Thread: How I got here/some questions?

After reading around the forums for a bit understanding basic terms and concepts I have become thoroughly intrigued by the premise of lucid dreaming.

I had a dream about two nights ago that lead me to the discovery of this site. Just before I explain some of the dream I would like to point out that it was not a lucid dream but it was very vivid. Well the night of the dream I went out with some friends and came home drunk (not overly but enough to feel it). The first thing I remember from my dream is being with two of my friends and two random girls (whom I didn't recognize). The one girl kept brushing up against me and the next thing I remember was driving a car to find some place to hang out with all of them. (This is where it started to get vivid) I was driving and felt sketched out because I was drunk in my dream, then the one girl opened up the door and grabbed me by the hand and we ran into a field and talked for what felt like a long time. I felt sober at this point. The last thing she told me was that she really like me and "find me when you wake up". I then woke up. I found this girl to seem so so real it was actually kind of disturbing how could my brain create such a believable person, like I remember her name she told me, awkward silences and most of the conversation (mostly about random things like we played the game "would you rather").

So trying to search the meaning of this dream I stumbled across this website and I'm glad I did. Now I would like to point out that I have had a few lucid dreams before I even knew what they were. These were probably when I was around 13-14 and I got a nightmare I would always think okay this isn't real and I would start blinking my eyes in my dream trying to wake up and eventually I would wake up in real life blinking my eyes haha. I distinctly remember one dream where I was being chased down the street by a flying dragon (haha) and I relized it was a dream and I was trying to think of it to go away but yet it remained there. My question is even once you find out your dreaming how do you control things? Like do you just think of it intensely to appear/disappear ect? Also one last question kind of random. I have heard in dreams the brain itself cannot process a random face on its own, it can only reuse a face in your dream of someones face that you have seen in at some point in your lifetime. So this would mean that every random person (that you don't know) in your dream is actually a real person, your brain just creates their personality. I found this to be mind-boggling and I was just wondereing if this is actually true.

But anyways thats kind of my story how I got here, I hope to learn a lot from these forums and one day be able to completely control a lucid dream.