Lucid dream with galantamine

I recently took some galantamine after having slept for about 4 hours. I immediately went back to sleep and had the longest lucid dream I've ever had.

The dream started out with me "waking up" in the back seat of my car, which was driving down a freeway at night. No one was driving the car, so I quickly jumped into the driver's seat and drove for awhile. I ended up parking and going into an apartment. Inside, something (I don't remember what) made me realize I was dreaming. I talked to some people in the apartment and then went back outside. I decided to fly around for awhile, which worked pretty well, except that I kept getting stuck in mid-air. I tried to will myself to move through the air, but didn't have much success. Eventually I floated back down to the ground and went into a large building, which was something like a huge store, though I don't know what was being sold. I ran into some people who seemed pretty normal, but also some who were really strange. In one room there were a lot of women with distorted faces. I had the impression that they were witches, or something like that. They were performing some kind of a ritual with a live "baby" that looked like a skeleton. Even though this was scary, I knew it was just a dream. I took the "baby," held it up, and looked at it for a while. I don't remember many details about the remainder of the dream, except that I met quite a few other people, some of whom I know in real life. I also tried flying a few more times, which always worked, except that I kept getting stuck in mid-air.

The whole experience was amazing. My only regret was that I became annoyed at getting stuck in mid-air. In retrospect, I wish I had simply allowed myself to enjoy the experience of being up in the air, whether I was moving or not. Being aware that one is dreaming is not the same as being able to control the dream. I find that more interesting things happen if I go with the flow and don't try to control things too much.

Wall of programming

Another non-lucid dream I had recently involved a former friend with whom I had (in real life) unsuccessfully tried to reconcile. In the dream, I was having dinner with him in a Japanese restaurant. Besides us, no one else was in the restaurant. Later, we were at his work place where he showed me how he edited his computer programs. We were floating weightless in front of a self-illuminated "wall of programming" that was about 100 ft high and 30 ft wide. He was manipulating the various symbols in the program by grabbing them from the wall with his hands, moving them around, discarding them, or changing their shapes. The comments in the program took the form of Japanese etchings of different kinds of trees. Later, we were in a restroom. He gave me a white, glowing bar of soap with which I began to wash my hands. Still holding the soap, I turned to him and said, "I'm sorry." He just stared at me with a blank expression on his face. Somehow the dream made me feel better about having attempted to patch things up with him, even though I did not succeed.

Fishing train

A month or so ago I had a non-lucid dream in which I was staying at a large resort condominium built on the side of a canyon. Everyone there was into fishing. When they weren't actually fishing, they were practicing casting or talking about fishing. Almost everyone was also smoking marijuana and drinking dark rum. Once a day a fishing train would take everyone along the river at the bottom of the canyon. The train would stop every so often so people could get out and fish. Then they'd get back in and go a little farther down the river. I hiked down into the canyon. Most of the exposed rocks of the canyon walls had been covered with multicolored mosaic tiles. Across the canyon I could see a glacier. The glacial ice had been carved into huge sculptures of different kinds of food, mostly bagels. Later I took a walking tour of the area right below the condominium. The guide explained that the condominium complex was millions of years old and was gradually sinking down into the canyon. As the older condominium units sank down and were compressed, new units were built on top of them. I could see the layers of the older compressed units, like sedimentary rock. The guide also mentioned that eventually the pressure of the upper layers converted the lower layers into chocolate cake and vanilla ice cream. I tasted some of these layers, and found that he was correct.

Experiment with caffeine-withdrawal initiated lucid dream, Part 3

I just tried this method again. Yesterday I had no caffeine at all. By evening I had a pretty bad caffeine-withdrawal headache. I went to bed around 11 pm. When I woke up around 4 am, the headache was gone. I drank about a cup of strong coffee and went back to bed. Although the coffee made it somewhat harder than usual to get back to sleep, I managed to get to sleep after what seemed like about 20 minutes. I slept well until about 7:30 am. Unfortunately, I didn't have any lucid dreams. At least I don't remember having any. I actually don't remember having any dreams at all.

It could be that this isn't the right method for me. I'm probably not sufficiently addicted to coffee. I usually only drink a cup or two a day. More than that makes me too jittery. Although I had a headache at bedtime, by the time I got up at 4 am it was gone. Maybe sleeping well for a few hours was enough to cure my caffeine-withdrawal symptoms, thereby preventing the method from working properly.

Experiment with caffeine-withdrawal initiated lucid dream, Part 2

Last night I tried the CWILD technique developed by people on the Mortal Mist forum. I went to sleep around 10:30 after having drastically cut back on caffeine during the day. I got up around 2 am and drank a cup of strong iced caffeinated coffee. I then went back to bed. I didn't have much trouble getting back to sleep, though it seemed to take a few minutes longer than normal. Unfortunately, the iced coffee didn't produce any lucid dreams, nor did it enhance my dreams in any way. This may have been due to not cutting back enough on caffeine during the day. I had about 25% of my usual daily dose of caffeine. This produced some very minor caffeine withdrawal symptoms, including a slight headache and a lack of energy. Next time, I'll try cutting out caffeine completely during the day.

Experiment with caffeine-withdrawal initiated lucid dream, Part 1

Some of the members of the Mortal Mist forum recommended that I try their caffeine-withdrawal initiated lucid dream (CWILD) technique. Based on their recommendations, I drank an extra cup of caffeinated coffee yesterday, in addition to a Coke. Today I'm drinking my usual amount of coffee (2 cups), but brewed using a mixture of 25% caffeinated coffee and 75% decaf. Tonight I'll try waking up a few hours after going to sleep and drinking half a cup of (caffeinated) coffee before going back to sleep. For more details on CWILD, go to this link. You'll have to sign up as a Mortal Mist member, if you haven't already.

An experiment with galantamine

I haven't had any luck inducing lucid dreams lately, so I decided to try something different. Perusing Ryan Hurd's website, I noticed this article about the use of galantamine to induce lucid dreams. This herbal drug has been known for centuries to have memory enhancing effects. It's used to treat the symptoms of Alzheimer's disease and other memory-impairing conditions. It's also known to promote dreaming--including lucid dreaming--as well as the ability to remember one's dreams.

I recently ordered a bottle of galantamine capsules from PhysicianFormulas.com, which is the vendor recommended by Ryan. These capsules also contain vitamin B5 and choline, essential nutrients that enhance the effects of the galantamine. I tried one of the capsules this morning for the first time. After going to bed last night around 10:30, I woke up around 4:30 am, took a capsule, and went back to bed. I ordinarily fall back to sleep fairly quickly after waking up that early in the morning. But the capsule had a slightly stimulating effect, similar to--though subtly different than--the effects of caffeine. I couldn't seem to settle down, due to random thoughts racing through my brain. I also experienced some physical restlessness, mainly due to sensations of itchiness. For example, a spot on my back started to itch. I had to turn over to reach the itchy spot. After scratching it, a spot on my arm immediately began to itch. I decided to try my normal meditation technique, which involves concentrating on my breathing while repeating a meditation mantra. That worked. I quickly fell asleep and had a number of dreams, many of which I remembered after waking up. One of the dreams was briefly lucid: I was in my house and was disturbed to notice a number of corpses lying around. But I suddenly realized this was similar to a dream I'd had once before. So I told myself I didn't need to worry about the corpses, since I must be dreaming. But then, rather than taking advantage of this realization to become fully lucid, I immediately relapsed into a non-lucid dream. Still, the fact that I became somewhat lucid, if only briefly, is encouraging. I didn't notice any unpleasant side effects, other than the brief attack of itchiness. I plan to continue experimenting with this induction technique, so stay tuned for updates.

More on the moon's effect on lucid dreaming

The news article mentioned in yesterday's post made me wonder whether my lucid dreams are more likely to occur on nights when the moon is full. It appears that the opposite may be true. Only about 14% of my lucid dreams occurred when the moon was either full or approximately full. About 29% occurred when the moon was approximately half-illuminated (either first or third quarter) and 57% occurred when the moon was new or approximately new. Of course, this could be a statistical fluke, since the number of samples is small. If you keep a dream journal, try generating your own statistics. You can find the phase of the moon for any date on the website StarDate.org. Let me know what you find out.

The moon's effect on lucid dreaming

I found this article yesterday on a science fair at Landrum Middle School in St. Augustine, Florida. One of the great things about science fairs is how they encourage children to make discoveries themselves, rather than just passively absorb knowledge from others. This fair included research on soil organisms that might be capable of transforming the Martian environment into something more Earth-like. I wonder if that would actually be possible. Other children studied the physics of dance and how light affects crystal growth. It never occurred to me that light might affect crystal growth, but it makes sense that it could.

It was great to see that one of the projects involved lucid dreaming. Seventh grader Jason King studied whether the moon can affect lucid dreaming. He appears to have found some evidence that it can. He kept a journal in which he recorded whether he dreamed and whether any of his dreams were lucid. He found that his first lucid dream occurred during a full moon. Of course it's possible that it was his knowledge of the phase of the moon that triggered the lucid dream, rather than the moon itself. But even that is an interesting result. I hope others researchers will pursue this line of research. If you've been keeping a dream journal, why not review your past dream activity to see if there are any correlations with the phase of the moon? I think I'll do that myself.

3D Mandelbulbs

A friend of mine recently sent me this link:

http://www.skytopia.com/project/fractal/mandelbulb.html

It describes experiments with 3D analogs of the famous (2D) Mandelbrot set. These are some of the most beautiful, dreamlike images I have ever seen. They have an otherworldly quality that is difficult to describe. Regularly studying these images before going to sleep could inspire some amazing dreams, lucid or otherwise. If you're not familiar with the original Mandelbrot set, go to YouTube and search for "Mandelbrot". This one is pretty good:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2oa5DkJcLA&NR=1

This Wikipedia article is also worth reading:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandelbrot_set