possible to stop lucid dreaming?

Hey everybody,

I've recently gotten interested in lucid dreaming and have had 2 lucid dreams since (and one when I was a kid by accident), and although my experiences so far have been enjoyable, I'm hesitating to go further. This is because I kind of doubt you can stop lucid dreaming, stop noticing you're dreaming and in control of your dream. Learning to lucid dream is often compared to learning a language, and a language, once learned, seems near impossible to 'forget' to me :).
So far not much negative effects have been attributed to lucid dreaming, but then again, not much is known about the function of dreams. We do know that people deprived of REM sleep for a prolonged time get great trouble in their daily lives. The same drastic effect is obviously not obtained by lucid dreaming, but to me it doesn't seem unrealistic that manipulating your dreams could have a similar -though much smaller of course- effect.

So what I'm actually wondering is this: Do you guys think that one could stop lucid dreaming if research were to show that there is a health hazard?

Greetings,
ID

Why would you be deprived of REM just because you're aware of your dreams? You're still in REM every single lucid moment. There are barely any negative effects at all, the good ones outweigh the bad ones tenfold. And sadly lucid dreaming is not like all other skills. If you learn how to ride a bicycle you will probably be able to do it for the rest of your life, however if you learn how to have frequent LD's, they will stop as soon as you stop paying attention to them.

So to answer your question: Yes, you will be able to stop. Now I'm sure some kind of study will show up later on because some asshole mass murderer claims his deeds was because of lucid dreaming, or if this thing gets too popular and the large entertainment companies starts loosing money because people can have fun on their own. I will never believe in those lies, the world is so full of them and I wouldn't let anyone take something as wonderful as this from me. If it's indeed dangerous according to future research, then it has minimal if not zero negative impact on a person's life.

If you're REM deprived you can also meditate.
If you really think it's bad for you then you might try simulated LD.

I think it's very easy to stop lucid dreaming. My personal experience has always been that if I don't constantly keep at it and work toward it, it eventually goes away. HOWEVER, I honestly do not think you have to worry about it being a health hazard.

Even with multiple long lucids (30 minutes+) in the same night, I have never felt sleep deprived I assume from my own 25 years of lucid dreaming as a serious hobby, that you may always flash into a lucid dream now and again, but as everyone above says, it takes disipline and focus to have these dreams. If you become aware spontaniously, you must do certain tricks to stablize the dream, otherwise you are lucky if it lasts 2 minutes. Not a lot of sleep lost there,

It can't be any different than a regular dream. The only thing separating an LD from an actual dream is the fact that you consciously know you're dreaming, and I doubt that realization will suddenly prevent you from REMing. I think I know what you're thinking, that LDing is some kind of "awake" dreaming where since you're consciously thinking and making decisions, you're not actually asleep, but that's not true. You're still very much asleep and very much in REM. That's probably one of the big draws of LDs, you can go on all your adventures in real life during the day, then sleep and go on even more while dreaming, all at no cost to you personally.

Almost sounds too good to be true huh? But then again, so do regular dreams don't they?