Thread: Awake in Dreams: Acetylcholine

I'd do his full recommendation:

2-3mg melatonin at bedtime

4-5 hr waking:
~300mg choline bitartrate
~300mg (1 capsule) Alpha GPC
4mg galantamine

Yuschak mentioned also that nicotine is highly effective. A guy here on DV would slap on a nicotine patch during a WBTB and said it produced wild vivid dreams. I'm too chicken to try that though. I'm sure I'd just get nauseous and not fall asleep.

I don´t know if it is possible to call it best, but basic combo galantamine+cholin after 4-5 hours of sleep works wonders (if you are not unlucky and could fall a sleep).
What I did find very interesting in the whole book were closing chapters called Preparation and Transition and Breaking the Wall.

EDIT
I will just add that dose of melatonin recommended by Yuschak is max 0.5 mg.

Originally Posted by FryingMan

4-5 hr waking:
~300mg choline bitartrate
~300mg (1 capsule) Alpha GPC
4mg galantamine.

This is almost exactly what I take when using supplements except I wait 6 hours. It gives me profoundly vivid dreams for about 20 minutes. Then I wake up and can't fall back asleep

The intense vividness snaps me into lucidity. MILD techniques should be used to reinforce this affect.

I don't take dream supplements more than 2 times per month to not risk damaging my natural brain chemistry.

Thanks a lot for the replies, guys, this is brilliant! I'm getting a picture here. I'm getting the book. Once again, I urge caution when experimenting with these substances and be sure to maintain the practice of inducing lucid dreams using the methods and techniques recommended by the scientific experts.

Originally Posted by IndigoRose

I tried Huperzine A today for the 1st time (250mg Alpha GPC before going to bed, then some reading, falling asleep and 200mcg of Hup A approx. 30 minutes after falling asleep). I was really worried about possible side effects and because Hup A is active much longer than Galantamine, I decided to take it in the evening to combat problems with falling asleep.

Interestingly, I was able to sleep on it without any problem, I actually felt pleasantly sleepy for most of the night, never as aware as I normally do in the morning. It was like it removed both of my extremes - being too awake after micro awakening vs. being too tired - and kept me in a narrow band in the middle.
I noticed the dream in the 1st REM period. Then nothing, for a long time. Approx. 5.5-6 into my sleep, I was thinking that it completely removed my dreams. I also did some thinking about the nature of my sleep and decided that I am probably asleep, not awake. The sleep was somewhat trance-like, with passive awareness, but not too mentally active. And time was passing slower than normally at night, my time estimates were always off.
Then I got some middle of the night insomnia, at my usual time, but while I felt awake, I wasn't as alert as I am normally during these episodes.
When I finally got to some dreaming, I realized I was probably dreaming earlier too, I just didn't realize that I was. The dreams felt very shallow, not immersive, daydreamy. On the other hand, the stories were more coherent, like there was more memory present. They were also unstable, sometimes overlapping with normal sleep/feeling my body/being aware of my surroundings. Like the hard line between non-dreaming sleep and dreaming sleep getting blurry.
I was thinking about WILDing but I had no idea what to do. All I know from normal WILDs - when I am making progress, what is HI, what is a dream etc. - just didn't apply in this state. I wouldn't be even able to recognize the transition into the dream. I think the transition was super-smooth and possibly in-and-out at the beginning of the dream. I tried to interact a little bit but it was like interacting with a dreamlet, dissolving it. Waking up from a dream felt like snapping out of a daydream.
I didn't really think about it too deeply though. The passive awareness was somehow muting. My usual hyperactive ADHD thoughts weren't there. I was more observing than anything else.
Another very interesting thing was my tolerance to outside noise. They are doing some roadworks close to us. Normally, I wouldn't be able to sleep with that and it would be very annoying to me. But I was able to be just passively aware of the noise, without caring. Sudden loud noises still woke me up/snapped me out of dreaming but didn't make me more alert. Even now, my husband is telling me how the noise is annoying... I am aware of its presence but I don't mind.
I needed to sleep a little bit longer to feel ok. After 8 hours of sleep, I had a light headache, after closer to 9 hours of sleep, I am ok. No nausea, so that's good. But the cognitive effect will last at least the whole day. I don't feel smarter or more attentive, I feel different than normally but I am not sure if it is worse or just different (probably not better though).

Conclusions: It is not for me but I think I will try it once more, to get more familiarized with the state of my brain on high acetylcholine. I sometimes get the dreams like I got and I sometimes have very smooth transitions, so it's something to think about. It also makes me rethink the difference between various sleep onset imagery and dreams. It's good to know that acetylcholine levels can change a lot how these things feel.
I am not sure it will ever be useful for me for lucidity. Maybe I am a too light sleeper and this makes my sleep too light to be useful. But I will give it a try to see if lucidity has a stabilizing or destabilizing effect on these shallow-feeling dreams.
I can see how it can be useful for WILD, at least for someone who gets deep and stable REM. The trance-like sleep is just perfect for WILDing. My usual conscious NREM is much less stable, it's much more in and out, with the mental activity fluctuating.

I wonder if your experimentation with Huperzine would have gone better without the auditory interference from the roadworks. Did you allow it enough time to take effect? For instance, I was once prescribed Sertraline for depression and it made me feel worse before it got better after more than 4 weeks. I wonder if Huperzine requires a similar probationary period before one can fully reap its benefits—it does seem like you underwent a mnemonic boost early on. (By the way, Sertraline can decrease REM sleep. When I was first on it, for the first month it had killed my dreams.)

I tried it again recently. This time after WBTB and without choline. Much better experience. No lucidity but a lot of nice vivid dreams, it was fun.

So reading all this I also reached for a pill yesterday. :-)
600 mg GPC and 200 mg huperzine (after 5 hours of sleep and before meditation). After getting back to bed mission accomplished and I had DILD where I could at least fly and let other people fly with me when they didn´t belive me that I´m dreaming. :-)

Yes, that seems to be common with me too. The last time I encountered a doubting Thomas in a lucid dream I decided to levitate in front of him which seemed to terrify him. Upon awakening I wondering why I tried to convince him in the first place.

This doesn't seem to be a feature of my LDs. The last time I remember telling a DC that he was in my dream, he answered, "Yeah!? Cool!"

Has anybody ever taken Galantamine or Huperzine during lucid dreams as a means to intensify and/or prolong the experience? And did it work? I wonder if the dream version of such supplements can have a placebo effect ...

What I found to promote lucidity and brain health:

Brain chemistry alteration techniques:

Food (rich in choline and vitamin B5 or Pantothenic acid): Vitamin B5 + choline = acetylcholine (B5 is the precursor to the acetyl group)

B5-rich: liver, bran, sunflower seeds, whey powder, mushrooms, cheese, sundried tomatoes, fish

Choline-rich: raw beef liver, whole boiled eggs, cod, chicken, milk, spinach, tofu, wheat germ (daily intake: 425mg for adult females and 550mg for adult males)

Supplements:

Galantamine (lucidity aid and prolonged periods of REM)

Popular choline supplements for lucid dreamers: Choline Bitartrate (peak plasma time of 1 hour) and Alpha-GPC (peak plasma time of 3 hours)—the latter is optimal and generally taken prior to an induction attempt after 4-5 hours of sleep before returning to bed

For a healthy brain in general: Omega 3, fish oils and vitamin B12