Lucid Dreaming Gone Bad!

Hey Hey.I want to talk about lucid dreaming gone bad. Let me rather ask. One of my close friends started practising lucid dreaming about a year ago. He recently stopped. He kind of went mental and crazy. He said it was because of the lucid dreaming. He said that he could not take it any more, because he mixed up the real life and the dream world. He got confused, because he did not know if he was sleeping or not. Maybe it was because he did not prepare well lucid dreaming. I don't know? Maybe he could not identify his the symbols in his dreams. I realy can't explain. any explanation on what he did wrong, cause I have none.



I would be glad to answer anything I can. If it means I can figure out why he went crazy, I will gladly answer anything.

That's odd. I'm not sure why it happened. Maybe his dreams tricked him so much in thinking that it was reality, while it was not, and he eventually found out in every dream of his with a great shock of surprise. Maybe this has caused him to be very paranoid about whether he was dreaming or not. Eventually he was only thinking bad stuff, causing him to develop some disorder?

I'm not sure why it happened. Maybe it's because he already had some disorder, and when you mix that with lucid dreaming, it gets worse? Most lucid dreamers are well aware whether they're dreaming or not.

This can happen and is not unprecedented- it has come up on this forum before.

My friend stopped aswell......................

Maybe he used a lot of drugs, or maybe he had some tendency to schizophrenia.

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Originally Posted by dodobird

Maybe he used a lot of drugs, or maybe he had some tendency to schizophrenia.
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schizophrenia?

i hope i dont suffer the same fate as him since i love lucid dreaming....

What is schizophrenia?

Check this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schizophrenia

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Originally Posted by Melkien

Check this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schizophrenia
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Okay. will do that.

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Originally Posted by Scar

What is schizophrenia?
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To make a long story short, a person having it sometimes can't tell between reality and imagination, or he/she is "hearing things" or seeing delusions.
The disorder can be mild with just subtle disruptions of perception, or it can be severe: for example if the person is sure he/she is a penguin or Napoleon

He must've had obscure mental problems beforehand. I seriously doubt that something such as LDing could drive someone insane on its own.

Did your friend know how to do definitive reality checks? (ie. the nose plug reality check)

If he didnt (and he just depended on finding fuck-ups in his environment) then it makes sense that he could go crazy.

he could have been mental before, like people said. .. mabey he had severe insomnia, seeing as some LDing techniques can make you loose some sleep.. and the loss of sleep made him a bit mental? ive had some problems myself with.. illnesses.. but it has nothing at all to do with LDing, just my overactive imagination mixed with horror movies.. LDing has actually helped it, letting me face my fears. mabey he didnt prepare for his LDs correctly, reality checks would have helped alot


~R~

possibly the LDing was a trigger
to mental problems that he already had
i sincerely doubt lucid dremaing cuased it fully.
but ya never know
jus make sure hes got some help!
Imran

yeah! maybe you are right. He was actualy kind of weird. He loved drinking alchol, but I read somwhere that alchol does not have any affect on lucid dreaming. I can't realy remember. Maybe some people aren't made to have lucid dreams. There is something else though. His IQ was extremely high!! and I mean very high!! maybe your intelligence can have an affect on your ability to have LD's. I have read that these mathmaticians usualy get crazy or go mental when they reach the age of 55. I think so. It was researched. People with a high IQ tend to become crazy. Anyone that can confirm this statement? I'm not realy sure, but I know I read something in that line somewhere

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Originally Posted by Scar

He got confused, because he did not know if he was sleeping or not. [/b]

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Isn't this the exact opposite of lucid dreaming?

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Originally Posted by Scar

I have read that these mathmaticians usualy get crazy or go mental when they reach the age of 55. I think so. It was researched. People with a high IQ tend to become crazy. Anyone that can confirm this statement? I'm not realy sure, but I know I read something in that line somewhere
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I think i've heard that somewere too.

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Isn't this the exact opposite of lucid dreaming?[/b]

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Yes it is but it could be a sympton that comes from lucid dreaming like false aweakings.

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His IQ was extremely high!! and I mean very high!! maybe your intelligence can have an affect on your ability to have LD's. I have read that these mathmaticians usualy get crazy or go mental when they reach the age of 55. I think so. It was researched. People with a high IQ tend to become crazy. Anyone that can confirm this statement? I'm not realy sure, but I know I read something in that line somewhere[/b]

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Sorry but i have read a study on this that says people with higher IQ tend to be more sane then anyone else. If your talking about godel and nash they had inherited schiofernia that cause their mental state, well they were the only two mathematician that went crazy.

Has he got anyone in his family with mental problem this is a great indication that he suffer from a mental disorder that not caused by environment i.e. lucid dreaming.

Also the effect on the cerebral cortex during lucid dreaming is unknown so unless some scientific studies our carried out then we dont know what damage it does to the places which should be repaired during sleep or if memory is processed proberly.

On a personal note i keep on getting headache or migraine it has got to the stage where my head hurts in some form all day i dont know if this is due to lucid dreaming but the period i have join is the period where it got worse. Also i think i have obessive compulsion disorder this also developed around the time i joined here.

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Originally Posted by becomingagodo

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It was researched. People with a high IQ tend to become crazy.
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Sorry but i have read a study on this that says people with higher IQ tend to be more sane then anyone else. If your talking about godel and nash they had inherited schiofernia that cause their mental state, well they were the only two mathematician that went crazy.
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And what if people with higher IQ tend to think too much, so they think alot more about things like infinite sized universe, how small one human is compared to everything else, what purpose we have in life and such things?
I think these thoughts can drive people mad, crazy, depressed...

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Originally Posted by qzole

And what if people with higher IQ tend to think too much, so they think alot more about things like infinite sized universe, how small one human is compared to everything else, what purpose we have in life and such things?
I think these thoughts can drive people mad, crazy, depressed...
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First of all, in response to your statement "people with higher IQ tend to think to much": Thinking to much? I would argue it is impossible to think to much about topics such as individual significance, the expanse of the universe, etc. I highly doubt that thinking a lot about how insignificant the individual really is would drive anyone insane. On the contrary, in my case, it has given a more complete understanding of the world and a stronger connection to those around me. But I digress. IQ is pretty much BS anyway. It's very arbirtary and measures only one or two kinds of intelligence. What about musical intelligence, emotional intelligence, physical intelligence, etc.? And this is coming from someone who scores very high on said IQ tests.

Your friend and his "lucid dreaming gone bad" seems to be a special case, as we don't see many other people experiencing the same thing (as evidence by Dream Views). As such, there must have been something different about his case that made him this way. As stated previously, high IQ can be ruled out as a cause of his condition. It would probably be extremely hard to determine why he had such a hard time separating reality from the dream world unless he had a diagnosable mental illness or had a history of hard drug abuse. Maybe he just couldn't accept the possibilities of LDing, or he was afraid of the unkown, or his mind made his dream world was so real it behaved just like reality (i.e. reality checks didn't work, couldn't do anything "impossible," etc.).

This brings up another interesting question, one that has been discussed, but I don't know in what forum so I dont have the link: What if people with mental illnesses, such as schizophrenia or mental retardation, have it all figured out, and the rest of us have it all wrong? Seems wrong, but it's fun to think about.