a few things I haven't seen mentioned

[craigmontvii]

I had been trying to have an LD for a while with not much success. Then I read online somewhere that consuming fluoride can calcify your pineal gland, which a lot of people say is linked to dreaming. I figured, "what the heck, maybe if I stop consuming fluoride I'll have a little more luck." So, I stopped drinking tap water and started using toothpaste that didn't contain fluoride. After a few days, I could tell my body was going through detox (based on the symptoms of flouride detoxification I found online: red patches on the skin, bad depression for no real reason, etc.) It was pretty uncomfortable for a couple days, but got better quickly. Then suddenly, my dreams became really vivid and within a week I was able to have my first DILD, which was an incredible, even life-changing experience for me. Since then I've realized also that taking some 5htp around noon (but not before bed) helps me a lot, as well as large amounts of vitamin C (a few cans of guava nectar a day is always good.) I haven't seen anything about vitamin C on here, but it helps me a bunch. There's a lot of speculation that DMT is partially responsible for dreaming, (which would make sense considering detoxing my pineal gland helped so much and the pineal gland produces DMT) and there have been a lot of accounts of vitamin C enhancing LSD trips; DMT and LSD are fairly closely related tryptamines, maybe I'm on to something, haha.

[dodobird]

Thanks for the great post! I usually don't drink tap-water and don't use fluoride toothpaste anyway. But I can try your advice and take some Vitamine C. About taking 5HTP at noon, how much to you take, and what effect does it have on your dreams and on your waking state? For me it's a bit hard to tell if a supplement causes vivid or wild dreams, as I am blessed with quite vivid and frequent very wild dreams. Often I wake up from a tottaly wild psychedelic dream and don't even bother opening the dream journal to record it, because I cannot express even 0.1% of it in words.

[craigmontvii]

Usually I take one or two capsules of 5htp, although, if I'm feeling depressed, occasionally I'll take 3. It can make you slightly drowsy during the day, but alert at the same time, usually accampanied with some mild euphoria. I don't think it has any direct effect on dreams or the REM cycle, but it DOES help me sleep more easily through the night, which is obviously a big part of dreaming haha. I usually just do that once or twice a week because it seems to have less effect in the long run if I use it every day. Honestly, I don't know if you would really need it though if you already have very vivid dreams... I have kind of waves, I have really vivid dreams for a week or so, then I have a week or so of almost dreamless (but not completely dreamless) sleep. I generally only go about trying to induce vivid dreams if I'm not already in a cycle of them. And there's really nothing you can do beyond practice that can ensure lucidity in those dreams. It just takes a lot of work training your mind to recognize when something isn't right and if you already have vivid dreams, the only part than can really be chemically enhanced is already done. Although, if there's a night when you just REALLY want to have a lucid dream, I definitely wouldn't argue against doing everything possible to ensure that you have a good opportunity at night (assuming you would be going the DILD route).

[dodobird]

What is the dose of the 5-htp caps you use? No, I didn't mean that my dreams are always or usually wild and vivid, just that they are quite often so, and because of that it is difficult to know if a supplement or herb affected the dream or not. I am very interested in effects of supplements and herbs on dreams, and I'm in the slow process of exeprimenting with them, one by one. Note that everyone is affected differently, but from my own tests so far I can tell: Pepper mint tea makes the dreams more humorous and good natured. Alcohol causes vivid, epic, non-lucid dreams, with good recall. Galantamine together with choline causes lucidity, and vividness. Vitamine B6 with Zinc and Magnezium sometimes causes lucidity.

[craigmontvii]

Oh, well then. I use 100 mg capsules that I got from a vitamin store. Usually two, occasionally three of them. Hope that helps

[craigmontvii]

oh yeah, don't use 5htp if you're on any sort of antidepressants. Just saying, it could cause serotonin syndrome if you mix it with some other things