Testing Melatonin: A one month study on Melatonin + Dreaming/Substances/Techniques

I've been here for quite some time now and figured it's about time to give something to the community. I noticed that the forum, while it has a broad range of threads about "Melatonin and lucid dreaming" or "questions about...", it doesn't have any in-depth professional (semi-professional? give me a break ;) ) studies about it. I've been going through quite a long dry spell (maybe a year) and really wanted to get back into lucid dreaming. So I figured I could start with this study and see what results I can get! Please, if you have anything you would like me to attempt, feel free to ask! I'd love to try new things in the field!


Throughout this journey I plan on testing Melatonin's effects on things such as:
++Popular Techniques such as WILD, FILD, DEILD...
++Inducing lucid dreams during naps
++Bizarreness of Dreams
++Melatonin + Other Substances (Marijuana, B-6, maybe more...)
(more to come I'm sure...)

Sunday, April 15, 2012. (Night 1)
notes: tonight I am going to take B-6 and Melatonin and see what my results are in the morning.
1 tabled (100mg) B-6 taken at 10:31.
1 tablet (3mg) of Melatonin taken at 10:16.
(bed at 10:35)

Results:
I had little to no recall this night, which I found interesting. The only thing I remembered was something about food in my refrigerator.

Sunday, April 15, 2012. (Night 2)
notes: I'm going to not use melatonin tonight and only use B-6 to see if anything happens.

No luck I take it? :(

I think Hitman took him out while he was in the woods;-)

I posted the results of my melatonin use over on the Astral Pulse forums. I've recently knocked my dosage down from 20mg a night to 5-10mg a night. There seems to be a point that the melatonin reaches it's highest usage, then it has no more or less of an effect.

Quote:

---

5mg: More comfortable sleep. No changes in dreams.
10mg: Good Sleep. More vivid dreams. Dream characters are more hostile. Lucidity attained most often.
15mg: Fantastic sleep. Less vivid dreams but greater intensity. Dream characters are very violent and will often attack if disturbed.
20mg: Heavy sleep. Slept for 45 minutes longer than usual. Vivid dreams (about the 10mg level). No lucidity whatsoever. Reguar dream signs are ineffective. Dream characters are not violent at all.

---

So from my experience, 10mg is the best dosage for me.

Thank you LucidPirate for your information. As for everyone else, sorry about the random loss in posts. I will be restarting this experiment shortly, however I will not be updating it daily, for I will not be using Melatonin daily (to avoid any sort of dependency issues). I will attempt 10 mg tonight and report tomorrow.

Melatonin helped me with some really vivid recall for about a week maybe. That was a couple years ago. The effects wear off pretty fast.

Now I just take 3mg a night. It doesn't do anything for my dreaming, that I'm aware of anyway.

Last night after reading this thread, on a whim, I decided to try taking a larger dose to see if it would do anything for me. I took 15mg instead of the regular 3mg I normally take. It didn't do anything. I had less recall than normal.

Last night I took ~10mg of Melatonin before going to bed and the most I got was remembering a small piece of an odd dream (half of my toenails were ripped off?).

Tonight I'm going to drop down to 6mg and see what happens.

Last night I took 50 mg of melatonin.

Results:
Increased dreaming
Increased recall
Increased vividness
No substantial increase or decrease on lucidity
No substantial increase or decrease on control
Mild increase in stability

Have you considered taking a larger dose to see if there are any substantial changes? I tried taking 6 mg a month ago on two occasions and both times I had really bad recall. This was the third time I've ever taken melatonin. Obviously too small a number of occasions to build any sort of a baseline but it was more a in-the-moment sort of thing.

I've read a few accounts where people had extreme dreams because of melatonin. Your tonsils thing sounds a little in that area. I dreamt of being in a plane crash but it wasn't a big deal... but I can see how peoples perceptions of what they experience in their dreams can easily be viewed as extreme or severely upsetting. Not sure I'd recommend larger doses to people who weren't somewhat skilled in emotional regulation.

Keep us updated.

Tonight I'm going to take a break from the melatonin (since I've taken it two nights in a row) and see if the change decrease from 10,6, to 0 effects me in anyway.

Last night (With 6mg) I had very little recall, but slightly better than the night before. I believe that this comes from my want to remember more-so than the Melatonin.

Night of Tuesday, May 08, 2012
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I believe I had recalled a very small dream I had this morning, once again I believe it's coming from just dream recall practice. I had no melatonin last night and had the most success so far when it comes to dream recall. I'm going to try 6 mg again tonight and report back tomorrow.

Results of Tuesday
--------------------------
I honestly didn't remember anything

Nights of Wednesday(5/9/12) and Thursday (5/10/12)
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These two nights were two that melatonin was NOT used at all and I recalled a small portion of one dream each night. The first involved me being in some sort of command center and the second was too weird to be typed up here.

I've found the nights I use melatonin I am very groggy in the mornings. I don't want to get up, and the bed feels extra comfortable.

I have to wake up early again tomorrow morning, so I won't be using melatonin tonight. However, I will be taking a nap tomorrow and taking melatonin right before it as I attempt to wild and see if it's going to help anything.

My friend suggested St. John's Wort, So I might go pick up some of that at a local Rx store and give that a try. Apparently it's a natural herbal anti-depressant that you take three times a day. It's side effects seem to be long, stable, vivid dreams. My friend came into class after being in a long dry spell of no-recall and explained a very elaborate, detailed dream to me. I plan on trying it myself and reporting here.

May 14, 2012
----------------------------
Tonight I will be testing out St. John's Wort. It's an anti-depressant suggested to me by a friend of mine. Apparently it creates long, stable, vivid dreams. I took 600mg (double the daily dose) on accident (thought they were 100mg tablets) earlier at lunch time. i am going to see what it does for me tonight, and I will report in the morning.

No 50 mg of melatonin huh. Darn.

I never said I wasn't going to do that eventually, Kaomea. ;)

Results of the St. John's Wort...I had a dream that I dipped my bag of herb in the toilet and it all got wet. It was, to what I remember, slightly more vivid and "lifelike" than most dreams I've had lately. I'll have to "do more tests" so to speak to see if this little green pill does anything. Tonight I will take a 300mg tablet before bed and see what it's effects are.

Last night's results were nothing, even after taking it right before bed. I will attempt to use melatonin with St. John's Wort (STW from now on. tired of typing it) after I get some dinner. I'm leaving in the morning so I don't mind a messed up sleep schedule. Will report later tonight.

I added melatonin (.5mg) to my Galatanmine (8mg) + Choline bitartrate (500-ishmg) + Alpha GPC (300mg) .....all on WBTB after 5 hours of sleep.
I got back to sleep for the 1st time taking the G+C with the melatonin! Had 3 lucid dreams in control and flew in 2 of them. About 8 out of 10 for vivd and control.
After the 3 lucids, I felt I could still go lucid anytime for another 3 hours but didn't put enough effort into it...just felt very relaxed and didn't care on the added melatonin.

Just my .5 cents.

Thanks for the results Zencowboy! I encourage any others to participate in trying things out as well and reporting back here! How has your success rate been with Galatanmine, Choline bitartrate, and alpha GPC individually (if you have even tried them individually).

I have not tried individually. I read the 40+ page on here about "Galatanmine + Choline" and it seems not much came of it when folks took any of them by themselves.

I have success with or without Alpha GPC so far. Took 300mg less this morning and seemed the same. DID notice the 0.5 mg melatonin and being able to get back to sleep before galatanmine kicked in and keep me awake.

My 4th time taking this combo with 3+ days apart and worked every time.

PS. I didn't take anything before bed...other times I took 100mg of 5-HTP before bed then woke up and took the combo. Same results so far but will try it again to see if there is any REM rebound and IF it adds to the # of lucids or vividness of them.

I'm going out of town for the next couple of days and will not be able to post here about any of my experiences. I will, however, record my experiences up there and be sure to get them here when I return (Sunday/Monday). I'll pick up some of the other listed things to try on the forums next week when I get paid and start testing those as well.