I don’t really dream. It’s extremely rare to the point where I’ll have a handful in a year and I don’t remember them. Waking up with an emotional reaction to an odd dream inspired by life events or entertainment… Then the details slip away from me and I can’t even talk to anyone about the experience.
What’s it like for you?
Do you enjoy, dislike or analyze your dreams?
Is it really a window to the subconscious for you?
Is like a movie that is injected into your brain, but randomly generated by AI (aka: it make zero sense and random as fuck).
Then just as things get interesting, someone wake you up and flash the Men In Black memory eraser thing and you’re like: “What the fuck was that? I think I had a dream, but I forgor”
Somewhat weird and cringe but entertaining. I usually keep my phone next to bed, if I have some dream I’d like to remember I turn on audio recording and speak whatever comes to mind. Hopefully I get to remember that in the future.
Maybe you can write your dreams down as soon as you wake up and remember them. Perhaps it will help
Yeah I’ve seen notes about sleep journals
It’s fun until someone cuts your arm with a sword during medieval battle, you wake up but you can’t move and can’t feel your arm so you lay on the battlefield for a while.
Have you tried learning to be better at sword fighting?
I rarely dream the same twice
Dreaming is like reality, but far from reality. Regardless, you accept it anyway. It looks so close to reality, yet many nonsensical things can happen. I recently had one which featured astral projection and trippy visuals. The stretching of hallways, the breaking of physics.
Foreign realms which often feel quite familiar.
Also–do your own research, but… this might interest you.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemisia_vulgaris
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oneirogen
Mugwort is known as an oneirogen. These are a class of substances known to produce vivid dreams.They are not psychoactive to any degree. I use them very, very infrequently, but they do work for me. As far as I understand, it’s diminishing returns for repeated use. If you use them daily, they stop working. Mugwort has worked for everyone I know who’s tried it, and I’d imagine it’s hard for placebo to occur here. Note that this is far from a scientifically defined class of substance–most descriptions of their effects are anecdotal. That said, they are extremely unlikely to be harmful, if that’s even at all possible.
If this is an active point of interest for you, it certainly can’t hurt to read into it. Hope this all helps!
Wow that’s. I’m down to try a herbal tea!
I haven’t tried tea, but smoking works if that doesn’t. I’d assume you want to drink the tea about an hour before bed to ensure effects take hold at the right time. You won’t notice any effect while awake. It should have mild sleep support properties, though. Also interesting is that it’s reported to work by being placed under the pillow.
Thujone is an involved compound that’s worth mentioning. In very large amounts (and I mean a catastrophic 3g+ of pure compound for myself), it becomes toxic–but typical doses are very, very far below this. Imagine how much 3g of the compound is, and how much compound is actually contained in the material.
Hope this all helps!
I didn’t plan anything with this post but I feel like I’m going to be chasing the experience of getting a dream. Even a lucid dream.
Good luck, and stay safe! Please do get back–people’s experiences will help me with my project (a work featuring dozens upon dozens of psychoactives/medicines/therapy options). Reports will help me provide better, more diverse information to people.
It won’t be for some time. But I plan to make a follow up post.
I used to have vivid awesome dreams when I was a kid and some scary ones as well, as an adult I am in the same boat as OP, handful of dreams a year that I even register and I forget almost everything once I wake up. And the worst part is most of my dreams seem related to my daily worries, like even in my dreams I can’t escape my anxiety. I remember an amazing dream I had as a kid where I could fly, it felt so real, it was like entering into a futuristic simulation.
I recall I used to dream as a kid. Only vaguely recall one or two.
Check out the Twin Peaks series. For me that’s the closest I’ve ever seen on screen
What do you mean?
Closest depiction AND sound design to what I dream when I’m dreaming.
It’s like having thoughts, but weirder.
Everyone dreams, FYI. It’s an integral part of sleeping. You just don’t remember it.
It’s like being awake except more entertaining things are happening. It’s a window to the subconscious in the sense I can tell problems from the day appear in them, but not in a Freudian way where they mean things.
The weirdest part is that you only realize the nonsense after waking up
Funny enough, I’ve been weirdly lucid in my dreams recently.
Congratulations! I’d love being able to lucid dream, I imagine it’s like being on some kind of drugs but without the risk.
For those who don’t dream much, I’m curious of your surrounding sleep habits and how much you’ve looked into changing your habits. This could be a big indicator you’re not getting into REM sleep, which is not good.
Do any of you drink alcohol, take other prescribed substances (or not prescribed)?
Have you tried eating foods rich in magnesium or taking magnesium supplements?
I don’t really dream much but my watch says my REM is fine.
Cutting out weed after a stint gives me more dreams than usual, but then cuts back to my baseline once in a blue moon after a while.
Take lots of magnesium, have always been like this. Also have aphantasia though so not much to my dreams to remember.
I’m similar expect I don’t take magnesium. I also have aphantasia. I get 8 hours nightly and wake up refreshed. I do drink 1 cup of coffee every morning. Acetaminophen and/or Ibuprofen as needed which isn’t often and usually only for a tension headache. No other drugs. I drink on occasion but no more than 1-3 beers/week and the rare night bourbon. My wife cans all of our veggies that are cannable so we know they’re fresh. We have pigs raised (working on a cow) and we eat pretty clean food (know how it was raised/grown) as much as possible.
I can’t remember the last time I can remember a dream, it’s been that long. I also have a terrible memory and it takes a a lot of effort to retain events, even something that happened last week, they’re mostly fading memories.
Good news is that means I’m generally very upbeat most of the time. I do not have bipolar disorder or any other mental issue that I know of. I’m very even keeled, so much so that I find Lemmy’s reactions to things happening in the world to be super amplified and irrational. Sometimes it’s warranted, many it’s simply bad for their mental health.
Be careful, radical centrism is the worst kind of extremism and dulls your surroundings.
There are many kinds of dreams, each with a different sensation.
- There’s vivid nightmares which leave you in a state of panic, often unable to go back to sleep due to a hyper focus on every little sound and touch.
- There’s action dreams which give you an adrenaline rush and a state of random anger.
- There’s emotional dreams which leave you as an empty shell, crying or full of longing for something out of reach.
- There’s horny dreams which leave a puddle in your bed.
- And there’s also happy dreams which fill you up with joy and leave you refreshed and full of love for life.
Of course there’s also the forgotten dreams which can be anything, but don’t really matter to you because you can’t remember having them. But they often leave behind the feeling you’re supposed to be doing something, which can drive you crazy during the day.
I got an emotional dream a few months ago. Woke up feeling a wreck and distraught while having no idea why. Very frustrating.
I don’t dream much either, according to sleep studies. Do you have a sleep disorder and/or smoke weed?
I don’t do drugs. Even skipping pain meds for a bad back. No real reason I just dislike pills. Drug free for work reasons.
I tend to sleep 4-5 due to overwork. Even if I have 8-9 hours free my internal clock wakes me up at night.
The times I dream are often when I take a 30min-2hr nap.
This is my experience exactly! I have never heard of someone else having a similar experience. If you end up going to a sleep specialist or finding any sort of explanation, please DM me about it.
Sounds like you probably aren’t getting enough sleep to get into REM very often. 4-5 an hour isn’t the healthiest.
Valid. I’m trying to fix it.
You and me both
The type of dream I enjoy the absolute most are called “lucid dreams.” It’s when you actually recognize you’re dreaming and can take control of it. I could be dreaming of walking down the sidewalk and see a cool car, realize I’m dreaming, and then just say ok I’m going to get in that car and drive it lol
Unfortunately they’re super super rare so I think I’ve only had like 4 that I remember.
I have lucid dreams and I get excited when it happens and make some fun decisions. “Oh, this is a dream. Sweet, I’m gonna go do [X] now.” I always remember don’t try flying, because it was scary when I tried and jolted me out of the dream.
But here’s the thing. Once I’m awake, as I think about it, it seems like I did exactly what I wanted to do, but I realize that there’s absolutely no way of knowing whether I genuinely had control or just dreamed that I had control and made those choices. But in the end I did have control and made those choices because it’s my brain, right? And I feel like I did; it’s more like a memory than a dream. But following the same line, I could question reality.
Anyway, I’m currently cynical and think nobody actually controls their dreams, they only wake up thinking they did.