Thread: Held Prisoner in my Own Mind!

This is copy n pasted straight from my dream journal. I'd just like to hear some people's thoughts on what the hell it was all about, or how I could avoid/beat this kind of thing in future. Ever happen to anyone else? Here's the entry...

22.11.2009

Held Prisoner in my Own Mind (DILD)

NON-DREAM DREAM LUCID

So far in my lucidity-chasing, all my dreams have been quite light-hearted affairs, and I haven't had a nightmare in about four years. This one was different. I was actually trapped in a scary situation, with the full knowledge that I was dreaming, wanting to wake up.

A bit of background. I'm hungover to the max today. Last night's binge would account for the tiredness and massive REM rebound I got as soon as I went to sleep in the evening. I was also maybe not in the most positive frame of mind, which could have been a factor in all this.

I was sitting on a farm talking to my brothers. I saw smoke rising in the distance. After a while I could see flames. The fire was getting very high, and soon after, fire engines pulled up near me. I noticed one of the firefighters was my friend's dad, who I havne't seen for years. My mum pulled up, driving a minivan, packed with people I knew. She said everybody was going to visit somebody who lived near where the inferno was, to make sure she was ok. I got in too, and we drove off. The car was packed out with people, and it was a bit of a tight squeeze, but there were enough seats.

Instead of driving towards the fire, which was up the hill a bit, we drove downhill, and ended up at a beach. My mum tried to drive up a sand dune unsuccessfully. Next thing I knew, I was out of the car, standing in the middle of the beach. The sun was setting, and the waves were quite high, but very far away. There was a vast expanse of flat beach between me and the water. I turned round to walk up the beach, but out of the corner of my eye I saw movement. A single wave, about 2 feet high was sweeping silently (and very quickly) up the beach towards me. I tried to outrun it, but it got me. It soaked my phone in my pocket. I recognised the dream sign, and became lucid. I marvelled at how real my cold and wet clothes felt now that the water had receeded. I then had the desire to get off the beach. There was something eerie about standing alone in the middle of such an enormous wide open space in semi-darkness. I'm not agoraphobic in real life, but something wasn't quite right here. I tried to run up to the top of the beach, but I realised I was running but not actually getting anywhere. This was a bit scary, and I just wanted to wake up.

Then I had a false awakening. I was in my bed, and actually thought I had woken up. I was like, "Thank god that's over!" I looked down at my left hand and saw that it was glowing a purply-pink colour. "Shit," I thought. I got out of bed and wandered around to see where I was. I was in what looked like a big hotel room. Except there were no doors or windows, and the walls and floor were made of wood. There wasn't much light, but I could see black square panels around the room. I got a bit closer, and saw that they were holographic pictures. As in, if you moved, the picture changed. What was on them was pictures of my friends' heads. Their heads weren't quite solid, they were grey on a black background. As I moved across the room, they appeared to be shouting something at me quite desperately. I really didn't like this scenario at all. I went to look in a mirror out of curiosity. I was wearing my dressing gown in the mirror, and my hair was a lot shorter than it is now.

I then had another false awakening. I looked at my hand, which had an indeterminate number of fingers. I was getting a bit worried now. I got out of bed and walked out into the room. There was some sort of gameshow going on in the middle. I didn't want to take part, but the host forced me to.

Then I had ANOTHER false awakening. I was really relieved because I thought it was for real this time. I looked at my hand, and it didn't even look like a hand. This time, when I realised I was still dreaming, the music from The Twilight Zone played.

Listen to this shit...

This freaked me right out, and I started shouting things like "Wake up!" and just screaming in general. No such luck.

Yet another FA. This time I was in my own room, trapped in my bed and unable to move. I could hear my mum outside the door. I yelled, "Wake me up! Get in here and wake me up!" She never did come in, and the Twilight Zone music played again.

Another one. I was back in the windowless hotel room. There were two guys doing some measuring. I said, "Fuck this, I'm not playing the game any more," and decided to kill myself. Handily enough, a noose was hanging from the celing. I stood on a desk and put it round my neck. Yep, it's getting a bit heavy! As soon as I jumped off, the scene went into reverse. Everything literally rewound around me, and there was even a "rewinding" indicator at the bottom of my view.

I had, maybe 15 false awakenings, and each time my hand was different. The Twilight Zone music played every time I looked at it. One time it was fat, then the hand of an old man, flashing psychadelically, missing altogether... the list goes on. One time it looked normal until I realised I was actually missing a finger. There was a stump. I nearly shat myself at the music that time. I became increasingly desperate, and even tried holding my breath, in case that meant I was actually holding my breath in real life, and I might wake myself up by nearly suffocating. It didn't work.

Eventually, of course, I did wake up, only 2 or 3 hours after I went to bed. I very reluctantly checked my hand and it was fine. I ran straight out of my room and downstairs. I'm totally exhausted now, and maybe a bit afraid to go back to sleep! Also, still enormously hung over and it's killing me. I really hope I never have a repeat of that episode. Like being stuck in the matrix and not being able to find a fucking phone!