New and I keep having false awakenings...I think it's cause of Xanax?

[x3meaghan]

Hi, I'm new here. I know this might be weird since a lot of you try to learn lucid dreaming, but lately I've been having some and they really freak me out. I'm a nervous person in general...I'm always having awful panic attacks so I'm prescribed Xanax. Since I've been regularly taking it, I've been having really vivid dreams. My first false awakening happened a few days ago. I had a doctors appointment at 11:00. I woke up out of my bed, went to the bathroom (should have hinted me that I was dreaming cause there was a tv in there...), then I turned on the tv, and I noticed the digital clock said 2:00. I thought..."That's weird...I set my alarm for 10..." But I didn't think much of it and I went to clean my guniea pig's cage. Then I looked at the digital clock again and it STILL said 2:00. I got sort of freaked out and got the phone to call my parents, but it didn't go through. Then I got messages from my pharmacy telling me to pick up some perscriptions and they said it was November 17th...That's when I knew I was dreaming. I started having a panic attack IN my dream! For some reason the first thing I thought was, "OMG I'm dreaming, I need to find my body so I can jump back into it!" I went to my bed, and I didn't see myself lying there, so I rushed into my moms room to see if I was sleeping in there, and I didn't see myself. But then I woke up. I started doing research, and I found out Xanax increases REM sleep so that could be the cause of it. I guess others have had false awakenings on it too...But sometimes I need Xanax to function...So I wanted to give it the benefit of the doubt. I was so freaked out that I didn't take it for the next 3 days...But today I decided to take it again. I figured this way, if I had another false awakening...I'd know it was the Xanax... So anyways I go to bed, woke up, and this one didn't really start as a false awakening, it just ended like one. It started off as a crazy dream, but then it turned into an everyday day for me. I went to call Sprint on the phone and I kept asking the rep on the other line, "Can you tell me what date it is?" and they couldn't tell me, they kept going in and out so I couldn't hear them. I asked again, and still, the line kept going in and out when they told me the date. So then I was like, "Is it May?" and he was like, "Oh ya ya so anyways about your problem..." So that freaked me out. Tried calling my parents, no answer...So I knew I was dreaming at this point. I started getting scared that I would get stuck in the lucid dream state. Then I remembered a lot of things I read on this forum and a few others when it comes to lucid dreaming and false awakenings, and I remembered reading that if you jump in your bed and pretend to sleep, you'll wake up for real...And I did. I jumped in bed, and woke up for good. I've noticed that after these false awakenings I feel completely DRAINED...More tired than usual. I'll wake up so exhausted that I feel like I just slept for 10 hours even though usually I've only been taking a nap. I know I'm new here, but I just needed to tell someone about it since it was freaking me out. And now that I know it's Xanax, I'm definitely going off of it. It's just weird that the 2-3 nights I didn't take it, nothing happened, but then the one morning I take it again, I have another false awakening...Weird!!