Thread: Things that are BAD for dreaming

Being ill. On some occasions I've gone to bed with the flu or a cold and thought that repeatedly waking (to cough, sneeze etc.) would help me LD but in my experience it doesn't.

Things that reduce my LD odds:
-anxiety
-frustration with failure to LD or just the thought of being frustrated with failure to LD
-going to sleep and getting up early - it's easier to have memorable, and lucid, dreams later in the day
-B-vitamins - B-6 has been touted here as a lucid aid, but in my experiments with it, it made it too hard to sleep at all. I also recently took a B-vitamin-containing multi before bed and it seemed to screw with my sleep/dream quality. For proper LDing I need to be sleeping shallowly enough to get the beta-waves of REM sleep, but deeply enough that I can reach REM sleep in the first place and stay in it once I'm there.
-colds/flu. Being sick tends to shift the balance too much toward non-REM sleep, especially Stages 1 and 2 'cause it's kinda hard to sleep deeply if you've got a stuffed nose or are in pain. Although one time I was sick, I slept like a log for 13 hours and felt excellent afterwards, so some cases or stages of being ill might help with deep sleep.

http://www.entertonement.com/clips/v...ape-Fear-Theme

While alcohol is harmful to my dream recall most of the time, about half of all the LDs I have ever had were because I went to sleep wasted. What often happens to me when I go to sleep drunk is that I wake up after five to six hours because I'm dehydrated, drink water, and then go back to sleep. Sometimes I have trouble falling back asleep but when I do I often have a WBTB. I'm not sure if any of y'all have experienced this too but going to bed drunk, when done correctly, has been the single most effective method for me when it comes to inducing LD's.

Maaan I've been having drowsy allergy tablets for the last couple of weeks before bed. The number of dreams I could recall fell in correlation with this. I'll take them in the morning from now on and see what happens.

Originally Posted by utexas313

While alcohol is harmful to my dream recall most of the time, about half of all the LDs I have ever had were because I went to sleep wasted. What often happens to me when I go to sleep drunk is that I wake up after five to six hours because I'm dehydrated, drink water, and then go back to sleep. Sometimes I have trouble falling back asleep but when I do I often have a WBTB. I'm not sure if any of y'all have experienced this too but going to bed drunk, when done correctly, has been the single most effective method for me when it comes to inducing LD's.

I think so... In some hours I have a party with Mexican people. Is my closest neighbor's birthday, so I will drink 5-6 beers and then announce I'm leaving, then I will drink like 8-9 "last beers" with the excuse we are door to door neighbors and just walk 20 feet and fall in bed So drunk lucidity for me tonight, for sure

However, when I go drunk to bed, usually my lucidity is drunk to. So, I'm basically drunk in the dream world. Is like I have the same effects of being drunk but in a different place instead of my neighbor's garage so I become lucid... But it's like if I decide to have a magic duel in my lucid dream, I try to throw a beam or fireball and I have terrible accurancy... or evering in my dream moves... or if I have to fly or run... I do it like a drunk would do (running though) in waking life.

Pot makes DR almost impossible for me.
however, NyQuil has given me many lucid dreams and they tend to be very vivid. I suppose this probably differs from person to person.
When I am sick I almost never LD but I have very strange vivid dreams that are almost as enjoyable as a lucid

Alcohol - makes dreams less clear, but I still dream
Weed - no recall what so ever
Dextromethorphan - no dreams that are lucid, after the effects wear off i have very cool dreams

anybody knows how xanex affects lucid dreams?

Originally Posted by Higurashi

Fear of the unknown.

Kept me from WILDing for a while, and ruined many potentially great lucids.

Bingo this is a huge one. Many people dont even realize its an issue for them.

About weed:If i smoke in the morning and not at night,Very vivid dreams.If i smoke at night cant remember dreams.So smoke in the morning-noon only.

Originally Posted by JamesLD

when i smoke pot before i go to bed i absolutely cannot remember my dreams the next morning.

which is part of the reason i quit smoking weed

Absolutely ,positively weed is detrimental to recall BUT quitting after being a constant smoker makes your dream recall and vividness phenomenal.So i just hope that the effects of quitting do not diminish after a while (going on a month now)

Man, I am so glad I found this thread. I have been taking OTC sleeping pills off and on for the past 5 years. In particular I have been taking like 1 pill every night for the past year. While I get to sleep pretty quick, and usually sleep for 8+ hours, I notice I get really crappy quality sleep. I am tired and groggy when I wake up and most of the morning. I also don't seem to remember many dreams and those I do remember are just short disconnected pieces. After reading this thread I decided to not take the sleeping pills last night. At the moment I was taking Advil PM which has 38mg of Diphenhydramine citrate. I also didn't take the 3mg of Melatonin I usually take and took 200mg of L-Theanine instead. Let me just say the results were dramatic.

While it was a bit harder to fall asleep, and I did wake up a few times during the night, the quality of sleep was significantly better. First off, I had not one but two lucid dreams (which is unprecedented for me). I also had some vivid non-lucid dreams that were pretty cool. Then I was able to wake up before my alarm and I was wide awake and totally refreshed. I don't think I have woken up this rejuvenated in years. Since I woke up early I had enough time to write about 6 pages in my dream journal and still get to work on time. Plus, I wasn't falling asleep at work at all. Amazing. This thread has changed my life! I can't believe I didn't realize it was the sleeping pills. I should have figured something was off because I am usually getting 9+ hours of sleep during the week and still tired as all hell. I really hope this is not a one time deal. I would love to have lucid dreams like this all the time and wake up as refreshed as ever. Thanks so much.

That's not a 100% stopper for me . I've had different outcomes of dreaming with alcohol . I remember having a 3-4day fest of drinking and loosing the recall completely , but there were also times when after some amount of drinks my dreams just went crazy . Not only so vivid but i don't know how even to describe them . They seemed to be beyond my fantasy(which i believe is really wide) . So alco overall is not so good for dreaming , but you may have different outcomes.