I'll start off by saying, I've never been very good at introductions. Now I'm not too sure how many lucid dreams I've had, but I don't have many now adays. When I was younger I was terrified of going to sleep because of almost guarenteed, vivid nightmares. My mom could only take so much of me running to her room in the middle of the night, so at some point, I was on my own. Learning to lucid dream came naturally.

When i was very little I had a recurring dream of my brother dragging me down the hall, and swinging me through a laundry basket, (you know...the plastic ones with all the square holes,) and it would shred me into little pieces. I started to remember I was dreaming, and would just accept my fate and wait to wake up. After a few times I learned how to wake myself up by tightly shutting my eyes and opening them (theres a mental aspect thats a bit difficult to explain) and I'd be awake in my bed. Long story short, this led me to not just waking myself up, but giving myself advantages over my nightmares, hence why I'm now on a lucid dreaming forum.

At some point in my early teens I sort of... forgot about lucid dreaming, or maybe lost interest, I don't quite remember as this is the drug experimenting age. At some point in my life I developed a drug addiction and robbed myself entirely of my dream recall, and probably REM sleep in general due to the short hours of sleep and certain narcotics. About a year ago I cleaned up, but I'm still having trouble trying to get back to my previous level of very strong dream recall. I keep a dream journal by my bed but usually only use it for a few words, cause I can only remember what just happened. I have one or two good dream recalls a week, and have had a couple lucids this past year, but I woke up from them both extremely quickly. One of them kind of just... faded to black, and there I was in bed with my eyes closed.

Anyway, I'm rambling. So this is why I'm here. I've been browsing the forum before I go to sleep for the past couple months, to try to keep my mind on dreaming. I figured, why not make an account? Meet the strange (in a good way) people that write out the thoughts I've been reading every night.