Thread: 2nd Galantamine experience

Yes while working is tough -- but while walking around I notice pretty fast if I've lost it, and start it up again, so that's improving....now to get it going while I'm working!

HA! Had my first long LD this morning. At last! I'd taken a week off, and last night woke naturally at about 4, took 2x4mg GAL tablets (with Ch bitar in) and tried to WILD. I had a vivid dream but then as usual just as I got lucid I woke at 6 and thought that I had blown it for that go. I managed to get to sleep again and had a quite long semi-lucid, where I sort of knew it was a dream but didn't interact, but then it turned fully lucid and I didn't immediately wake. It did feel like the scene was fading so I span round, and at the same time had a feeling I would like to swim, and sure enough I was under water in a pool! Then decided I wanted to be somewhere with people, and the scene changed to a busy outdoor shopping arcade. Had a total of at least 5-10 minutes exploring, so about 60 times longer than my longest so far!
I'm not sure my attempts at continuous RC were up to much, so probably had nothing to do with it.
Very happy bunny!

Schweet! The long stable ones are really fabulous. Congrats!

I finally had another non-hazy fairly stable LD night before last (late morning). It ended when I got "frisky" but I felt fully myself, remembered and did the basic TOTM, had my first actual conversation with a DC! 5 minutes is my max LD so far. If I can keep "cave man me" (who likes the frisky stuff) away I think I could go a really long time. That's my goal for the next one: fully engage with the environment and see how long I can go. This week I've been sleeping through (not noticing the earlier wakings) to 6-7 hours so haven't had a decent opportunity to try my "LD dream kit" which is still waiting in a baggie by my bed (2x 4mg Galantamind, 1 300mg Alpha-GPC, 1 300mg choline bitartrate)

Congrats!
I must look up the TOTM's (didn't know what that was to start with!). Need to keep upping the expectation now that I've got somewhere

Have you found that taking supplements makes your "natural" ability better or worse? I think the visual clarity so far on supplements has been slightly worse that the natural LDs I've had.

Can't say yet. I need to get the right night for them, and get a 4th hour waking. I've only ever tried them while travelling and having generally poor recall, so now that I'm having very good recall again and just had a nice non-supp LD, I'll try again and see how it goes.

Well I went ahead and pulled the trigger on my bedside lucid cocktail this morning. Conditions were not ideal: super late to-bed time (3am approx), and it was already about the 6th hour (approaching 9am), so it was dicey at best but I had a quiet home (both kids out in the morning today) so I decided to go for it. It looks like the 8mg galantamine did the trick, plus all the extra choline (bitartrate and alpha gpc).

Again the mixture was: 2x GalantaMind 4mg (each capsule 4mg galantine, 50mg B5, 100mg choline dihydrogen citrate) for a total of 8mg galangamine, 100mg B5, 200mg choline dihydrogen citrate), 1x choline bitartrate 310mg, 1x Alpha GPC 300mg.

Mostly I spent the next 5 hours trying to get to sleep. At approximately 1-2 hours I did start getting pretty abnormally strong HI.

Somewhere in the 2+ hours my daydreams started getting a lot more realistic than usual, with more visual and tactile feedback, but still very much daydreams.

Numerous times I gathered my will and emptied my head and tried to sink into relaxation. Again and again and again.

At one point it finally worked and I got to sleep and dreamed...a lucid FAKE OUT!

I feel myself in bed, and I started getting a solid image appearing before my dream eyes. I was coaxing it on, "Ok, good, solidify, solidify, that's it..." I'm anticipating entering the dream. I see a tall outdoors strip-mall sign pole with several store signs on it. Interesting. I'm looking at them and pushing them into focus. Then I start thinking something like, "aw man, this isn't a dream, this is the view from my bed. You see, there's the KFC across the street, and somebody will come out of that door soon, there's the guy now, he's walking down the street" I watch him go by. Then I get self-conscious that here it is daytime, and I still feel myself lying in bed (apparently outside in a parking lot) (in the actual position I was really in bed), and people will walk by and see me. I think "oh that's ok, people sleep in all the time and see people in their beds." I get up and some woman in her car comes tearing into our outdoor carport just off of the sidewalk in a big rush. She jumps out (with a briefcase?) and runs across the street to the entrance of the subway. I think we need to put up poles to block our carport, but realize that the people who drive quickly into our carport will hit the poles and their cars will go flying into the air.

I follow into the entrance to the subway. Up stairs, through a window/door. Lots of people, I see my wife just inside the window in the crowd (purple blouse?), I notice her chest . I'm trying to push through the crowd to walk faster towards the subway platform, but I can't since there are so many people. I see two pairs of 2 movers (who work for the furniture store at the subway platform, of course!) moving two large cabinets along the walkway with the crowd. They're approaching an overhead beam, I think they're going to smack the furniture top into it, they end up just grazing it lightly.

I go down some stairs and can't find the platform. It's deserted, in a large building. I think I must be at the gym, since the swimming pool is that way. I turn back and see about 20 feet from me who I think is my old grad school girlfriend, I call to her, but then I realize I didn't put on my gym shirt and I notice my bare chest/stomach. I'm not in perfect shape. She turns and walks away, not noticing me, I see a big entryway in the distance...



so that's basically I think good news! It seemed really vivid. This dose seems to work for me. All I have to do now is prepare another little LD cocktail baggie by the bed and wait for better conditions. And with repeated determination I finally got to sleep, despite being all juiced up on choline and the G. I definitely need to take it early in the night, probably not later than 4 hours, maybe earlier, and perhaps work in some melatonin.

I should add that I got some WILD noise pretty early in the process (rocking, typical body hallucination for me) but somehow it faded pretty quickly leaving me awake.

Originally Posted by FryingMan

a near DILD where I told myself "too bad this is not enough to get me lucid!" DOH!

So funny! I've had moments like that too.

Well I've had absolutely no LDs since Feb 22nd, Feb 25th was the huge galantamine/choline cocktail. I'm concerned that the supplements may have reduced my natural ability. I'm doing tons of day work and working on sleep schedule. I did have really excellent recall one week ago, a few days after the galantamine so I'm just not sure, so to be on the safe side I'm going to put the supplements on the shelf until I get a good consistent natural frequency going.

Hey FryingMan, I may be suffering the same problem. My first few goes with Galantamine have produced LDs, but the last few attempts, while giving good vivid dreams, have failed. I wouldn't say my dreams between using the supplements have been much less vivid or memorable, but certainly slightly less I think. Sleep schedule plays such an important role that it could be the main problem. I've only been using the supplements once at the weekend, with the week off between, so I doubt it's de-sensitisation. I've been using 8mg but don't want to go higher just yet.
My problem is that I've only had one longer LD, and that was using supplements! If I had some confidence in a natural ability, I too would drop off for a while.

I'm really not sure what's going on. Could just be "one of those times." But the coincedence seems so strong that after recovering from my February jet lag my recall was going up and up and then I had a great TOTM-solving LD. Then 3 days later I took the huge cocktail (2 GalantaMind, 1 300mg Alpha GPC, 1 300mg choline bitartrate), and nothing since then. Recall is OK, but absolutely no lucid moments for 2 solid weeks despite lots and lots of day work. Sleep schedule is fairly bad but no worse than when I was getting lucid a lot more. And I'm working on schedule. So I'm leaning towards the conclusion that the supplements have damaged my natural LDing ability. So I'm resolving to stay away from them until I have a dependable, high natural LD frequency.

Galantamind also has Choline in it, as well as vitamin B5 (at 10x daily requirement dose);
Pantothenic acid (Vitamin B5 as calcium pantothenate) 100 mg
Choline (as choline dihydrogen citrate) 200 mg
Galantamine hydrobromide (extracted from Galanthus nivalis) 8 mg

I don't know if that matters?

This does seem to be far removed from Yuschak's experience?
I do wonder if good awareness and recognising you are dreaming is still a basic pre-requisite. Maybe he had good success because of that.

Yes I know the contents of the Galantamind capsules. Not sure it made a difference or not.

I'm not sure it's removed from his experience or not -- he mentions that he tried for *several years* to lucid dream without supplements and only got about 2 dozen low to medium lucidity dreams. That is far below the success rate of a number of dedicated beginning dreamers on this site. I don't recall from his book him talking about his ability to LD without supplements after the heavy use of them, maybe I just missed it.

But anyway, people are different, and if the effect is not physiological, perhaps it's psychological. Very strange because I've been very positive and on upwards swings of frequency, including great recall and recent good lucidity. So I'm just going to stay away from supplements for now because I don't want to become dependent on them.

Or it has nothing to do with the supplements at all, but why take the chance?

From time to time I experience dull stretches, with hardly any dream recall at all - and certainly no lucidity. Last year (my first year of LD'ing), there was a four week period, where I did not have any LDs. Just recently, there were four consecutive days without any dream recall (and I actually think there were no dreams).

This may be due to too much use of supplements (in my case, Choline bitartrate, B6, and L-tyrosine), but I think it just happens for any number of reasons. During this last dry spell, I have been sleeping very deeply (which is very healthy), and maybe my body simply required that. After all, dreaming may be great, but deep sleep is vital.

It would very well be just that, a nasty dry spell. I took the G. only about 4 times, between mid-January and end of February, starting with the smallest doses and the least amount of extra choline, and only gradually working up to the 2x 4mg Galantamind + 300mg alpha gpc + 300 choline bitartrate. I'm approaching 3 weeks, which will match my long dry spell between thanksgiving and mid-december, which is the longest time after the 1-month initial start lucid dreaming practice before 1 got my first LD.

So, bleah. My recall is hovering around decent to very nice, usually no less than 3-4 dreams and upwards of 10 on a good night with multiple wakings. So I'm shaking my head for why no lucida....because I do lots of daytime work every day. Meh, I'll wait it out, and keep on dreaming.

Interesting that from another thread Goldenspark started I found my way to another Yuschak paper that I was not previously aware of. You can find it online:

substances_that_facilitate_lucid_dreaming_-_a_case_study.pdf

VERY interesting that it lists a blend of 3 amino acids as having a 100% LD rate (4/4, one test subject) with "high" lucidity noted! And way cheaper than galantamine!

The dosages used for all tests incorporating this amino acid blend were 2000mg L-aspartic acid, 4000mg L-glutamine, 300mg L- theanine.

This is a must for follow up. My son is into body building and he has super amino acid mixtures and he said when he took it before bed once he had wild and really vivid dreams. There's a scoop left at the bottom of that container I may just see how it goes....it's just amino acids, after all -- it's all natural!

L-theanine is really useful; good for falling (and staying) asleep, and good for maintaining focus and determination (in my humble experience at least).

Basically one of them (aspartic acid?) is a major neurotransmitter booster, but it doesn't cross the blood/brain barrier easily, while the other two help the transport into the brain. I'm going to take some body building amino acid super mix with basically everything in it (except l-theanine) at night and see how it goes.

I'm going to do this too, tonight. I have l-glutamine and l-theanine. I don't have l-aspartic acid, but I do have d-aspartic acid, and apparently they are both nmda agonists, which I gather was the point of the l-aspartic acid, so I'm going to use that instead. I won't take any galantamine, but I may be adding in some choline bitartrate and some tyrosine.

Lately. I've been doing biphasic sleeping for reasons totally outside of lucid dreaming, but what it means for me is I sleep 3.5 hours, wake up for 1.5, then sleep another 3.5, so I'll dose during my up time. Maybe I'll dose after about 45min awake.

I didn't do it last night because of severely disturbed sleep schedule. When it calms down in a few days (I'll be travelling again and will pick up some of these AAs + some B6 which I'm curious to try) I'll try them out. Post your results!

(Written last night but not posted)

Will do.

So in my wake time between sleeps I've been researching some stuff. It looks like Ginkgo Biloba is a norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_adrenergic_drugs and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ginkgo_biloba -- so that would fall into the same categories talked about in that paper

Results:

Ok, so I took the following:

4g l-glutamine
2g d-aspartic acid
300mg l-theanine
500mg l-tyrosine
650mg choline bitartrate

And yes, I did have a lucid dream. =) It was much shorter than any of my previous 10 or more lucids. And, I only recall the last part, not the beginning! This is a first for me, where I know that there is a part of a lucid dream I know I did have that I cannot recall -- but lately (past 5 months) I'm used to not even remembering I had a lucid upon waking, just to recall it later. At the end, I started trying to do ToTM (Task of The Month) Bonus Task, but I didn't quite get into space -- but the stars were beautiful.

The nice thing about this combination of aminos is that I wouldn't think it would have the same tolerance issues of galantamine, but the body is funny that way, so never know.

This is really exciting, will head to the nutrition store ASAP!
What's the function of the tyrosine?

Hm, hm - didn't you necropost in an old amino-acid thread, FryingMan - me too - can't find it any more, now it's closed.
We should have rather posted on topic directly instead of trying conversation with Percy - shame it got closed there was a lot of info in it - for example that the 100% were only 4 occasions, and he himself as subject, wasn't that so?
Can you find the thread?
Maybe something can be done about it still - if we take out the @Percy stuff and post on topic?
Would be a case to ask for re-opening - a thread with important and still asked for information in it - don't you think?

Yes it was 4/4, and I suppose he himself was a subject, but the paper does not say this. But without supplements, Yuschak apparently very rarely LDs. Anyway, I don't particularly care, I just take it as a hint of what else there is out there to try.

We know that Nfri corroborates the effectiveness of Galantamine + Nicotine, which is given highest billing in that Yuschak study as well ("very high" lucidity and 4/4 for galantamine+nicotine, versus the 4/4 "high" lucidity of the amino acid blend). I don't want to try nicotine myself unless as a last resort.

Galantamine + Choline may work wonders but I have yet to get back asleep with them. I think it takes more careful timing, being vigorously disciplined about not daydreaming or anticipating the coming dreams, just *get back immediately to sleep* so I'm dreaming when they kick in. I'll also try taking them earlier in the night (4 hours instead of 5) where I have more likelihood of falling asleep again immediately.

Then there's the disturbing knowledge that Yuschak has apparently completely withdrawn from the lucid dreaming community. Maybe he blew out his brain on all those substances.

I started a new amino acid blend thread, we could continue there for example. Or here.