Reverse Engineering my Success

Greetings to the Members and Moderators of Dream Views!

I discovered lucid dreaming when I was about six years old. I was staying the night at my grandparent's house, and they had let me stay up watching my favorite cartoon: VOLTRON: Defender of the Universe. The one with the lions. You lame car-voltron fans can go away. In my dream, two of the characters, Pidge and the Princess, were hiding behind some rocks, getting shot at from all sides by the bad guys. I heard my own voice say "and now Pidge will run out from behind the rocks, shooting, but he will fall flat on his face with his but sticking up in the air, and it will be really funny" and it happened just like that. And from that point on, I can hear my own voice in the "back of my head" in my dreams.

After a few nights of this, I brought it up with my mom. As it turns out, my family is one of those where "picking on" is supposed to be great fun. Should somebody say something that isn't "quite right" then it is standard procedure to rip on them anytime anything relating to that subject comes up. So, for a six year old to try and describe lucid dreaming, I thought I did alright. Nobody else was impressed, or seemed to "get it". So, for a while afterward, any time that dreams, dreaming, or sleep came up, my "strange dreams" would be brought up and ridiculed. I learned to shut up about my dreams.

Over the years, I have enjoyed my lucid dreaming experience. I am -always- in control of my dream, unless I decide not to be. Except for one recurring nightmare after watching a friend killed as a teenager, I haven't had a "bad dream" since I was five or six. I even discovered that I can "meditate" while I am having a dream, and will wake up feeling even better than just normal sleep. I don't know exactly HOW I did it, I just did.

Fast forward to years later: My wife's mother had just died, and she was having a terrible time with bad dreams and not being able to sleep. For the sake of our >1 year old daughter, I tried again to explain the little I knew of lucid dreaming and told her that it might help her out. Predictably, I got much the same answer from my wife as I did from my family years prior, except she had grief-rage to express, as well. I re-learned to shut the hell up about my dreams.

Here is where my problems began. I was working to put my wife through college, and putting in long hours at two jobs. I was literally working 22 hours a day, 7 days a week, for months on end. I forced myself to stay awake so long, for so often, that I became an insomniac. I would still enjoy my lucid dreams, when I could have them. At first, the dreaming itself wasn't a problem, once I was asleep the show began... when I could get to sleep. Even after the excessive work hours stopped, after the stress and subsequent release of a divorce, I have an incredibly hard time getting to sleep. What is even worse, is I went to see a doctor about my insomnia. I was prescribed drugs to help me sleep. That was the first time since I was six years old that I wasn't in complete control of my dreams. I was confused, slow, and clumsy in my dreams. That never happened. I tried to explain to my doctor why I didn't like the drugs, but he just could not wrap his mind around the fact that I wasn't having NIGHTMARES, or even BAD DREAMS, per se. I just wasn't in complete control of every aspect of my dreams like I have been used to my entire life. After an entire month with sluggish, or no dreams at all, I got rid of the medication. What was the point in sleep when the very thing that made it great was taken away?

Well, the effects of the drugs have been a little longer-term than I would have hoped. I still have lucid dreams, and they are better than what I had while drugged up, but it takes an effort now, where before it did not. And the insomnia is back, full force. One of those things that insomnia does, is inhibit your decision making. You just aren't thinking clearly when you haven't slept in days. So, this morning, when a facebook friend was complaining about "weird" dreams, I once again opened my stupid mouth about lucid dreaming. Only this time, instead of getting a bunch of flak, I got encouragement and a google-supplied link to this website.

So, here I am, hoping to learn some techniques on getting to sleep normally again, and perhaps return some of the "ability" I feel that I have lost because of the drugs. Any tips would be greatly appreciated.


tl;dr - Voltron is AWESOME

What an interesting story! And what an appropriate username, to boot.

I wish I could provide some sort of advice or feedback, but I have little experience with insomnia. I hope you can find others like yourself here on the forums, though. There's a great multitude of people here, from all sorts of backgrounds and places. I'm sure you can find plenty of people that feel your pain and are willing to give some help. Good luck!

Hey there and welcome to Dreamviews! :content:
You have come to the right place for everything lucid dreaming plus the added bonus of people coming from all backgrounds so any specific help you need can also be received. I have a couple of suggestions to fight your insomnia, note that these might not work as there just general recommended sleep aids (one is designed for insomnia)... And I don't have insomnia I just find it really hard to get to sleep sometimes. My first suggestion for you would be binaural beats designed specifically for the purpose of getting people to sleep who have insomnia. I would highly recommend this one:
(Binaural Beats) Sleep Aid Music for Insomnia - YouTube
Its the highest rated binaural sleep aid I could find on YouTube, with lots of positive comments from people with insomnia. Don't research them too much until after you try it to get the fullest effect, but trust me they are considered neat tools amongst people who find it harder to sleep.

My second suggestion too you would be listening to a podcast, although I'm not sure how effective this would be since I imagine the fact is that you just can't fall asleep whilst listening to things. I'm guessing this because it's sort of similar to me.

I hope one of these two things help, if not there's more skilled people than me when it comes to this area so you might get better help from them... Other than that I hope you have a great time here on Dreamviews, If you need anything that you don't want to talk about publicly I answer all of my PM's :)

My advice for fighting insomnia is exercise especially yoga, at least that's part of what helped me. The nice thing about yoga is that it encourages one to work on one's mind working together with one's body. Also excercise could hopefully reduce some tension and tire your body out. You may say that you do not have time to exercise, but it does not have to be long. Try to exercise five minute every day, and see if it helps. If it seems to help, try increasing the time spent if possible.

Also in my case insomnia was caused predominantly by stress. Once I worked on reducing the stress, my sleep got better. I bet with all the work and a small child, you probably have plenty of stress in your life. There are many ways to reduce stress, and I cannot tell you which one will work for you, but here are some possible ones: if you can have an occasional evening out with a good friend just being carefree together; fiction books help me reduce stress too; singing and music help me; daydreaming also helps me relax; talking things over with my priest (or if you are not religious any other person you know who is a good listener). There are many other ways to reduce stress. Of course, it could be that stress is not your only problem or that you do not have stress in your life after all - you know that better than I do.

By the way, welcome to DreamViews!

EDIT: Another couple of thoughts: What if the lack of control in dreams was not caused by the medication as much as by the lack of sleep and stress (or whatever caused your insomnia)? Another idea, what if your expectations by now are contributing to the control problem: now that the issue has been going on for a while, it may be that your subconscious mind expects that it will be like that, and in dreams expectations cause dreams to be as expected usually. Anyway, I would probably work on the insomnia first and ideally on the cause of the insomnia (whether it is stress or something else), once you eliminate the cause of the insomnia and get some rest hopefully, if your problems with dream control still continue, then we can brainstorm more of course to try to figure out what else to try.