# Lucid Dreaming > General Lucid Discussion >  >  Possible Dangers Of Lucid Dreaming!

## Luciel

So I was searching around the web and thought I'd Google "dangers of lucid dreaming", and I'd like to show you guys what I've found.



Possible Dangers Of Lucid Dreaming

There is no current evidence of lucid dreaming being abnormal or unhealthy in any way. However, there may be some more or less minor side effects associated with having lucid dreams. Please dont let this scare you away from this trying this; rather, remember that with dreams you are dealing with your own subconscious mind and recklessness is not recommended.


Addiction
Lucid dreaming can be used for different purposes. Some may want to try it just for fun, using it as a "safe drug", or a personal virtual reality machine. Having fun is a fully valid application of lucid dreaming. However, be careful not to be addicted to this way of escaping your waking life. If you find that you are spending more time asleep than actually needed, or that you are thinking more about lucid dreams than your real waking life, you might want to consider taking a look at your life: if you're accomplishing the goals you have for yourself, and/or are content with the state of your life, there's likely no cause for alarm. If you see that your life needs work, you might take a break... or, you might use the tools of lucid dreaming to explore what needs to be done in your life.


Alienation
Most people have never even heard of lucid dreaming, much less ever experienced it. Some people are also less than open-minded and receptive to new ideas. Dont be surprised if someone considers this whole phenomenon weird or crazy (which it is not). Dont preach, either; you don't have to convince anybody.
Often people who spontaneously lucid dream, especially children, may find it surprising that not everyone does. They may even start thinking that they are the only people in the world who have lucid dreams. If theyre worried, the best support is to let them know that theyre not alone.


Dissociation
Lucid dreaming may weaken the borders between waking and dreaming, the conscious and subconscious mind, reality and fantasy. This might lead to problems of a dissociative nature. Probably the most common form of dissociation involves having problems distinguishing your waking memories from dream memories. Everyone who recalls at least one dream will have to sort out their dreams from reality in the morning. This can really be a problem for those who have previously had zero recall and, due to lucid dreaming, have had a major uptake in recall. Now, suddenly, they have all these excess, illogical memories to sort out. This is unlikely to be a major problem, but may be a big annoyance. An example is when you have actually misplaced an item, and "find it" in a dream. If you cannot distinguish dream from reality you will now think you know where that item is, perhaps even placed it where you felt sure to find it later, but when you awake it will not be there.
However, there are signs that you should watch for which indicate a larger problem may be developing. Lucid dreaming in itself should not cause these to appear in a waking state:
Ability to ignore extreme pain or what would normally cause extreme pain
Absorption in a computer game, television program or movie
Remembering the past so vividly one seems to be reliving it
Finding evidence of having done things one cant remember doing
Not remembering important events in ones life
Being in a familiar place but finding it unfamiliar
Seeing oneself as if looking at another person
Other people and objects do not seem real
Looking at the world through a fog or haze
Not recognizing friends or family members
Finding unfamiliar things among ones belongings
Finding oneself in a place but unaware of how one got there
Finding oneself dressed in clothes one doesnt remember putting on
If this has happened, and there is no other cause (e.g. drugs), take a break from lucid dreaming for a while. In fact, take a break from anything fictional for a while, at least until symptoms stop. In addition, you may consider avoiding experimentation with lucid dreaming if you have some form of schizophrenia (although very few schizophrenic people admit that they are).

PLEASE NOTE: The following possibilities are controversial and have not been proven.


Controversial: Accidentally encountering spiritual entities
This depends on your worldview. If dreams are a creation of your brain and nothing more, you dont need to worry about spirits or anything similar. If you want to be on the safe side, treating objects in your dream decently and politely wont do you any harm.
The book "The Art of Dreaming" by Carlos Castaneda has a lot to say on this subject. (See Further Reading)


Controversial: Creating bad habits or becoming a control freak
When lucid dreaming, you have the option to control the dream world in ways that are impossible in the waking world. You can, for example, make objects appear or disappear, or make people act according to your will. Some people believe this may lead your subconscious to desire this kind of control in the waking world, where its highly inappropriate. Also, you might be tempted to apply dream-world solutions to waking-life problems instead of actually facing them; for example, just willing bad things to go away or escaping or destroying them by superpowers. Again, this is probably more of a problem if you are not mentally stable at the outset of your dreaming process.


Controversial: Exhaustion
Some people believe that experiencing many artificially induced lucid dreams often enough can be very exhausting. The main reason for this phenomenon is the result of the lucid dreams expanding the length of time between REM states. With fewer REMs per night, this state in which you experience actual sleep and your body recovers becomes infrequent enough to become a problem. This is just as exhausting as if you were to wake up every twenty or thirty minutes and watch TV. The effect is dependent on how often your brain attempts to lucidly dream per night. If you enter into a routine of attempting to lucidly dream, you may cause recursive lucid dreams that occur at each state change.


Controversial: Inability to stop
If you have trained your mind to the point where it can step over the boundary without conscious effort, you might find it difficult to stop. Do not become alarmed if you have trouble stopping the process of lucid dreaming, it is possible to get out of the habit. As long as you truly expect to stop having lucid dreams regularly, you will. You just need to stop any further attempts to lucid dream, and within a few months the lucid dreaming will go away by itself. Remember; do not be alarmed if, even with your attempts to stop, you experience further lucid dreams. It might take a while to break the habit. If you have real concerns, it may be advisable to talk with your doctor or therapist regarding appropriate treatment, including medication.


Controversial: Undesirable false awakenings
One of the advantages of having lucid dreams is being able to change a dream or wake up if things are not turning out as planned. But sometimes, while trying to leave a dream, you'll get "stuck" in a series of false awakenings. A false awakening is when you seem to have woken up but are actually still dreaming. For example, you may find yourself waking up in your room. But once there, new things will start happeningfor example, someone might visit, or you might wander outside because of an odd noise, or there might be objects all over the place. Then you might realize you're dreaming, but "wake up" immediately, and the cycle repeats until you eventually do wake up or else dream about something different. This happens mostly with nightmares or when your body is very tired, so your attempts to wake up cause false awakenings. It's a good idea to get in the habit of doing a reality check just after waking up so that you'll realize when this happens and become lucid.
When this happens repeatedly in the same night, it can be very tiring and often frightening. Not only can the belief of being fully awake in your room while being exposed to unusual situations be scary, but you also may start fearing you won't be able to actually wake up. And, depending on the content of the dream, since all your dreams tend to start in your room, you may fear what could happen once you actually do wake up.
But this is not a very common situation. Once you are lucid, it is usually easier to wake up or lose the dream than it is to keep dreaming.

Source:Lucid Dreaming/Introduction - Wikibooks, collection of open-content textbooks

Hmmm, what do you guys think? I mean, like anything, too much of a "good" thing can be bad.

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## Tim_PL

My opinion (as a qualified psychologist :] ) - a bunch of b***it  :smiley: 

Show me the data, show me statistics, reports, research - then we can discuss  :smiley: 
Sorry, but Wikibooks (especially without direct references to solid literature) is not a reliable source of information.

If you have no mental disorder, everything is fine. If you do however, then i guess, you are not able to achieve lucid dreaming.

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## Sam1r

> My opinion (as a qualified psychologist :] ) - a bunch of b***it
> 
> Show me the data, show me statistics, reports, research - then we can discuss
> Sorry, but Wikibooks (especially without direct references to solid literature) is not a reliable source of information.
> 
> If you have no mental disorder, everything is fine. If you do however, then i guess, you are not able to achieve lucid dreaming.



Agreed...
Unless you're mentally ill,there's no risk...
if there were,I think we'd hear about it...





> The following possibilities are controversial and have not been proven.



All I need to know...

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## slash112

The truth is that spending too much time on this shit is in fact a "danger" or lucid dreaming.

It is worth it though. But it still takes up time, which can have negative consequences.

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## Luciel

> My opinion (as a qualified psychologist :] ) - a bunch of b***it 
> 
> Show me the data, show me statistics, reports, research - then we can discuss 
> Sorry, but Wikibooks (especially without direct references to solid literature) is not a reliable source of information.
> 
> If you have no mental disorder, everything is fine. If you do however, then i guess, you are not able to achieve lucid dreaming.



Ah, true but there hasn't been any sufficient statistics, reports, and research that proves there's a deity(or deities) yet the majority of society believes in them. I don't want to be gullible but I want to be open minded at the same time. Can I ask why you dismissed Wikibooks without a second thought? Also, where's the statistics, reports, and research that something that is hard cover literature versus online literature is better?
Has anyone even done a study on whether there ARE negative effects or not? How can we just claim "bull sh*t" if we don't have proof? Well, I don't at least. Do you? 

PS: You're a qualified psychologist? I feel like you're gonna' say "there's somethin' wrong with this kid!" xD

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## Luciel

> The truth is that spending too much time on this shit is in fact a "danger" or lucid dreaming.
> 
> It is worth it though. But it still takes up time, which can have negative consequences.



I sorta' think that way too. I feel like...it's too good to be true. Like, there HAS to be a side effect to getting anything you ever imagined even though it's only for the night. Hm, I don't think if it's worth it to me. O_O

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## Rozollo

An open mind means you let anything in regardless of plausibility. An active mind means you assess everything and take responsibility for your assessment.

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## Cosmix

I've never heard of people who have had these problems but I can definitely see where there coming from.  I think dissociation and unwanted false awakenings would be the major ones.  I had 4 false awakenings in a row one time and on the 4th one I started wondering if I had died but that thought woke me up to the real world.  I also read in Lucid Dreaming: Gateway to the Inner Self that Robert Waggoner had 11 false awakenings in a row.  Now that would be a trip.  Waking up the 7 - 10th time I'd be like fuck is this really happening.

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## Tim_PL

> Ah, true but there hasn't been any sufficient statistics, reports, and research that proves there's a deity(or deities) yet the majority of society believes in them.



Please, don't mix science and religion. It's one of the biggest mistakes. It doesn't bring anything to the discussion. Thank you :smiley: 






> I don't want to be gullible but I want to be open minded at the same time. Can I ask why you dismissed Wikibooks without a second thought?



I don't dismiss Wikibooks per se. I just reject sources with have no references to any reliable data. Nothing more.





> Also, where's the statistics, reports, and research that something that is hard cover literature versus online literature is better?



The key phrase here is _peer review_. Whenever scientific study is conducted the results are reported and verified by other scientists. The same goes to books and any kind of publications which are supposed to be scientific. You don't know what are qualifications of the guys behind this article in Wikibooks. If you read research report you are able to verify it. And again - in research report you make references to others sources, researches and observations.

I can write an article that LD causes deaths. And i know i am right! You can denied that i know i am right!  :smiley: 
Can you see my point?





> Has anyone even done a study on whether there ARE negative effects or not? How can we just claim "bull sh*t" if we don't have proof? Well, I don't at least. Do you?



Show me the proof that this article from Wikibooks is based on proofs!  :smiley: 





> PS: You're a qualified psychologist? I feel like you're gonna' say "there's somethin' wrong with this kid!" xD



There's sth wrong with everyone, LOL!  :wink2:

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## mrdeano

My lecturer over heard me talking to a friend about Lucid Dreaming. Of course my friend thought the subject was 'weird' and quickly got back to work.
My lecturer used to work in psychology and she often finds herself talking to her students as if they are patients. Well during this lesson she approached me about lucid dreaming and told me that I was doing it because I want to escape from reality.

I have actively been Lucid Dreaming for well over a year and a half. The only down side I have had is the inability to talk to my friends about it. Lucid dreaming is relatively unknown and most people assume I am making it up or something.

Although, thank god for Inception. Hopefully this will open up peoples minds.

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## Snowy Egypt

I hate to be part of the "I call BS" group....but I call BS.

I don't know about you, but I would KILL to be unable to stop. And I'd kill to have FA after FA. For those of you that know him, that's how Walms gets 99% of his LDs. If you have dissociation, well, it's not Lucid Dreaming's fault. I'd say you have a deeper, bigger, underlying issue. Applying dream-world solution to real life ones? Again, an underlying issue with you. Exhaustion? If that was the case, then the Naturals wouldn't make it through the day. As for addiction, well, I'm not complaining. There's never too much of a good thing in my book. Not to mention that in the last part of the FA section it's almost _promoting_ waking up after getting lucid! XP 

Yep...BS.

/rant

To me the only true, REAL, negative side-effect is Lucid Dreaming is.....


*Spoiler* for _Negative_: 



Loss of sleep.  ::D:  WBTBs and WILDs come with a price.  :wink2:

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## zhineTech

> The key phrase here is _per review_. 
> 
> Show me the proof that this article from Wikibooks is based on proofs!



Actually its _peer_ review.

There are many good, noble, and interesting ideas which are not based on proof. Although a bit alarmist, anyone reading the above wiki books statement can evaluate the truth in them for themselves. They are merely covering their bases.

I find most of it indeed to be B.S. for myself, but I am sure there are less stable types out there who I cannot vouch for....

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## PXUmais

> I hate to be part of the "I call BS" group....but I call BS.
> 
> I don't know about you, but I would KILL to be unable to stop. And I'd kill to have FA after FA. For those of you that know him, that's how Walms gets 99% of his LDs. If you have dissociation, well, it's not Lucid Dreaming's fault. I'd say you have a deeper, bigger, underlying issue. Applying dream-world solution to real life ones? Again, an underlying issue with you. Exhaustion? If that was the case, then the Naturals wouldn't make it through the day. As for addiction, well, I'm not complaining. There's never too much of a good thing in my book. Not to mention that in the last part of the FA section it's almost _promoting_ waking up after getting lucid! XP 
> 
> Yep...BS.
> 
> /rant
> 
> To me the only true, REAL, negative side-effect is Lucid Dreaming is.....
> ...



I HATE FAs, personally they creep me out.. And to me, are the least preferable way of having LDs... 

I think most of the points made in the post aren't really problems.. I do believe the memory thing is annoying, cos I get that alot of the time..  

But the rest, are either crap or not truly negative points...

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## Snowy Egypt

Not trying to be rude or anything, but how do FAs creep you out? I really am curious. You're not the 1st person I've seen that's said the same thing, and every time I think, "Hmm...I wonder why...".

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## Puffin

IMO, this is a load of bull.

For starters, none of these have to do with me, or frighten me, and I've had loads of lucid dreams, been doing it for almost a year... 

I'm sure dissociation (and similar problems) only arises if the person's unable to distinguish normal dreams from reality in the first place. Unless they have some bigger underlying psychological problem. Unless the person's very fragile, and want to escape from reality due to depression, etcetera, addiction won't be a problem. Lucid dreams don't change a thing about REM, your brain's just conscious while you're dreaming. There's no true biological effects. And false awakenings are a good opportunity to LD. The positives far outweigh the "risks" posted, and there's no need to even post them because the person should really know, from common sense, what the risks are if they're mentally unstable or such.

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## CrimsonStorm

I'm gonna go with the majority here, and say that for the most part, the article is complete bogus. The only potentially valid point, which it uses to extend over several negatives, is that of obsession - and that point can apply to anything. Of course if you become obsessed with lucid dreaming, or anything for that matter, such that it negatively impacts the rest of your life, there's a problem. However, I can't imagine any circumstance where lucid dreaming would be the cause of that problem - there would almost have to be some underlying, probably unrelated issue. But that's just my thoughts.

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## PXUmais

> Not trying to be rude or anything, but how do FAs creep you out? I really am curious. You're not the 1st person I've seen that's said the same thing, and every time I think, "Hmm...I wonder why...".



In all my FAs, I've woken up in the last place I remember seeing.. A dark room.. 

And, I hate the dark.. My mind's always conjuring up crap, that's scares the living daylights out of me..

Not to mention, that dreaded feeling I got when I had my first LUCID FA... I woke up, then BAM became Lucid.. But it just didn't feel good, and it gave me goosebumps..  It was probably because it was scarily real, and the fact that I could easily mistake it for my reality, *Shudder*.. 

Anyways, I know I'm probably just being a wuss, but meh..

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## Puffin

> Not to mention, that dreaded feeling I got when I had my first LUCID FA... I woke up, then BAM became Lucid.. But it just didn't feel good, and it gave me goosebumps..  It was probably because it was scarily real, and the fact that I could easily mistake it for my reality, *Shudder*.. 
> 
> Anyways, I know I'm probably just being a wuss, but meh..



I'm sure lots of people have experienced that feeling, including myself. It's creepy knowing that it's your room (usually), but you're actually in a dream where anything can happen. But hey, it's a dream, so go fly or something!  ::D:

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## Dash

You can become addicted to anything, and I don't see why people would want to use dreams to "escape" from their lives. Sounds kind of ridiculous, imo.

I just personally just do it because it's a fun hobby on the side. I love my life, and lucid dreaming hasn't caused me to appreciate it any less (actually, it improved my life even more).

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## Trahaern

I have to agree that almost any negative effect from lucid dreaming would likely have some other underlying cause. As for FAs, I used to be afraid of them as normally it was my house and room but something just felt terribly wrong though everything looked fine. However the last time I felt this was about eight years ago, when I found lucid dreaming. Now I use that bad feeling as a trigger to realize it is time to do a reality check.

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## OldNutter

> In all my FAs, I've woken up in the last place I remember seeing.. A dark room.. 
> 
> And, I hate the dark.. My mind's always conjuring up crap, that's scares the living daylights out of me..
> 
> Not to mention, that dreaded feeling I got when I had my first LUCID FA... I woke up, then BAM became Lucid.. But it just didn't feel good, and it gave me goosebumps..  It was probably because it was scarily real, and the fact that I could easily mistake it for my reality, *Shudder*.. 
> 
> Anyways, I know I'm probably just being a wuss, but meh..



Well if you RC when you wake up and you find out your LD'ing, then you can conjure up something else. If not, then its pretty easy to fall back asleep. I personally love FA's. the last 2 LD's I had were cause of them.

But back on topic, I believe all that danger stuff is sorta like the placebo effect. If you believe hard enough that your gonna mix things up between the waking and the dream world, then you will.

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For a Newbie this is seriously making me have doubts about having Lucid dreaming. I mean it seems awesome but what the op had to say was a little startling. Considering the side effects I may just back off from this for a moment. 

These are a few of the side effect that were startling 

Not remembering important events in ones life

I don't want to forget things. Let alone important ones.

Being in a familiar place but finding it unfamiliar

Wow that bit unnerving.

Seeing oneself as if looking at another person

Could this be a sign of someone going crazy?

Other people and objects do not seem real

See above

Looking at the world through a fog or haze

whoa I don't want to be me.

I really hope am over exaggerating about this because the comments above really is putting to rest. Hope their right.

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## Samael

Ergh, dream recall _improves_ your memory. It helps you create mental "links" between events that you normally wouldn't process at all. In lucid dreaming, when you try to remember tasks (ie: TotM) you came up with while awake, you stimulate parts of the brain that you usually don't even use. 

If anything, the process involved in becoming a lucid dreamer makes you _more_ aware of the waking world, not less. The technique that I use to DILD involves taking note of the "feeling" of the dream. Just by thinking about it, I can tell whether I'm dreaming or awake, which, in turn, makes me more lucid/aware/alert/conscious/alive while I actually am awake.

I agree with Tim. This article is utter bullshit, written by someone who doesn't know the difference between speculative fiction and reality. Also, source?

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## jesse111

lol,  that list is for wuss pep..  :tongue2:  ohhh noo pleasee... falsee a weakeningg.. im gonna die.. call 911 ohhh noo pep think im craxyy cause i lucid dream!!! 
naa just kidding... but really.. thas lamee  :tongue2:

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## Squaddle

Shouldn't be plausible.

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## eidahl

LMAO. Of course lucid dreaming is about 'escaping' ... so is reading a book, watching tv, sports, gaming... it's the abuse of 'escape' that's harmful, but there's nothing wrong with it, as long as it doesn't consume your life. Besides, as Samael mentioned, living lucidly is about WAKING UP to reality ( ' l u c i d i t y ' = clear/aware mind, remember? ) and understanding it. Being 'dreamy' and accepting everything, never noticing details, so on, is like how most people are these days. It's the opposite of a lucid state of mind.

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## Puffin

> For a Newbie this is seriously making me have doubts about having Lucid dreaming. I mean it seems awesome but what the op had to say was a little startling. Considering the side effects I may just back off from this for a moment. 
> 
> These are a few of the side effect that were startling 
> 
> Not remembering important events in one’s life
> 
> I don't want to forget things. Let alone important ones.
> 
> Being in a familiar place but finding it unfamiliar
> ...



There's nothing to worry about! 

Dreams aren't dangerous in any way, regardless of whether you're lucid or not. And besides, if you don't have trouble with regular dreams, you won't with lucid ones. I'm actually really starting to dislike the OP because of these doubts he's raising, and want to lock this thread. After all, doubts are definitely being raised for no reason whatsoever. There's no legitimate source to prove any of this stuff can happen with normal people.

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## Samael

> I'm actually really starting to dislike the OP because of these doubts he's raising, and want to lock this thread.



The OP just reposted a WikiBooks article that's already freely available. Most of the thread has just been the rest of us tearing apart this (poorly researched, hackneyed, fear-mongering) article. At least this thread is now under "Dangers of Lucid Dreaming" on Google, which might help slow the tide of misinformation.

BTW, I do love how the article begins with "there is no current evidence of lucid dreaming being abnormal or unhealthy in any way," and then goes on to make shit up about what _might_ happen if real life was a terribly scripted sci-fi movie.

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## Luciel

I'm sorry to say but most of you haven't carefully read the title. It's not misleading in any way. It says POSSIBLE effects. I could see if I made a thread saying "THE PROVEN DANGERS OF LUCID DREAMING, CLICK HERE!!!", then I'd deserve that. It wasn't meant to scare anyone. I personally only believe in one or two or those effects, but not really the rest. That doesn't mean they CAN'T be there though. Next time you start going on about "disliking" me then first read the title. Also, I asked for your opinions, not to hear "Oh, I dislike you, I wish I could lock the thread, waaah  ::morecrying:: ". I dislike "some people" for being illiterate. I'm not saying any names though.  :wink2:

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## Puffin

It wasn't meant as a personal attack.

And you're obviously talking about me but in a rather obnoxious manner (even if you don't mention any names, it's pretty damn obvious). And I can tell your reply was meant to be rude and exaggerated, which I don't really appreciate. The issue here is that someone isn't sure whether they want to LD anymore; because of that maybe you'd want to think twice about posting something that doesn't have hard evidence, you know?

I'm tired and cranky so I apologize for my post, but I didn't need a reply like that.

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## Oneironaut Zero

In my opinion, those are "possible dangers" of lucid dreaming like stabbing yourself in the eye is a "possible danger" of eating with a fork.

"Possible," but not really worth acknowledging, unless you're prone to that level of mindlessness.

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## Snowy Egypt

> I'm sorry to say but most of you haven't carefully read the title. It's not misleading in any way. It says POSSIBLE effects. I could see if I made a thread saying "THE PROVEN DANGERS OF LUCID DREAMING, CLICK HERE!!!", then I'd deserve that. It wasn't meant to scare anyone. I personally only believe in one or two or those effects, but not really the rest. That doesn't mean they CAN'T be there though. Next time you start going on about "disliking" me then first read the title. Also, I asked for your opinions, not to hear "Oh, I dislike you, I wish I could lock the thread, waaah ". I dislike "some people" for being illiterate. I'm not saying any names though.



Can you blame them? I mean, you post a huge article citing the possibly bad things that may come about from Lucid Dreaming, and not expect this backlash? If it's already about to scare MrBlonde away, imagine the thousands of potential lucid dreamers it HAS scared away. All because of a notion by whoever wrote the article that lucid dreaming is so amazing, and too good to be true, that there HAS to be a downside. That there HAS to be side effects, like its some drug. When in reality it's the greatest alternative to a drug other than not doing drugs at all. It's misleading, it's scaring away those who could either enjoy or benefit from Lucid Dreaming, and it's BS. I've yet to hear about any of these things to be a truly real concern, and I doubt I will.

Which then brings up the question of _why_ you looked this up in the first place. Why so hesitant? If anything, dreams, let alone lucid ones, should be the last thing on anyone's list of things too look up dangers for.

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## Luciel

> It wasn't meant as a personal attack.
> 
> And you're obviously talking about me but in a rather obnoxious manner (even if you don't mention any names, it's pretty damn obvious). And I can tell your reply was meant to be rude and exaggerated, which I don't really appreciate. The issue here is that someone isn't sure whether they want to LD anymore; because of that maybe you'd want to think twice about posting something that doesn't have hard evidence, you know?
> 
> I'm tired and cranky so I apologize for my post, but I didn't need a reply like that.




Wasn't meant as a personal attack? I could see if you said everything...maybe without the "dislike" part. You don't even know me yet you're starting to dislike me over a thread that does not in anyway say there's scientific proof of these occurrence? I don't appreciate that. Hell, they flat out tell you everything and are honest that they're just basically theories and not scientifically proven yet. Besides, our so called "evidence" changes all the time. What may be proven now may be dismissed later or the other way around. I didn't go around telling people to stop lucid dreaming. It's just a direct quote on quote from Wikibooks. I asked for people's opinions not to be attacked. The expression goes as follows, "don't shoot the messenger!"  ::lipssealed::

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## Puffin

I form strong opinions of people during first encounters (in this case, posts), and that's me. And I also tend to voice my opinions rather vocally. You'll meet a lot of people like that in life, so you might as well get used to it here. I'm not even close to mean, compared to others you'll meet.

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## Luciel

> Can you blame them? I mean, you post a huge article citing the possibly bad things that may come about from Lucid Dreaming, and not expect this backlash? If it's already about to scare MrBlonde away, imagine the thousands of potential lucid dreamers it HAS scared away. All because of a notion by whoever wrote the article that lucid dreaming is so amazing, and too good to be true, that there HAS to be a downside. That there HAS to be side effects, like its some drug. When in reality it's the greatest alternative to a drug other than not doing drugs at all. It's misleading, it's scaring away those who could either enjoy or benefit from Lucid Dreaming, and it's BS. I've yet to hear about any of these things to be a truly real concern, and I doubt I will.
> 
> Which then brings up the question of _why_ you looked this up in the first place. Why so hesitant? If anything, dreams, let alone lucid ones, should be the last thing on anyone's list of things too look up dangers for.



So basically it's my fault even though I never said there was any scientific evidence and just asked for opinions. It's my fault those potential thousands of people don't know how to carefully look over my post? I never said it HAS to be true, you're putting words in my mouth to try and support your point . I said " I mean, like anything, too much of a "good" thing can be bad." I'm questioning it, and I'm definitely not held responsible for other people's possible illiteracy.  ::D: 
PS: I looked it up because I heard people talk about experiencing exhaustion while lucid dreaming.  :bedtime:

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## Samael

> Wasn't meant as a personal attack? I could see if you said everything...maybe without the "dislike" part.



Tempers are a bit heated, I get that. Luciel, I realize that you didn't mean any harm by posting this, and that you do just want people to be informed, but this article is about as fair and balanced as Fox News. Puffin is angry because you posted a huge article that masquerades as a reliable source, which is possibly scaring off the lurkers who don't have a decent bullshit detector.





> You don't even know me yet you're starting to dislike me over a thread that does not in anyway say there's scientific proof of these occurrence? I don't appreciate that. Hell, they flat out tell you everything and are honest that they're just basically theories and not scientifically proven yet.



They do. The problem is that the article proceeds from that point with the assumption that there is a danger in lucid dreaming. Like Snowy Egypt said, it also assumes that lucid dreaming must be too good to be true, and there must be dangers associated with it. 

Also, the "Controversial" heading should precede most of the statements in the article, not just the last few. And that's giving them the benefit of the doubt.





> Besides, our so called "evidence" changes all the time. What may be proven now may be dismissed later or the other way around.



I'd like to introduce you to a concept known as the Flying Spaghetti Monster. The article itself admits that there is no evidence for the hypotheses that it posits. If there's no evidence, there's really no reason to believe it. There's really not a disclaimer big enough to portray that.

ETA: 





> So basically it's my fault even though I never said there was any scientific evidence and just asked for opinions. *It's my fault those potential thousands of people don't know how to carefully look over my post?* I never said it HAS to be true, you're putting words in my mouth to try and support your point . I said " I mean, like anything, too much of a "good" thing can be bad." I'm questioning it, and I'm definitely not held responsible for other people's possible illiteracy.
> PS: I looked it up because I heard people talk about experiencing exhaustion while lucid dreaming.



You should really stop defending the article. We are, actually, a little worried about all of the newbies/lurkers lacking up-to-date bullshit detectors. Like you, for instance.

Actually, can we stop blaming Luciel for the content? He didn't start making objectionable comments until well into the thread.

Edit the OP, put it in QUOTE/QUOTE tags, and link to the original article on WikiBooks. That's common courtesy anywhere on the internet.

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## Naiya

Stephen LaBerge, the person who has perhaps done the most research of lucid dreaming in recent decades and is often considered THE expert in lucid dreaming, has this to say about the dangers of lucid dreaming.  Most of the things in the OP are explained. 

TLDR, there are no dangers to lucid dreaming, according to all the evidence and study so far. Wikibooks link with no sources is not a good source. It is likely written by biased and ignorant people who have not even bothered to read the current scientific literature on the subject, let alone actually study lucid dreaming themselves (I'm talking scientific experimentation here). 

If a person has a completely distorted or shattered sense of reality in the first place (i.e. severely delusional, schizophrenic), lucid dreaming may or may not play a negative role but lucid dreaming certainly does NOT cause any sort of mental illness, period. But again, if you are severely delusional or schizophrenic, you shouldn't even be allowed to drive a car, care for children ect. ect. 

If anything, LDing makes you MORE aware of the difference between dreams and reality. Most dreamers believe that their dreams are real until they wake up. A great lucid dreamer always knows what is a dream and what is reality, and they carefully test reality. At the very worst, a lucid dreamer will slip and believe a dream is real. But they will never believe reality is a dream--as I said, they are more capable than a normal person at telling the difference, not the other way around. 

Dissociation has nothing to do with LDing. Being lucid means being aware of your environment. If you are in a dissociative state you are less aware of your environment and you feel completely detached from it. A lucid dreamer is able to observe the world objectively and logically, but they are actually MORE engaged with reality because things like reality testing and cultivating awareness require this. 

"Probably the most common form of dissociation involves having problems distinguishing your waking memories from dream memories. Everyone who recalls at least one dream will have to sort out their dreams from reality in the morning. "

The author of the article clearly has NO idea what dissociation even IS. And the second sentence there basically implies that even NORMAL dreams are "bad" and will make you unable to tell what is real and what's not. If someone wakes up in the morning and has serious issues sorting out their dream recall from real life--it's NOT the dreams or lucid dreaming. That would merely be a symptom of a far more serious mental problem that is not caused by dreaming or lucid dreaming. 

As for alienation....so what? It's not well-known yet. Most people have at least one hobby that is not well known or considered weird by everyone else. Inception among other things is bringing lucid dreaming into mainstream society. 

And of course there are the controversial dangers...I won't waste my time on them. Most of them are horribly illogical, aside from having no evidence at all. In fact everything in the article is extremely illogical, and at some points the article isn't even coherent.

----------


## Snowy Egypt

> So basically it's my fault even though I never said there was any scientific evidence and just asked for opinions. It's my fault those potential thousands of people don't know how to carefully look over my post? I never said it HAS to be true, you're putting words in my mouth to try and support your point . I said " I mean, like anything, too much of a "good" thing can be bad." I'm questioning it, and I'm definitely not held responsible for other people's possible illiteracy.



Did I say it was you fault? Nope. All I said was that you posted it, and all I asked was why you looked it up. Was I referencing YOUR post being the cause of the potential loss of future dreamers? Nope. I was referencing the ARTICLE. It's not your fault is it? Nope. It's whoever wrote that BS-tastic article with no backing both potentially and scientifically.

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## Puffin

The article should never have been posted (regardless of proper citation or "controversial" labelling) because as Samael said, some people don't have bullshit detectors. The posting of the article itself doesn't bother me because people make mistakes, but the fact that it's deterring people and is being defended so strongly, I think we should all take a time-out and just cool down a bit. This is getting pretty confrontational; Luciel is probably feeling attacked.

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## Wildman

I am occasionally (slightly) worried about potential dangers of lucid dreaming, and I think there is slightly too much hostility towards discussing these things. I agree that there are no major risks -- we would have seen them by now. And I also agree the article is nonsense. However, I do wonder if lucid dreaming can have some (negative?) impact on certain memory-related processes that go on during sleep. I don't know enough about sleep and dreams to justify this, but I would be curious to see if anything has been written on the topic.

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## Waterknight

Only possible danger I can see is if you are awake but kinda tired and you are on the top of a skyscraper and you see a flying pig and you realize how out of place that would be and automatically assume you are dreaming then jump off of the building and plummet to your death.

But that all comes down to seeing the flying pig so highly unlikely.

And by the definition of lucid dreaming you are AWARE that you are DREAMING that means you wont think it is real later because you KNOW it was a dream.

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## Alt Ædende Ateist

I can tell my storie, that i think other users of LD could eksperiance.
My friend die are couppel years ago, and I was in deep gref. I found out how to meet this person in my LD, and spend time with her. 

When I found out of this, my life was all about dreaming, and meeting her. At last, it allmost maked my insane, I convinse my self that she  actually was real and not are part of my subconscious. My life was on are standby, when I was awake i thinked about the night before end the night to come. And if I diden´t had are LD i thoght that she was mad at me, and diden´t wan´t to see me. 

Now I can see that I was totally out of my mind. I belive other persons can eksperience this, and i wan´t to make are warning. It can get really diffucult to see what´s real and what´s is not.

Sorry for my spelling, i´m not good at english. Hope you understand :-D

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## justme

Just because it's peer reviewed doesn't mean it's legit. I was looking for any articles that metioned lucid dreaming and are from peer-reviewed journals and found stuff concering OBE's and spiritual healing and psychic healing and other stuff like that (no offence to anyone who believes that stuff). And I have no idea how you guys suddenly thought lucid dreaming might be dangerous to somone who is mentally ill. I do believe that there is evidence of virtual reality systems helping with PTSD (usally used on people in the military) and how virtual reality systems can help people with phobias, but virtual reality systems are hard to come by and are pricey, and maybe lucid dreaming can be a cheaper form of this virtual reality. I was reading an abstract of a case study (couldn't find the whole article and couldn't find the researcher's email) about, well I don't wanna summarize this.

"Presents a case report of a 39-year-old male presented to the emergency department with a history of five suicide attempts in a week. He had three previous admissions to psychiatric wards with varying diagnoses including depression, PTSD and alcohol dependence. He would awaken after 2 hours from a nightmare and find it extremely difficult to return to sleep. These nightmares usually revisited one of a number of traumatic incidents which he had witnessed in his life. He was commenced on an alcohol withdrawal scale (AWS) which was ceased after 5 days. He was prescribed 200 mg quetiapine nocte and 100 mg fluvoxamine mane. Initially he was using considerable amounts of prn temazepam (20 mg nocte) and chlorpromazine (300 mg daily). He was then instructed to write out his dreams on awakening, and to then reimagine them as he tried to fall back asleep. After several days of this, he began to become aware of the fact that he was dreaming in his dreams when he had a nightmare, and then changed the dream so that it was more pleasant. The nightmares did not bother him as much, his sleep improved, and he was able to sleep 6 hours without awakening as a result of nightmares, with no medication. It is not clear to what degree the psychoeducation contributed to his improvement, but the patient was adamant it was the primary factor in his improvement."

I feel like I should cite this or something (study done by Greg Been and Vikas Garg from some mental institution in Australia)... anyway there was another report that wasn't conclusive but was talking about if lucid dreaming could cause apnea (stop breathing during the dream) and seemed to be just making conclusions and there was no experimentation to prove that not breathing in a lucid dream can couse sleep apnea (assumptions made by Staish C. Rao Mayo Clinic in Minnesota).

Here's a study that specifically studied the relationship between nightmare's and lucid dreaming.

"Abstract
Background: The goal of this pilot study was to evaluate
the effects of the cognitive-restructuring technique lucid dreaming treatment (LDT) on chronic nightmares. Becoming lucid (realizing that one is dreaming) during a nightmare allows one to alter the nightmare storyline during the nightmare itself. Methods: After having fi lled out a sleep and a posttraumatic stress disorder questionnaire, 23 nightmare sufferers were randomly divided into 3 groups; 8 participants received one 2-hour individual LDT session, 8 participants received one 2-hour group LDT session, and 7 participants were placed on the waiting list. LDT consisted of exposure, mastery, and lucidity exercises. Participants fi lled out the same questionnaires 12 weeks after the intervention (follow-up). Results: At follow-up the nightmare frequency of both treatment groups had decreased. There were no significant changes in sleep quality and posttraumatic stress disorder symptom severity. Lucidity was not necessary for a reduction in nightmare frequency. Conclusions: LDT seems effective in reducing nightmare frequency, although the primary therapeutic component (i.e. exposure, mastery, or lucidity) remains unclear."

This study done by Victor I. Spoormaker and Jan van den Bout from Netherlands. 

There was also an abstract which I thought was kind of silly (talked about the relationship of NDE's and LD's and something called dream yoga) but very intergering and was able to find the researchers email and ask them about the study. No reply yet but the abstract was 

"This article brings together three areas of research on disembodied consciousness: death, near-death, and dreaming. Research on lucid dreaming suggests that there is a close connection between consciousness in the dream state and that experienced in dying. More specifically, it is dream yoga as a special form of lucid dreaming that relates to the near-death experience (NDE) as the occasion for encounter with the clear light. The author discusses the meaning of the clear light in dream yoga and in the NDE in order to inquire into the interpretation of its role in spiritual emancipation."

Study done by Raymond Lee of Maylasia. Also all the above were peer-reviewed and I take no credit for any of these studies don't sue please and thanks.  ::D: 

Also @ Alt Ateist, yea I could imagine that happening, even though there was no research on this subject for some reason (probaly because there arn't as many people who even know about lucid dreaming, and even if they do few can ld well enough to do this, I know my lding skills suck at least :-()

Sry for long post.

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## Mayatara

Only danger I'm facing with lucid dreaming is being committed to a mad house if I keep mentioning it to people who don't share the ability. 
People tend to completely dismiss LDs (and any dream at all) as unimportant. So when I talk about it, they react in all sorts of agressive ways. And it's really hard, because it counts for about a 3rd of my life time and I have to pretend that it doesn't happen!!! 
It is especially hard wiith my loved ones, with whom I speak everyday but with whom I have to avoid this subject. If I talk about it to my dad he says I should see a shrink, as I'm losing contact with reality. If I talk about it to my BF he gets mad at me that I don't shut up with this dream BS. if I talk to my mom, who is a spiritual person, she seems worried and afraid of whatever forces I might be playing with. So, yeah, I feel alienated!
But the dangers  of LDing don't come from LDing in itself, but from the persecution that LDers face in today's society.

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## Puffin

> Only danger I'm facing with lucid dreaming is being committed to a mad house if I keep mentioning it to people who don't share the ability. 
> People tend to completely dismiss LDs (and any dream at all) as unimportant. So when I talk about it, they react in all sorts of agressive ways. And it's really hard, because it counts for about a 3rd of my life time and I have to pretend that it doesn't happen!!! 
> It is especially hard wiith my loved ones, with whom I speak everyday but with whom I have to avoid this subject. If I talk about it to my dad he says I should see a shrink, as I'm losing contact with reality. If I talk about it to my BF he gets mad at me that I don't shut up with this dream BS. if I talk to my mom, who is a spiritual person, she seems worried and afraid of whatever forces I might be playing with. So, yeah, I feel alienated!
> But the dangers  of LDing don't come from LDing in itself, but from the persecution that LDers face in today's society.



If you explain the process of LDing scientifically to people, there's no reason why they should think you're crazy. It's not you, it's them for not taking two seconds to consider the possibility that they just haven't heard about it before. Sure, talking about "dreams" can come across as stupid and pointless and make one look like an escapist, but you're the only person you need to convince. Like I said - if people think you're weird, it's not your fault because you've done the research, know it's legitimate yourself, and the likes. I personally don't care if people consider me "weird" for LDing.

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## Agent

I don't think most of this is true.  Even if any of it is, not a problem for me yet, since I don't have lucid dreams regularly.  But I will try to keep this thread in mind, just in case.

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## johns56469

Sorry if someone already said this, but it's kind of impossible to become addicted to lucid dreaming.  You only have a certain amount of REM sleep time, so it's not like you could spend all of your time doing it...

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## Bobblehat

> Only danger I'm facing with lucid dreaming is being committed to a mad house if I keep mentioning it to people who don't share the ability. 
> People tend to completely dismiss LDs (and any dream at all) as unimportant. So when I talk about it, they react in all sorts of agressive ways. And it's really hard, because it counts for about a 3rd of my life time and I have to pretend that it doesn't happen!!! 
> It is especially hard wiith my loved ones, with whom I speak everyday but with whom I have to avoid this subject. If I talk about it to my dad he says I should see a shrink, as I'm losing contact with reality. If I talk about it to my BF he gets mad at me that I don't shut up with this dream BS. if I talk to my mom, who is a spiritual person, she seems worried and afraid of whatever forces I might be playing with. So, yeah, I feel alienated!
> But the dangers  of LDing don't come from LDing in itself, but from the persecution that LDers face in today's society.



It's the same thing you get from people if you mention you're interested in psychology or philosophy: blank stares and a rapid change of subject. You have to come to terms with the fact that you share your planet with people who are mostly happy to sleepwalk through their life without trying to experience life to the full.

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## atkins513

I agree 100 percent with Puffin. These negating topics greatly disappoint me when I see someone has posted disinformation and manage to draw so many people into it. For those who say they are terrified of false awakenings... Most of us are not, but it is easy to get out of a series of false awakenings just as it is easy to get out of Sleep Paralysis. If you want to leave the dream state altogether, Lucidity, SP, false awakenings, ect. All you have to do is take very long deep breaths in and out repeatedly for about 5-10 seconds. Your mind/body notices the difference in response, and will leave the state altogether. This is why getting excited in dreams usually ends them, changes in the body states, heart rate, breathing, ect. So there is nothing to be afraid of and you are likely to see that lucid dreaming will be a great stepping stone forward in your life and spirituality.

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## zhineTech

theres crazy stuff in the news about the guy who shot the congresswoman in arizona being all into lucid dreaming.

*shakes head*

ryan hurd has done a good counter article:
Jared Loughner and Lucid Dreaming | The Dream Studies Portal

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## atkins513

Wow. No Offense ZhineTech.. but we've already heard it. There are atleast 6 new post on this very subject. Can we bring anymore negativity to the world of Lucid Dreaming? This is so annoying to me... and I know so many others.. it sucks that many reputable news organizations are now dogging lucid dreaming due to this one nut case.

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## zhineTech

sorry i had scanned for it in this section and did not see it, plus had not seen it in this thread.

hurd's article is a good counter balance to the negativity, which is why i posted it btw.

**ahh i see the thread i missed. apologies.**

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## renegade13

You want a Fact? here is a fkin fact. I had a friend who killed himself b/c of a lucid dream. dont tell people there is no fking risk you dick

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## Mancon

> You want a Fact? here is a fkin fact. I had a friend who killed himself b/c of a lucid dream. dont tell people there is no fking risk you dick



...what? How exactly did he kill himself from a lucid dream? Could you explain more, please? I have been lucid dreaming for a long time and nothing harmful has ever happened to me.

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## Taffy

I was going to post something stupid and witty, but I stopped myself. Because this thread should be taken seriously! Everyone should know how _dangerous_ this is! *snicker*

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## nzshaman

losing touch with reality can be a bit dangerous, say you thought you were dreaming and did some crazy shit like tried to superman punch a moving car... your'ed get owned, i mean it all depends on the mental stability of the person, but if you have trouble differentiating real life from your dreams then there may be some decent risks

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## Taffy

> losing touch with reality can be a bit dangerous, say you thought you were dreaming and did some crazy shit like tried to superman punch a moving car... your'ed get owned, i mean it all depends on the mental stability of the person, but if you have trouble differentiating real life from your dreams then there may be some decent risks



Every time I turn on my gamecube the health warning screen ones up, telling me that it could cause seizures if I have a previous history of epileptic issues. Since I don't, I have nothing to worry about. Your point is valid, yes, but is it the standard?

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## Lovelucid

My opinion (as a qualified psychologist :] ) - a bunch of b***it  :smiley: 

Show me the data, show me statistics, reports, research - then we can discuss  :smiley: 
Sorry, but Wikibooks (especially without direct references to solid literature) is not a reliable source of information.
**************************************************  ******************************

Thats true but... Lucid dreaming hasn;t been fully discovered so these are just things that might happen.

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## Taffy

> Thats true but... Lucid dreaming hasn;t been fully discovered so these are just things that might happen.



From : A History of Sleep and Dreaming




> We have to thank the eighth century Tibetan Buddhists for the discovery of lucid dreaming. They learned how to control dreams with Dream Yoga.



Lucid dreaming has been around for a LONG time. If there was anything like this, we'd know about it by now.

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## MMM

I've had lucid dreams for around 17 years now or 2/3 of my life, the only real consequences is length of time dreaming, time dilation & conflict escalation. All other claims sound improbable to me & likely stem from preexisting circumstance.
For my experiences, the length of time spent lucid dreaming has steadily increased over time. It started insignificant enough, around fifteen minutes to half an hour every night. Now it's often between an hour or two every night, which can get annoying at times. This can also become exceptionally distorted if I wake up to my alarm & hit the old "snooze" button, going back to sleep. In these cases it isn't irregular to experience a (1:10 min ratio) time dilation. I can only validate time dilation during these periods of time, but suspect it occurs during normal sleep as well. I'm still rather young, so in the back of my mind I wonder how extreme this time dilation can get. 
The other primary consequence I've experienced is conflict escalation. I strongly believe my lucid dreaming evolved as a consequence to nightmares. My ability to recognize when I'm dreaming, also gave me a quasi sense of immortality. Knowing you can't die when your enemy certainly can is an intoxicating feeling for anyone. Nightmares ceased existence soon after, but what soon came can only be described as an arms race. Instead of a nightmare dream-scape, my controlled dream-scape can sometimes encounter intruders. These intruders always meet a quick demise, but only because I've evolved faster then they apparently can. These interruptions although infrequent are extremely annoying & drag innocent entities into the conflict. I've never been a religious person, but through lucid dreaming I understand my Creator's paradox. To be all powerful & yet unable to save everyone. For those who think your lucid dreams are a theme park for all manner of immoral mischief, consider this. In the beginning I was reckless, but was confronted by an individual with a simple question. It asked me, "Just because you gave us life, do you think we don't exist?". I never answered because I didn't know how to. I could only think what If I was in that entities place facing my Creator. Even if at the time I was unsure, how crushing would it be if your Creator told you that you don't exist? For those who think lucid dreaming is an escape, they're vastly misinformed. Lucid dreaming is the opportunity to be a god, but what you do with that power defines you as a person.

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## UnrealReality

I deal with disassociation in waking reality, tons of feelings of "derealization", which has nothing to do with lucid dreaming nor was it induced by lucid dreaming. However, lucid dreaming opens one's mind to the endless possibilities OF the mind. It requires a deep amount of awareness and self-awareness and questioning reality. I can see how someone who hasn't dealt with some derealization can experience a small degree of such in waking reality, but not enough to induce a psychotic state or have lucid dreaming be "dangerous".

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## Zoth

> Can you truly become so good at lucid dreaming that you can't stop?!                   what would be some ways to stop the habit?



 :Picard face palm:

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## Rothgar

I get the feeling this was written by someone who studies LDs but doesnt actually have any real experience. I think his intentions are good so i'll cut him some slack. What he says can be true of someone who watches too much tv as well. His most important takeaway is that you can stop LDs if you want. Heck, most of us expend a lot of mental effort trying to figure out how to HAVE them!

So newbies, worry about lucid dreaming to the same degree you worry about television.

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## Rothgar

Well....ok, maybe it is addictive....being one of the most awesome things I can do in my life does tend to make you want to be a repeat offender   :smiley:

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## Kopheay

> Although, thank god for Inception. Hopefully this will open up peoples minds.



I wish I had a bunch of guys hanging out in my dreams trying to help me achieve lucidity. That would be great.

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## DensiaV

Although this conversation is a bit outdated, I'd still take the chance to comment. Everyone knows that lucid dreaming should be avoided when suffering from any type of mental illness (schizophrenia, PTSD etc.) or in case of general neurosis, increased anxiety etc. The problem with people dealing with such conditions is, that they are afraid of what they can find in their own head. And if one is not prepared to find out the rules of the subconsciousness, that he/she should not practice lucid dreaming altogether. I read an interestin article about dangers of lucid dreaming here http://howtocontroldreams.com. 'Nuff said!

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## Drax

The whole OP's post shows a general misconception of lucidity. Lucidity is *synonymous with awareness*  therefore becoming dissociated or neglecting reality will diminish ones ability to become lucid. Why do you think people on this board cultivate All Day Awareness (ADA) and generally wakeful awareness techniques. Sageous on this board is able to be lucid without RC's because he progressively works on his awareness during waking life. The ideas of dissociation, problems with memory and addiction from this context make absolutely no sense.

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## Drax

> losing touch with reality can be a bit dangerous, say you thought you were dreaming and did some crazy shit like tried to superman punch a moving car... your'ed get owned, i mean it all depends on the mental stability of the person, but if you have trouble differentiating real life from your dreams then there may be some decent risks



Once again you don't understand that awareness is fundamentally what lucidity is. Therefore how can you believe you're dreaming in waking life, you would in that circumstance be worse then the average person in terms of awareness.

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## LonelyBeliever

I doesn't really understand the danger of sleeping normally at night while being lucid  :smiley:  ..Most of all it just only a dreams..The different is maybe just the awareness and you can tweak it a little bit..But in the end the reality after waking up is all the matter..Just like games is addicting..But people still live up normally..It just like some kind of hobby that you do at night..Exploring the dream world..I think that there is no harm in that..In short its a choice in life..Some prefer to live in reality and some to live in fantasy..Its up to each of the single individual out there..For me..I choose to Live in both  :wink2:

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## SystematicAlec

Why do LDer adore LD's? its true because I've experienced 80% of this including the multi false awakening that makes you think, "I'm trapped!, is my life now over?". I detect a conspiracy lol

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## Coolcat1711

> Please, don't mix science and religion. It's one of the biggest mistakes. It doesn't bring anything to the discussion. Thank you



I gotta say, Religion and Science go together nicely...

Science can only prove things wrong/incorrect but religion can only prove things right...  I Certainly it's an idea that shouldn't be dismissed

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## StephL

> My opinion (as a qualified psychologist :] ) - a bunch of b***it 
> 
> ....
> If you have no mental disorder, everything is fine. *If you do however, then i guess, you are not able to achieve lucid dreaming*.



I didn´t read the whole thread - but to assume mentally ill people can not lucid dream - is not professional - why shouldn´t they be able to?
Being a psychologist - you are surely aware of the fact that most people with psychosis spend most of their time outside of acute phases - so why the heck should they not learn it then?
I mean - in the midst of psychosis - you won´t be able to learn a lot, probably - but otherwise..
You say, you guess - okay - but I tell you this does not make overly much sense - I would go as far and call is BS.
Otherwise agreed with you.

I made a poll a while ago - on the addiction potential:

http://www.dreamviews.com/general-lu...-shortcut.html

Might be of interest.
There is another thread - I will dig it out - about if you can get psychosis from LD-practice - there is also a small discussion on if it would be good/detrimental for a schizophrenic to learn it.
Oh - and - I have come across people on here, who gave their psychiatric diagnosis/mentioned taking neuroleptica - and LD anyway ..

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## JoannaB

Well, LaBerge in his books said that lucid dreaming is not recommended to people with mental disorders that make them unable to differentiate reality from non reality. On the face of it initially I thought that makes sense, but I have thought about it some more, and here is my current thinking: if someone is already unable to differentiate reality from non reality, so they already have times when they are incorrectly thinking their experience is real when it is not or vice versa thinking reality is not real. So they are already doing that. In such a situation what would be the harm for such a person to try to learn to differentiate reality from dreams. Now granted they likely will be unsuccessful since they already have issues with this, but attempting to become better at it, wouldn't that be desirable? Of course, especially such people should avoid ever doing anything that they would regret if their assessment of their state was wrong, thus no shooting people with gun if one thinks it is just a dream. Lucid dreaming practice is fundamentally about increasing awareness, and even if someone is mentally ill, wouldn't attempting to increase awareness be more likely to help rather than harm? Now I may be wrong about that since I am not a psychologist of psychiatrist, so this is just speculation, and if you think I am wrong please correct me.

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## Zoth

> I just reject sources with have no references to any reliable data. Nothing more.







> If you have no mental disorder, everything is fine. If you do however, then i guess, you are not able to achieve lucid dreaming.



So much for standing by your principles 0o

When people start saying that lucid dreaming can be addictive and harmful to people with mental illness, I remember this link and then I laugh for a bit  :tongue2: 

But, truth be said, there might indeed be some negative consequences for lucid dreaming. As far as report go, I'd say this consequences were really minimal. If we're talking about undeniable negative aspects, there's only one I can recall:

- WBTB or WILD reduces total amount of time sleep, and can *potentially* harm your overall sleep quality. You may think not, but 20 minutes lost per day adds to quite a bit after some time, especially if you're already sleeping 8 hours (excluding the average 15minutes to fall asleep). My personal opinion on this one is that they are just 2 among many techniques for lucid dreaming, and many lders opt to completely ignore the WILD method, but yes, many people would be better off by just not waking themselves up during the night.

Other than that no apparent consequences exist. All mentions to addiction, dissociation, they are fit into a specific scenario where the person is already at risk, it's not enough to say that the person "think about it every day", addiction has actual serious implications on the person's normal functioning. Regarding people with psychosis, like StephL mentioned, you don't see these people with in constant acute phases, and even if it's proven that lucid dreaming could be a dangerous activity for these, you're still talking about a relatively low margin of the population, and you'd review this case by case, in the same way you'd analyse if a taxi driver with frequent epileptic attacks is fit for his work.

Now, the complicated part: we don't know how random dream content expression is. If it happens to be relevant (imagine for example that this dream happened exactly like this so you could consolidate/get rid of certain memories), then there would be some consequences for lucidity. When I say consequences, I'm not talking about extremes, but things like loss of certain memories....and then you realize that this can't be true or is completely irrelevant: memory recall already distorts the memory itself. At some point, you start "incrementing" false details into the "real memories" to a point where a significant percentage of that (once-real) memory is actually false. And we don't even know if dreams (I'd be more inclined to mention "some" dreams, for the sake of honesty, because some N-REM dreams seem especially relevant to certain motor learning) possess dream content expression that has a direct purpose.





> Well, LaBerge in his books said that lucid dreaming is not recommended to people with mental disorders that make them unable to differentiate reality from non reality.



I'd say this was more in lines of : safety first!





> On the face of it initially I thought that makes sense, but I have thought about it some more, and here is my current thinking: if someone is already unable to differentiate reality from non reality, so they already have times when they are incorrectly thinking their experience is real when it is not or vice versa thinking reality is not real. So they are already doing that. In such a situation what would be the harm for such a person to try to learn to differentiate reality from dreams. Now granted they likely will be unsuccessful since they already have issues with this, but attempting to become better at it, wouldn't that be desirable? Of course, especially such people should avoid ever doing anything that they would regret if their assessment of their state was wrong, thus no shooting people with gun if one thinks it is just a dream. Lucid dreaming practice is fundamentally about increasing awareness, and even if someone is mentally ill, wouldn't attempting to increase awareness be more likely to help rather than harm? Now I may be wrong about that since I am not a psychologist of psychiatrist, so this is just speculation, and if you think I am wrong please correct me.



Beautifully put, agree with all that. I'd love to perform a longitudinal study on the effects of lucid dreaming prolonged practice on patients with Alzheimer's disease.

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## blazingnyancat

That is True Stepyl 
Off Topic: 666 Posts D:

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## LucidAcademy

Man this is such a common question amongst lucid dreamers and potential lucid dreamers that I went ahead and wrote a full blog post on it: [please post the text instead of the link].

It's too bad that so many people get scared off from lucid dreaming from hearing some rumor, or having a run in with sleep paralysis.

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## FallenSoldiers

Lucid dreaming occurs in a very real dimension. It is different from the physical realm we live in. Spirits and other entities good bad and indifferent can have influence on you in this realm they do not have in the physical world. My wife is a talented lucid dreamer but I asked her not to do it anymore after a frightening experience. The bible forbids us from performing witchcraft and sorcery because we are not designed to interact with the nonphysical realm so directly.

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## Rothgar

I'm confused. You told your wife not to, but you still practice it? Just saying.....

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## Sensei

> Lucid dreaming occurs in a very real dimension. It is different from the physical realm we live in. Spirits and other entities good bad and indifferent can have influence on you in this realm they do not have in the physical world. My wife is a talented lucid dreamer but I asked her not to do it anymore after a frightening experience. The bible forbids us from performing witchcraft and sorcery because we are not designed to interact with the nonphysical realm so directly.



The Bible does forbid witchcraft and sorcery, which is normally written as communing with the dead or "pharmakeia" which would be where we get our term for "pharmacy" meaning using drugs for a "other-worldy feeling" It also has places with medicine in it, showing that it just doesn't want people to mess with things that do that, because like a lot of the bible, it is saying no to protect you, not trying to stop you from doing something fun. I do not see how realizing you are dreaming would suddenly make you into a different dimension. If you are in a different dimension when you are lucid, then you are in a different dimension every time you sleep, so if lucid dreaming is evil, then so is dreaming.

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## JoannaB

> Lucid dreaming occurs in a very real dimension. It is different from the physical realm we live in. Spirits and other entities good bad and indifferent can have influence on you in this realm they do not have in the physical world. My wife is a talented lucid dreamer but I asked her not to do it anymore after a frightening experience. The bible forbids us from performing witchcraft and sorcery because we are not designed to interact with the nonphysical realm so directly.



You have asked your wife not to lucid dream any more because it is witchcraft and you believe it is something that actually happens in a very real dimension, and yet recently you posted that most of your lucid dreams consist of having sex with hot girls?

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## Oneironaut Zero

> If you are in a different dimension when you are lucid, then you are in a different dimension every time you sleep, so if lucid dreaming is evil, then so is dreaming.



And, since we dream every time we sleep (even though we don't always remember dreaming), then sleeping, by extension, is also evil. OH NOES!  ::chuckle::

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## StephL

Witchcraft!!  gaah.gif

Was just about to cite the findings of a German study (which I got to get a hold of..), which found, that among the LDing 5-10 % of adults - mental health problems are found to a significantly less degree than in the non-LDing rest of the population.
I agree with Sageous - in esp. as I have not seen the data - it could be, that the more healthy do it more - having it easier or something - but maybe it is the LDing making them more sane also.
For example by dealing with nightmares and the problems underlying these.
Don't know - but good news anyway I find!

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## Sensei

And it also seems like lucidity might be. The brains natural defense mechanism against nightmares. >_>

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## LouaiB

> And it also seems like lucidity might be. The brains natural defense mechanism against nightmares. >_>



But it does put us in a nightmare itself, so why develop a mechanism to stop it? Maybe bcz the nightmare may be sometimes too much?

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## Sensei

Nightmares normally come in response to a waking fear or worry, I like how LeBarge talked about nightmares. He said that if your dream is this:

You walking down a street at night and you àre lost, you see a dark figure approaching. 

Then you would have a couple reactions thanks to subconscious expectation. Most people would have:

You take off running and the figure chases you down. Since you are lost you trying to zigzag doesn't work, so you end up getting trapped and the figure approaches. He is missing a few fingers and his face is mutilated. You try to scream, but your throat is too dry. He pulls out a gun. 

But an optimist would have something more like this. 

Oh thank goodness! 
"Do you know where I am?" 
An old lady appears out of the shadows and smiles at you. "Of course I do." She takes you to a place for a nice meal and some tea and call you a cab. 

Since our dreams are based on our fears and our expectations, it is really us that makes ourselves go through nightmares. The subconscious doesn't seem to be able to tell the difference between thoughts and experiences during the day, so it is normal for your thoughts (fears) to take place in some dreams rather than what youaactually experience from day to day.

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## LouaiB

makes lots of sense!
If I recall correctly, Laberge lbeled them mental schemas. I read ETWOLD. It's great، but one should also rely on new foundings too, it is kinda old dated. I especially loved the last chapter! That butterfly story was AWESOME!

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## Sensei

Doesn't matter how old it is if it is the truth. Truth stays true. That is why Archimedes's tomb had Calculus on it way back when, and we use calculus now to program out machines. Truth doesn't change over the ages, unless something to do with that truth changes. Since we are still sleeping the exact same way as we were when it was made, then it still applies. We aren't all cryogenically frozen every night instead of just sleeping.  :tongue2: 

My favorite parts were creative problem solving, using it for art, and adventure (I think it called it wish fulfilment, like going to different universes in your head).

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## LouaiB

Of course. But some details turned out to be wrong, but they are minor details, that Laberge concluded, but don't really effect the general benifit and effectiveness of the book's contents.
One of them being that we don't remember LDs if our recall is bad, and may have a LD and not remember it. That is untrue, since we are aware in a LD, and the event is directly stored, and can be recalled later, using that memory, not the dreaming memory(the one that loses dreams quickly, if ever remembered!)

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## Zoth

> And it also seems like lucidity might be. The brains natural defense mechanism against nightmares. >_>



That's a cool idea, but flawed. Nightmares are evolutionary beneficial, so the brain would never create a natural defense mechanism against them. Besides, if lucid dreaming was a "natural" mechanism, then it would kick in much more often in people's nightmares, especially considering studies that show that a very high percentage of dream possess negative content.





> Since our dreams are based on our fears and our expectations, it is really us that makes ourselves go through nightmares.



In the same way, while this makes perfect sense, it also only amounts (at best) at half the equation. Nightmares can be induced simply by sleep posture, acidic stomach, and other psychological factors. Besides, it's relevant to distinguish the several types of dreams, because N-REM dreaming doesn't seem to totally fit into the "fear and expectation" theory.





> Was just about to cite the findings of a German study (which I got to get a hold of..), which found, that among the LDing 5-10 % of adults - mental health problems are found to a significantly less degree than in the non-LDing rest of the population.



And there's also stuff like this, who strengthen the argument  :wink2:  : Learning lucid dreaming and its effect on depression in undergraduates

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## Sensei

Oooo. I had a hunch that the first one was wrong, but the second one is as well? *a bright light shines at the end of my tunnel*. (I dont care at all about being wrong, I don't want to be right all the time, just at the end of the day, after I have learned)

First. You are saying that nightmares are evolutionary beficial because they get us prepared for a dangerous situation right (I don't believe in evolution as you know), but if nightmares are beneficial to survival, then that is something interesting for me to look into more. :3

If I could find a way other than fear or lucidity to make a nightmare, then I might be able to lucid more. Could you send me a link to things that actually cause nightmares (please dont say cheese, that doesn't work). I have been lucid in every nightmare since I was young and someone told me to wake myself up from them. I had trouble waking up at first and spent some time knowing that it was a dream. Most everything that I have found that "induces nightmares" are old wive's tales, but if you have a way, please show me!  :wink2:

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## LouaiB

Seems interesting! I think both are right. schemas and physical/psychological factors! ^^

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## Zoth

> Seems interesting! I think both are right. schemas and physical/psychological factors! ^^



Ya. Honestly, I'd agree with Brandon in his 2nd remark, because at some level he is indeed right: dream content seems to at least be influenced by our expectations/fears, aka, emotional memory. The deal is, being so many theories and variables lying around, it's hard to go on one specific direction without we stumbling according some aspects that don't fit the puzzle.
That's why I'm also so curious to see the effects of lucid dreaming on mental health, and what exactly is causing those improvements, but I guess we need more studies ^^

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## LouaiB

> Ya. Honestly, I'd agree with Brandon in his 2nd remark, because at some level he is indeed right: dream content seems to at least be influenced by our expectations/fears, aka, emotional memory. The deal is, being so many theories and variables lying around, it's hard to go on one specific direction without we stumbling according some aspects that don't fit the puzzle.
> That's why I'm also so curious to see the effects of lucid dreaming on mental health, and what exactly is causing those improvements, but I guess we need more studies ^^



Exactly my opinion!
And studies are lacking frequency and...what is it called?....Good standards...

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## Sensei

Studies for lucid dreaming are normally lacking a control group and really lack a good conclusion. They could all be chalked up to expectation since we aren't doing them correctly. :/ I might have to look more into how to have nightmares.

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## Psionik

Nightmares are beneficial? How exactly? How is illogical fear beneficial? It kills mind, therefore it is detrimental.
I don't remember last time I had bad dream... What was my worst nightmare I had? Someone would maybe say that being shot or cut by knife to death is a nightmare, and while I had that maybe 3 times through my life, it wasn't nightmarish for me. When I was shot down I actually make it to LD, I was just tired of dying and it occurred to me that I don't need... I simply stood and walked away through wall. And that made aware of dreaming. I most dislike dreams where there is chaos and lack of peace.

I'm training relaxation and concentration directed for mastering OBE from age of 12(I'm now 41). I created my own system out of autogenic training(I found in sci fi book Vladimir Paral: Valka s mnohozviretem, (War with manybeast)), found  my own way... remembered and reproduced feelings, states of mind... I do meditations for nearly the same period of time(it came spontaneously with exercises)... Maybe that makes one immune to nightmares.

I seek for inner peace, for control of illogical impulses... I seek knowledge. I think, it is why my dreams are not something I fear. But I would exchange normal dreams for lucid one entirely if I would know how to do it. Lucid dreams are more ordered... Greater, stronger lucidity is for me better way to live than let it slip into imagination where I could get lost.

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## Laurelindo

There are dangers in everything, but the benefits of lucid dreaming are definitely worth it.
It is "dangerous" to flirt with your crush as well, because he or she might not be interested or turn out to have a relationship, and this can make you feel rather bad for a while - but that doesn't mean that we should never show sexual feelings for anyone.

Also, saying that lucid dreams are "possibly dangerous" because they can turn into nightmares is a moot point, because ordinary dreams can also be nightmares, and lucid nightmares would in fact be less scary, because if you are lucid then you can at least change the nightmare into something different.

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## mowglycdb

I think that the negative of feeling drained has to do with keeping your mind concious too much time, I think that a requierment needed for resting well is completely shutting your conciousness off.

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## Laurelindo

> I think that the negative of feeling drained has to do with keeping your mind concious too much time, I think that a requierment needed for resting well is completely shutting your conciousness off.



Your consciousness does turn off pretty much completely during NREM.
And you are always conscious during REM while you dream anyway, that's why you can experience and remember dreams.

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## Sensei

> I think that the negative of feeling drained has to do with keeping your mind concious too much time, I think that a requierment needed for resting well is completely shutting your conciousness off.



I have never felt drained from an LD, and talking with people like hukif and Oreo that have LDed alllllll night long, they dont seem to feel tired all the time or worn out. So this is kind of just a hypothesis without any substantial evidence, no good observations, and no experiments that have been run  showing that this is the case.

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## Laurelindo

> I have never felt drained from an LD, and talking with people like hukif and Oreo that have LDed alllllll night long, they dont seem to feel tired all the time or worn out. So this is kind of just a hypothesis without any substantial evidence, no good observations, and no experiments that have been run  showing that this is the case.



I sometimes feel like the only reason why these sorts of rumours appear is because people might believe there has to be a catch somewhere, since lucid dreaming sounds "too good to be true".
It's pretty sad that people have to feel that way towards lucid dreaming.

There is no golden rule in nature that says that anything that is precious and fantastic "must" be extremely hard to get and/or have horrible negative side effects.
There is, of course, the catch that you often compete over precious stuff with everyone else, but you don't need to stand in line or anything for lucid dreaming.

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## Psionik

I never felt drained from LD or OBE. LD is like normal dream for me, in comparison to OBE

Off topic: after OBE I feel little off - not drained, not in ecstasy or depression... but for example my vision is usually sharper and things seems to have aura(a little), sensation of color is off... I see things more blue tinged... My feel of body balance is also off, maybe because of hours long deep relaxation...

What about NON-REM LD? Maybe need of REM phase is overrated. 

Also I found that long deep relaxation, concentration and especially meditation makes body feel much more rested. Now, I manage 1-2 hours thoughtless meditation (I train every day when I'm going sleep, and when I feel need) makes my sleep shorter, before I normally slept around 9 hours, now it is enough to have 5-6 hours. Without exercise I need again around 9 hours. Maybe if I manage 4hours of thoughtless meditation I could go without sleeping? Don't worry, I'm listening to my body, if it needs more rest it will get it. Nothing can go by force without some damage.

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## Laurelindo

I have actually noticed that I tend to feel _more_ rested after lucid dreams.
In fact, I once slept for only 5 hours and had a lucid dream that night, and despite sleeping for such a short time I felt surprisingly awake and rested.
Of course, this was probably just because the lucid dream gave me such a rush that I didn't notice that I was "actually" tired, but still...

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## rmwebberuark

Please clarify your personal opinion because I gathered that you meant people with mental disorders cannot lucid dream.  In my opinion, I think it is a lot easier to lucid dream with certain mental disorders (like ones that my psychologists are medicating me for:  C-PTSD, anxiety, depression, and OCD).  I feel that with anxiety, I am more aware of slight oddities.  And I can say, with much personal certainty, that too much lucid dreaming can be a bad thing.  I started at the age of 5-6ish because of an obsessively-controlling, abusive, and militaristic-like father.  I can relate with exhaustion (each time I have an LD now, I wake up with a racy heart and have to take a Beta Blocker), alienation, inability to stop for many years, false awakenings and sleep paralysis, and most importantly dissociation.  It's really f***ed up when I can remember the order and vividness of my dreams from my childhood but not many waking experiences.  I feel that psychologists that haven't had several, if not hundreds, of lucid dreams just won't be able to fully understand the mystery.  It really is the most addicting drug ever created.

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## rmwebberuark

Does it matter if a religion forbids it? NOOOOOO!! This is why we are so behind in research because our culture puts religion first.

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## Phantox

Honestly, a lot of this is possible but if you look at it, you'd have to be mentally weak to have any of these affect you in this way. The only one that might apply to the average person is the false awakening one. I've actually heard of people having 3+ false awakenings.

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## mowglycdb

> I have never felt drained from an LD, and talking with people like hukif and Oreo that have LDed alllllll night long, they dont seem to feel tired all the time or worn out. So this is kind of just a hypothesis without any substantial evidence, no good observations, and no experiments that have been run  showing that this is the case.



  It was for me though I had to put a lot of effort into lucid dreaming and that would tire me up. I have a total of 13-14 lucids.

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## Sensei

> It was for me though I had to put a lot of effort into lucid dreaming and that would tire me up. I have a total of 13-14 lucids.



Putting so much effort into LDing isn't needed. Consistent doable effort is what will bring consistent LDs. Consistency is the key. Consistent sleep and consistent effort.

If you put so much effort that you stress, it will lower LD amount as well. Know your stress level and what you can do daily. All stress will hurt you in all parts of life.

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## Tygar

The only issue I have is the occasional loss of sleep.  Sometimes I have trouble falling back to sleep after waking up and trying to commit my last dream to memory.

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## fogelbise

> It was for me though I had to put a lot of effort into lucid dreaming and that would tire me up. I have a total of 13-14 lucids.



Honestly, I did have a little trouble getting proper sleep early on but I am very glad that I stuck with it and made some adjustments. Getting proper sleep has not been a problem since maybe LD#25 or so. I think rmwebberuark's situation is very specific and would not apply to the average person and I wish them luck as I understand that PTSD is no joke.





> Putting so much effort into LDing isn't needed. Consistent doable effort is what will bring consistent LDs. Consistency is the key. Consistent sleep and consistent effort.
> 
> If you put so much effort that you stress, it will lower LD amount as well. Know your stress level and what you can do daily. All stress will hurt you in all parts of life.



Exactly!  :smiley:

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## greendrive

> And it also seems like lucidity might be. The brains natural defense mechanism against nightmares. >_>



I agree, I started LDing in order to overcome nightmares and since then I have used it to become lucid. It helps to calm me down, otherwise I used to wake up so disturbed and taking a lot of my daytime to overcome the nightmare I had.

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## chance7hope

_Hey everyone!
As far as I know there arent any dangers doing lucid dreaming. It is a normal state of mind. Even if you get addicted thats not a problem. Its like getting addicted to normal dreams, never gonna happen because they acure ever night. Some experts have only lucid dreams. Their normal dreams are gone. Well not exactly. Its just that their mind learned that it had to make the pearson lucid when he enters a dream. 
So in my personal oppinion ther are no dangers to lucid dreaming._

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## StephL

> Please clarify your personal opinion because I gathered that you meant people with mental disorders cannot lucid dream.  In my opinion, I think it is a lot easier to lucid dream with certain mental disorders (like ones that my psychologists are medicating me for:  C-PTSD, anxiety, depression, and OCD).  I feel that with anxiety, I am more aware of slight oddities.  And I can say, with much personal certainty, that too much lucid dreaming can be a bad thing.  I started at the age of 5-6ish because of an obsessively-controlling, abusive, and militaristic-like father.  I can relate with exhaustion (each time I have an LD now, I wake up with a racy heart and have to take a Beta Blocker), alienation, inability to stop for many years, false awakenings and sleep paralysis, and most importantly dissociation.  It's really f***ed up when I can remember the order and vividness of my dreams from my childhood but not many waking experiences.  I feel that psychologists that haven't had several, if not hundreds, of lucid dreams just won't be able to fully understand the mystery.  It really is the most addicting drug ever created.



This is very, very interesting - thank you for sharing and for your honesty and openness! 
There's this thread next door:  http://www.dreamviews.com/attaining-...iousness.html:

Where we're - well me, mostly - rambling on about ASC, including the thread's proposal/idea (if I managed to understand, finally), that it might be possible to gain more control over acute psychotic states and the accompanying hallucinations by making use of something akin to advanced dream-control, acquired from LDing practice. Lacking such experiences - I can and did only guess so, but I've been also wondering, if not the reverse effect could also come about. That at least excessive LDing would induce psychotic episodes, or make them more severe and less well controllable.
Now you mention dissociation and alienation as side-effects, and I have to say, it doesn't overly surprise me. One needed to ask an actual schizophrenic lucid dreamer to find out a bit more about this specific aspect. Unfortunately that's not so easy, and maybe not a good idea, even, to induce people to make public, what they'd like to have kept to themselves in hindsight.

I believe many of us have such a hard time to lucid dream in the first place, that it is difficult to imagine, there could be anything negative about it, and how it would be like, if you did it since 5 years of age and excessively, obsessively. I have to say, I take claims of people saying they don't have any normal dreams any more with a big grain of salt, but that's something else. I'm not addressing you with this (at all) or anybody specific here, just wanting to make sure...

I'll quote from my over-extensive ramblings of my latest post in the above mentioned thread:





> Space enough to say, what I believe dreams to be - evolutionarily developed for once and secondly providing a simulation space for practising for real life. 
> Nesse doesn't mention this, but it's not my idea, well it is - but I read about it, too. Maybe I'll find something later. Lucidity is the next logical step for self-aware creatures in my view - only then can we, as complex as we are, really profit from this great tool. While our dog dreams of hunting or taking flight, we so often repeat socially awkward situations and whatnot else in normal dreams, which might often be rather irrelevant for our actual lives. Or maybe not so - maybe solvable and to be solved better with lucidity. Most of us are aware of the beneficial potential of LDs anyway, but much more might be possible than most can even imagine and/or are able to realize.
> 
> How would teaching/coaching/fostering it in young children turn out?
> In principle it's of course possible, that it would interfere with the (classical/usual) cognitive development. Many young children lucid dream (citations can be produced!) and cease to do so around puberty (me too). Around that time, schizophrenia develops as well, which could be completely coincidental, or not. To what effects would it be to motivate children to practise, and keep it up into adulthood? Nobody knows, but I chose (on faith) to be hopeful there until evidence to the contrary reaches me!



I really hope, it could be beneficial - but as said, that's on wishful thinking and faith. Good to have a voice like yours, even if I don't like the conclusions, which follow. Do you sometimes hallucinate, or lucid-daydream, or however you want to call it? Does it happen while excessive bouts of lucid dreaming, that you start to really be unable to decide what is reality and what not, too?  Only if you want to answer of course!
So - it might actually be a bad idea to motivate and coach kids to keep it up from external...
Shame that - well - if it is so - and who knows?





> Does it matter if a religion forbids it? NOOOOOO!! This is why we are so behind in research because our culture puts religion first.



Most definitively not!!
And yes - we are in dreary lack of psychiatry and psychology catching up with the sort of scientific scrutiny being wielded in other fields of medicine, or human biology, if you will, which would gain us important insights. And that's - in my view - not least because of culture and of course esp. religions and superstitious, dualistic thinking having long impeded the idea that mind is something for science in the first place.

Maybe you'll like this place: http://www.dreamviews.com/religion-s...ists-here.html

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## WillOtheWisp

I don't entirely get why everyone needs to have their argument male-genitalia (to be polite) thrust prominently to show off when they are getting their point across. And yes, I am talking about the first response by the psychologist. I expect more thought-out and polite responses from someone in that community than BS and a winky face. 

Actually addressing things, nicely, like you are sitting down to a comfy chat with a friend is pretty much the minimum level of attitude I would think to see on message boards discussing topics like this.

About lucid dreaming, and this is ENTIRELY based upon my own experience, I have a few things to share.

Firstly in my LD's I can feel pain. Distinctly. So that probably changes things a little bit in terms of the effects.

For me the dreams were often very negative and dark, since most nights when I would see a documentary on sharks I would LD being pulled under the water and chomped on by one. Needless to say I would stay awake often.

After a while you get used to the scary stuff and you learn to accept it. I have had to. 

Point is, these dreams were very formative in my life. Like mini-experiences. I knew they would end and I eventually learned better control, but they still had an effect on my development as a person. 

I certainly DONT expect that to be the case for alot of people. Alot of it probably has to do with the fact that I was a personality who took over for the central one a while ago. Before that these dreams were often the only time I existed or could act. 

-flies away-

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## Seltiez

I think it could be dangerous for people with certain conditions. Escaping reality to lucid dreams can be really harmfull and being obsessed to lucid dream could have negative effect on your social life. So yes i think it can be harmful for people with problems. As long as you have healthy attitude to lucid dreaming and first reality then dreams nothing bad should happen.

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## chance7hope

> I think it could be dangerous for people with certain conditions. Escaping reality to lucid dreams can be really harmfull and being obsessed to lucid dream could have negative effect on your social life. So yes i think it can be harmful for people with problems. As long as you have healthy attitude to lucid dreaming and first reality then dreams nothing bad should happen.



Well yeah you are right thats on one side of it. Some conditions can stop you from lucid dreams. Like lots of the LDs give you fast hearth beat in the begining and the end of one so that might be harmfull for some people with certain conditions. But overall I think that you can still LD. Consulting with a sleep speacialist or a psycologist is a priority here. 
And for the other part. Yeah it can kind a give a negative effect on your social life, but in my perconal appinion the individual should know for itself what is good for him or her at a certain moment of their lifes. Yeah I have bad days too and want to jusy escape this reality and start flying above some Tropical island or meditate near a waterfall in a blisfull forest, but I know that this is all a part of my nornal physicall evryday life. Plus I know that I can go to bed with a propper mindset and still go to those places. Still as I said every individual should know whats good for him or her.
Hope I was helpfull ^ω^
Ciao.

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