Thread: My experiences, my plans for the future

Hey people, I am totally new to this forum and haven't read a single post before. I'll start off with telling you something about myslf:
I've been suffering from some strange sleep phenomenoms in the past couple of years and have been self medicating myself with marihuana for more than 5 years every night. I have now that I stopped the cannabis use realized that the problem has grown on me and become way worse than before. I am planning to learn lucid dreaming to manage the fear that often comes over me during and between sleep episodes.

Ok, here I go... I'll try to make it short...

First time I experienced the phenomenom was when I was 17, I just came back from the USA where I had stayed for almost a year. Being back in Germany, I woke up a little earlier than usual and realized I couldn't move. I tried to scream which didn't work either and remained in terror for usually less than 30 seconds until I woke up in my room, with a pounding heart and covered in sweat. This starnge sensation was new to me back then and I was totally confused, not knowing what happened, feeling absolutely ridiculous talking about it because it might have just been a regular dream.
Well, these sort of dream sensations reoccured a number of times over the coming years, becoming more and more frequent, especially when I had not smoked enough cannabis. The phenomenom also changed and seemed to be interacting with the other, "normal" dreams.
The room was often made up by parts of rooms I had slept in before, other times it was the exact same room I slept in. The first thing I usually realized was that I couldn't move (besides maybe a tiny little bit, my arm or leg for example). This was most of the times accompanied by a floating sensation (for example I would feel like I was lying 5cm above the bed), buzzing sensations of my body, sometimes resulting in shaking of the eyes and my field of view, tremors of the whole body, also loud noises, usually buzzing or hissing, often multiple not clearly separatable sounds. Often this was accompanied by the strong sense of the presence of a threatening entity, which I was never able to see. Often the entity would be located outside of the room, downstairs, sometimes I could hear it in form of a loud stepping sound, like a large creature coming up the stairs or something.

I talked about this with one or two persons, who would not consider me insane for it. I actually realized my friend had experienced the same thing when he was 16 himself, only once though.

I started to realize I could fight the Sleep paralysis (this is what I thought it might be after some research on the Internet) by cannabis administration before going to sleep. This worked fine for a couple of years with only occasional episodes of SP (?).

Now I have had plans to quit pot for a number of times and the reason why I usually picked up my old habits was sleep and only sleep. Besides the mentioned sensations I have had an extremely vivid dreaming life which would often keep me awake for the whole night, even on the weekends I would not be able to catch up on sleep, which made me extremely tired and resulted in an even unhealthier sympathomimetica abuse habit. I quickly realized this would not work and usually picked my cannabis habit back up.

Now I feel ready to confront myself with the sleep problems and the dreaming sensations and had to realize things got a lot worse.

I have been able to crystallize two different phenomenoms from the sleep paralysis (?) sensations. The first one makes me wake up in my room, unable to move, very similar to the thing I have described above. Sometimes I would notice weird things, like the lights flickering or it being bright outside although it should already be dark. This usually subsides and results in me waking up completely, with a feeling of intense fear to go back asleep.
The other one seems much more like a real dream. It consists of multiple false awakenings in a row, often resulting in me walking around the house, checking if I am finally awake etc. Usually everything is normal until a certain point. Like everything would seem like a normal day (normal dream without me realizing it) until something shocking happens... I'll name a few examples:
1) This is what usually happens, the cases 2-4 have only happened once. I wake up in my room or foten somewhere else and everything seems normal. I check my surroundings and something happens: Often I am accelerated to lightning speed and thrown against the wall or the bed turns around and lies on top of me. Sometimes I'm twisted around and similar things. It's always accompanied by buzzing sensations, electrical current going through my head and the feeling of my body being accelerated manifesting in a stomache pressure/cramp.
2) I wake up in my room after having a nightmare (regular old school kid's nightmare). I am scared to go back to bed and start walking downstairs. I walk into the bathroom and realize a plate with spaghetti that is standing there. This seems odd and I am overcome by intense fear!! The world around me begins to dissolve and the fear gets worse and worse. I wake up in my room.
3) I wake up in my room and sit up in my bed. Trolls or freaky little kids start walking in, I am overcome by intense fear and once again the world begins to dissolve. This is accompanied by the sensation of an acceleration, like the feeling you get in your stomache when you're in a rollercoaster. There's also a weird feeling in my head, like flashes or electrical current going through it, accompanied by weird noises (the same that are mentioned above). Again, I wake up in my room.
4) I wake up in my room, I go downstairs to use the bathroom. I sit down to take a dump, feeling enormously tired. I in that moment know of my sleeping problems and how I have been lying awake for multiple nights... My brother starts knocking on the door asking me to come out of the room. He talks to my other brother who was already visiting us before I went to sleep. I realize he should've been gone for a while and am confused. I ask them to leave, no: I beg (!) them to leave, I fall on the floor and tell them to leave me alone, I don't even know what day it is. I realize I am in need of help because I'm lying on the floor and wait for my family to comein and help me. The door is locked though and all of a sudden I am kicked by my family members through the closed door! I look throught he glass door and realize they're walking like spiders. The world around me once more begins to dissolve, accompanied by the same sensations mentioned above...

Well... In nights that start off with those weird sensations I am usually more likely to have extremely vivid dreams, often up to 20 different dreams that can be remembered. I sometimes write down one or two of those dreams in the middle of the night and go back to sleep. It shouldn't be necessary to say that this behaviour has an effect which I would not describe as healthy on my waking life.

So my plans are to learn lucid dreaming and try to stop myself from waking up so often and maybe decrease the amount of fear that is felt.

Sorry for making it so long...

Any kind of advice would be much appreciated!!!

EDIT: My experience with lucid dreaming: I had read about lucid dreaming before and started following the instructions right away. I tried to imagine what it would feel like to be dreaming for an hour or so and told myself to realize I am dreaming in the night over and over again. This was in an episode of cannabis use. So when I finally felt asleep and started dreaming I was quiet impressed that it did work to a certain degree:
I remembered the reality check thing when I was standing in front of a cupboard with lots of miniatures in it and realized that their order had changed! The dream started fading right away and I started to turn around really quick. The dream did seem to come back for a second but I finally lost it. This happened two more times within the next couple of weeks and those times I could actually walk through the dream world and do whatever I want. Well, the control was limited, but I could at least think of doing whatever I wanted to. I wasn't able to act it all out unfortunately (It involved lots of sex with lots of women at the same time btw) For some reason I stopped trying...

crOOk

Hiya, welcome to the board...what you were discussing is definitely sleep paralysis...You say that you use the pot to stop these symptoms, therefore it's a self perpetuating cycle?

Are you hooked on it? can you get hooked on it? (i've never tried it...)
When you stop smoking it, do you stop altogether, or gradually cut down?
The things you are experiencing could be down to the fact that when you stop smoking, your brain chemistry is altered, causing these changes...
How long do you go through this before you pick the habit up again?

I have a bit of a thing for caffeine...it's not that i drink it to excess...because i only drink it at work, but i do take my coffee quite strong, and i do use caffeine pills in the morning if i can't wake up.
I tried giving it up a while back...and i stopped altogether (at the time, i wasn't taking the caffeine pills, just drinking a hell of a lot of coffee!)
And i found my mind much altered...i'd be irritable, paranoid. Unable to sleep. And my dreams were particularly bizarre...however, after three weeks or so, my symptoms settled down, as i no longer had the caffeine in my system (i'd switched to decaf herbal tea)

So, i'm wondering; you say you want to give it up again...maybe it's a case of waiting for the withdrawal to wear off, and then see where you are at. Also, have you considered seeing a doctor? You may have some kind of sleep disorder.
Another thought i'm having is that originally you started taking it in order to sleep...thinking it wouldn't come to much. And now if you don't take it, the symptoms return...
So it's a vicious circle...

I suffered SP as a child, and it was frightening. it's only since i've been here i've researched it, and i now actually do it on purpose at times, in order to reach lucidity. I've written a tutorial on it, if you are interested...so i've turned it to my advantage, basically.

I hope this helps, let me know if you have anymore questions!

Hey irishcream!
Thanks for the quick reply! You are right, I definitely do have a sleep disorder. :/ I don't think a doctor would help at all, he would tell me to try to get into a regular schedule and probably give me some benzodiazepins to achieve that. I won't go for that, no way.

Anyway, you can get hooked to pot and there are some symptoms of physical withdrawl for lots of people. These include sleep disorders and excessive sweating, especially at nights.

I was definitely hooked to pot since I used it on a daily basis in order to be able to fall asleep! Everytime I quit it (and that wasn't very often) I did it all at once, from 100 to 0.
That causes a phenomenom called REM rebound, I'm sure you've heard of it. For those who haven't:

Some drugs reduce the amount of REM sleep you have (duration and frequency of REM cycles). Quitting those drugs will result in a rebound of the REM cycle, often resulting in extremely vivid dreams and better dream recall.

REM Rebound: When you are sleep deprived you lose out on two types of sleep, REM and NREM (non-REM). Typically when you have a chance to fall asleep after sleep deprivation you have a tendency to get more REM sleep than you would normally get. This is your body's way of trying to catch up on its REM sleep.\"

Source:http://tinyurl.com/dsu23[/b]

What I am experiencing now is an episode of REM rebound. I have talked to multiple people who have successfully beaten their habit though and they say it is something that might last for not only weeks, but won't fade completely at all. I hope this is true for me, since I'm starting to enjoy the idea...

Anyway, tonight I had ingested 4g of Calea zacatechichi aka the Dream Herb and went to sleep at 11pm. I had made multiple reality checks before (around 5-10). Before I went to sleep I made my last reality check and was gone at maybe 11:15 or 11:20.
I still can't believe it, but I seem to be predestined for lucid dreaming...
This is what happened:

I dreamt I was in a hospital with an old colleague of mine, we both used to work in the same hospital. My friend was kneeing down in front of a fridge and removed a metal box from the fridge which we were going to steal meds from (never done that in reality!). The door was left open and a guy came in. My friend quickly got another box with urine samples out and pretended to be very uncareful with it in order to distract the guy from the other metal box. Well, the guy got kinda angry for my friend messing around like that, but didn't notice the other metal box and left. I quickly closed the door behind him and wanted to lock it. In the instant I tried locking the door a nurse came in and asked me: "So you've got problems with your stomache, huh?" I went like... Uhhh, no and all of a sudden the room around me changed. It was now larger, almost empty and my friend was gone. The nurse was still there. This seemed odd to me so I decided to perform a reality check. I noticed the cardboard boxed that had something written on them in red color. I got closer, everything was blurry (I have to wear glasses, but usually don't), and I realized the text had changed to the image of some red currants. I thought it might be related to me not wearing glasses and looked once again, now realizing the text/image was morphing which made it clear: I was dreaming.
I now had only limited control over my body movements, but already the spinning trick had come to my mind. I didn't think it would be necessary though since I seemed to stay in the dream. I tried to say something to the nurse, but when I realized the dream was fading I started spinning. Too late, I didn't even turn around one time because I wasn't in full control over my body. Movements were very uncoordinated. I hate it when that happens in dreams.

I woke up at 11:30pm, only 10 minutes after falling asleep!!!

Now I'd be willing to write every dream onto this site in form of a journal. Where should I do that? Btw, I have LOTS of interpretations for what was going on in that dream, amazing, this might help me to understand myself a lot better in the future!!

Oh, one more thing: It's a real pity that dream woke me up. I have to get up in 5 hours! I can't have these dreams interrupt my sleep, that's what I planned to learn this thing for among other reasons... It's not healthy at all.

I'm still amazed though that I became lucid with my first try! Does that happen very often or is it rare? I have always considered myself a very active dreamer.

crOOk

http://www.dreamviews.com/forum/viewforum....d3f0c7e2dd4be9b

this is the link for the dream journal forum, you can start a new one, all your own!
I look forward to reading it!
I keep a handwritten one by my bed and i use that to update my online journal...it's best to write dreams down as soon as you wake, but you can write them later in the day if you remember them.

A dream journal will also help you to recognise your dreamsigns, in order to do reality checks, so that you can have a lucid dream...

@irishcream
Cool, thx for the link and sorry for my laziness. Haven't had anymore dreams last night besides the one in the hospital. Well, I did have more, but neither do I think they were lucid, nor is there any memory left.
Btw, my PC is running all night and I can write the dreams down just as fast as I would be able to with pen and paper.

crOOk

you're welcome...also, if you find that your recall slackens off for a period of time, say maybe a few days, try not to worry about it, as this happens to me all the time, and it could be down to many factors.
In this case i've found that worrying about it only perpetuates it.

Cool, thx for the advice!

crOOk