and harmful to people with mental illness, I remember this link and then I laugh for a bit

But, truth be said, there might indeed be some negative consequences for lucid dreaming. As far as report go, I'd say this consequences were really minimal. If we're talking about undeniable negative aspects, there's only one I can recall:

- WBTB or WILD reduces total amount of time sleep, and can *potentially* harm your overall sleep quality. You may think not, but 20 minutes lost per day adds to quite a bit after some time, especially if you're already sleeping 8 hours (excluding the average 15minutes to fall asleep). My personal opinion on this one is that they are just 2 among many techniques for lucid dreaming, and many lders opt to completely ignore the WILD method, but yes, many people would be better off by just not waking themselves up during the night.

Other than that no apparent consequences exist. All mentions to addiction, dissociation, they are fit into a specific scenario where the person is already at risk, it's not enough to say that the person "think about it every day", addiction has actual serious implications on the person's normal functioning. Regarding people with psychosis, like StephL mentioned, you don't see these people with in constant acute phases, and even if it's proven that lucid dreaming could be a dangerous activity for these, you're still talking about a relatively low margin of the population, and you'd review this case by case, in the same way you'd analyse if a taxi driver with frequent epileptic attacks is fit for his work.

Now, the complicated part: we don't know how random dream content expression is. If it happens to be relevant (imagine for example that this dream happened exactly like this so you could consolidate/get rid of certain memories), then there would be some consequences for lucidity. When I say consequences, I'm not talking about extremes, but things like loss of certain memories....and then you realize that this can't be true or is completely irrelevant: memory recall already distorts the memory itself. At some point, you start "incrementing" false details into the "real memories" to a point where a significant percentage of that (once-real) memory is actually false. And we don't even know if dreams (I'd be more inclined to mention "some" dreams, for the sake of honesty, because some N-REM dreams seem especially relevant to certain motor learning) possess dream content expression that has a direct purpose.

Originally Posted by JoannaB

Well, LaBerge in his books said that lucid dreaming is not recommended to people with mental disorders that make them unable to differentiate reality from non reality.

I'd say this was more in lines of : safety first!

Originally Posted by JoannaB

On the face of it initially I thought that makes sense, but I have thought about it some more, and here is my current thinking: if someone is already unable to differentiate reality from non reality, so they already have times when they are incorrectly thinking their experience is real when it is not or vice versa thinking reality is not real. So they are already doing that. In such a situation what would be the harm for such a person to try to learn to differentiate reality from dreams. Now granted they likely will be unsuccessful since they already have issues with this, but attempting to become better at it, wouldn't that be desirable? Of course, especially such people should avoid ever doing anything that they would regret if their assessment of their state was wrong, thus no shooting people with gun if one thinks it is just a dream. Lucid dreaming practice is fundamentally about increasing awareness, and even if someone is mentally ill, wouldn't attempting to increase awareness be more likely to help rather than harm? Now I may be wrong about that since I am not a psychologist of psychiatrist, so this is just speculation, and if you think I am wrong please correct me.

Beautifully put, agree with all that. I'd love to perform a longitudinal study on the effects of lucid dreaming prolonged practice on patients with Alzheimer's disease.

That is True Stepyl
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