I have been trying for a little over a week to have a lucid dream. I have never done this (that I remember) in my entire life. Both of my room mates say that they have had them without even trying.

I have known of lucid dreaming for at least 12 or 14 years, after flipping through a book on the subject in my school library in 6th grade. The idea fascinated me, but I did not have the patience or diligence to follow the instructions. As I recall I did not check to book out, just looked it over in the library.

Anyway, I was in a bookstore killing time one day and saw a book called "Exploring The World of Lucid Dreaming" by Stephen LaBerge. I had not thought of lucid dreaming in years, and was immediately intrigued again. I bought the book on a whim, and have read nearly the entire book.

I have been keeping a dream journal since 6/28, and have recorded seven dreams. I usually go to bed between 10pm and 12am, and wake up around 7:30am. Almost all of the dreams I remember are between 5:45 and 8:00am, so I guess I am mostly remembering dreams from just before I wake up. I remembered two dreams the first night, and two dreams last night, and one dream most of the other nights. I have not yet come even close to being lucid.

I have been doing my state tests (do you prefer RC's?) every day as it occurs to me, and also deliberately each time I see certain things. Last night one of the exact things I have been RC'ing on was in my dream for several minutes in a row, and it never crossed my mind to do an RC in the dream.

I saw that the most popular RC most people listed in another forum was 'Questioning your surroundings", but for some reason I never do when dreaming.

Since I have started writing down my dreams, it is becoming obvious that my dreams are pretty weird more or less all the time. The sorts of things that the book tells me to watch for as clues I am dreaming are happening constantly, but it really never disturbs me at all.

I am starting to wonder if my drug use may be part of the problem. I have been using psychedelics (psilocybin, mescaline, and LSD - not all at once, though. ) at least 6 times a year for about the last 15 years. I am starting to wonder if dealing with hallucinations for so long has made my attitude towards reality too flexible. To steal a line from Hunter S. Thompson, "A drug person can learn to cope with seeing things like their dead grandmother climbing up their leg with a knife in her teeth...." When dealing with hallucinations that you cannot control the best advice is not to fight against them, but to calmly accept whatever is happening. Now it seems that my mind just calmly accepts my dreams as well.

Does anyone else have a similar experience, or advice on how to train my mind to be more questioning of my surroundings? Or do you think its enough to just keep forming the habit of doing RC's through-out the day?

--J