Melatonin + Alcohol = Vivid dreams?

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Originally Posted by Melatonin.com

Q. Are there any side effects to mixing alcohol and melatonin? Sometimes I may have a beer or two and then later take a melatonin when bed time approaches. Does alcohol lessen the effectiveness? Strengthen it?
A. Alcohol helps induce sleep, however, there is often a rebound effect a few hours later with waking up in the middle of the night with difficulty falling back asleep. I think one drink of alcohol combined with one mg of melatonin should be safe, but two or more drinks along with more than 1 mg of melatonin may interfere with clarity of thinking or induce vivid dreams. However different people respond differently.

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Last night I took about eight Melatonin (24g total) and had about three beers an hour later. It was experimental, and to be honest I'm not exactly cautious with my experiments. I immediately became very tired, felt rather drunk (my tolerance is rather high, so even feeling slightly loopy after three beers is odd) and I had very vivid dreams.

My recall of the dreams was very good within the first ten minutes of waking up, I could remember emotions, scents, textures etc. My dreams were very detailed and structured, though none were lucid. I don't keep a dream log, and I really don't work on my dream recall at all.

I'm going to try again in a few days (I don't want to develop tolerance towards the melatonin) and I will be keeping a dream journal from now on to increase recall. I'll report my findings back.

Personally I would reccomend against taking such a large dose of Melatonin, considering the reccomending amoutn for this type of endeavor is 5 mg. But to answer why it happened, the melatonin and alcohol caused you to lose REM sleep during msot of the night which resulted in a large REM rebound in the early morning, which gives intensly vivid dreams.

I also tend to think it's a bad idea to take such a high dose of melatonin. For the typical person trying to regulate their sleep patterns, 1-3 mg is the recommended dose of melatonin, and 5 mg tends to be the upper limit. Some people take more than that, but if you're needing to take more, I tend to think that it's probably not the best supplement for you. As far as experimenting with alcohol, I also don't tend to think that's a good idea either. I think there are quite a few far better ways of achieving vivid dreams and working on recall without combining supplements and alcohol.

The following is what happens to me, 5hr's latter... wake up: "oh ya baby lucid time" followed by uh somethings spinning, YES hypnotic imagery, dreamworld hear I come! Uh still spinning... Blah... 2hr's latter... Blah blah blah...

Go for it!!!

Alcohol is generally a great way to ruin short term memory, (ie: Blanking out, blacking out, haziness) so I don't recommend it for dreaming.

I tried this once. I took 10mg of melatonin and about 1/4 a bottle of UV Blue 15% alcohol. I fell asleep really quickly but it didn't last long. I woke up like 2 hours later and was incredibly dizzy. I wasn't drunk in the sense that i was acting like an idiot, i felt completely lucid, but I couldn't keep my balance for the life of me. Total vertigo. I almost threw up several times. Went back to my room and just laid down until it passed. NEVER going to try this again.

I can't say it's fine for all doses, but melatonin on it own is safe. Experiments have been done up to 200mg without adverse effects, its just that an effective only really has to be tiny since the body's natural production is in the microgram range
Yesterday I had about 6 standard drinks, about 3 double rum and gingerale, and a 3mg melatonin. I slept like a baby the whole night, and woke up feeling refreshed, which was nice since I've just finished highly stressful midterms.
I do get the vivid dreams with the rebound effect of waking up after a few hours, but only when I combine melatonin and diphenhydramine, and even then it only takes a short time to get back to sleep.
In all, all alcohol will do is thin your blood, thus making the effects of melatonin more intense, so just bear that in mind. A standard 3mg with a few drinks will knock you the f*** out for 8 straight hours.

Melatonin, taken before bed, affects your biological clock according to the phase response curve This means it may shift your REM episodes around a bit. Alcohol causes REM rebound effect due to REM suppression in the first part of the night. Together, the two can produce some very uncommon effects within the brain. It may be fun, but your brain is confused as hell as to what time it is and how it should regulate itself.

The same can be said of cough medicine +(melatonin?)+fever. This is how I got my first lucid dream/false awakening, because I had dreams which were like 4-5 times as long as my regular long dreams. They simply would keep going on and on and on. Yet I would not advocate that combo on a regular basis!

based on other people's comments, I would say that 10mg of melatonin with 1-3 beers MAY be safe, not saying that it is but it might be....I'm only saying that because the store's by me in NJ only sell melatonin 10mg no less at all..

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I have a very high tolerance, but that is mostly from smoking pot everynight almost for the past 2-3 years...taking melatonin while smoking worked great at first I would be super baked and have an awesome sleep..but ever since my tolerance got higher once again...well last night I had about 7 bong rips of 3g of good stuff plus a melatonin like an hour and a half before going to sleep and was still hard to sleep (don't know why but Friday nights it takes more then usual to get me to sleep even though I wake up at 6am Saturday wide awake...

tonight I had about 4 beers so far, stomache is a little bad right now cause I didn't prepare, I gotta prepare to drink cause I don't do it that much and have a very bad stomache with a halactic hernia or whatever its called in it,......
that's mostly the reason I smoke, so I can eat (getting appetite) otherwise its nearly impossible to finish even a quarter of a normal meal plus use it to sleep too and pain so I don't have to take percs for kidney stones cause those make you puke if you have a bad stomache...anyway I might try a 10mg melatonin tonight with the 4 beers soon, ill let you know how it works out..

Wow...that seems like bit much to me also. I can tell you that 5-HTP gives me crazy dreams bordering on nightmares. I tend to go light with all these supplements, although I don't impose my preferences on anyone. I merely point out that more is not always better, and polypharmacy is a well-established way to trigger unwanted side effects! :panic:

DH

Not sure why you need melatonin. Alcohol works great alone for me, other than waking early and not being able to sleep after that.

If I wanted to become an alcoholic, I'd keep it up.

I tried B5 and melatonin, that was some wacked stuff. Brain was about to explode but I had recallable dreams.

Best to find sustainable ways to dream that arent too extreme. Dreams are so hit and miss, trying to do it one just one night always seems to fail.