Thread: Alcohol increasing vividness??

I often wake up at a god-awful time (bed around 3am wake around 7am) and go to the bathroom and go back to bed with the most vivid dreams ever!

I usually Get my LD's between 5: 20 am regulary. And than oobe afterwards.
But let me tell you something, when you consume alcohol it affects your brain structure while you sleep. I preffer you not to drink when trying to have an LD
Altough you succeeded to have a LD i congratulate you in that.
Plus you found out the appropriate time that works for you to experience vivid dreams which is

(around 3am wake around 7am)

use this time and you shall succeed in LD

Alcohol is a depressant and usually prevents much REM sleep as it causes you to sleep more deeply. It affects different people in different ways, but that's the general reaction to alcohol.

I actually did an experiment with alcohol about a year and half ago. In the experiment, I would take one shot of Cognac right before I went to bed. The results seemed to help with my dream recall and vividness, but I only did the experiment for one week, and that's not long enough to draw definite conclusions. I was in college though, so I stopped the experiment because I thought it was a waste to drink a shot every night before I went to bed, when I could save all those shots for partying on the weekend.

Originally Posted by lucidbuddha

I've just noticed that when I drink a lot....a considerable amount I guess, I often wake up at a god-awful time (bed around 3am wake around 7am) and go to the bathroom and go back to bed with the most vivid dreams ever!

Well, the fact that you're WBTBing does help with the vividness of the dream. Alcohol might be a helping factor, but WBTB is definitely one as well.

Originally Posted by Amethyst Star

Alcohol is a depressant and usually prevents much REM sleep as it causes you to sleep more deeply. It affects different people in different ways, but that's the general reaction to alcohol.

I remember reading something that said alcohol is supposed to increase your dreaming. I can't remember the details though, but maybe the REMs in the end of the sleep are prolonged?

I have also noticed this when I drink (and much, much more so when I leave my nicotine patch on at night) and thought it might have something to do with the REM rebound effect. From what I have read if you miss your REM period due to alcohol or some other substance you build up a REM debt which will cause you to have longer REM periods later that night / next time you sleep.

If this is right it may be that the alcohol interrupts your normal REM sleep and causes you have longer periods of REM later in the night as you begin to sober up. As a result you have more chance of waking up during a dream and thus remembering it.

Karillion that makes the most sense to me. I've been practicing LDing for about 5 years now and know the in's and outs. I've read numerous times that alcohol inhibits recall and LD's but like you, I have noticed when going to bed 'buzzed' I recall more vivid dreams.

I wonder how many college students would sign up for a study like that?

Alcohol makes me sleep more lightly and decreases the amount of time I sleep, and I have never ever once had a lucid dream when I went to bed drunk or on any recreational drug. However, the most profound lucid dream I ever had happened early on the Tuesday morning after the Sunday morning I woke up in the emergency room with alcohol poisoning. I think being wigged out about facing death made me face the beauty of life in a lucid dream. My lucid dreaming happens only when I don't have mind altering substances in my system. There has never been an exception to that with me. Also, my brother drinks every single day and almost never remembers his dreams.

Take all of that correlational data and do with it as you will.

THe pattern:
-go to bed smashed about 4AM
-back up about 5 hours later at 9AM, difficult to go to sleep for another hour
-after an hour awake, body has readjusted to the beatings of the night before and you crash again... <--this is where the dreams happen. And they are intense most of the time.

It's not a healthy method, however.

Originally Posted by Torcher

THe pattern:
-go to bed smashed about 4AM

lol at this point in the 'pattern,' i'd like to point out that there are innumerable other steps you can take to get lucid dreams that dont involve killing yourself slowly.