It has recently occurred to me that menthol might actually be a powerful dream enhancer and potential lucid aid, if used correctly. In order to test this out, I've decided to keep this research log. Since menthol is ridiculously easy to obtain for just about anyone, in the form of cough drops, essential oils, or possibly even pure crystals, you should feel free to post here if you give it a shot to contribute. But if not, that's fine too. I'll be giving a summary of why I think menthol can be so useful, followed by some past evidence and my first experience with it so far. Further experiences will be listed in successive posts.
03-18-2013 Update: Hey guys! I just wanted to add something here since this thread seems to be getting a lot of activity lately. Keep in mind that my theory here about how the way menthol works was just my first big one, but we've found out a lot more about it since I made this post and come up with lots of new (possibly coexistent) theories, and the picture just seems to be getting bigger so don't just take anything as fact yet! We've still got a lot to discover so just keep an open mind and consider the angles.  If you want to see more of the theories you can either read through the thread or just come to the end and see what we're focusing on at th/e moment, it's generally the most up to date anyway. That's all for now!
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Why I Think It Works
Excuse me if I get a little technical here, but I'm going to try to give a good description of just exactly why I think menthol is effective at enhancing dreams. Most of this is actually documented, and some of it is hypothesizing based on those documents. Feel free to criticize, ask for references, or add comments to anything I have to say here.
Melanopsin, Melatonin, and the D2 Receptor: Deactivating the Pineal Gland
I'll start with a description of each of these. Melanopsin is "a photopigment found in specialized photosensitive ganglion cells of the retina that are involved in the regulation of circadian rhythms, pupillary light reflex, and other non-visual responses to light." (Wikipedia) Essentially, melanopsin responds to light, and the more melanopsin you have the more light you perceive. Melatonin, which most people here are probably already familiar with, is a hormone that is one of the core chemicals produced by the pineal gland to regulate the light-dark cycle and the difference between REM and NREM sleep. Melatonin production is suppressed during the light and enhanced during the dark, and melatonin is correlated with NREM. It is also known that melatonin receptor agonists, like melatonin, inhibit the effects of 5-HT2A agonists, which enhance REM sleep. For this reason, I believe it's actually deactivating the pineal gland that promotes dreams and dream-like experiences, not activating it as many people seem to believe. (Not that I believe they're working towards the wrong sensations and the like through meditation, they're just calling it the wrong thing.) Melanopsin responds most strongly to blue light, and therefore, melatonin is suppressed most strongly from blue light. The D2 receptor is a G protein-coupled receptor in the brain, and other parts of the body, that responds to dopamine and other endogenous and exogenous ligands. D2 mutations have been associated with mental diseases such as schizophrenia, and many drugs which activate D2 can create dream-like experiences while awake, while the dream-like experiences of hallucinogens that work through separate mechanisms (e.g., psychedelics, which work through 5-HT2A receptors) can be reversed by drugs which block activity at D2. Effects commonly associated with D2 activation include rewarding feelings and increased power or energy, enhanced libido, and self-perpetuating anxiety (such as in panic attacks), all of which can be seen in lucid dreams (like lucid nightmares, for the last one). Furthermore, it is known that damage to the dopaminergic areas of the brain can result in a loss of dreaming. With all of this considered, I find it very likely that D2 is a very important mechanism involved in dreams.
Now, how does this all connect? Well, anyone who has researched spiritual/religious experiences or psychedelic drugs enough should be familiar with the "white light experience". If not, then essentially what it is is a perception of light so blindingly bright that it encompasses your entire being. It's often associated with OBEs, NDEs, and high doses of hallucinogens, and can even be experienced in dreams by chance or through meditation. I believe that this white light is part of a balance in the brain, and can be both a cause and effect of upsetting this balance. Aside from the sensory distortions of psychedelics that appear even at low doses, which are not considered true hallucinations, this white light seems to go hand in hand with dreams and dream-like experiences. On an average night your brain will block out this perception of white light as part of the dream process just like it blocks out your normal perception of entering sleep paralysis every night before you start dreaming, but it's still going on in the background. It's this white light that causes melatonin levels to drop to their lowest, inhibiting NREM and allowing REM dreams to form. As I mentioned before, the action of hallucinogens can traced through the D2 receptor, and all of these hallucinogens (especially direct D2 agonists, like salvia) can cause the white light experience. This is because melanopsin-containing ganglion cells express D2 receptors, and activating those receptors thereby increases melanopsin concentrations and inhibits melatonin production.
So there's the idea behind why the D2 receptor is important, which is significant in my explanation of menthol's usefulness. Clearly, activating this receptor is very useful as it directly enhances the mechanism by which dreams are formed. However, dopamine itself, while activating this receptor, also activates other dopamine receptors which promote wakefulness and energy, and overall will be harmful to keeping yourself in a dream. So, how do we go about activating D2 in a more efficient way?
Phenethylamine and the CB1 Receptor: Finding the Missing Link
Phenethylamine is another endogenous D2 agonist, a trace amine that exists naturally in the brain. Unlike dopamine, its action is much more selective in this respect, working directly on D2. Interestingly, D2 receptors actually act as a kind of flood control, lowering dopamine levels when activated. Since dopamine itself is already activating other receptors when it activates D2 receptors this effect is insignificant, however phenethylamine uses this method to directly block dopaminergic effects in certain areas of the brain, even directly blocking the effects of dopamine reuptake inhibitors like cocaine, while still creating the dream effects of D2. The CB1 receptor is another G protein-coupled receptor which responds to endocannabinoids, and drugs like THC (cannabis) and synthetic cannabinoids such as JWH-018 (Spice, K2). It is responsible for the psychoactive effects of these drugs.
It has been known for some time that THC increases endogenous levels of phenethylamine, but it would appear that the mechanism by which this occurs is still elusive. Very little is known about this phenethylamine boost other than the fact that it happens, and it doesn't seem to be a very well-researched subject matter. However, it does seem to be the case, at least. Many drug users in certain experimentalist groups have been testing the effects of pure phenethylamine and found it to produce the same type of psychedelic dissociation produced by cannabinoids, including the potential anxiety effects at high doses, all from D2 activation. The bad thing about this is that phenethylamine alone has effects on the peripheral nervous system which would not exactly be desired for a dream aid, whereas cannabinoids seem to release it only in areas of the brain involved in creating its dream-like effects, but of course, CB1 agonists have other effects as well involved in inhibiting short-term memory, clearly limiting their usefulness as dream aids.
From this point on an amount of guesswork is required, so please keep that in mind as you read. One of the core effects of CB1 agonists, which appears to lend itself to functional selectivity by different agonists, seems to be releasing dynorphins. Dynorphins are a class of endogenous opioid peptides that bind to certain receptors in the brain, which I'll go further into in a little bit. They are involved in a large number of processes which includes, most significantly for this discussion, circadian rhythms. They also directly lower the production of dopamine, block the effects of dopamine reuptake inhibitors, cause dysphoria and/or anxiety, and downregulate D2 receptors, while lowering dynorphin levels upregulates D2. This would imply that dynorphins are causing a direct activation of D2, as this relationship is how the brain creates tolerance. If you've read this far then you can probably already see where I'm going with this. Though there doesn't seem to have been any research done on the matter, I find it very likely from all these comparisons that dynorphins stimulate the release of phenethylamine, and that this is how CB1 agonists like THC create their dream-like effects. In fact, mice (or maybe rats, I'd have to pull up the article again) that were lacking in dynorphins were found not to have the anxiety reaction to THC, even though they should have still gotten it from phenethylamine if it was being released through a separate mechanism. So now the important question is, how are dynorphins achieving this?
The Kappa-Opioid Receptor and the Menthol Connection
The kappa-opioid receptor is the G protein-coupled receptor which binds dynorphins as its endogenous ligands. This makes dynorphins analogous to the mu-opioid receptor's endorphins. Drugs that bind to this receptor are known to cause hallucinations, though the recreationally used drugs that activate it (DXM, salvia) bind to other hallucinogenic receptors as well. Nonetheless, there are lesser known opioids, such as pentazocine, which have a strong kappa-opioid binding affinity in addition to their mu-opioid effects that are known to be self-limiting as analgesics because of their tendency to cause dysphoria/anxiety and hallucinations at high doses. Though dynorphins do have other minor binding affinities, it is very likely, if they really do increase concentrations of phenethylamines, that they do it through this receptor.
Now, the important part: menthol is a kappa-opioid agonist. It is a weak agonist, but an agonist all the same. For all of the enthusiasts out there, let me put a big DISCLAIMER here: I am not suggesting in any way, shape, or form that menthol is a viable candidate for recreational use as a hallucinogen. Menthol has other effects aside from its kappa-opioid agonism which may or may not create potentially dangerous side effects at doses that would be required for a full hallucinogenic effect. I am ONLY suggesting that it may be used as an effective dream enhancement aid because the doses required are much smaller and known to be safe. Any recreational abuse of menthol is done at your own risk. Believe me, it doesn't seem like I should have to say that, but I'm sure that I do, and it doesn't hurt to play it safe.
Anyway, the point by now should be clear. Kappa-opioid agonists seem to have fewer memory-limiting effects than cannabinoids, at least from what I've been able to find, and therefore are a better choice for dream enhancement. They surely seem to enhance dreams and recall in a more reliable way than cannabinoids, in any case. Due to the potential release of phenethylamine in only the safe parts of the brain like cannabinoids, they should also increase activity at D2 in the areas of the brain involved in dreaming, increasing melanopsin output and lowering melatonin production. And that is, in summary, why I think it works.
Dream Experiences
In this section I'm just going to reference a thread I responded to a few months ago, and add my experience with menthol thus far. This is what's made me consider menthol as an effective dream enhancer.
The Inspiration
This thread was a major player in my decision to test menthol out, after I'd looked far enough into its mechanism of action: Does anyone have these really messed up dreams? And what causes them? The thread creator was having intense nightmares and was wondering why, and it turned out that they stopped after they stopped consuming a very large quantity of menthol cough drops every night. This would correlate with strong D2 activation (the dysphoria/anxiety), but could actually be overcome if lucid to make for an intensely vivid dream... though, nightmarish doses are certainly not a requirement. At the time I had suggested to the thread creator that the menthol cough drops may have been causing their nightmares, and it turned out to be correct but I didn't think too much into it at the time because I was focused on other things. Here are just a few excerpts from the thread which highlight its point.
 Originally Posted by Psyche
So, for the past few days I've been having these crazy violent dreams; but they aren't like normal nightmares I've had before, they're just these REALLY intense dreams, where I feel REALLY intense emotion and sensations, and they're like REALLY INTENSELY MESSED UP. And I remember every detail, like they feel totally real except for the strange...ness.
...
But now I'm sick and having them, so maybe I'm just staying a bit more aware or it's because I'm eating so many cough drops or I DUNNO?
Originally Posted by Psyche
Hahahhhaha yup, cough drops- theyre more like little candies, but I think I've been eating more than I should. Wait, so cough drops actually might be boosting the vividness??! I actually hope they are the culprit, cuz I could just stop taking them! I haven't had any cough medicine yet though.
Originally Posted by Psyche
It's really the incredible vividness that was scaring me- sorry if my post was confusing anyone, I'm a bit confusing with organizing my thoughts!
And! The dreams have stopped, woohoo!! Thanks guys, it was definitely the coughdrops- I later found the package I was eating before had like 8.6mg menthol a piece and I devoured that package within a few hours... xD
I think those quotes speak for themselves here. It certainly sounds like a promising route of exploration just from that alone.
My First Experience
Before going to bed last night, at around 10:45 PM, I ingested 18.2 mg of menthol in the form of cough drops. Because menthol has a short half-life, it may actually be better suited for WBTBs. However, it did seem to have an effect, as it did in the above thread. It's possible that increasing the dose enough extends the half-life, or that sufficient enough kappa-opioid receptor activation allows for residual effects to still enhance dreams. This could hold with salvia, which can cause vivid dreams the night after smoking it despite having an extremely short duration of effect. This is from my dream journal entry for today.
DJ Entry - Memory Skips, Fake-Out, Controlling The Professor
Supplement Dose: 18.2 mg Menthol (Cough Drops)
Weed was smoked and half a beer was consumed a while before going to bed. This probably had a slightly detrimental effect on my recall, but overall didn't seem to influence my dreams.
#1 - Memory Skips [Non-Lucid]
The beginning of this dream is harder to recall as I believe it happened in third-person, but there was a group of people searching for something.... A time machine? Special documents? It's hard to remember now, but something important along those lines. This group of people was the bad guys, but a couple good guys had infiltrated their ranks and was planning to sabotage them. My memory skips forward a little bit, and I remember lying naked in bed with a friend of mine. o_o I want to say it was... well, that's not important. >w< But we were just cuddling and I was getting lost in fantasy. My memory jumps forward again a little bit and now I'm walking around a store with my dad, and he's talking to someone about how he always eats all the Ritz crackers and cookies at our house and I get mad that there aren't any left, which isn't even remotely true. 
I woke up after that. The naked cuddling thing was definitely interesting... my libido was running strong in this dream, which it almost never does (unless I'm lucid). Was the menthol to blame? Hmm....
#2 - Fake-Out [Non-Lucid]
For this one I was actually just lying in bed for a while, and noticing that my visualization skills were REALLY strong. Everything in the previous dream had been incredibly vivid, and these mental images were no different. I was hoping it would go somewhere, but it didn't seem to be... so I sat up in bed, not realizing that it was suddenly a different bed, and opened my laptop, not realizing that I didn't have my laptop with me. I started typing stuff about the dream I'd had in, and slowly the screen started getting further and further away... until it faded out, and I woke up again. Damn! :O
#3 - Controlling The Professor [WILD]
Now I was just lying in bed again, still exploring the visualization. But I was also really tired still... my consciousness was drifting, but not fully fading away. Suddenly it occurred to me that there was some strange wall of bars and electricity and words that were impossible to read in front of me, it was all very confusing. Finally I decided to look away from it, and noticed that I had fully entered a dream. My second ever WILD!  If that's not a testament to menthol's potential, then I don't know what is.  There was a TV in front of the bed I was in that showed what looked like a Futurama video game, with the professor riding a motorcycle.  Everything was extremely vivid and not unstable at all. I focused myself intently on the game trying to let it consume the whole dream, but it never happened. However, I was able to feel everything on the screen as if it was happening to me. I felt the motorcycle engine beneath me and all that stuff. I had the professor drive up all these crazy wall angles and up on to a person's back, that was fun.  But then he accidentally drove off of a pier he was on and into the water, abandoning his motorcycle and swimming into a vortex of psychedelic-like mermaid faces as he did so.  My libido was starting to shoot up and becoming really intense, and then the vortex consumed my entire perception, and I woke up.
So, that's what I've got so far. I'm certainly interested in seeing how much further I can take this, and will be posting more results as they come along!
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