Thread: Dreaming while awake

So, I remember as a kid waking up one night, seeing candy on my bed, reaching for it, and realizing I was dreaming. This was the first time I remember dreaming while awake.

Last night I was awake later than I wanted to be, so I took a shot of Nyquil to sleep. I know there are better methods to fall asleep, and different medicines, whatever, I just wanted a quick way to sleep. Even after the Nyquil started taking effect, I was still wide awake, so I decided to lie in bed and fall asleep eventually.

I remember waking up in the middle of the night and seeing my room as if it was a solid metal chamber. I knew for a fact I was awake, and that if I got out of bed, I would probably wake myself up to a point where my brain would take over and realize what I was seeing wasn't really there. For a good 5 minutes I laid in bed gazing around my room, believing I was in a metal box. Where my shelves are on the wall, there was nothing on them in this dream state. I stared at them, waiting for my brain to remember what was there and start filling in the gaps. Then a section of shelves appeared normal, with the contents appearing as they would, then everything started to appear as it would, until I found myself back in my room, as it should be.

The night before I had a dream in my room (I knew I was asleep when I woke up the next morning) so I knew I was awake last night.

These are called false awakenings. You can do a reality check every time you wake up to catch them!

Then it can become lucid.

Hmm dolphin,

I dont think this was quite a false awakening. Or if it was, definitely not a normal one

Aerotactics! All i can say for now is that this experience/ability is extremely amazing. I've never experienced that before. To be awake and have the dream fade-transition to waking as it did for you is probably quite rare. So first, congrats on your gift and second have fun experimenting and learning about it!

Reading on Wikipedia what NyQuil is made of, I can't say I'm totally surprised!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NyQuil

Occasionally it's possible to be in a sort of dream state briefly as you wake up and have hypopompic hallucinations, as they're called. Personally, I only remember one time off the time of my head where I've encountered it: I woke up, saw a sort of shadowy image of one of my electronic devices in front of me, thought to myself, “Wait, I don't sleep holding onto this; this shouldn't really be there”, blinked, and it was gone. Then I immediately jotted down notes about this and the dreams I had just had, went back to sleep, and used those notes in the morning to add to my dream journal, where the entires still exist.

This dreaming while awake thing happened to me this morning! In my dream was outside in the air as a dog was biting me. The dreaming world faded to waking away really slowly, probably 15-20 seconds. Because of this, I could still see the dog for a few seconds while I was awake with my eyes open. It was neat.

Originally Posted by dolphin

This dreaming while awake thing happened to me this morning! In my dream was outside in the air as a dog was biting me. The dreaming world faded to waking away really slowly, probably 15-20 seconds. Because of this, I could still see the dog for a few seconds while I was awake with my eyes open. It was neat.

Oh yeah, I've had the fading thing happen once, too. Really interesting. Makes me wonder if I could ever have a dream end with a different sort of cross-fade, like a wipe or special effect. Haven't seen it yet, though.

In response to everyone, I haven't been in a waking dream state since, but I did want to mention that I do have quite a few dreams of my bedroom, which is odd, because the last place I lived I never had a dream of that bedroom, and I spent a majority of my time in there. I was also having terrible quality sleep from a number of factors, so that was probably a lot of it. It's odd that as far as I remember, all the dreams in this room were dark/morbid. In one of them, it was completely burned to the ground, yet still standing, with kids playing around in it on the shelves. A couple years back before I moved, I had a dream that involved a ghostly hand come from under one of the shelves, tap my lava lamp, and tell me "well that's no fun to play with," and in that same dream, I turned around to see a couple packed boxes on my bed with a dead cat hanging out of one of them. None of these dream are scary, they are just dark when looking back at them.