Uncategorized

Well I went ahead and pulled the trigger on my bedside lucid cocktail this morning. Conditions were not ideal: super late to-bed time (3am approx), and it was already about the 6th hour (approaching 9am), so it was dicey at best but I had a quiet home (both kids out in the morning today) so I decided to go for it. It looks like the 8mg galantamine did the trick, plus all the extra choline (bitartrate and alpha gpc).

Again the mixture was: 2x GalantaMind 4mg (each capsule 4mg galantine, 50mg B5, 100mg choline dihydrogen citrate) for a total of 8mg galangamine, 100mg B5, 200mg choline dihydrogen citrate), 1x choline bitartrate 310mg, 1x Alpha GPC 300mg.

Mostly I spent the next 5 hours trying to get to sleep. At approximately 1-2 hours I did start getting pretty abnormally strong HI.

Somewhere in the 2+ hours my daydreams started getting a lot more realistic than usual, with more visual and tactile feedback, but still very much daydreams.

Numerous times I gathered my will and emptied my head and tried to sink into relaxation. Again and again and again.

At one point it finally worked and I got to sleep and dreamed...a lucid FAKE OUT!

I feel myself in bed, and I started getting a solid image appearing before my dream eyes. I was coaxing it on, "Ok, good, solidify, solidify, that's it..." I'm anticipating entering the dream. I see a tall outdoors strip-mall sign pole with several store signs on it. Interesting. I'm looking at them and pushing them into focus. Then I start thinking something like, "aw man, this isn't a dream, this is the view from my bed. You see, there's the KFC across the street, and somebody will come out of that door soon, there's the guy now, he's walking down the street" I watch him go by. Then I get self-conscious that here it is daytime, and I still feel myself lying in bed (apparently outside in a parking lot) (in the actual position I was really in bed), and people will walk by and see me. I think "oh that's ok, people sleep in all the time and see people in their beds." I get up and some woman in her car comes tearing into our outdoor carport just off of the sidewalk in a big rush. She jumps out (with a briefcase?) and runs across the street to the entrance of the subway. I think we need to put up poles to block our carport, but realize that the people who drive quickly into our carport will hit the poles and their cars will go flying into the air.

I follow into the entrance to the subway. Up stairs, through a window/door. Lots of people, I see my wife just inside the window in the crowd (purple blouse?), I notice her chest . I'm trying to push through the crowd to walk faster towards the subway platform, but I can't since there are so many people. I see two pairs of 2 movers (who work for the furniture store at the subway platform, of course!) moving two large cabinets along the walkway with the crowd. They're approaching an overhead beam, I think they're going to smack the furniture top into it, they end up just grazing it lightly.

I go down some stairs and can't find the platform. It's deserted, in a large building. I think I must be at the gym, since the swimming pool is that way. I turn back and see about 20 feet from me who I think is my old grad school girlfriend, I call to her, but then I realize I didn't put on my gym shirt and I notice my bare chest/stomach. I'm not in perfect shape. She turns and walks away, not noticing me, I see a big entryway in the distance...



so that's basically I think good news! It seemed really vivid. This dose seems to work for me. All I have to do now is prepare another little LD cocktail baggie by the bed and wait for better conditions. And with repeated determination I finally got to sleep, despite being all juiced up on choline and the G. I definitely need to take it early in the night, probably not later than 4 hours, maybe earlier, and perhaps work in some melatonin.

Follow-up to today's earlier entry : went back to bed for a late morning nap and slept for approx. 3 hours, 2 sleep cycles, I recall waking up once with recall but chose not to record and just try to slip back in, I did go back to sleep but not lucidly, don't remember those first dreams, but I did wake up right from the second batch of dreams with decent recall.

As is typical for those late morning dreams after about 8 hours it pretty much was "go with the flow" very low awareness, except right at the end I was sitting with a bunch of college students on some table and notice a long blonde haired stunning girl with her back towards me (pink leggings?), and I start to hit on her making a joke about the topic of conversation (which was showers), I touch her back to get her attention and start to give a stupid pick-up line involving showering ( ), and decide, no, I'm not going to do that, and I instead just am very genuine and "would like to go out with you." She's looking at me and says something is different about you, your hair?, and I touch my face and realize I've shaved off my beard, and I feel that my hair is very long and sex-ay.

Then that transitions to hanging out with a bunch of college girls and a narrator says "you don't want to run with the buffalo" (meaning you don't want to hang out with girls who just are with you to raise their status but are otherwise not in your league.) and I wake up.

good variety last night, much forgotten, still tired

+ playing baseball in the snow, the ball shoots past into the outfield and gets lost in the snow

+ walking through a big place with lots of people, some naked ladies lying around on the ground, checking them out "subtly" as I walk by . Bodies exaggerated in various ways.

+ driving at night, try to pull into a place that it turns out is closed, then suddenly I'm in, a guard calls out something at me, I say in a foreign language "exit!" (to communicate I'm leaving), he calls after me (in FL), "exit?", I say "exit!" and I'm out again.

+ sitting in church, people start dancing in a circle in pairs holding hands, I stand up and look for a free partner, a (redhead?) woman eventually takes my hands and we start moving in the circle

+ soccer goal? (not sure this was a dream or a waking memory of sitting in a restaurant with soccer playing on the TV screens last night)

+ playing a space ship video game, shooting at two other guys playing nearby, I'm just off the edge of their screen shooting individual torpedoes at them who are orbiting a planet, I imagine the key sequences required to do this.

+ I notice a large square hole in the right upper leg of my jeans (about 6 inches on a side), I see a system of multi-layer padding and rollers/cushions underneath, I'm staring at this in confusion for a while, I'm upset my pants are ruined, we try putting various patches over the hole but it won't look good.

+ church scene: there with various young people, there's a screen, someone said "this technology (some name) is a great way of authenticating," it was based around little images.

Lots of dreams, recall poor, only vague impression of long dreams, too tired from previous night's loss of sleep

+ walking into a large enclosed structure/building within a larger building, dark, lots of metal hanging around, a bunch of guys in there were pretending they were in prison, swaggering and positioning themselves as cool, asked WTF I was doing in there, I didn't belong, I left, and shut and bolted the door, they all shouted "HEY" (there was no light) so I opened it again.

+ on the crew of a Star Trek ship? (which I had more recall of this one!)

+ in a racquetball court (I hereby promote this to formal dreamsign status, happens a lot recently), I'm warming up with friends we're about to play, I hit the ball a few times, I hit it to a friend so he can hit it, he doesn't, the friends decide to play instead in another court in another club later in the week, I say, WHAT? Aren't we going to play, I imagine the other court has narrow passageways leading in to the court.

Trying to always go back to DEILD at each waking, so recall suffered and don't know time of dreams.

+ in a concrete underground bunker, I'm looking for the toilet, I see a hole in the ground where it used to be. A workman is quizzing me about bolts in the ceiling.

+ in a large hall with long wooden seats (Church?) I'm trying to move ahead of a slow moving group, I can't get by.


00:00 Wednesday 2014-01-22

05:00 1 4mg galantamind, 1 250mg (300mg?) alpha gc

+ lived in a land where the rulers were against me, I had to leave and come back. Long dream. There's a refridgerator/ice maker I wanted to give away to some poor folks there was a place to plug it in, as long as they would let me use it, I would come and have drinks there. At the end I was going somewhere in a jeep with 2 girls they had left their crutches behind we had to go back to the bad land to get them but it went OK.

07:47

+ in a racquetball court, fairly dark lights weren't on, it was not the right size, it was not deep enough , threw a ball around, there was a bunch of stuff in there I was moving to out of the way so I could play, but I didn't have a racquet then I see a racquet.

Was trying to get in to a court , the walls were so opaque I could barely see through, but I saw players playing there ,I think I probably need reservations.

(Experimented with DEILD attempts on every waking so alot of recall sacrificed)

Lots of wakings through the night, I still roll over / move at all wakings. I realize I'm rolling over but it's too late. I go back to sleep right away with the notion of DEILDing. Tired from previous night's 3-hour sleep loss. I recall a waking at about 3 hours, and

+ (DO) A woman and I are in some chidlren's play-place (tubes), we take turns pulling each other out of stuck positions

+ A huge family is being cooked for, it's in a deli, there are lots of cats wandering around, I notice in particular a white cat with luxurious fur, and a scraggly older cat with dirty white fur

+ Driving with wife, I'm in passenger seat, she's not paying attention (on phone or something), I keep screaming "pull over! pull over!", I grab the wheel, we're skidding sideways across the road, we pull off on to a dirt road, we get out, my kids and I are walking and sinking into mud to waist depth, I'm concerned we'll drown, I tell my kids to move slowly so as not to sink deeper, we get out OK.

+ At boy scout camp, the patrol camps are all squished together in one small spot, the camps and areas are delineated by little 4-inch-high curbs made of stones running everywhere in no particular pattern. The patrol members will be able to see each other.

00:00 Monday 2014-01-19

+ Playing blackjack at a table, buying a snack from the dealer who handed it to me over a 3-foot high clear plexiglass barrier, spied a former neighbor of mine who was behaving entirely deranged, walking around with severely squinted eyes (not the first time I've seen a DC with squinted eyes, weird) knocking into people and babbling, I'm riding in an office chair with wheels I roll right up to her and call her name, she opens her eyes widely as she recognizes me, and she says something about the correct words/grammar to use when discussing dachsunds -- she holds one of my seated legs between her standing legs and I think this is a bit inappropriate.

+ I'm trying to woo a crush by giving her pieces of strangely glowing minerals I find in the ground.

+ Driving in my childhood neighborhood I get chased at high speed by some bad guys.

--------------------------
00:00 Friday 2013-12-06
~02:00 bedtime, in bed at 01:38, but wife came later, had to start over
08:15
F1) long dream sequence about...dreaming?
hungry, wanted to sleep more, got up for small bowl of cerreal
10:00 - 11:00 ? BTB nap couch
11:59
1) in a very cluttered (asian) Indian store. There are many cash registers each with a very dark-skinned Indian (or African perhaps) woman. I'm approaching one register and I realize the woman there is chanting something, I hear it, I do not want her to think that her chant has power over me to bring me to her register to I turn away and head towards another register. At the registers are boxes of shallots and garlic, I go to a closed register (no one is there) against a wall, I pick up 3 big shallots and want to buy them, a woman from another register comes over, I look into her face, and I say "open? Can I buy these here at this register?" I think she probably doesn't understand.

I am aware while waking up, it feels like I'm entering a dream lucidly but instead I'm leaving the dream. If I had stayed asleep I probably would have gotten lucid.

Lots of thoughts about WL stuff interfering with going to sleep. Wife snoring in the morning. No earplugs because my ears are irritated from wearing them all night every night so I'm taking a break from them. Actually slept most of the night fine without them.

Last night was one of those dreaming nights you wish you could put in a can and just keep opening again and again!
Legend: not-dream, normal dream, lucid dream

Day: lots of prospective memory targets. Medium number of state checks, a few Sageous RRCs.
Before bed:
One hour of transcribing my voice journaling into written journal for a couple days.
~1 teaspoon lecithin granules, couple of glasses of apple juice
Read for about 45 minutes (helps me get to sleep faster I've found).

Bed at 01:00 Thank SC for dreams, ask for more LDs, put in request for particular themes.
wake at 05:17, no recall (may have been some earlier awakenings, I thought, hey, I didn't recall doing any journaling yet, and I was pretty sure I had some earlier light recall)
drank 1/2 cup of apple juice
then did some MILD reps based on previous night's dreams
and did some SSILD cycles for good measure.
wake at 06:17: LUCID!
Progress! A different lucid awakening moment, this time: critical faculty! I was in the middle of a (somewhat bizarre) conversation, I was asking an old friend about his hush-hush new business venture. It had to to with coaching (kids?) football. I said I had not ever coached football but that I had coached soccer (true in WL). I tried to hand him a card from my wallet, when all my cards fell to the ground. About 10-15 of them, I'm kneeling down trying to pick them up. And I can't. They just keep falling out of my hands, they just won't get arranged how I want them to be. Then I think, "Hey, this is a bizarre situation, I should check to see if I'm in a dream" and BOOM as soon as I said "dream" I became lucid. Same "sucked into the movie" feeling as the first DILD, I instantly stood up in amazement. I was *so sure* that I had been awake before, I was almost in shock to realize it was a dream. No RC again like DILD #1, as soon as the word "dream" popped into my head after and I had the notion to question my state, I was instantly lucid.

And I wasn't super-confused before being lucid, like I am sometimes in dreams, it was more like light puzzlement, the flavor of the thought was, "oh, this is one of those times when things don't work like you think they should that you're supposed to see if you're dreaming." If I can get consistent with this then my frequency will skyrocket since I have these moments all the time. I missed one earlier in the ND portion: I saw a shooting star (cool, it went all the way across the sky). Then more, and more and more shoting stars (whoa!). Then I saw colorful pinwheels of stars in the sky, I tell my friend "Look! Check that out!" Then I see a huge picture/ scene in the sky and first am filled with wonder, but quickly think, "Oh, someone must be running a projector somewhere" and my attention moves on. Doh!

Again, right away the very high/giddy excitement, I completely forgot and blew off the ND conversation and DCsI, I just turn around and walk through the crowd of people and head down the corridor, no clear goals in mind. Without willing it, I suddenly float like a balloon up to the roof of the hallway and stay there, looking down. I feel out of control. I get a grip on myself, and rub my hands together (yay!). I feel my hands rubbing and and see them briefly, feel a little heat. Right away I float down to the ground, and feel more in control. (I wish I had right then done a thorough stabilizatation / dream quality shouting, but I didn't, I guess I felt sufficiently stable.)

I start walking the hallways looking for a way out. All the people have vanished. I'm walking through a building, observing, looking for a DC to talk to. It's sort of a cluttered industrial "backstage" place, lots of random stuff around.

I decide to try summoning. I say to myself "there's a DC around that next corner." I look around the corner -- empty hallway. Darn. I turn around, walk back, and then try "there's (my prepared-in-WL special dream location) through that next doorway. Nothing. Just an old woman in the distance.

Have the idea to stabilize (woot), I decide to try "making out with the ground" as heard in a podcast here on DV. I lie down on the ground on my stomach and lick the floor. I'm only wearing underwear, and I feel the grain/grittyness of the wood floor on my stomach and arms. I lick the floor with my tongue. No taste, though. In retrospect I think it's better to "make out with the wall" since lying down can be risking a waking.

I want to get outside, to where more people are. I'm still in the very high-ceilinged storage room, the same area I've been in for a minute, I see a sign/doorway about 15-20 feet above the ground. At one point it says "exit" I think and at another it shows a big picture of a person in a swimsuit. Must be the way to the pool, I decide to go there.

I start climbing up a dresser to get to the exit/door and have a Matrix moment (as in, "do you think that's air you're breathing!?"), thinking I'm going about this the wrong way. Some things are in my way, I try to "jedi force blast" (I wasn't actually thinking "jedi force blast" I just pushed my hand forwards and willed the stuff to zoom out of my way) them out of my way, I succeed in moving a few things out of my way. Then 3 people came in to the room from the swimming pool entrance above me and I woke instantly, no fade to gray.

Thought briefly about trying DEILD to get back in but decided I wanted to journal and remember.

Subjective time: 2, maybe 3 minutes

Thanked my SC and asked for more!

07:20 MILD reps and SSILD cycles
09:37 woke from vivid ND , just what I asked SC for!
09:57 trying more MILD and SSILD
Couldn't sleep, very excited, going over dreams in my head
10:43 trying more MILD and SSILD
12:44 woke from another awesome reasonably vivid ND, many details forgotten, but still fun

Woohoo, one month to first DILD, 1 week to second DILD (with 3 days of missing the key REMs), shooting now for multiple per week! And it didn't need to wait for the late morning REMs, it came around the 5th hour.

There is a very different feel between my 2 DILDs and the recent vivid NDs: in the vivid NDs I'm totally confident and feel entirely in control, in my LDs I'm excited but my attempt at control was more "hopeful wishing" than "confident expectation." That's the next thing.