This DreamScape will explore the infinite variety of substances and their effects on dreaming. Obviously, drugs and alcohol can produce weird anomalies in the dream content, but what about just ordinary, everyday substances? Start taking inventory of your dreams and notice whether certain foods/drinks do certain things to your dreams.
Some substances may make a certain emotion stronger, may invoke lucidity earlier or easier, enhance or degrade the vividness, etc. See if you can attain a trend that can be replicated by others. Compare and contrast and try to attain the ideal amount of that substance.
We’ll begin here by a fine observation from a dreamer named Don, whose ideal substance is a specific amount of apple juice:
Hey Chris,
I’m 59 yrs. old, I’ve had my share of dreams that turn out to be real and some hard to explain. My dreams only happen between the hours of 3 am to 4 am, reason I know I wait up during those times. I know for fact drinking a liquid before bed effects the dreams, I experimented a little, I found drinking a 4 ounce of apple juice seems to make them more clearly and normal. too much doesn’t work and too little doesn’t either. I’ve tried a lot of different drinks, apple juice for some reason works the best.
Then, when asked about the reason why apple juice might have this effect, Don continues on with more about the fantastic experiences he’s had when ingesting it.
To be honest I have no clue, wish I knew more about chemicals. All I can say is since I was 18 yrs. old, I’ve been curious about the human brain. If you really think about it, the brain depends on our body to function for it and it alone. Let me tell you one of my dreams I had when drinking apple juice before I went to sleep. It was like a out of body experience, I was floating in the lobby where I work, it was at night, I heard this cry of someone in pain coming through the door to the lobby. I saw this guy holding his hand and it was wrap up and the supervisor ( Daniel) was with him, walking him to his car, Daniel him he would take him tot he hospital. Well I woke up and saw it was 3:05 am. I got up drank some water and laid back down. I doze off and on, but not dreaming of anything. Well I got up went to work, ran into my friend JR, I mention to him what I dream of, and told him who I seen and where I was and what was going on. So as we were chatting about other things, out friend Tim walk up and ask if we heard about what happen in the press shop last night at 3 am. He said that Daniel had rush this associate to the hospital that got his finger cut off in the press shop and my friend JR, look at me and said, Don did someone tell you this before coming to me. I told him no, I was serious I dreamed it. This is only one of many that I have dream and came true. I’ve dream of fire and all of a sudden I was awaking by my fire alarms in my home go off and there wasn’t any fire. I’ve dream of traveling to other another country and years later when I travel, I knew of the streets and what was on them. the best one was going to Germany, I went for the company I work for and as I was drive around the town I was staying at, I felt relax, I never got lost or used a map to get around, it was like Deja Vu. From my own researches that I have done, I know there’s more to us than we will ever know. I’m just an average guy, interested in many things and keep an open mind.
What works for you, or what is anti-productive? Please share your experiences here with us….
Ever wondered what weed would do to dreams (or rather what quitting weed would do to dreams)? Apparently it’s called REM rebound, and weed isn’t the only thing that causes it…
from: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-teenage-mind/200906/marijuana-sleep-and-dreams
Marijuana, Sleep and Dreams
Does marijuana affect REM sleep?
Published on June 22, 2009 by Jann Gumbiner, Ph.D. in The Teenage Mind
Marijuana affects dreams. Stoners say they don’t have dreams but if they stop smoking for a few days, they are flooded with dreams. Is there any psychological research supporting this?
Sleep and wakefulness are both parts of a normal daily rhythm. Fish, cats, humans, and many other living things have daily cycles of activity and rest. This daily cycle is called a circadian rhythm. “Circadian” comes from the Latin root “circa dies” and means “about a day.” Both external and internal events can influence circadian rhythms. Morning light and alarm clocks trigger wakefulness. When isolated from normal time cues, the daily human cycle is about 24 hours, hence “circa dies.”
The study of sleep is fascinating. Sleep has been extensively studied in research laboratories, like the University of Chicago, by measuring brain waves and eye movements while research subjects sleep. Gentle electrodes are placed on volunteers’ scalps and near their eyes. While sleeping, the electroencephalogram (EEG) provides evidence of brain activity.
Though sleep seems like a passive state to us, the brain is still very active. In fact, the EEG of a person falling asleep shows five stages of sleep: Stages 1 through 4 and a stage called rapid eye movement (REM) sleep. Each stage is progressively deeper and the complete cycle is repeated several times during the night. When awakened during REM sleep, subjects report dreaming. So if dreams take place during REM sleep, the question for us is: Does smoking marijuana interrupt REM sleep?
article continues at the above link…
I use medical marijuana for various reasons, I have found that I seem to dream just fine. I dream a lot, can remember a lot of them with great detail. I’ve heard the stories that it diminishes your ability to dream but I wonder if it is an individual thing. The one drug that gave me the most incredible lucid dreams was Demerol after surgery for pain. I would be very interested to hear from others that use substances for altered states or pain management after surgery (excluding the oxy family) and how it does or doesn’t affect their dreaming.
A surprise to me I had a dream (Though an odd one it was one!) without thinking about having one.
I fell asleep listening to a water documentary – Excellent! no wonder people that speak/act negatively are ill (this would include being around negative mean persons), they change the structure of the water in their bodies – and since our cells are mostly water and has memory, it be best we speak softly yet carry a big stick as needed. ;”)
I thought about what was different last night –
I ate some kefir with strawberries. I was hungry, not that I didn’t eat a lot throughout the day,
it was because I didn’t have much protein. So, maybe it was the kefir. I normally don’t eat before bedtime instead taking supplements, typically, magnesium and niacin, but I skipped all vitamins.
The dream –
I entered a garden/courtyard, someone (stranger) sitting at a round table. I was watering with a hose and had picked up a clear plastic jug, adding water to it to use as a watering can. For whatever reason, while watering with the jug, waste/feces came out and some rolled into an open door off of the courtyard. The stranger at the table told me I’d need to clean up the waste in that room/office because the person in there (female) cannot go home with a such aroma on her person or all hell would break loose with her husband. — it ends with me cleaning up.
… although I keep gardens around my small city lot, I’ve never gardened for employment.
Adding – I consume kefir or yogurt on a daily basis in aiding my working compost, aka the stomach.
For those that don’t know, kefir is a probiotic. The one I buy has 12 live/active cultures, more than the typical yogurt with about 3. … Days gone by, before milk pasteurization most likely everyone had a healthy stomach flora. Though they were not overwhelmed with antibiotics, nor chlorine and fluoride added to the well water before the city hookups. Isn’t it interesting well water is called that, “well” meaning good/healthy and some wells are not polluted, still providing water that is alive verses dead water provided the city, but one can fix the structure of water.
Here’s the excellent doc –
MAGNETIC WATER DOCUMENTARY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nIaQWRBQ6E
ps. I have a flat stomach, (don’t do sit-ups nor any formal exercising) and am a healthy – 118 lbs, 5’5″, 57 yrs old.
Study: Eating Cheese Can Alter Your Dreams.According to a new study by the British Cheese Board, different cheeses can give you different types of dreams. None of the study volunteers reported nightmares from their bedtime snack. NPR’s Melissa Block talks about the results of the study with Nigel White, secretary of the British Cheese Board.
snippet:
“ One of the amino acids in cheese – tryptophan – has been shown to reduce stress and induce sleep so cheese may actually help you have a good night’s sleep,” says Dr Judith Bryans, Nutrition Scientist at The Dairy Council.
85% of females who ate Stilton had some of the most unusual dreams of the whole study. 65% of people eating Cheddar dreamt about celebrities, over 65% of participants eating Red Leicester revisited their schooldays, all female participants who ate British Brie had nice relaxing dreams whereas male participants had cryptic dreams, two thirds of all those who ate Lancashire had a dream about work and over half of Cheshire eaters had a dreamless sleep.
Commenting on the study, Neil Stanley, PhD Director of Sleep Research HPRU Medical Research Center at the University of Surrey says: “The Cheese and Dreams study conducted by the British Cheese Board is the first study of its kind and suggests that eating cheese before you go to bed may actually aid a good night’s sleep.
What is particularly interesting is the reported effect different types of British cheese have on influencing the content of dreams. It seems that selecting the type of cheese you eat before bedtime may help determine the very nature of often colorful and vivid cheese induced dreams”
The origins of the cheese gives you nightmares’ myth are inconclusive. Some believe that it may have originated from Dickens’ Ebenezer Scrooge, who blamed “a crumb of cheese” on his night-time visitations; others people believe that its origins may lie with a Fifties’ health scare when cheese was found to be problematic for people taking a certain anti-depressant.”
http://www.npr.org/player/v2/mediaPlayer.html?action=1&t=1&islist=false&id=4851485&m=4851494
I took a Valerian root for the first time and was stunned how it relaxed me. Almost too much, I was mellow the whole next day. They are 500 mg capsules I believe.