Addiction to LDs and disregarding life

Hi,

I haven't posted in a long time here, because, well, I kinda quit the whole lucid dreaming thing and I would like to discuss this.

After being extremely interested in LDs for a long period, say 2/3 months, at the end of that time I really had to quit.

The problem with LDs, at least for me, is that I find them addictive in a way. There is no real addiction, per say, but since they can be so good and so engaging they kinda took control of my life in a very strict sense. Here's how.

Keeping a dream journal and being constantly recalling dreams, paying extreme importance to them, left me in a mood in which it was very difficult to wake up in the morning. As I woke up, I tried to remember everything in the dream before I forgot about it, and inevitably fell asleep again. I began to miss classes in the morning, feeling unproductive because I woke up always too late. If you have an extraordinary life, I can imagine it must be pretty easy to wake up in the morning, but when you're life is restrained by doing things you don't really love, a routine of seeing the same people over and over again, dreams are more appealing and the prospect of a new day isn't. Also on this topic I remember I was having a lot of trouble concentrating. The memories from dreams kind popped out, splashed in from my eyes, if you will, and I would find myself thinking about it without actually realizing it.

Another problem is this cycle of dedication I ended up locking myself in. Getting started with LDs can be quite hard, mastering a WILD for instance is a challenge, but once you get started it's easier. Much easier. And you see that the more time you give into it, the more LDs you can successfully have. I can say locked myself in it, because it was a very quick cycle of preparation-reward. Not only reward, but progress also, you find yourself staying lucid longer and longer, and it being better and better.

Of course this ends up affecting not only your life in terms of responsibilities you have, but also problems with the people you know. I am sure this has happened to everyone who recalls a lot of dreams or has a lot of LDs. Haven't you ever mistaken an event you dreamed about with an event in real life? Talked about something with a friend only to realize that that something never actually happened? Right. At the point I was having a lot of LDs this happened to me a lot. In the beginning it was funny, after a while it's not funny at all. You feel completely disconnected with life and ultimately alone. I started talking less and less with my friends because i guess in a way I didn't want for it to happen again, but on the other hand your "dream life", if you will, gains a lot of importance and tricks your mind.
As an example, at one point I didn't even realize I hadn't seen this guy in almost 3 weeks because I had dreams in which he was in at least 3 or 4 times during that period. My initial reaction was "But we..." only to conclude "Oh... right".

Having said all this, here's a couple of questions. Am I the only person this has happened to? If so, can you deal with it with some sort of auto-enforced discipline? I sure couldn't. Any comments would be appreciated.

Since you are asking for comments/advice.

A dream journal's real use is as a tool for improving dream recall and stimulating lucid dreaming. If you have so many recalled dreams and LDs as you say, then the journal has served it's purpose, and you don't really need it anymore. You can LD without a journal, if it's cutting into your real world living. Maybe you can just save it for the especially interesting dreams, and journal them later in the day after your responsibilities are taken care of?

Anything can misused as escapism, not just LDing. Video games, the internet, television, music ... Those things aren't bad, but they are only beneficial when used as a compliment to reality, not as a replacement. If your real life is dull and not very fun, you could try to spice your reality up a little.

If you really can't tell dreams from reality, that sounds like a serious problem. Maybe more lucidity would help? But if it does come from having too many dreams about your real life people and places, then maybe you could use your LD control to find new things to dream about which aren't in your real life at all?

Lucid dreams affected me in an exact opposite way. Since I started lucid dreaming I would daydream all day long (ALL DAY LONG) If I wasn't talking, I was daydreaming. Everything I did, I was daydreaming. Then i started lucid dreaming. When I woke up and I walked outside, I tried to do a RC. When I do my RC I always try to convince myself that I am dreaming first. Since dreams are created by are brains, I've always find it amazing what how are brain can create all the stuff so in dream I'd always get to look, feel, hear, smell, taste the dream. That's what I did in my real life. I felt the air, I felt the ciment under my feet. I heard usual sounds I never took notice of before. I saw so many details that it sorta felt like a dream. I thought it felt so cool and I realised how my daydreaming had stopped me from living my real life. Since, I've decided, I'd dream at night, not during the day. So techneckly, to me, its like having two life. One is at night and has no physical laws. i can do whatever I want in that life. The second one is during the day. There are physical laws and there are limits to what I can do but I can accomplish goals and interact with actual beings. I think that lucid dreams have made me more lucid to my real life. :)

Moved since this is talking about LD rather than normal dreams.

If you feel disconnected try to stop it this way....

I know it may sound freaky, but I'd advise you to talk to your friends about your hobby. No matter what their reaction would be. If they think it's strange, so be it, if they're friends they'll listen to you anyway. You can proceed telling them afterwards daily about cool LDs you had, and they will listen. Maybe they'll even get interested after the initial surprise about your hobby wears off. Show them LD forums, show them books about LDing, they'll understand that it's a hobby many others like. The same you can do with your family, just start telling them. It can bring you back the feeling of being connected to people around and reality, you won't have to keep secrets and feel like you're isolated.

And I'm not just telling you that without a reason, I tried it out myself, I was telling my friends about things that didn't interest them at all. No problem, just do it, not everybody has similar interests and it's no reason to keep yours secret if it makes you feel distant.

You say you don't want to get up and fall asleep. I'd suggest that you put your dream journal online if you don't already have it online, not on paper. In this case you must get up in order to type in your new dreams, and the quicker you do it the better the chance that they don't slip away. That should make you wide awake, and you won't go to sleep again and miss classes.

About memories. I have such a "problem", too, and it's not very horrible. Usually I tell others something alone these lines "Oh so it didn't happen? Haha, so it was a vivid dream". And believe me, nobody thinks that I'm a freak, it's safe to say this. Sometimes I ask others whether something happened or not, telling them that I can't tell, and they reply. No bad reactions. It's really okay to behave like that with dream memories, people won't think you're an idiot, the majority will never even care why you're acting like that at all, and others who're more interested in you will think that you tend to have extremely vivid dreams. And as long as dream memories don't cause you social trouble, there's nothing dangerous with being a little confused.

If all that is of no help and doesn't put you in touch with reality, then it's a problem of your own attitude I think. If you firmly decided that LDing is escapism and that it's bad, then there's no other way to avoid tormenting feelings about it than to drop it.

Good luck, I hope you find a solution that you like.

Thanks for the answers and sorry about the wrong section, hope it's ok.

starry eyes, the dream journal itself was not the problem, I actually took it as an opportunity to improve my writing further, although it took some time in my day it wasn't really an issue.
The problem was really remembering all the dreams I had. Specially memories of lucid dreams, they're very vivid, it got very confusing very fast.
The problems regarding my life at the time are secondary in a way, but I'd say now it is important not to look at LDs as a way to escape a boring life. There are other forms of escapism, of couse, but LDs I'm sure you'll agree have a very unique appeal. Do they not?
Thanks for the advice of spicing up my life, but I'm not just pretending this happened a long time ago, it did. In the mean time I quit lucid dreaming and moved to the netherlands, my life has changed dramatically in short.
I never reached the point of controlling my dreams very well, and maybe that was a problem. I was able to curb my excitment of being lucid that was making me wake up, my last phase was just maintaning lucidity by participating calmly and not activaly manipulating what was happening.

SleepyCookie, it's interesting you mentioned doing RC in actual reallity, I remember now doing that a couple of times when I wasn't sure if I was really awake. That was really weird. That's a very stable situation you put yourself in, being able to separate dreams and reality as 2 different lifes is a very interesting take. Would you consider yourself an organized and self-disciplined person? I guess you made yourself the ideal situation, but I don't know, at the time I just couldn't.

Arutad, my friends did know about what I was doing, the hobby as you call it. There was even one who found it interesting and we talked about dreams we had on the occasion. But it didn't change the fact that I felt disconnected because I was confused with all the memories I had. Other people knowing or acknowledging what I was doing was not the only problem, I couldn't really deal with it properly. I just cannot picture how you say just a "little" confused, doesn't the confusion just keep on growing with you?
Getting up immediately to write down the dream is an interesting idea, I don't know how this never occured to me. If I decide to get into it again, I'm sure I'll try it.

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Originally Posted by Ceno

Arutad, my friends did know about what I was doing, the hobby as you call it. There was even one who found it interesting and we talked about dreams we had on the occasion. But it didn't change the fact that I felt disconnected because I was confused with all the memories I had. Other people knowing or acknowledging what I was doing was not the only problem, I couldn't really deal with it properly.

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That's bad :(. Then it was not a feeling of isolation but real escapism, I guess you were right about giving up LDing.

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Originally Posted by Ceno

I just cannot picture how you say just a "little" confused, doesn't the confusion just keep on growing with you?

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Not really, but I guess it's just not as bad as your case was. Even if confusion happens a few times per day, I find it interesting instead of becoming worried.

How frequent was it for you and what do you mean by confusion growing?

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Originally Posted by Ceno

SleepyCookie, it's interesting you mentioned doing RC in actual reallity, I remember now doing that a couple of times when I wasn't sure if I was really awake. That was really weird. That's a very stable situation you put yourself in, being able to separate dreams and reality as 2 different lifes is a very interesting take. Would you consider yourself an organized and self-disciplined person? I guess you made yourself the ideal situation, but I don't know, at the time I just couldn't.

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No, I am far from being self-disiplined, actually, I am more like in a fight with myself trying to be self-disiplined but its so hard for me since I used to be a daydreamer.

I think, all it is, is to live both of your life the same way, except that Real Life is a place you can train your self-disipline and achieve real goals, as for dreams are just fun and really interesting. But still, I think real life can be really interesting when you live it like a dream, like, when you take notice of your fice senses. I think its made my life twice as exciting. It spiced my life a bit more and I guess you could do the same.

I do sometimes get confused with memories but it never was a problem. Maybe you should have a pet or a human at all times in your dreams. I've just thought of that right now so its not proved to work in any ways, I'm just giving an idea that I might myself try. So when you get a good control of your lucid dreams (if you don't already) you could summon a pet or a human (that doesn't exist in real life) or an alien or object that you never see in real life. just something that be with you at all time and that would stick to the memories of that moment. In real life, if you remember something and you also remember your pet/human/anything being with you in the memory, then you'd know that you were dreaming. And doing lots of RCs could be really good.
But I don't know, it might be really hard... But personnally, I think that putting lots of effort on something as such as lucid dream is worth it. My opinion though. :)

Sometimes I'll go through the day and I will recall something and I can't quite remember if it was a dream or not. But that isn't a big deal. Neither is sharing, as I have no one outside of DV to share my dreaming with. However, my mom does think my dreaming endevours consume too much time. Time that could be spent doing important things. Well, anyway, in a way dreaming has affected me in a negative way, but I think it's only negative in the eyes of others. I like have lucid dreams (when I do, that is).

Pick a time where your dreaming won't affect your work, i.e. when school is out/over.

Sorry for your troubles, too bad you gave up LDing...

First off, you said you had a long obsession about 2/3 months... Thats not very long at all, more like a phase too me and probably would of passed...

Secondly, I do agree that when the lines of reality and dreaming become blurred it can be very unsetteling, in some cases I think it can be as bad as acute symptoms of dissociation.

When I first began LDing I had a lot of this (I only truely began 4 months ago) I began having wake hallucinations and would constantly confuse something that happened in a dream for reality.

You can read through some of my concern and other's similar experiences here

However, the good outweighed the bad. I began seeing the RL world in a whole new light as Cloud9wannabelucid mentioned. I realized how awesome and special it was that I was lucky enough to open this "portal" in my mind called lucid dreaming..

I'd advise you to try again, go beyond 3 months, keep a DJ and whatever else you need to aid in LDing. Start incorporating daily walks and take in the world in a new light. Go see some shows/movies, read a good book, give yourself something to say "hey I get to do this today!" Remember you are A L I V E (IRL and in dreamland) and thats all the motivation one should need :D

I can relate. I once almost put my arm around a girl and kissed her because we had been going out in a dream I had the night before. She wasn't looking when I started, then realized "Oh shit, that was a dream!" and pretended to yawn instead. That would have been so awkward, as I don't even really know this girl. You said life is boring. Don't let it be! If you enjoy dreams more than life, move to maybe India when you get out of school and become a Buddhist monk. You'd spend your day meditating and have few responsibilities. Then you'd get to LD all you want, with no fear of looking strange! I'm actually considering doing this myself.

Wow, got busy with an exam for 2 days and there's a lot of replies. let's see if I can tackle this.

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Not really, but I guess it's just not as bad as your case was. Even if confusion happens a few times per day, I find it interesting instead of becoming worried.

How frequent was it for you and what do you mean by confusion growing?

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Well, for me, as time went by and I accumulated more and more memories from non-lucid/lucid dreams, feeling confused with the origin of the memories happened more often. I mean that as time progressed confusing reality and dreams happened more often.

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But still, I think real life can be really interesting when you live it like a dream, like, when you take notice of your fice senses. I think its made my life twice as exciting. It spiced my life a bit more and I guess you could do the same.

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I'd advise you to try again, go beyond 3 months, keep a DJ and whatever else you need to aid in LDing. Start incorporating daily walks and take in the world in a new light. Go see some shows/movies, read a good book, give yourself something to say "hey I get to do this today!" Remember you are A L I V E (IRL and in dreamland) and thats all the motivation one should need

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Hm. Maybe it's just me, but that kind of thinking never really sticks. Being excited about being alive is one of those things that wears off rather quickly. I mean, I had those phases like "Live each day like it's my last one" or waking up every morning and feeling happy because I don't have any serious physical impairments but... It's really idealistic in my opinion, borderline juvenile even but maybe I'm a negativist fuck and I'm stretching it. If it helps you and makes your life happier, than great, in a way I envy that, but I'd be lying if I say that type of thinking has any consequence in my daily life or my daily feelings.

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Secondly, I do agree that when the lines of reality and dreaming become blurred it can be very unsetteling, in some cases I think it can be as bad as acute symptoms of dissociation.

When I first began LDing I had a lot of this (I only truely began 4 months ago) I began having wake hallucinations and would constantly confuse something that happened in a dream for reality.

You can read through some of my concern and other's similar experiences here

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I read some of your stuff. It reminds me of hallucinations I have when I'm awake for more than 30h. Never had any of that because of LDs, how weird O_o glad to know you got it under control.

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I can relate. I once almost put my arm around a girl and kissed her because we had been going out in a dream I had the night before. She wasn't looking when I started, then realized "Oh shit, that was a dream!" and pretended to yawn instead.

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Haha oh man that's hilarious!

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If you enjoy dreams more than life, move to maybe India when you get out of school and become a Buddhist monk. You'd spend your day meditating and have few responsibilities. Then you'd get to LD all you want, with no fear of looking strange! I'm actually considering doing this myself.

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Terrible weather in that india dude, terrible weather... lol

Maybe I'll get back to lucid dreams this summer, see what happens. I tried it a couple of times this week but I lost pratice o_O