June 24, 2004

• that just means you're a creative person, sooooz. but maybe you're not using your creative brain during your waking hours! i'd suggest, um, creating more.
• Alcohol. Copious amounts of alcohol. Mixed with painkillers. But seriously, I experience it, too. What I've found that helps is vigorous exercise in the evening. It puts me into a dead sleep and I generally sleep throughout the night with no dreams and no wake-ups.
• Although, on second thought, while I experience these dreams very frequently (every other day or so), I kind of like them. Even if it does make me tired in the morning.
• Yeah, you have to give that stuff a conscious outlet, or it'll come out in your sleep. It's sort of like sex -- most people don't often have dirty or wet dreams if they're sexually active or masturbating regularly. So it goes with the subconscious. If you can find a good, conscious creative outlet to occupy you during the day, your brain won't be as active at night. Also, what shawnj said. Diet and exercise can be a factor.
• Soooz, I had the same problem, from the time I was a teen until I reached my mid-30's. I can relate to waking exhausted, I never found a cure. These days I rarely sleep more than 4 hours, but without dreaming. If I do dream, I don't remember the dreams. I went to my physician and she prescribed a sleeping medication, Ambien. I tried it, I had vivid nightmares and dreams, worse than when I was younger and took no sleeping medications. So now, I fall out after a couple of weeks of surviving on 4 hours a sleep a night. By *fall out* I mean, I crash and sleep for 12-16 hours about every two weeks, then its back to 4 hours a night. I wish I could be of some help to you , but alas, I never figured out how to fix the problem for myself either. I hope you find a rememdy for this problem...
• rememdy =remedy, I swear I did the preview :) Exercise and creative outlets did not work for me, but that is just me. These things are alays worth a try.
• alays=always ok, I quit for awhile. Seems I can't post a comment without a typo. :)
• monkeyfilter: masturbating regularly
• I regularly masturbate in my vivid dreams due to copious amounts of alcohol. I wonder what that says about me...
• Very heavy REM sleep is tied to both a depressed aminergic system and clinical depression. For pill form SSRIs, MAOIs, and amphetamines will decrease your REM sleep, and so will the herbal 5HTP (which is a seratonin precursor and inhibits REM sleep). But a much better solution is to get a lot more exercise.
• Well, rather than looking at the symptoms, do you have any idea what's causing these dreams? I have trouble sleeping when there's something stressful or upsetting going on in my life. And I know there are certain drugs (the patch, notoriously) that cause "vivid" dreams. How long have you been having these dreams?
• IANAD, but a 3-month bout of insomnia a few years back forced me to research the crap out of this topic. Here are some things to ask yourself: 1. How long has this been going on? Weeks? Months? Years? 2. Are you on any meds that can mess with sleep cycles, either when they're working or when they stop working? How much caffeine do you consume and when? 3. Are you under lots of stress? Who isn't, right? ;P It can cause you to spend more time in REM sleep. Depression and/or anxiety can affect this too. (In my case, anxiety was reducing REM sleep. The hallucinations were awful.) 4. How long does it take you to fall asleep? Sleep-deprived people fall asleep right away vs. about 15 minutes for people who get enough sleep. 5. Do you start dreaming right away, or do you go through the normal cycle of Non-REM sleep first? Hitting REM sleep right away can be a symptom of narcolepsy among other things. This site seems like it has helpful info. Try shawnj's & rolypolyman's fab suggestion of evening exercise. If you have a good relationship with your doctor, talk to him/her about it. It might be something really simple. If you visit a sleep clinic, keep a sleep diary beforehand so they can get a better picture of what's going on. I'll never forget how wonderful it was to start sleeping and dreaming normally again. It's difficult, but try not to succumb to the despair of having effed-up sleep. Keep hope aliiiive! Seriously, good luck and please let us know what happens.
• I've found that going to bed a little hungry helps me avoid having fitful sleep and memorable dreams. Though I do sometimes miss the cheese dreams...
• vigorous exercise in the evening. It puts me into a dead sleep Definitely good advice. And as shinything suggested, take a glance at your medications. Or, you could just live a more boring life.
• Shinything, rolypolyman, and shawnj all have suggestions I would echo--here are some additional thoughts. While doing more creative work might help the vivid dreams, the dreams could be just as easily a result of you tapping into a muse and your brain going on overdrive--at least, that's something that's happened to me. My mind is racing so much during the day, I need some full-on dreams to help my mind sort things out further at night. It could be your mind needs another type of creative outlet...even if for a little while. Is there anything artistic or creative that you haven't really done for awhile that, once you think about it, gives you a little pang of longing? This could be anything from cooking a particular meal to finger painting, really. While we monkeys can debate whether or not having vivid dreams is good (I, for one, love 'em) it's obviously not working for you, _and_ it sounds like your sleeping brain is caught at one speed. Try to give your brain some different exercise to snap it out of this gear. And speaking of excercise, that I think would almost certainly help, especially any sport where mind and body are getting a workout (which reminds me, I need to get back into fencing). And, in any case, it'll exhaust your body in a natural non-dream way. Hope things change for ya soon.
• I have found that when I'm having vivid dream, it's my subconscious trying to process what's going on in my life. Solutions I've found are journaling, talking to people, and lots of introspection. I also read cheese books before I go to bed to try and slow down the brain. (In my case, cheese books = romance novels, but everyone has their own flavor of mindless and relaxing books.)
• You don't say whether these dreams are disturbing, or whether they are simply confusing. From the tone of your post, I suspect they are a little of both; probably dealing with events, personas and imagery that you would much rather not consciously think about. Hence the troubled feeling in the morning when you recall the details, probably trying to dismiss the cloying imagery from your mind. The answer may be not to try suppress those thoughts at all. If my speculation is accurate, it's extremely important *not* to try to block the dreams. I can see no other reason why vivid & complex dreams would be anything other than enjoyable, to be honest. I have experienced the same thing on and off since childhood. Eventually, rather than try to get rid of the cyclical, exhausting phantasmagoria, I decided to experience them more vividly in order to understand *why* my mind was conjuring such stuff; I taught myself to experience lucid dreams. This is one of the greatest things I ever did. However, learning to lucid dream is difficult, & requires a lot of practice & effort. This mental effort alone may actually solve your problem by tieing up your mind in a task that subdues its unguided night-time wanderings. I disagree with the solution of extra exercise or other ways to suppress the dreaming, particularly the use of pharmaceuticals, alcohol or other narcotics. Dreaming is a vital, necessary and entirely normal mental process. If you're having lots of vivid dreams, then your subconscious is trying to process something important, just as Kimberly says above. You shouldn't try to suppress them, but integrate them. You will find yourself very much rewarded by this in the end, and the dreams may even stop altogether! There is much data around on this subject. Read a bit about the dreaming process & attempt to understand what is going on in your particular, & I'm sure, intimate case. The messages from your hidden, buried self should not be ignored! But how to interpret & deal with them can only really be tackled by you alone.
• Ok somewhat off topic but while we are talking about dreams, does anyone else here ever dream in cartoon? Some of my most vivid dreams were in cartoon, not like watching cartoons but actualy being cartoons, the people the settings, even I was a cartoon. Weird!
• I have noticed such long and vivid dreams occur more for me when my waking life is not as satisfying as I would like. There have been times in my life when I can't wait to get to sleep and hate to wake up because my dreaming is so much more interesting and exciting than my humdrum daily. Are the dreams following a theme? If you have the same types of dreams each night, or even wake up with the same feeling from the dreams you are having, your subconsious might be trying to tell you something very important. The last time I was having vivid, nightly dreams, it was because I was reading entirely too much Sandman comics. I don't know if they would help, but they might make you see your dreams in an entirely different light. and any oportunity to plug the BEST. COMIC. EVER.
• For me, vivid and exhausting dreams have always been a sign of external stress and worries in my life, even if the dreams themselves are not threatening. Take some time for introspection: is there something in your waking life that you need to fix? And I too recommend exercise. Supposedly 5-7 hours before bedtime is optimal.
• I too periodically am plagued by super-vivid, complex, often disturbing dreams. Suggestions that I think theoretically should help, but that have never actually helped me are: exercise, and cut down caffiene intake (especially: no caffiene within 6 hours before bedtime). Suggestions that have actually helped a little: no alcohol, sleep in a slightly cold room with sufficient covers to be comfortable. The only thing that ever really helped me a lot: low-dose Risperdol. Risperdol is a next-generation anti-psychotic, used off-label (i.e. not FDA approved for that purpose, but widely used for it) at low doses for atypical depression and to treat nightmares. I was on it for about a year and a half, and during that time I had a dramatic decrease in both remembering and being bothered by my dreams. I also slept much better and felt more rested after sleep. I was on 1 mg. at bedtime. On the other hand, I don't recommend it unless your dreams (and/or depression) truly interfere with your life, and/or make daytime functioning difficult. Anti-psychotics can have very nasty, sometimes permanant side-effects. Not everyone gets them, but you'll never know if you're one of the lucky ones until you do (these side effects are much less likely at low doses however, which is what you would be taking). Also, I think the suggestion of a sleep lab may be a good one. Good luck.
• Write them down in detail. Charlie Kaufman pays $50 per dream, $75 if there's a Catherine Keener-type in them.
• Just to give a bit more info in response to your posts - I've had these types of dreams off and on ever since I was a kid, but have been experiencing them regularly for a few years now. I do exercise regularly, usually in the evening around 6:30 or 7:00. I'm on an antidepressant. I drink very little caffeine and always in the morning, never at night. I don't drink alcohol. I don't have health insurance right now so seeing a doc or getting a prescription isn't an option for me. I work in a creative field but am not responsible for creating works directly. It takes me FOREVER to fall asleep and I don't think I start dreaming right away. My dreams are sometimes disturbing or upsetting but not nightmar-ish. I'm very big on dream interpretation and know my dreams tend to follow certain themes that I've come to recognize and understand their meaning (stress-related, feeling ready to move on into the next phase of my life, etc.), but it doesn't seem to matter that I've figured them out. They keep coming. Maybe it's just my brain smacking myself in the head, saying "Okay wise guy, you've figured it out, now do something about it or we won't quit"? Thanks for all the good suggestions, and for sharing my pain! It feels good just to write about it. Hmmm.... journaling.... On preview: sorry for the long post!
• Maybe it's just my brain smacking myself in the head, saying "Okay wise guy, you've figured it out, now do something about it or we won't quit" Of course. If it's stress-related, it won't go away until you stop being stressed. Merely achieving the insight that you are stressed doesn't remove the stress. You might find you fall asleep more easily if you can shift your exercise to earlier in the day. Maybe early morning exercise would help clear the cobwebs out too.
• Is there some aspect of your life that is especially stressful that you aren't acknowledging? I suffered from chronic insomnia for nearly five years. I couldn't sleep, when I did I had wildly funky dreams, if something woke me in the night I couldn't get back to sleep. It drove me to tears repeatedly. I was exhausted all day and miserable at night. I tried everything- went off caffeine completely, exercised myself into physical exhaustion, acupuncture (and the inevitable acupuncturist's stinky herbs), counseling, etc. I was reluctant to try prescription drugs because I feared getting hooked. The pink elephant in the living room that I was so studiously ignoring was a relationship that was making me profoundly unhappy- and the day I made the decision to leave, I slept like a baby, and I've slept great since. I'm just sayin.'
• BearGuy, Nostril et. al. had great ideas with journaling, lucid dreaming, channeling creative energy. Find interesting new territory for your brain to travel in, and use any other stress-reduction methods you can think of. If you decide it's a question of chemicals instead, find a cash-only doc (via SimpleCare) or someone with a sliding fee scale. Your antidepressant's side effects may be exacerbating the crazy dreams. It's also possible your med dosage needs to be increased or decreased, or you need to try a different anti. If you're on an SSRI, you may want to look into an SNRI or one of the atypical antidepressants (like Wellbutrin). On preview, what Ambrosia and Vitalorgnz said.
• deep rem slep and the dreaming, tend to occur early in the morning, prior to waking. thus they are more memorable. are these dreams repetive? the same dream would definitely indicate an unresolved issue. constantly changing but distruptive dreams would indicate anxiety or stress. if anyone does know a way to break the cycle of repetive dreams due to ptsd, i know someone desperately in need and he can't take the usual meds as they all have an impact on blood pressure. there is a med used for war vets in atypical applications, that is well-known for it's ability to reduce repetive nightmares. if that's any help...
• If by lucid dreaming you mean being aware you're dreaming when in your dream, I do have that from time to time. How does that help?
• These folk have information on lucid dreaming and many other dream/sleep-related topics.
• yeah, sooooz, i'm with ambrosia. there may be something deeply troubling you that you're not aware of or simply cannot acknowledge. are you happy in your job, your love life, your living situation, your family? look hard around you and think deeply. sometimes, like ambrosia said, it's a big old elephant in the room you don't or cannot bring yourself to notice.
• (that "can't/won't notice" thing must be a fairly common psychological quandary. when i was in group therapy, everybody had an issue that was RIGHT IN FRONT OF THEIR FACE that everyone ELSE could see clearly -- except the person themselves. interesting.)
• Stephen LaBerge offers the ultimate dream vacation, teaching you to control what unfolds in your mind while you sleep.