Thread: Using Caffeine as a Trigger

Glad to not be alone. What have you found to be too late in your experience? For me it seems to relate more to how close to morning, daylight, and activity outside rather than strictly about the number hours of sleep. If there's any trace of daylight or cars going by, I seem to generally be doomed.

I guess it all depends on how sleepy you are during a specific night. My WBTB range is between 4 and 6 hrs after sleep. I prefer it to be 4.5-5 ideally but with no alarm it is hard to hit it. And unfortunately every night is different. Light is somewhat irritating especially in summer but I sleep with a folded T-shirt on my head, so it blocks light just in case. Now sounds can be very distracting, no matter what time it is there is always some noise. Unfortunately there's very little one can do about it, if it's a bad time to ld, it is a bad time.

In the last few days I have been working on developing a viable schedule to LD, but it seems the more I try to control things, the worse it gets. It has been like deep sleep, deep sleep, insomnia, insomnia and recall has been getting worse too. Hahaha! I guess I should take it easy? This always happens when I want to ld very bad.

Anyways, I think about caffeine you should always refer to your own sleepyness levels and WBTB timing, and also how prone you are to insomnia. It's so tricky, something you really need a few extra mg of caffeine, but at other times, it proves too much. There is one thing I want to try by the way, to see if it helps me wake up a bit more, splash some cold water on my face during WBTB instead of caffeine. I know it sounds funny but it might do the trick.

Wow!Congrats on the great recall. Getting anything out of dreamworld is always a bonus.

Originally Posted by NyxCC

Anyways, I think about caffeine you should always refer to your own sleepyness levels and WBTB timing, and also how prone you are to insomnia. It's so tricky, something you really need a few extra mg of caffeine, but at other times, it proves too much. There is one thing I want to try by the way, to see if it helps me wake up a bit more, splash some cold water on my face during WBTB instead of caffeine. I know it sounds funny but it might do the trick.

Great thoughts all the way around. I know what you mean about just a few extra mg of caffeine... I sometimes wish there was a little keyboard I could type a really precise number into and have it brew perfectly-caffeinated tea for me right there at WBTB. But I brew my tea the night before out of bags whose caffeine contents are, honestly, probably inconsistent and really hard to gauge accurately. I sometimes desire an unreasonable degree of precision.

You'll have to let me know how the cold water splash goes! One thing I can tell you doesn't work for me is anything which elevates the heartrate. Going up and down stairs to deal with nonsense from the dogs or reading something that gets me all excited and pumped up seem to be my personal pathway to insomnia.

Originally Posted by NyxCC

...There is one thing I want to try by the way, to see if it helps me wake up a bit more, splash some cold water on my face during WBTB instead of caffeine. I know it sounds funny but it might do the trick.

Originally Posted by CanisLucidus

You'll have to let me know how the cold water splash goes! One thing I can tell you doesn't work for me is anything which elevates the heartrate. Going up and down stairs to deal with nonsense from the dogs or reading something that gets me all excited and pumped up seem to be my personal pathway to insomnia.

Re: The splashing of cold water on the face - I have tried this during WBTB basically to try and DROP the heartrate, by trying to activate the Mamillian Diving Reflex.
Note that the water does have to be below a certain temperature, plus it depends on the length of contact, and/or immersion, etc.
Mammalian diving reflex - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

However don't feel like I'm totally disagreeing with you guys, as I agree that splashing cold water on your boat race is bound to make you more (mentally) alert!

Originally Posted by Highlander

However don't feel like I'm totally disagreeing with you guys, as I agree that splashing cold water on your boat race is bound to make you more (mentally) alert!

Awesome info... I can't even find a point of disagreement! This makes the cold water technique even more exciting! Because if it makes you more mentally alert (which I think we generally agree that it at least seems to do) and it also drops the heart rate, it sounds like a winner! Because an alert mind and a slightly slower heart rate sounds like exactly what you would want to have heading into lucid dream time. Particularly for a WILD.

I'll need to read up on this more! I see some experimentation with cold water in my future.