I tried galantamine last night for the first time and wanted to share my experience in order to 1) give others who are interested in it a first hand account, 2) see if anyone else has had similar experiences, and 3) see if anyone has any tips for me.

I've naturally had LDs since a kid, though they're less frequent now. I'm fairly new to conscious LD induction, doing reality checks during the day and trying MILD/WILD/WBTB when I have the motivation. Last night I took galantamine for the first time and this was my experience:

Took an ambien at about 9pm (not related to the LD attempt). Fell asleep easily at about 9:45 and had some standard dreams. Woke up to my alarm at 2:30am for a WBTB, immediately took a capsule of Lucid Dreamer from dreamamins.com, which is 4mg galantamine, 200mg choline. I walked around my apartment and little and got back in bed and turned the lights out about 20 minutes after my alarm went off. I laid on my back and attempted a WILD, but my heart was pounding and I could not relax/calm down no matter what. I don't know if there was a physical stimulation from the pill, or if i was just excited/anxious/nervous about the experience I wanted to have. I think it was more the latter, but either way after about 30 minutes I was as wired as I could possibly be, so I turned on my side and tried to just fall asleep naturally without an WILD/MILD attempts. No luck. Back on my back, no luck, turned on my other side.

About 90 minutes after waking up, I finally drifted off into a normal sleep and had an extremely realistic and vivid dream. The level of detail I can recall from this dream was astounding. I have pretty good dream recall (often 2-3 dreams/night in decent detail), but this was a whole new level. I can playback almost the entire dream and recall very minute details throughout the dream. This is not normal for me.

Then things got weird.

I woke up from that dream into a semi-conscious state, which is normal. I turned on my back and started drifting back off to sleep but the sensation was unlike anything I've ever experienced. It was like I could feel myself falling asleep but I wasn't looking my mental awareness. I could start to barely feel the twinges of instant WILD lucidity coming on, and then.....the only way I can describe it is that my eyes and ears felt like they were short circuiting. Out of nowhere, this very intense, high pitching WOMP WOMP WOMP screeching sound exploded in my ears and bright, white lights like firework orbs started exploding in my field of vision. It startled the hell out of me and i initially began to lose lucidity because I was a little rattled, but then I remembered I had read something similar online about this and that it was "normal", so I began to drift back towards lucidity. I could feel myself falling directly into a LD and it was like all I had to do was push through this bizarre sound/sight barrier and I would be fully lucid. But then this realization got me really excited, and I fully woke up. My heart was pounding and I couldn't fall back asleep again until my alarm went off at 5:30.

So has anyone had similar experience on galantamine? Particularly with the strange noises/sights right as you're crossing over into the dream world? Any advice on how to break through this barrier into full lucidity? Any advice on falling back asleep after taking galantamine during a WBTB?

Thanks, any sort of feedback would be awesome.