Bitter lessons about lucid dreaming
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Maybe I'm a unique example, but none of this matches my experience at all.
I was able to have lucid dreams relatively consistently just by dream journaling and doing reality checks. WILD was quite difficult to do, because you kind of have to walk a tight balance, where you keep yourself in a half-asleep state while carrying out instructions that requite a fair bit of metacognitive awareness, but once you get the hang of it, you can do that pretty consistently as well, without much time commitment.
That lucid dreams don't offer much more than traditional entertainment seems also (obviously?) false to me. People use VR to make traditional entertainment more immersive. And LDs are far more immersive than that, and less limited than video games are.
They're also just a really interesting psychological phenomena. The process is fun. If you find yourself in a lucid dream, its a strange situation. Testing out things, like checking how well your internal physics simulation engine works is really fun. Or just walking around and seeing what your subconscious generates is very fun. And very different from just imagining random stuff. Trying to meditate, and observing how your mind works differently in a dream, compared with waking reality is interesting. Seeing how extreme/vivid sensations you can generate in a dream is fun. Like trying to see if you can get yourself to feel pain. Or how loud sounds you can make.
Galantamine and various supplements all did nothing for me.
The only thing I agree with is the habituation effect. But like, that's how many things work. You eventually get bored of stuff / feel you've exhausted all the low-hanging fruits.
In my experience, conscious Daydreaming can achieve the same results but more consistently. But then again, my imagination is extremely visual, I tend to "think in VR movies", so Lucid Daydreaming comes easier than Lucid Dreaming, and is far more controllable.
Man, I just wish I could remember my dreams. I miss it. I assume I do still, but when I wake, I don’t even have a hazy recollection.
I used to have vivid dreams, and even lucid dreaming when I would have a nightmare. Flying was my favorite LD activity. It was always hard though.
Can't you just keep a dream journal? I find if I do that consistently right upon waking up, I'm able to remember dreams quite well.
No. When I wake up I have no memory or sensation of dreaming. Just sort of a jump in time. If I were to wake up and realize I had been dreaming. I’d be pretty excited and put it in my journal.
1I don't have much information about your case, but I'd make a 1-to-1 bet that if you got up and wrote down your dreams first thing in the morning every morning, especially if you're woken up by an alarm for the first 3 times, that you'd start remembering your dreams. Just jot dow whatever you remember, however vague or instinct, upto and including "litterally nothing. The the last thing I remember is going to bed last night."
I rarely remember my own dreams, but in periods of my life when I've kept a dream journal, I easily remembered them.
especially if you're woken up by an alarm
I suspect this is a big factor. I haven't used an alarm to wake up for ~2 years and can't recall the last time I remembered a dream. Without an alarm you're left in a half-awake state for some number of minutes before actually waking/getting up, which is probably when one forgets.
During the period when I was writing down dreams, I was also not using an alarm. I did train myself to wake up instantly, at the time that I wanted, to the minute. I agree that the half-awake state is anti-helpful for remembering dreams.
The alarm is helpful for starting out though.
That's common for beginners. If you want to give this a go, you should start by writing down fleeting, vague associations. "Something a bit sad or disappointing. A car. School and also not school. The texture of cinnamon rolls."
It doesn't matter that you can't remember anything concrete at first. Eventually, you'll remember more and more.
This assumes that I have any sort of vague impression. I really don’t. I’ve tried many times to focus on any recollection from when I’m asleep, and it’s just blank. I don’t keep a journal because a whole bunch of pages saying “nothing” isn’t useful.
When I am falling asleep, I may have a dreamlike state of imagination. Never upon waking though.
Even just writing down loose associations and your emotional state is enough; that's how you get the ball rolling. Try it for two weeks even if it feels useless. Unless you're taking antidepressants in which case this might actually be ineffective. I know this doesn't sound worthwhile, but I know from experience (mine and others) that it usually works.
Ooooooooh…. Antidepressants……..I take Wellbutrin.
Yeah, that could be it.
Welp, I enjoyed dreaming when I was younger. I’d rather be happy now.
I remember my dreams only sometimes, but I’ve had good experiences just sitting down and trying to recall them for about a minute. One time, I started out remembering nothing. After a while, I recalled some vague details, and writing those down led to remembering even more specifics, until I remembered three different dreams I had that night. It might be worth trying that out!
In my experience, the results are quite quick and its interesting to remember your dreams. The time it takes is ~10 minutes a day.
I'm not gonna say it doesn't take any effort. It can be hard to to it if you are tired in the morning, but I disagree with the characterization that it takes "a lot" of effort.
Outside of studying/work, I exercise every day, do anki cards every day, and try to make a reasonably healthy dinner every day. Each of those activities individually take ~10x the cognitive effort and willpower that dream journaling does. (for me)
B6 vitamin in doses 50-100mg before sleep increases recall significantly - did you try it? (read about risks of large doses of B6 first.)
I have a suspicion that "flying dreams" have more to do with the state of your physical body than just your mind. I noticed I only dream of flight (or rather, levitation) if my muscles are very relaxed, like after a good massage, long hot bath, or good stretching. If im physically tense, either from effort or from stress, then I either cannot fly in a dream at all, or I keep losing the ability and falling, often with enough distress to wake myself up.
I learned about lucid dreaming at 13 and decided to try it. I practiced self-hynosis trance states while falling asleep. Took a couple weeks of practice before getting it to work. After that, it was easy.
Too easy.
Couldn't turn it off. Every dream became a lucid dream, except no, they were lucid dreams within dreams. I'd wake up and go to school then wake up and realize I was still dreaming. Real life and dreams began to blur together. My dreams were so vivid I couldn't tell them apart reliably. My dreams would alternate between lucid and not, nightmares crept in. It was thoroughly unnerving. So, I did the same self-hypnosis practice in reverse. A week of so of demanding normalcy again, and my dreams went back to normal.
Eventually, in grad school, I went through a similar process to stop myself from remembering my dreams, because I was so stressed out that all my dreams were nightmares.
After grad school I went back to allowing myself to occasionally remember dreams, at least fuzzily while waking or recalling the previous night's dream while drifting to sleep.
Yeah, I suppose, if lucid dreaming is that hard for you, that it requires constant excercises during daytime, you shouldn't strain yourself.
I learned it intuitively in childhood as a way to deal with rare nightmares and so it is all mostly effortless fun for me since then. I don't get them all the time, but at least half the time I remember dreaming, it's lucid.
Another point is that lucid dreams are usually short. At least in my case its hard to stay in the state without waking up or forgetting that it's a dream. I don't think I've had more than 15 minutes of uninterrupted experience at a time, though it's hard to tell due to the fact that time perception in a dream is messed up.
Lucid dreams as erotic adventures can be fun but only after you already had enough sexual experience. I think it can be more satisfying than onanism but not significantly. The real advantage is that you are not loosing your daytime on such activity.
I spent may be whole year in my twenties trying to get more LD, journaling, using devices, different methods etc. I went from 0 to 10 LD in a month, but after that the number declined.
Maybe it is netter to learn lucidity in some critical period in childhood - or wait until new technologies will solve it.
Perhaps Randolph Carter was right about losing access to dreamlands after your twenties:
When Randolph Carter was thirty he lost the key of the gate of dreams. Prior to that time he had made up for the prosiness of life by nightly excursions to strange and ancient cities beyond space, and lovely, unbelievable garden lands across ethereal seas; but as middle age hardened upon him he felt these liberties slipping away little by little, until at last he was cut off altogether. No more could his galleys sail up the river Oukranos past the gilded spires of Thran, or his elephant caravans tramp through perfumed jungles in Kled, where forgotten palaces with veined ivory columns sleep lovely and unbroken under the moon.
Btw, have you heard about PropheticAI? They are working on device that is supposed to help you with lucid dreaming?
Yes, I know them and read their blog.
I am now 51 and can remember dreams now only if I take B6.
Based on my limited experience with lucid dreaming, my impression is that, roughly, whatever you expect to happen in a dream will happen. This includes things like the "lessons" in this post. As far as I know, there's no particular reason that lucid dreams have to be easier for women or people ages 20-30, or that you can't transform into someone else in a lucid dream (it's happened to me). But if you convince yourself of these lessons, then they'll be true for you, and you'll be limiting yourself for no reason.
I’m not sure about (10).
Whenever someone has a theory that it’s impossible to do thing X in a dream, the regular lucid dreamers will provide a counterecamp,e by deliberately doing X in their next dream.
Computers, clocks, and written text can behave weirdly in dreams. Really, it’s the same things that generative AI has diffuculty with, possibly for information-theory reasons.
I have yet to be able to successfully make a Google search during a dream - what I "intend" to search for is never what appears in the box I'm trying to "type" the search query into.
Hmm… but, for example, stabilising a dream is kind of like a meditation, and one of the many ways you can transform your body in a dream is basically a body scan meditation from hatha yoga.
My hypothesis is that a lot of things that seem impossible or very hard in a dream, are simply too boring to focus on. Its totally possible to consciously dream up a page of text, but who would really want to waste precious dreamtime to type?
Lucid dreaming is often like being Sigourney Weaver in Alien while also being on hospital sedatives. (You are, in fact, actually asleep, so it’s kind of a miracle you can reason at all and not the least bit surprising that you feel a bit groggy; also, dream can be nightmarish).
Why people choose to do this for fun is an interesting question.
You do get people who think they might get into lucid dreaming, then they read the dream diaries of some of the experienced lucid dreamers, and then are like “OMG, I never, ever, want to experience that.”
A possible benefit: the regulation of your own emotion that you do to keep a dream stable (even when alarming things are happening in it) may help you keep your emotion stable in the waking state too.
Sure, but given the effort invested, wouldn't any way of practicing emotional regulation be a better use of time?
Well, it’s an interesting question whether there might be more efficient ways to do it.
Lucid nightmares are quite a good way of exposing you to real-seeming dangers without actually dying.
Thanks, that's very useful.
If one decides to use galantamine, is it known if one should take it right before bedtime, or anytime during the preceding day, or in some other fashion?
It is recommended to take it in the middle of night around 4-8 mg. It didn't work for me. However, when I took 16 mg before sleeping as a test of its antidepressant qualities, I immediately have around 10 out-of-body experiences in the first hour of sleep.
I don't know will it work for others, and 16mg is a large dose, which makes one groggy next morning (but Alzheimer patients take up to 24 mg a day). I experimented with it once a week for 2 months with consisted results, but eventually become tired of the dramatic effects.
Laberge also shows that lucidity chance increases with galantamine dosage, but he tested only up to 8 mg in the published study.
Stress during the day takes years off people's lives. Is there any evidence that stress during dreams (not necessarily nightmares) has a similar effect? Then that could be a significant benefit of lucid dreaming to reduce stress.
this might not actually be always beneficial. Lucid dreaming also means you remember much more from the dreams, which can extend the lifespan of your recurring nightmares. Not to mention, if you dream lucidly, your consciousness is not resting, and intrusive thoughts will pile up.
The best practical application of lucid dreams is reducing effects of nightmares by recognizing that it is just a dream.
Sometimes I remember having had the thought "this is a dream" while dreaming, but doing that doesn't really give me any extra "conscious" control over what happens - all it does is let me "decide" to wake up.
Don't know if this counts but I sort of can affect and notice dreams without being really lucid in the sense of clearly knowing it's a dream. It feels more like I somehow believe everything is real but I'm having superpowers (like becoming a superhero), and I would use the powers in ways that make sense in the dream setting, instead of being my waking self and consciously choosing what I want to dream of next. As a kid, I noticed I could often fly when chased by enemies in my dreams, and later I could do more kinds of things in my dreams just by willing it, perhaps as a result of consuming too many scifi or fantasy books and games. And I noticed some recurrent patterns in my dreams, like places that don't exist in real life but dreaming-me believe to be my school or hometown. Sometimes I get a strange sense of "I dreamed of this before" when I somehow feel like I have had the same or similar dreams as I'm having now, but without really realizing that I'm dreaming or remembering who I am in waking life. Then I subconsciously know I can do these things, or can focus on seeing and memorizing more of the dream world (if it was interesting) so I can write it down after waking up.
I noticed that the ability to LD is strongly correlated with the condition known as "Maladaptive Daydreaming" (the "maladaptive" part here is subjective and situational, but it basically means the ability and need to have very addctive, vivid, VR-like daydreams that obscure waking reality).
I used to suffer from MD, until I learned to control it well enough to just be benign Daydreaming. Simultaneously, I achieved the ability to LD, which works on very similar principles to controlled Daydreaming.
The trick to LD if you are a person who daydreams visually, is to focus on plausibility. Trying to consciously train your daydreaming mind to enforce realistic, plausible daydream scenarios leads to the same mental need to "fix" unrealistic dreams, which either wakes you up from the dream or makes it Lucid.
Now, all that being said, LDs rarely approach the quality of Daydreams. Its extremely hard to make a Lucid Dream realistic and detailed enough not to feel trippy. Moreover, while most Daydreamers can make their Daydreams simulate tactile sensations, you cannot do the same in an actual dream. For one, erotic Lucid Dreaming is almost always pointless, because your lucid mind cannot force your sleeping body to actually experience sexual pleasure, let alone orgasm. If you are a bio male, it is likely you won't even achieve erection, so LD sex feels like trying to play pool with a rope.
The only good use I ever got from LDs is that it lets you remember bits of your dreams better and use it as raw footage to edit into your Daydreams.
Good point about impossibility of sex in LD. But masturbation is actually a form of day dreaming,
I wrote Active Imagination as an Alternative to Lucid Dreaming: Theory and Experimental Results which is basically about controlled daydreaming.
I don't agree with any of this. When I was really into lucid dreaming, I discovered that the best approach is two-fold: keep a detailed dream journal, and make a habit of performing reality checks. That's it. If you don't keep a dream journal, you'll likely have lucid dreams and just ... forget about them. And as for reality checks, my preferred one is trying to push my thumb through my palm. You can do it casually anywhere and it's an instant confirmation.
When I was actively trying to induce them, I often had periods where I had several lucid dreams per night. Gradually, I mastered dream flight (it's so weird how it's a skill), and I became better able to maintain my lucid state, which is often the most tricky part.
I was never interested in erotic, oneironautic adventures. I spent most of my time flying, which doesn't really get old.
I find lucid dreams to be effective "against" nightmares (for 10+ years already).
AMA if you want
I don't think so (?)
There are physical things that make me have more nightmares, like being too hot, or needing to pee
Sounds like I might be missing something obvious?
I don't have much in terms of advise, I never felt the need to research this - I just assumed there must be something. I have a mild nightmare maybe once every couple of months and almost never something more serious.
I have anecdotal evidence that things which disturb your sleep (e.g. coffee or too much salt affecting blood pressure, uncomfortable pillow) cause nightmares. There are also obvious things like not watching horror movies, etc.
I've had lucid dreams by accident (never tried to induce one). Upon waking up, my head hurts. Do others have the same experience? What are common negative effects of lucid dreams?
Also, can you control when you wake up?
I’ve had a few lucid dreams, only by accident. No aftereffects. My difficulty is staying asleep. I always start waking up before I’ve had a good chance to explore the dream world.
The main risk is entering is sleep paralysis state, which itself is benign, but some terrifying sounds can be heard during it and this can cause stress.
Yes, it is to wake up from lucid dream - juts thing about your slleping body.
Discussing sleep paralysis might be an infohazard…
The times I’ve entered sleep paralysis it hasn’t bothered me, as I knew what it was.
(source epistemic status: mostly experiential and anecdotal from a lay lucid dreamer who knows a few other lucid dreamers)
The common negative effects from my lucid dreaming experiences:
- If I'm not careful with how I exert the "influence" I have in the dream, I can "crash" the dream, usually resulting in me waking up and having trouble getting back to sleep for a bit
- When I use a lot of influence in a lucid dream, especially to extend the length of a dream, I find that I end up seeming way less rested than normal (but that has proven hard to try and quantify beyond "when in the day do I hit a point of exhaustion")
A somewhat less common negative effect I keep in mind:
- Some people I know have had issues where their nightmares became far more unpleasant after trying to learn lucid dreaming to "fight back"
Reading this article, I have just realised that a dream I had last night came from reading one of those test cases where people try to bypass the guardrails on LLMs. Only the dream was taken from the innocuous part of the prompt.
At this rate, I’m going to be having dreams about turning Lemsip(*) into meth.
(*) UK cold remedy. Contains pseudoephedrine.
Dreams lost a part of their enigma after it becomes clear that they are very similar to generative network. I used to think that I have superhuman ability to generate worlds. Now I can do this with a prompt.
Given the significance of lucid dreaming in Buddhist practise (Siz Yogas of Naropa, etc.) realising that having a lucid dream just for sexual purposes is kind of pointless may lead to you realising that it’s kind of pointless in waking life too. Many of those guys were monks…
I can lucid dream, and I kind of agree here. Sure, lucid dreaming is possible, but why would you do that?
Re (3), a dream you can completely control tells you nothing you didn’t know already. There is some scope for controlling the dream enough to, in effect, set up a question, and then not control the result.
There a running joke in the lucid dreaming community that the first thing everyone tries is either flying or sex. It’s only when you get to #3 on their list of things they want to do that it becomes at all interesting.
I haven't tried galantamine, but didn't find the drugless techniques all the same. The standard advice of keeping a dream diary and psyching yourself to have a lucid dream and to do reality checks never worked at all for me. Wake-back-to-bed on the other hand got me dozens of lucid dreams and often worked the first time I tried it after a break. It's also annoying to do because it involves messing with your sleep cycle and waking yourself up in the early morning, and it seems to always stop working if I try to do it multiple nights in a row.
Agree with the other parts though, the lucid dreams are generally pretty short, kind of samey. Maybe it takes a longer dream for the narrative to get properly weird, and the WBTB lucids are more often short dreams that start out of nowhere than becoming lucid midway through an involve dream. They're also too sporadic to get any sort of ongoing active imagination practice going since I don't have any routine of trying to WBTB once every week or something. There's Robert Waggoner's lucid dreaming book that talks more about possible ongoing psychological development you could make happen with repeated lucid dreams, as opposed to just the "hey, lucid dreams are a thing" books, but I guess a regular routine and some kind of intentful approach would help a lot here.
One thing I've been thinking is that the stories about shamanic journeys sound a whole lot like lucid dreaming, so maybe you could take a page from there. Try to travel to the underworld or overworld, meet some spirit entities, ask them what's up and maybe have a nice chat about large integer factorization.