why is this happening to me?

I'm awake right now and pissed off. I KNOW I dreamed last night... and I even remember remembering what it was. I woke up and the first thing I thought of was "what did I dream?". Ok, all good so far. I then laid there with my eyes closed piecing it together, and I managed to recall a very solid number of scenes and I felt quite confident. In fact I remember that I had recalled it quite vividly.

Next thing you know, I'm lying there and I don't recall a damn thing. I don't know if I fell asleep while trying to piece everything together or if the thoughts just totally vanished from my head but I suddenly was unable to recall even a single scene, minus one little mental picture which I couldn't get anything from. This has happened the last night and the night before (zero recall two nights in a row). This is after a month of practicing recall, the last two weeks of which have been for the most part amazing (2-3 detailed recalls every night).

Why is this happening? Why is the dream just vanishing from my mind even after I manage to remember and think about it? Should I just wake up and immediately start writing? Because I always thought it was better to lie there and remember as much as possible first but now for some reason that's just making me forget it... so god damn frustrating... I remember it was a really good dream too.

Most people write as much as they can when they wake up.

If you want to put it together in your head first then at least write down a few key words first.

I often fall back to sleep out of laziness and forget everything. I hate when that happen.

I've had that to happen before as well. If you've remembered it once, it should be easier to remember it again. Don't get frustrated; if it happens again, lie there and try to remember again. Make sure the memories are "solid" and won't slip away.

You could try summarizing different scenes with single words. If you remember the word, you'll remember the scene. For intance, say you had a dream about a cat falling off the roof of your house. You could simply associate that scene with "cat."

thanks for the replies guys. i finally broke the dry spell today... i think i may have had it because the first night i didn't remember dreams was when i was out partying and i was drunk and high when i went to bed, plus i only slept for like 5 hours.. and the next night i just don't know what happened, i just recalled and forgot.

last night though i had two recalls but one of them i forgot because i went back to bed... i woke up in the middle of the night sweaty as hell and that was the first thing i thought about because i was so uncomfortable (it was really hot and humid) so by the time my thoughts wandered to my dream it had already largely disappeared. i went back to bed though and a couple hours later woke up with an amazing vivid recall... so it's all good now i think i've got my mojo back lol.

Drugs and alcohol can definitely screw with your recall a bit depending on the person, it's good to know you got it back though.