Thread: Lithium and lucid dreaming

I'm not a doctor or expert on the subject, but I can offer some layman's knowledge about neurotransmitters and sleep.

Lithium, and several other medications for treating depression and anxiety, are though to work by altering the body's use of neurotransmitters, especially serotonin. Serotonin influences your mood, particularly in the subjective feeling of being secure and content. This can be in primitive ways (like feeling secure that you have enough food and water) and in more complicated ways (like feeling that you are respected and able to influence others in a social situation). So when your serotonin is normal to high, you feel like "Hey I'm okay, in control, with no threats." In the opposite case, your mood would tend toward being worried about things or feeling helpless.

Now then, one theory about sleep phenomena like sleep paralysis and lucid dreaming is that they result from a state of heightened alertness and caution. Think like a caveman. Being asleep and unconscious can be a vulnerable situation. So there's an evolutionary balancing act between getting required sleep but also avoiding danger. The cyclical pattern of sleep is thought to allow the brain to frequently remain in a state of near-wakefulness. You've never totally zonked out. Rather, the degree to which you are aware of your environment while you are asleep moderates itself by cycling up and down. And sometimes this system of moderating awareness goes a bit haywire like in sleep paralysis or lucid dreaming. In both cases, the mind is "awake" while the body is "asleep," but in different ways for each case. These unusual states are more likely to happen when you experience a heightened state of alert or when you sleep is interrupted (like sleeping in an usual position, being sick, feeling stressed, having nightmares, hearing noise, sleeping in bright light, to name a few cases.)

So perhaps you can see the possible connection between the two. Lithium boosts your serotonin and makes you feel more comfortable and secure. That's the opposite of the condition when you're likely to have a lucid dream or sleep paralysis, which is when you are anticipating danger or vulnerability.