Thread: weed and dream recall

I having only been seriously getting back in LD'ing and dream journals for about two weeks now and can remember 1-4 dreams a night, and have had 4 lucids - and I generally smoke every day. I find my dream recall is best if I stop smoking an hour before bed, and then WBTB in the morning.
Cannabis can suppress REM sleep cycles, but if you stop a little while before bed and WBTB in the morning, it should all be worn off by then, so I did see why it should effect you at all.

Originally Posted by hermine_hesse

I having only been seriously getting back in LD'ing and dream journals for about two weeks now and can remember 1-4 dreams a night, and have had 4 lucids - and I generally smoke every day. I find my dream recall is best if I stop smoking an hour before bed, and then WBTB in the morning.
Cannabis can suppress REM sleep cycles, but if you stop a little while before bed and WBTB in the morning, it should all be worn off by then, so I did see why it should effect you at all.

yeah great post HH. short answer for me is that weed can be detrimental to recall. however it can also show you how to negate this. as long as you are aware of the effect it is happening, you can adjust your practices so that weed can be extremely beneficial. remember that your expectations are a major part of the psychadelic experience so if you expect it to wipe your memory it probably will. can be a bit like using weights for sprint training. once you take them off you learn to fly, then you learn how to fly despite of the weight

far more people who smoke are into lucid dreaming i would say. also without smoking many people would not even open themselves up to the possibilities of the imagination. everything in moderation folks

I actually recently quit smoking weed, and it is helping a lot with dreaming. I used to dream about once a week if I was lucky, and once I stopped, I started getting a lot more, before
I even started to try and remember them. It has also helped me in a lot of other ways, but I'm not here to preach to you about drugs, I just wanted to share my experience.

When i first quit, for unrelated reasons, my recall increased dramatically...for about a week, once i was used to not smoking it went back down to nearly none. maybe its just the change in habits that affects recall

I used to smoke weed on a daily basis, my dream recall wasn't to good but I also hadn't discovered lucid dreaming. Now I get drug tested and can not smoke, I realized when i quit smoking my dream recall increased a lot. If you smoked before bed that could have contributed to it because it keeps your mind too active to really remember your dreams often. I have siblings that smoke a lot and can almost never recall there dreams. As for your recall increasing dramatically for only a week after quitting I'm not sure why. Do you keep a dream journal? If not, that may very well be the reason as to why you have bad recall.

I didnt then, as i had no knowledge of lucid dreaming. I have just started learning about it this week and started my journal.

Ok, do you still smoke? Do you find your recall is getting better after using a dream journal?

No i had to quit as i am joining the navy I just started the dream journal this week and I have recalled one short dream, but i was in a hotel the night before MEPS, so I cant really attribute that to the DJ

Oh, as much as it sucks not smoking anymore hopefully it will have a positive effect on your recall, and one dream is better then none just gotta keep trying.

Agreed. Does suck lol, but i just keep thinking that once i make this money ill be able to do it when i want haha!

Haha good way to look at it.

This is an interesting topic so I'm going to bump it up a little. I normally smoke 3-5 days of the week. First of all, weed does NOT kill brain cells. This is a myth. When they first did the experiment that lead people to believe that smoking caused brain cells to die, they did it on monkeys I believe. I'm almost sure it was monkeys, although I could be wrong. It was an animal, I do know that. Anyways, when they did the test, they put a mask on the monkeys and inserted cannibis smoke into the mask. They determined that it kills brain cells, so everyone started believing this. A few years later, they discovered that the monkeys did not lose brain cells due to the smoke. Instead, the scientists were englufing the monkeys in smoke. At such a rate that the monkeys could not breathe and as a result were sufficated. Lack of oxygen and suffication is what lead to the depletion of brain cells. I smoke all the time, I lose no memory, and I'm a pre med student in college with great grades. This explanation is to those who have stated that weed is bad for memory and you shouldn't do it. Do not use this as an argument against weed, as it has now been proven that it does not affect brain cells. If anyone wants to prove me wrong, and you know that you can, feel free to prove me wrong.

Now as far as dream recall goes, weed DOES reduce the amount of REM sleep you get. This is not a drastic amount, and the REM effect is greater if you go to bed high. If you smoke during the day and come down before you go to bed, the effect on REM is not as strong. While you may not have as many dreams as a result, you still can recall dreams. I personally don't recall dreams as well when I smoke and go to sleep, but if I come down before I go to bed I remember dreams just fine. Last night I smoked and had my fun, and then studied after I came down and went to bed. This was one of the first nights that I have remembered a dream from the middle of the night. My recall is getting better and better everyday, and I smoke.

From what I've heard it really depends on the person, but the general idea is that weed suppresses REM and kills recall especially if you smoke right before sleep. For me it's like this, and like in your case, after about a day of not smoking I notice a huge increase in my dream vividness and the amount I can recall. I haven't gone a whole week without smoking so I don't know how it works in the long run, but my idea is that because of your suppressed REM sleep from weed, when you quit you experience a sort of REM rebound where dreams become more vivid for a while. After about a week or so it normalizes and then it's just up to you to do things like dream journaling and other things to build up your recall.

I did a test to see how it effects me and tried smoking at various times before going to sleep. I noticed that if I smoked right before sleep I would barely be able to remember anything. The more time between smoking and going to sleep, the more I would be able to remember in the morning, with my best recall if I didn't smoke at all during the day.

I read somewhere that weed can decrease memory recall for up to 24 hours after smoking, but I also hear claims that depending on the potency of the weed there is no effect on memory, so I don't really know what's true or not. I think it's just up to you to figure out how it effects you and what you should do about it.

A friend of mine told me he didn't remember a dream for like 6 years (since he started smoking weed daily). So i think it's pretty bad for your dream recall!

I smoked the night before both of the lucids that I've had. Although I did have lucids, the recall of them wasn't very good. I'm quitting for about 5 weeks, give or take, and I hope I can contribute to this discussion by later explaining what effect quitting had on my recall. When I do smoke at night and go to bed still high, I tell myself that when I'm high my imagination is broader, therefore I can have more interesting dreams. This has held true (probably because I believe it). But as I said earlier, my dream recall is worse unfortunately.

Smoke in the afternoon don't smoke 5 hours before bed

First of All
I smoke weed CONSTANTLY...and I found that its slaughters my recall....BUT...

I also found that performing WBTB after your deep sleep cycle eliminates almost all of the effects I previously experienced.

In other news: Weed helps my long term memory...It helps me process extreme emotion....It helps with anxiety, stress, and in general life enjoyment...

In conclusion: Its a toss up. Figure out what you can deal with in waking life and make the appropriate adjustments to your habit.

I started smoking cannabis heavily and during this time I lost interest in lucid dreaming because my dream recall fell away so badly. Now i'm trying to get back into it but its really hard to recall anything. Basically, pot f**ks up your memory

I tend to smoke daily but when I do have dry days my recall increases massively.
If I have a heavy one chances are I won't remember a thing.

I spent all day yesterday significantly more stoned than I do most days, I exercised heavily and had a small amount of alcohol in the evening. When I went to bed I slept HARD, and two times in the middle of the night I smoked small bowls to help me fall back asleep, and I had FOUR vivid lucids through the whole night.

So, yeah. Don't know what you guys are talking about