How the obsession of lucid dreaming became dangerous for me

I basically hated my living life and would try to sleep as much as i could and spend all day in bed (24/7 if permitted) trying to get lost in my dream world. i figured that if i spent most of my time dreaming (especially lucidly) then i can create my own world and do what i want to do and that would be more important than actual life which i would rarely be awake for anyway. things have changed and i still hate life but i haven't lucid dreamed in a while, but i can see how dangerous this obsession can be. Why strive for physical things in real life when you can just dream and recreate them in another world that you have full control over?

has anyone been through this?

I personally haven't gone through that so far, though I understand what you mean. I've also thought about this possibility a lot, and I'm sure it's on everyone else's mind too. I'm glad you're better now, and I hope dreamers that go into lucid dreaming don't get blinded by this shiny temptation and end up ignoring real life. We just have to set priorities and realize that no matter how awesome dreaming can be, there is still also a real world with real responsibilities and it is most important to take care of ourselves and our families.


To be honest, I'm more impressed by people who put lucid dreaming aside and come back to it later when they get their real life priorities straightened out as opposed to those who obsess over "mastering' lucid dreaming and ending up neglecting the outside world. I'm even more impressed by people who seem to balance both worlds very easily. After all, lucid dreaming is a lifestyle and we just have to make it work with everything else we are going through.

Gosh i'm so cheesy kill me now

18 years of age. Living in a crappy top floor of converted house.
Did not have a job. Knew nobody in the area. Had very little money.
Yes Lucid dreaming was a break from reality.I would often sleep until 3pm in the evening.
I do not class this as a waste of time. It was just another experience that built on my character.
Life always changes, weather you want it to or not.
Sometimes it is lonely, like my time in the flat. Then other times life is wonderful.
If you feel a little low, listen to Ralph McTell - Streets Of London


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDT1sx1yePM

What if the dream world actually is the real world, and the "physical" existence is merely a crazy delusion? :cheeky:

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Originally Posted by Voldmer

What if the dream world actually is the real world, and the "physical" existence is merely a crazy delusion? :cheeky:

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Then you are one of my Dream Characters. Made up by a deep part of my subconcious.

You might not like what I will say, but I hope this helps you.

You cannot blame lucid dreaming for what you'v done to your life. If you do not like your life you will always find another imaginary world to live in, it could be anything... drugs, gaming world and even suicide.
Stand up and change your life! Find a target and fight for it, find your love. You can still enjoy lucid dreaming without sacrificing your real life.

Iv never been through this, but I thought about it many times. I love my life, and I also love lucid dreaming. The difference with lucid dreaming is that I am going to sleep with joy and expectations of another wonderful world instead of recalling nothing.

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Originally Posted by TiredPhil

Then you are one of my Dream Characters. Made up by a deep part of my subconcious.

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The annoying thing, about that, is that there is no way in heaven or hell that I can prove to myself, that I'm not one of your dream characters.

If I am, then your subconscious allows itself quite weird excursions but, also, I would owe it a debt of gratitude (so please keep "dreaming"!) :)

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Originally Posted by Sospiro

I basically hated my living life and would try to sleep as much as i could and spend all day in bed (24/7 if permitted) trying to get lost in my dream world. i figured that if i spent most of my time dreaming (especially lucidly) then i can create my own world and do what i want to do and that would be more important than actual life which i would rarely be awake for anyway. things have changed and i still hate life but i haven't lucid dreamed in a while, but i can see how dangerous this obsession can be. Why strive for physical things in real life when you can just dream and recreate them in another world that you have full control over?

has anyone been through this?

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As I said elsewhere, if ever they develop a painless lucid dream machine...then look out! It may well be designated a class A drug and criminalised because so many people will "drop out" and who can blame them? Better that we few nutters corner the market by doing it the hard way...so it's in our own interests to form a secret society to hunt down potential inventors...and by using the powers of the most advanced among us (not me...I'll still be looking for LD #3) we "terminate them with extreme prejudice"...or is this just wishful dreaming?

Attachment 5603

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Originally Posted by Voldmer

What if the dream world actually is the real world, and the "physical" existence is merely a crazy delusion? :cheeky:

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If those "ladies" I was "sleeping" with the other night are real then I'm outta here right now...

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I can't relate to your "hating life". If you were able to lucid dream, you had the imagination to create a better looking existence - so why not do that in real life?
I don't mean change your life for the better necessarily, but shift your perspective.
Is it really that bad?
The key to happiness is to lower your expectations until they are already met.
If you can learn to be positive about your life, even if not brilliant, things will start to happen to move it in the right direction.

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Originally Posted by flowofmysoul

You might not like what I will say, but I hope this helps you.

You cannot blame lucid dreaming for what you'v done to your life. If you do not like your life you will always find another imaginary world to live in, it could be anything... drugs, gaming world and even suicide.
Stand up and change your life! Find a target and fight for it, find your love. You can still enjoy lucid dreaming without sacrificing your real life.

Iv never been through this, but I thought about it many times. I love my life, and I also love lucid dreaming. The difference with lucid dreaming is that I am going to sleep with joy and expectations of another wonderful world instead of recalling nothing.

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Where in my post did i blame lucid dreaming for my problems? I take full responsibility for everything in my life and have no idea how you came to that conclusion. If there is one thing that pisses me off it is when people misunderstand me. Just because i stated that lucid dreaming actually became detrimental to me at a point in my life, that doesn't mean i was blaming it.

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Originally Posted by Sospiro

Where in my post did i blame lucid dreaming for my problems? I take full responsibility for everything in my life and have no idea how you came to that conclusion. If there is one thing that pisses me off it is when people misunderstand me. Just because i stated that lucid dreaming actually became detrimental to me at a point in my life, that doesn't mean i was blaming it.

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According to the title of this post, obsession of lucid dreaming became dangerous for you. I think you became obsessed with lucid dreaming because of the situation in your life. You could become obsessed with anything else, that's the reason why I wrote that.

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Originally Posted by flowofmysoul

According to the title of this post, obsession of lucid dreaming became dangerous for you. I think you became obsessed with lucid dreaming because of the situation in your life. You could become obsessed with anything else, that's the reason why I wrote that.

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but it is MY obsession with lucid dreaming. I've never actually blamed it on lucid dreaming itself and have no idea how you interpreted it that way.

I have been through this. My two cents is:

The only thing that helped was making my waking life as great as possible (don't try for perfection, though) Work on your (waking) self. My belief is that when you are more confident in what you're doing with you're waking life, lucid dreaming will come more naturally.

What you're doing now is currently using it as a drug, like it or not. Common sense (presumably) tells us it is unwise to dose with a drug of choice and stay in that stupor all the time, avoiding waking life.

I think it would be helpful to see lucid dreaming as that "bonus of a fruitful life" as opposed to letting it become the only thing you enjoy. PM me if you like, we can talk about this.

If you understand how lucid dreaming works, you will realize that it is not feasible to completely escape into a dream world. Rather, you are just trying to sleep off your waking life. REM sleep occurs in certain patterns, so the actual time you can spend dreaming in a day is very biologically limited, so most of the time you will have to be in the real world. But yes, I have experienced this longing through escape through dreams. I used other things to, like drugs, movies, and video games, but over all it just made me more depressed. Now I try to expand my interests and do things to move my waking life forward. Develop new weird hobbies and start doing things that make you happy. Work out, read a book, research, perform, dance, build, create, innovate, achieve.

I can sympathize... I haven't been to that point (yet?) but it does cross my mind. Sometimes when things are tough I wish I could just sleep my life away and have awesome dreams where no one from real life could bother me and mess up my day. Sometimes I do sleep for 12-16 hours on my days off just because screw it, that's what I feel like doing and it's my life, I don't have any kids or a wife or anything so who's going to stop me? Not like it's any worse than getting up and spending that same day on the computer the whole time surfing message boards, Facebook, or playing video games. And when you really think about it, how is any of that any less respectable than going and spending time with friends and family or doing something "productive"? When I was with my last girlfriend (who already had a kid, we lived together) and we had this little "family life" thing going on and I was neglecting my lucid dreaming and other things I enjoy, I wasn't any happier then. Maybe that's because it wasn't the right girl, but who knows.

But maybe that's a bad way to look at things. I've always been kind of a loner, and I work and pay my bills so in my free time yeah I get kind of care free and ignore things that I could probably be doing to better my life. Just gotta be careful. I think pretty much anything you enjoy doing is okay but if you get "obsessed" with anything -- whether it's drugs, video games, lucid dreaming, religion, TV, or whatever you can think of, it can be detrimental to you. It's all a matter of perspective though I guess, once you start trying to define how much is too much. People seem to have these concepts of things that are "good" to waste your time on, things you should force yourself to do even if you don't enjoy them because that's what "having a life" is all about. If it's not making you happy, why would you want to keep doing it? I don't know, I'm going off on a whole 'nother tangent and I just need to go to bed. I think I have a warped perspective on life sometimes.