Hello, REM deprivation & seeking guidance :)

Hello :)

About 30 years ago when I was around 10 years old I used to get the usual nightmares that all kids probably had, but I had the ability to deliberately wake myself up if I got too scared by rolling over and bumping my head on the wall. I had one lucid dream in my youth which was an incredible flying experience accommodated with a feeling of euphoria so strong it is hard to describe.

A few years ago I practised LDing for about 3 months and I managed to briefly become lucid about 10 times but it only lasted a few seconds before waking up as I instantly tried to control the dream, I quit the practise as it was taking up an enormous amount of mental/emotional energy and I had very young children to care for. I have quite an addictive personality and I tend to overthink things a lot.

Upon reflection I realise that I was trying way too hard which caused me to burn out – I was doing RCs a few hundred times a day and so intensely that it gave me anxiety – I was almost trying to push my finger through my hand in waking life with the power of my mind and I would get frustrated easily. I tried to keep my mind awake whilst falling asleep but that would just keep me awake for hours.

I’m about a month in now on my second attempt and I’m trying a different strategy. All I’m doing is focusing on dream recall and casually practising all day awareness and guess what I already had an LD. Maybe it was “beginners luck” because the strange thing was that I had the LD after I had smoked Marijuana, everywhere I read that Marijuana deprives you of REM sleep. This gave me an idea – can you deliberately deprive yourself of REM sleep (e.g. smoking over the weekend but not during the week) in the hope that you have a REM rebound which will trigger lucidity?

I think you should keep focus on dream recall to be sure, ADA I have no opinion on as it's not something I've tried myself.

As for the rest, I wouldn't recommend it at all, but yes, technically you could self-deprive yourself of sleep for a REM rebound... This is easily noticeable when doing all-nighters, especially more than one night in a row.

Can't stress this enough, I really wouldn't rely on this as a method for consistently achieving lucidity, because while you may be more likely to get (possibly vivid) dreams from REM rebounds, there's no guarantee you'll have lucidity from REM rebounds. Either way, sleep deprivation will lead to extra tiredness, which could mean you end up unable to focus on things while dreaming anyway and potentially having unsatisfying lucidity.

Sleep deprivation is something quite bad for me, so personally I would value normal sleep more than I would attempts at lucidity if it meant a choice between skipping sleep/having abnormal sleep or just having normal sleep. You will know yourself and hopefully you already have some experience with sleep deprivation to assess what effect it has on you. If your Marijuana still allowed you to sleep but without REM, I would still imagine it wouldn't be healthy to do it a lot in the long-run, even if it was just over the weekends. If your use of Marijuana is casual/not frequent anyway, maybe there aren't huge risks to you, but basically I would just say, be prudent and basically don't abuse yourself if that's ever at stake - that's what would be on my mind at least.