Thread: My dreams are becoming deadly!!.. I stopped breathing.

last night i was having an ordinary dream.. well, not exactly ordinary, but. An un-lucid dream if you get me!.. And i was in this room with shaffleding and thses poeple were building a gym.. And there was dust and smoke everywhere. And the oxygen slowly got weaker, as i couldnt breath what so ever. And i ran out of the room. Almost about to collapse on the ground. as i got out the room i could still smell all the smoke and still couldnt breath. i was coughing my guts out, and i woke up and found myself gasping for air!!.. Is there a rationa explination for this. I thought when you went into the dream state your body went into Sleep paralysis. Then how come i stopped breathing!!.. i dont want this to happen again. It;s truely terrorfiyng. Someone help!! please

Its possible you may have something similar to or the same as Sleep Apnea, in which you may stop breathing for a period of time during sleep. Your dreams may be interpreting this physiological stimulus as a dust-and-smoke scenario you described.

If you don't have sleep apnea, I wouldn't worry about it. Very few, if any, people actually die from not being able to breath during sleep. If you do stop breathing (and you are capable of breathing physically, that is to say, there is no one choking you or you have adequate oxygen), then you'll eventually pass out and wake up after your brain 'restarts'.

I've had dreams where I pass out because I can't breathe, but I wake up after everything goes black. It's possible that your body has strong responses to the stimuli experienced during the dream. Thus if you think you can't breath when dreaming, your body won't breathe physically... sort of like the Matrix.

Weird. I also had a dream that caused me to stop breathing last night. My friend offered me liquid marijuana (yea, I know...) and I drank it. Then I couldn't breath, and I woke up but still couldn't breath. Then I finally could, but for the rest of the night before I fell back asleep my breaths were very heavy and it was hard to breath.

You are either not breathing irl and the dream makes scenario to look this way in the dream or you are really not breathing cuz of the scenario. It is probably the first, cuz if you dont have sleep paralys and you are not breathing in dream and in life this means you must also walk/talk and so on as in the dream, if it is the first, is something minor. Well there are other possibilites, too - cuz of not breathing in the dream, you stopped breathing after you wake up, cuz it sounds right to the body, cuz its just waked a.k.a. confused. And also when I thought about it, breathing in dream and irl could be connected. Thats why the nose plug rc is working.

I've experienced that before, and I am inclined to think in my case it is because of sleep apnea.

But it is terrifying, especially when it is in conjunction with conscious sleep paralysis (and no dreams). Sometimes though I will wake up with a start, gasping for air.

Sucks.

That sounds like a scary dream, and a scary experience. If it makes you feel any better, I wake up several times a week because I'm not breathing. Sometimes, it's so bad that I gasp for my breath for a good while after I've woken up, and I didn't even choke in my dream.